League of Legends and eSports - 22/4/14 - Sam

League of Legends, in my biased opinion, would have to be the definitive eSport heading into this current decades rounds of competition.

(For information on how the game is played, League of Legends follows close-to the exact formula as Dota, so one can look to Sean's previous blog post for information.)

Simply put, they are carrying on from two successful competitive seasons of 2012 and 2013 on their shoulders, both with their own narratives and internal conflicts, all meshed together in one deeply strategic, yet simple on the surface, video game.
Who could forget the deep rivalry between the KT Bullets and SK Telecom T1 as the new blood in Korea, or how hard Team SoloMid tried to defend their hold on the North American scene against the rising Cloud 9 in the LCS?

Coming into the 2014 Season, shakeups have already been seen. The so called best team in the world was almost universally known to be SK Telecom, who had won both the summer season of OnGameNet champions, and the Season 3 World Championship. However, after going on an unprecedented 18 game win streak during the winter season, they proceeded to crash and burn in the spring season, being almost knocked out in the group stages, before being properly knocked out in the first rounds of the bracket. In America, top performing team Vulcun fell from a regular 3rd place to the last place. New teams such as Edward Gaming in China, Roccat in Europe and Najin Shield in Korea are going to make this season all the more interesting to watch for both first time viewers, and those who have been watching since the inception of League of Legends professional competitive circuit.

The global competitive circuit has five regions, each with their own competitive regional tournaments:
Korea: OnGameNet Champions, NiceGameTV LoL Battle
Europe: Riot EU League of Legends Championship Series, Riot EU Challenger Series
North America: Riot NA League of Legends Championship Series, Riot NA Challenger Series
China: Tencent League of Legends Proleague
South East Asia: Garena Premier League 

Each region eventually fields 2 to 3 teams based on regional success to feed into the World Championship at the end of the year, where the winner is crowned world champions and granted $1,000,000 in winnings.

Next week I will discuss the fundamentals of League of Legends and how they are applied, but for now I'll leave you with a game from the American Circuit of League of Legends, the NA LCS.

                                          

~~Sam