WoWverload IEM Qualifiers, Yiska Talks MLG Anaheim, H2K With A New Team

It's been a long weekend. I just woke up from 14 hours of sleep as I wasn't able to sleep more than about 3-4 hours a night. But it's been great fun and an amazing experience for me. Syeren did a great job on Saturday and sadly he was busy on Sunday and I couldn't find a replacement fast enough. Doing it myself was nowhere near possible with the articles I wrote for Gotfrag. If you want to reread them to relive the emotions you had you can check them out here. And yes for some of us it was emotional. You can call me idiot for that if you want, it's no biggie. We were sitting with so many different pro players on Syeren's vent and even some of them were cheering if either SK.EU won a round or Check Six lost one. I still love you Twixz; he's a great guy.

Hearing what player's like Hydra, Kalimist, Spoh, Litre, Zyz, Trig, Ghingis and many more had to say about the games was amazing. Ensidia practised quite a bit with them on TR and therefore knew what SK.EU was capable of.

Complexity got two video interviews with Sodah & BHMS and you definitely want to check them out. Sodah seemed pretty upset but hey, they still qualified for Orlando. Hopefully the guys gained new confidence in their comp seeing how Button Bashers plays and could change a thing or two. You can find the interviews here: Sodah & BHMS. There are a ton more video interviews on complexitygaming.com you might want to check out.


Things that impressed me

• Tenderloin not making himself look like the "oh well the footsteps of Kollektiv are gigantic" replacement. He played extremely well.

• Azael attending with a team that was able to out-muscle Fnatic even though people weren't even expecting him to win more than one round. He almost made it in the final four. Also he was on par with Inflame in their series therefore putting himself on the list for players to watch out for.

• Azael being baller enough to ask Soulja boi for a picture, sneaking in considering he thought he was one of the gunner guys, haha.

• BHMS dancing off their LAN jitters and making it into the top 4. I didn't really believe that the wild card tournament was that high calibre but natural selection still sorts out the weak and only the fighters survive. Also a 15 year old just dancing off his nervousness and performing relatively amazing for his first event. Thumbs up.

• Private Enigmz being able to not only to withstand the pressure their team mates put on themselves by proclaiming themselves the winner pre tournament, but also stomaching the harsh words from 4 star general Another mid games. Alright, he did flake some very important games but give the guy some rest. It was his first tournament.

• You know it was coming: Button Bashers shutting up all the people who say WoW is not an e-sport and not a skill game. Also their sportsman ship and heart they put into this is absolutely amazing. This deserves another topic. Let me elaborate.

Button Bashers - the beauty of WoW


This topic will not be about how amazing these guys played. Of course I think they did, don't get me wrong. That was from another star, but what I wanted to talk about is a different topic. Nevertheless, you pro players should read this considering many many teams can learn from Button Bashers - outside the game. Let me elaborate.

To explain what I mean, I'll recap what happened from the moment they realized they had won the tournament:

The first player of SK.EU goes down and the Koreans start screaming from on top of their voice. They are so excited. They did it and they don't care if the look cool or if other players think they are retarded for screaming so loud.

The scoreboard pops up on their screens. Orangemarmalade, the team leader jumps up and the first thing he does is turning to his team mate Hiren, the Rogue that made all this possible. It's an honestly strong hug with sincere claps on each others backs. As they release, Orange turns to Numberone his other team mate and he high fives him and both have a big smile written all over their face.

As this ceremony of thanking the team mates is over, Hiren immediately sits down in front of his computer again. Nerd much? No. What he does is check all those Korean fan sites and he responds to fans that have been watching him the whole weekend. His smile is bright and wide and from time to time he starts giggling a bit as he pushes his glasses up his bridge.

SK.EU has packed all their stuff and is about to stand up and in this moment, three Korean hands cross the table for a hand shake.

This is what WoW as an e-sports should be about despite the amazing coordination these guys had. It's an MMORPG after all - there is a social aspect. If I was a fan after Orange's interview on ArenaCast, you can consider me a groupie now. I still sincerely love Europe and Divine Inflame don't get me wrong. I just think that it wouldn't harm them to learn from Button Bashers at least a bit. I know you will be mad with what I just wrote general, this isn't my intention though. You guys were on par with Button Bashers individual skill wise. Maybe this can help you to beat them next time. Europe needs you.



WoWverload with more Arena action


Many people said that this tournament inspired them to play better and I can totally see why. If you still don't know why WoW is an e-sports worth playing, maybe WoWverload can help you out here as they will be showing arena non-stop from the last week of ESL qualifiers. Many amazing teams will be playing. Just to name a few: Hydra's RMP, Trig's Wizard Cleave, Bloodx and H2k gaming.

I will definitely tune in as I simply can't get enough after this weekend. You can see their freestream (with slightly better quality than the MLG free stream, heh) >>>here<<<. For less than a weekend of MLG stream, you can buy a month of ESL TV footage by the way. I bought both...

The show starts very soon and considering the speed Shader proof reads, chances are you should hit that link right away as it will be running most likely.


H2K with a new sponsored team
 
I saw it in your face, don't lie to me. "Who is this H2K team you just named with all those other awesome teams, fatty?" you thought and I will give you a hand here.

Lawdy, Rasenz and Naurii, the cleave team that you saw last week on WoWverload which smashed the majority of the teams they played against on stream have been picked up by the e-sports organisation H2K. You can find their news here.

How viable TSG will be in the future will be one of the major questions for the success of this team. As Alca pointed out in his best player/class in Europe blog, all these guys are up there with the big names. We will see how it turns out for them.





That's it for today. I feel like I forgot something. I'm sure it was important. Think Sascha, Think! What happened this weekend. AH!

Yiska out.