Tag: esports

Man, the League scene has certainly changed

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It might sound like something that might’ve never happened, but I haven’t played League of Legends in nearly a month.  While mythical gf was out of the country, I spent most of that time doing little projects around the house to try and surprise her with some cosmetic changes here and there, and because I was on permanent dog duty that whole time, I didn’t feel good about hiding out in my office playing League for hours for the sake of the dogs.

I don’t really miss it, or have any anxiety at not having earned any IP blue essence in that time; considering that among my friends I’m the only one who’s been the closest to having been the most regular player, it’s easier to have walked away, considering I haven’t been leaving anyone behind in the process.

But I don’t intend on staying away, since ultimately I still did enjoy the game, it’s just that I found other things to do with my spare time than play League, but until that time comes, it’s almost been a full month since the last time I queued up on the Abyss, and there are sure to have been a hundred little tweaks and changes that will blindside me the next time I log in.

However, as long as it’s been since I last played, it’s been nearly triple that, that I’ve paid any attention to the League esports scene.  It’s funny to think that like 2-3 years ago, I was really into the weekly standings and looking up videos and recaps afterwards, to get the condensed action minus all the mundane boring farming and laning phases of the games, and I’d care about who was on top in NA, all the way to trying to figure out what darkhorse secondary region was doing what.

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Everything happened I said would happen at Worlds

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

At this point, I really don’t care who wins Worlds, because regardless who wins the final best-of-five, the winner is still Korea.  I mean, I’m aware that the scenario I was hoping for was like wishing the 90’s Chicago Bulls with Michael Jordan would do good each year, but it’s still never a smooth journey for the most competent of competitors year after year.  And this was supposedly the year that the rest of the world was thought to have caught up in League of Legends talent, and frankly that wasn’t wrong, it’s just that it just wasn’t enough.

But a week from now, will the finals of the 2017 League of Legends World Championship – pitting Souh Korea’s SK Telecom T1 against, South Korea’s Samsung Galaxy.  This is also a rematch of the previous year’s Worlds, and since all spectator events love to raise the importance of scenarios by stating first times for things, this is the first time that the same two teams have made it to the finals of Worlds, ever and in consecutive years much less, even in a league just seven years old.

LCK Fall Split memes, right here.

However, it’s not just the fact that it’s two Korean teams that has me all smug and arrogant, it’s also the narrative in which such a matchup came to fruition.  Worlds this year has been taking place in China, the region that has yet to hoist a championship in the seven years of competitive League, despite often being perceived as the #2 region in the world.  But don’t tell the Chinese that, because in their own opinion, they’re gods amongst mortals who can’t be touched in competitive League of Legends, except for the fact that, they’ve never won Worlds, and have almost never beaten Korean squads with very few exceptions.

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Cloud9 is going to find out the hard way

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Oh, how little they realize the danger they’re in: Cloud9 secures $25M in Series A financing from various notable entities, including the WWE

In other words, the world of eSports has let the wolf known as World Wrestling Entertainment into the chicken coop.  AKA Triple H, the de facto ultimate usurper and infiltrator has found his way into the burgeoning and profitable world of eSports.

And now that his foot is in the door, it’s only a matter of time before Triple H ultimately takes over every single C9 professional team, and then it’s only a matter of another time until Triple H, and just Triple H is the champion of League of Legends, Overwatch, Counterstrike and Smash Bros.

Granted, eSports will have been systematically ruined and destroyed, but hey, it would at least be a North American champion in some of these games, for once in the history of competitive gaming.

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Life is boring lately

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but as it pertains to my want to write every now and then, it sure doesn’t help when there’s nothing to really talk about outside of sports.  Like really, I comb through news sites, and I try to watch a little bit of news here and there, but on a regular basis, it’s the same old shit that’s being driven further into the ground every single time it comes up, so there’s really nothing particularly interesting to me that gives me any inspiration to really write.

On the local level, the AJC further reinforces the notion that they’re a clown outlet, since the front page of the site has basically turned into the SEC football daily, providing links and news for not just Georgia, but just about every single SEC school’s football programs.  Granted, I guess it sure beats the alternative to the daily shootings, robberies and killings in Southwest Atlanta, but surely, surely, there has to be stuff worth reporting on aside from college football.

National and global news are more of the same crap involving sexual harassment dogpiling, talk of building a wall, and the perpetually constantly rising tensions between the United States and other countries.

Same shit, different day.

It’s no wonder why I always fall back onto sports and wrestling to talk about, because there’s not much else worth writing about that doesn’t just trigger, bother, infuriate or simply annoy.

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Money > Loyalty – The Rito Way

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was thinking recently about how interesting it is to be actively witnessing the formation and establishment of the rise of professional competitive gaming.  Obviously having been around since like the 1960s long before I, or anyone else in my generation or younger were even born, competitive entities like MLB, NFL, NBA and even the NHL have been around for decades, and had the vast majority of their rules and infrastructure already build, established and requiring no more than occasional tweaks and union-related agreements to operate smoothly on a seasonal basis.

On account of that, I’m often fascinated by the way the ever-growing professional League of Legends scene as well as other professionally played video games operate in, by comparison, some very fast, loose and always changing rules and structure.  I get that they’re the new kids on the block in professional competition, but it would be kind of nice to not have to re-read the rules and conditions of the league every single season.  In LoL alone, the format has switched from best-of-ones, to best-of-threes, and then there’s all these weird convoluted tiers when it comes to playoff seeding, and they’ve basically invalidated the entire first half of a season, by making the first half winner not a lock for Worlds, while the winner of the second half is an automatic #1 seed, which makes absolutely no fucking sense to me at all.

The global professional League scene is just now at the tail end of just their seventh year, but it’s safe to say that aside from the map they play on, it’s entirely a different game now than in which it started when Europe were kings and Korea and China hadn’t even entered the playing field.

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Writing when I’m not feeling writing

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Every now and then, I’ll hit a point where I look at my docket of written things, and feel as if I haven’t written anything in a while, and then I feel anxious because I’m OCD like that and feel like I should be writing at the very least, once a week.

However, admittedly a lot of it has to do with the fact that I’ve been feeling like the world around me is in this stagnant state where on any given point, it feels like the world’s primary topics of discussion are encapsulated in these really small capsules as of late, and it’s like the same things are discussed and rehashed 50,000 times before the next thing that should probably be taking a back seat to larger things emerges and the cycle repeats itself.

Like, for example, it seems like the only things being talked about in the world are:

  • Sexual harassment that stemmed from Harvey Weinstein
  • Gun control that stemmed from the Las Vegas shootings
  • Kneeling during the National Anthem that stemmed from Colin Kaepernick
  • Football

Despite the fact that there are vastly bigger issues in the world currently such as:

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kT LOLster

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This is not a rebroadcast from last year: Samsung Galaxy defeats kT Rolster, advances to Worlds

Honestly, despite knowing that this was always a possibility, I would have put my money on kT to win the regional qualifier, and make it to Worlds as the #3 seed for Korea.  I don’t think it’s at all that often that a team of talented players doesn’t figure out how to rectify their shortcomings and overcome obstacles in their path; however, on that same token, it’s never out of the realm of possibility that a competitive team also has their kryptonite, and that for whatever reasons, falls short to the exact same circumstances repeatedly.

Regardless, despite being the vaunted meticulously constructed super team, kT Rolster for the second year in a row, will not be going to the League of Legends World Championships, falling short at the hands of Samsung Galaxy, again.

If it sucked being kT Rolster because they couldn’t ever beat SK Telecom at all throughout the year, it really sucks to be kT Rolster when they didn’t just fall short of winning Worlds, but didn’t even make it into the tournament at all.  This would be like if the Miami Heat didn’t even make it into the NBA Playoffs in the years that they had LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh.

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