LoL #Worlds2015: Only Eight Remain

“League of Legends”, the worlds most played online game in history with 27 million players playing every day. The season 4 LoL World Championship in South Korea last year was the most viewed eSport event ever with 35 million online views during the entire tournament and 11.5 million simultaneously during the finals. This year, the event is taking place right now in Europe. The group stages were in Paris, France and ended on Sunday the 11^th. Sixteen teams were competing to get a chance to advance to the quarterfinals in London, England. Then, the four remaining semi-finalists will travel to Brussels, Belgium, to finally see the 2 finalists battle the 1,000,000$ prize in Berlin, Germany. As I’m writing theses lines, 8 teams’ remain in the running towards becoming World’s best League of Legends team in 2015. I’ll go through the 4 groups that competed in Paris and then make an overview of the matchups for this weekend quarterfinals.

Group A:  YoE Flash Wolves, paiN Gaming, Counter Logic Gaming and KOO Tigers.

This group was a tight race to the finish until the end. Counter Logic Gaming (North America’s 1^st place) and KOO Tigers (Korean’s 3^rd place) were both favorites to come out of this stage. Unfortunately for NA fans, CLG fell short, losing an important game vs Flash Wolves (Taiwan’s 1^st place) in the last day of their group stage. The big surprise came on day 5 when YoE Flash Wolves won over KOO Tigers in the 5^th game of the day, finally giving them 1^st place of this group. Not a big surprise, as paiN Gaming finishes tied for the 3^rd, and last place, in this group. This Brazilian Wildcard team came in with no big expectations, finally stealing a game to the group’s 1^st place FW and another one to CLG in the last game of the day making them the best Wildcard team ever in LoL World Championships. “Props” to them.

Results Group A:

1^st:  YoE Flash Wolves (4W – 2L)

2^nd: KOO Tigers (4W – 2L)

3^rd:  Counter Logic Gaming (2W – 4L)

3^rd:  paiN Gaming (2W – 4L)

Group B: Fnatic, ahq e-Sports club, Cloud9 and Invictus Gaming

Group B went on to be the most surprising group in this year Worlds. Coming in as the underdogs and 3^rd place of North America, Cloud9 went on to finish 3 – 0 after 4 days of group stage. They even won a game vs Fnatic, the European’s 1^st place team. But then, on day 8 of group stage, their Cinderella story just ended short. ahq e-Sports Club (Taiwan’s 2^nd place team) and Fnatic, who were both in 2^nd place with 1W and 2L, delivered on the last day of group stage. Fnatic won 3 games out of 3 to take 1^st place and ahq e-sports club won 2 games out of 3 to force a Tie-Breaker vs Cloud9 who failed to win a single game that day. Meanwhile, Invictus Gaming, the China’s 3^rd place team, went 2W and 4L in the group to finish 4^th. In a 39 minutes Tie-Breaker, ahq e-Sports Club won a fairly close game and got 2^nd place to get out of groups.

Results Group B:

1^st: Fnatic (4W – 2L)

2^nd: ahq e-Sports Club (4W – 3L)

3^rd: Cloud9 (3W – 4L)

4^th: Invictus Gaming (2W – 4L)

Group C: SK Telecom T1, Edward Gaming, H2K and Bangkok Titans.

This group was just a stomp by SKT (Korea’s 1^st place team) and EDG (China’s 2^nd place team).  There’s not much to say except that SK Telecom T1 proved why they once were World Champions. The first place team didn’t lose a single game in group stage, ending it with a perfect 6W – 0L record. On their side, Edward Gaming will have to find a way to win vs SKT if they want to win the World Championship, getting their only losses to the Korean team and finishing 2^nd in this group. 3^rd and 4^th place were not a huge fight either. H2K (European’s 3^rd place)  went 2W – 4L and got their only 2 wins vs BKT (Thailand’s Wildcard Team) who failed to win a single game in group stage to end it 0W and 6L.

Results Group C:

1^st: SK Telecom T1 (6W – 0L)

2^nd: Edward Gaming (4W – 2L)

3^rd: H2K (2W – 4L)

4^th: Bangkok Titans

Group D: Team Solomid, Origen, KT Rolster and LGD Gaming

What a story this is for Origen (European’s 2^nd place). 10 months ago, xPeke (OG’s mid-laner and former world champion with Fnatic) founded his own team. They went on to make it into the E
U Challenger Series before getting in the LCS. In their first ever LCS split, they finished 2^nd in regional finals and made it to Worlds. This group was probably the hardest group and the one with the most probabilities to get upsets. TSM (NA’s 2^nd place and 5^th time at Worlds), KT Rolster (Korea’s 2^nd place), LGD (China’s 1^st place) and Origen were all competing to get out of a single group. Even the best analysts in the world couldn’t predict who were going to get out of this group. One thing was almost unanimous, TSM was not going to make it out. After 4 days of group stage, Origen was leading the group with a perfect 3W and 0L record. Not far behind was KT Rolster with 2W and 1L. Surprisingly, TSM was 3^rd with a 1-3 record and LGD was last with 0-3. On day 7 of group stage, Origen went 1 – 2, TSM 0 – 3 KT 3 – 0 and LGD 2-1 to set the final group.

Results Group D:

1^st: KT Rolster (5W – 1L)

2^nd: Origen (4W – 2L)

3^rd: LGD Gaming (2W – 4L)

4^th: Team Solomid (1W – 5L)

Quarterfinals

So here we are, 8 teams are still competing for that 1,000,000$ prize. Next step for them is a best of 5 in the quarterfinals. From last year, only Edward Gaming (who lost in the quarterfinals) made it back into the final 8 teams. This year’s match-ups are pretty interesting and we’re going to have great Bo5’s.

Here is the schedule:

Thursday Oct. 15^th: YoE Flash Wolves vs Origen

Friday Oct. 16^th: SK Telecom T1 vs ahq e-Sports Club

Saturday Oct. 17^th: Fnatic vs Edward Gaming

Sunday Oct. 18^th: KT Rolster vs KOO Tigers

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