[外絮] 電子運動LOL，2012回顧

[swwf (十字路口)]

http://www.sk-gaming.com/content/58560-LoL_eSports_2012_in_review

LoL eSports: 2012 in review

By Irena 'curlychan' Pencheva                             Jan 10, 2013 22:23

(原文太長，沒時間翻譯，但寫得很不錯，基本上S2這一年的LOL故事很有少年漫畫的
熱血感。 TPA的橋段在倒數第二大段。)

We have all witnessed the massive growth of League of Legends as an eSport
during the last year but let’s together take a look back at the most
important tournaments that took place during 2012!

Moscow 5: The beginning of the Russian domination

2012 has hardly even started when we had the first major tournament of the
year, which was also the first event of Riot’s Season 2 – IEM Kiev. Despite
the freezing temperatures in Ukraine the competition was more than heated
thanks to the growing rivalry between RU Moscow Five , who had just came out of
nowhere in the qualifiers for the event, and US Team SoloMid . The American
powerhouse was really confident that they would show the Russian “boy-band”
 who was the better team, but they came a little short of success losing the
final 1-2. The win gave a tremendous start to M5’s competitive career and
marked the beginning of their domination in the European and even worldwide
scene for some time.

While February had no offline events, March came along and with it came the
start of the IEM World Championship in Hanover. 12 teams, predominantly from
Europe and North America, fought hard in the most prestigious tournament since
the Season 1 Championship. Moscow 5 once more proved to be the real deal at the
time as they secured the trophy against another prominent NA team, US Team
Dignitas. They didn’t lose a single game on their way to the $50,000 cheque
and their fame of being nearly unbeatable on LAN started to grow and follow
them everywhere.

The birth of Korea's pro scene

A few weeks before the IEM World Championship there was an announcement that
not many people paid attention to at the time but it proved to be massively
significant as the year went on; the first South Korean tournament was going to
be organized by Azubu, OnGameNet and Riot and it wasn’t going to be a typical
3-4 day long event, but rather a lengthy three month competition that was even
shown on Korean TV. There were two foreign teams invited as well –- US Counter
Logic Gaming , who had previously visited Korea for the OGN Invitational and
flew directly from Hanover to the Asian country in order to participate, and
the Season 1 Champions EU fnatic , whose organization had a gaming house there
for their Starcraft 2 players. Both of them faced the recently established
Korean pro scene and felt the difference in the way these teams trained and
treated the game, which ultimately made them leave the competition after the
round of 8. “The Champions” final was an epic battle between the two MiG
teams in which the Blaze team, previously considered a B team, won the trophy
and took away the “Best team in Korea” title from Frost. The two teams’
 strong showing throughout the tournament also won them a sponsorship by the
Azubu organization, which was starting to get seriously involved in the eSports
scene.

(原來2012年初在韓國的季賽是有上韓國的電視的?)

TSM! TSM! TSM! - The NA terror

While “The Champions” was unfolding in Korea, in the beginning of April the
IGN Pro League ran their 4th championship: IPL 4. Despite being held in a
rather small hall (compared to other events) and featuring 7 North American
teams along with only 1 European squad, the tournament ran smoothly and got
greatly appreciated by the fans. IPL 4 was also the beginning of TSM’s
domination in all North American events for months to come after they changed
their long time top laner US Christian 'TheRainMan' Kahmann with US Marcus
'Dyrus' Hill.

May was another month that offered a temporary calm to the scene before June
came and brought us two consecutive weekends full of action. First we had MLG’
s Spring Championship –- their first tournament of the year that included
League of Legends. That was also the first big offline event for the online
stars at the time EU Counter Logic Gaming EU. They had a decent showing,
finishing in the 5-6th spot. The spotlight though was once again for TSM, who
managed to win the tournament after 2 grueling best-of-3 sets against CLG Prime.


CLG.eu's time to shine 

MLG was immediately followed by DreamHack Summer –- the place that a year
before had hosted the Season 1 Championship, this time was a home for a
European-only event and what an event it was! People talk about one of the
matches played there till this very day; the epic and legendary game between
Moscow 5 and CLG.eu in the group stage, in which the latter came back from a
huge gold, experience and kills deficit thanks to DK Henrik 'Froggen' Hansen’s
perfection with Anivia. The final of the tournament was a rematch between the
two teams but it was hardly as exciting as the game already mentioned. CLG.eu
were crowned champions for the first time, while Moscow 5 had to find out the
taste of defeat for the first time as well. Europe had a new king but for how
long?

When July knocked on our doors it wasn’t only the weather that got heated up,
so did the competition in Korea, when the second edition of “The Champions”
 started. This time featuring 4 foreign teams – the two CLG squads, Dignitas
and EU Natus Vincere , the tournament was promising to be even better than the
first one. The Korean teams proved to be dominant once again and CLG.eu became
the first Western team to actually pass the Round of 8. They didn’t stop there
and fought hard all the way to the final. There they faced off against KR Azubu
Frost, who previously surprisingly threw their brother team KR Azubu Blaze out
of the tournament. Frost didn’t have any intention of losing a second final in
a row and in a brilliant 5-game set, featuring a blind pick mode game as the
last one, managed to get their hands on the trophy and disappoint all European
(and worldwide) fans of CLG.eu.

Asia's first steps in the outside world

In early August, MLG organized their first Arena tournament for League of
Legends. Which meant that 4 teams were to battle it out in the MLG studios with
no live audience and while that might not sound like a important event, the
results proved differently. The thing that made the tournament really exciting
was the first Korean team to set foot in North America –- Azubu Blaze,
reigning champions from OGN’s first season. They brought an entirely different
mindset about how the game should be played and caught the other teams
completely off guard. Blaze won the tournament with a staggering score of 10-1,
losing only one game to US Team Curse , while TSM started their negative score
vs Korean teams losing all their 5 games vs Blaze.

A few days after the MLG Arena IPL held an event with the purpose of making the
wait between IPL 4 and 5 a little more bearable. It was the first large NA
tournament featuring Asian teams in the form of CN World Elite and SG Singapore
Sentinels , but sadly they couldn’t deliver an impressive performance. On the
other hand Curse did exactly that –- they fell to the loser’s bracket rather
early but managed to fight their way up to the grand final. Unfortunately for
them, the amount of games they had to play in order to get there wore them out
and they couldn’t overcome TSM, which allowed the latter to continue their
winning streak in offline tournaments.

Season 2 Regionals 

Season 2 was getting closer to an end, which meant the teams which would play
in the Championship had to be determined. The European Regionals were played at
Gamescom instead of the regular IEM tournament, which was held there in 2011. 8
teams came to give their best and try to get their hands on one of the 3 spots
for the big finale of the season. In the end those teams were Moscow 5, the big
surprise EU SK Gaming , who managed to 2-0 CLG.eu in the semifinal in one of
the most emotional sets in LoL history to date. Fnatic unfortunately only got
fourth place which meant they wouldn’t be able to try and defend their title
from Season 1.

On the other side of the ocean the North American teams had one more event to
play before their Regionals – MLG Summer Championship. As it was only days
before them, both TSM and CLG declined their invitations as they didn’t want
to give away their best strategies. That allowed other teams to shine, but
unfortunately they didn’t handle the opportunity in the best way possible.
Curse and Dignitas were the squads that reached the final and they managed to
stir quite the controversy by playing an ARAM game in the first map of their
best-of-5. They were both accused of collusion because of that and because of
rumours that they agreed beforehand to split the money, MLG denied Curse their
trophy after they won the set and didn’t give any prize money to either team.

A few days after the collusion fiasco, it was time for the North American
Regionals. Following the same format as the European qualifiers, 3 out of the 8
teams would win the chance to fight for the title of Season 2 Champions. The
semifinals proved to be the most interesting part of the tournament with the
second game between Dignitas and CLG being the most discussed match – 76
minutes, probably the longest official pro game to date. TSM were once again on
top of their game and took the #1 seed for North America, winning against Dig
in the final. In the match for 3rd place, CLG proved better than Curse yet
again and denied them the opportunity to participate in the Season 2 Finals.

Season 2 Grand Finale and the Asian powerhouses  

Before we all knew it, the magical time of early October has come and the 12
best teams from all over the world gathered in Los Angeles to find out who
exactly would take home the Summoners Cup. Competitive League of Legends fans
didn’t miss the opportunity to feast their eyes upon the skills of these
players who had worked hard all year long in order to get there, as a
record-setting viewer count was brought in. Let’s remind ourselves of the best
moments that we witnessed. Both Korean teams – KR NaJin Sword and Azubu Frost,
took their respective groups by storm and with no mistakes made, but the former
fell victims to the dark horse TW Taipei Assassins in the quarter-final, while
the latter highlighted TSM’s continued struggles against Korean teams and
threw the last NA hope out of the tournament. Deman and Jatt deftly survived
the longest quarter-final in League history between CLG.eu and World Elite that
we shall all not soon forget. The show went on with Moscow 5 submitting to TPA
and Frost once again proving to be an unsurpassable obstacle for CLG.eu in the
semi-finals. TPA and Azubu met in the finals, on the road there they had both
beaten opponents through perseverance and solid play. In the end we had a hall
full of the most enthusiastic eSports fans, an orchestra, two Asian teams in a
final worth 1 million dollars… and a crowned champion – Taipei Assassins.

After the presentation of the Summoner's Cup, Season 2 as such was officially
completed but that in no way meant the tournaments were over. Not even a month
had passed before it was time for MLG to wrap up their 2012 season as well with
the Fall Championship in Dallas. With two Korean teams in attendance, Azubu
Blaze and NaJin Sword, it wasn’t much of a surprise that they swept the
competition and faced off in the final. Even though Sword managed to win the
initial match between the two in the Winner’s bracket final, Blaze turned it
around and won two consecutive sets in the Grand Final thus taking home the
trophy. CLG.eu finished third by beating their “brother” team CLG, while TSM
took another hit to their “best team in NA” title by losing in the second
round of the loser’s bracket.

Old stars shining again and the promising newcomers

Back in the Old continent, the biggest LAN DreamHack was holding its winter
event, which for the first time featured a League of Legends tournament as
well. It didn’t exactly have a star-studded line up as only CLG.eu, Fnatic and
EU Team Curse EU were the popular attending teams, but it still proved to be
exciting as the latter dropped in the group stage after a 3-way tie and the two
teams from the BYOC qualifier were the ones that qualified for the semifinals
against CLG.eu and Fnatic. Another interesting thing about the tournament was
the addition of a new high-tier AD carry to the European scene, namely Fnatic’
s temporary addition SE Martin 'Rekkles' Larsson, who was destroying people
left and right with Vayne and Ezreal. In the end the “big” names ended up in
the final and Fnatic, who had literally never before taken a game off CLG.eu in
an offline environment, won 2-1. That was their first big offline victory since
IEM New York in 2011 and showed everyone that they had potentially found a
perfect 5th member. Although they sadly couldn’t keep him for long as his
tender age of 16 wouldn’t allow him to participate with them in Riot’s
Championship Series.

The most anticipated event of the year after the Season 2 Championship, IPL 5
finally came along in the end of November. After months of qualifiers for the
tournament the best 16 teams from all regions gathered in Las Vegas for an
event that may had a much smaller prize pool and no orchestra, but offered a
larger number of good games thanks to the double elimination format in both
group and bracket stage. It’s really hard to sum up in a few sentences all the
amazing games we witnessed during the four days of IPL 5, but two of the things
that have to be noted are the return of Fnatic as a big contender in the
international scene, not only thanks to Rekkles but also their amazing
teamwork, and the nearly flawless showing by World Elite. Fate put Season 1
champions vs Season 2 champions in their first game outside of group stage and
it seemed like TPA didn’t really know what hit them. What’s more, the same
happened all over again in the loser’s bracket final where Fnatic ended up
after a very close set with World Elite in the winner's bracket finals. They
then met WE once again in the grand final and the Chinese proved for the second
time that they were the better team at the moment. All in all it was an event
for the books and every tournament organizer will have a hard time to top IPL 5.

And to end the year like we started it – with an IEM event. ESL showed their
renovated studio, turned into Arena, in Cologne and we were in for some
surprises during the games as well. It was the first event in which CLG.eu
couldn’t get out of the group stage and the first international event for two
Korean teams – KR CJ Entus and the newly formed KR SK Telecom T1 . The latter
even got to the final against Fnatic, where KR Bok 'Reapered' Han-gyu’s great
leadership turned out superior to Rekkles’ wish to end his run with Fnatic
with another #1 spot, and the Korean team managed to take their first offline
victory in their very first event.

Now that Season 3 and all the awesomeness that it promises is just around the
corner, all we can do is hope for an even better year, filled with top class
events run by Riot and its partners. The chances that we won’t get these
things are, after all, pretty slim.

*Note: ex-CLG.eu and ex-M5 are mentioned with the names they used to go by
during 2012.

*Pictures courtesy of ESL, IGN, Acersport, Azubu, Riot Games, DreamHack and
ThisIsGame.

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◆ From: 86.168.90.84
※ 編輯: swwf            來自: 86.168.90.84         (01/14 06:33)
推 gox1117     :未看先推
推 csgod41     :看不懂英文也推
推 zsp7009     :lucky ball go~
推 hongo       :原來如此
推 blp0701     :恩 了解                            樓下幫翻譯感恩
推 zsp7009     :為什麼我按up會出現那個...
推 edwdada     :現在是如何擺脫LOL洗版中 這篇文之後只好用翻譯置底
推 johnnyjaiu  :感謝資訊
推 asd2260123  :好長..
推 Abre        :剛睡醒眼殘看成[外子] 想說怎麼回事了
推 rayterz     :怎麼還沒有翻譯(敲碗)
推 supertsao   :原文有TPA拿S2冠軍的照片 toyz看起來哭得很慘xD
→ iors0330    :以為要講軌域了
推 TKforever   :不是影片喔..........
推 a7v333      :那不是哭，那是因為獎盃很重，toyz那位置要出很多力
推 SINXIII     :那張照片怎麼看都是哭吧XDDD