ESL Regional Tournaments / New Sponsored Teams, Taiwanese Player Reaches Achievement Points Cap, The Race for BG9 Rank 1

With the European ESL qualifications well underway... and the 16 teams battling it out for 8 spots at their regional tournament one is left wondering what is going on with the North American tournament?  Well, as someone who's on a team which was one of the originally invited 8, I still have no idea.  The tournament is slated for December 11th in Edmonton which is now under two weeks away, and I have no idea which 8 teams will be going or if we will even be going at this point on such late notice.

As someone who has a great deal of inside information as far as what players are joining what teams, and what teams are getting sponsored I have trouble pulling together a list of 8 teams that likely be at the event.  Lets take a look at the American scene as of now...

Team EG - No real roster at the moment due to Smatin taking a break and contract issues.

SK US - Pretty much broken up, no real roster at the moment due to contract issues.

Complexity - Still together, should be attending the event.

Compleixty BHMS - Playing with a new druid as far as I know, but as to if they will attend or if that druid is signed yet - I am not sure.

MoB Gaming - Spoh's shadowcleave MAY be getting picked up by these guys, a pretty big question mark though as MoB has gotten out of WoW for the past while.  The lineup would be Mesmerize, Nadagast, and of course Spoh and they've been doing well online and since Shadowcleave is so strong (especially in s5 gear), they could definitely do well at the event.

Blight Gaming - Apparently sponsoring a beastcleave team I haven't heard of before.  Lafu is the only name I vaguely recognize and that was from some TSG comp last season.  Not sure if they're really sponsored and will attend or what's up with them.

Go Loaded - An RMP with a sponsor I have never heard of consisting of Lipstick, Ayune, Rgostic.  I have never heard of the rogue.  Lipstick (the mage) I recognize from some Blizzard online tournaments but they were always just a lower rated RMP that people farmed off of.  Rgostic I only know because he was Tenderloin's priest from Holyplay for the Blizzard Regionals where he didn't show up without any notice and then refused to answer his teams calls and messages. Sounds like a quality teammate right there.  Their sponsorship announcement can be found HERE.

Check Six - Same team, expecting them to attend and beastcleave as usual.

Fnatic - Great team and I expect them to bounce back after Anaheim if they attend, but I've heard they're broken up now and may not go.

Huggerz team - Won the qualifier for MLG Anaheim with Beastlol, Kaslol & Huggerz as Pally Hunter DK, but were unable to attend because Kaslol's parents wouldn't allow it. Apparently they may pay their own way to Edmonton, but who knows if they're invited and if they're actually going to do that. 

Vidra's RMP - Apparently has an RMP that may or may not be sponsored, which may or may not attend.  They also may or may not have Uck as a fourth.

If there are any teams out there I really haven't heard about them as these are basically all the ones I can come up with that could theoretically attend.  Out of that list of eleven teams, you have a grand total of two that I am sure will be attending, four if Fnatic and CoL BHMS are going to be there.  The rest of the teams all seem like question marks and with so little time between now and the event I really am starting to wonder if ESL will be able to get eight teams for the event or not.  It's a shame how unorganized it has been when we have no info and the tournament really couldn't even have been played even if it was run earlier due to the realms so frequently being offline.  The event itself is very important as it determines qualification for the global finals which is generally the second biggest event of the year behind only Blizzcon, and to think that it may not even end up filling is pretty sad.

I really wish that the event had been pushed back, or that the tournament realm was started earlier and not during MLG so that it could've been finished properly.  It was the same story last year with the ladder being in disarray and ESL being forced to just invite the teams instead of having them qualify, but this year they seem to be more behind on it all and everything seems very unsure.  I am praying everything will pull together and that we will be able to attend with a lineup that we feel confident with and with enough practice to represent ourselves well at the event.  If enough teams are able to pull together and the event is able to be filled with teams that are properly prepared then it should be a great showing for North American WoW that will (hopefully) send our best three teams to face the world at the global finals.  If not, then it might end up being a pretty big disappointment leading to another very poor display for North Americans at the globals.

Last year as I'm sure everyone remembers, HoN won, SK Korea got second and they were the only two Korean teams attending.  There were a ton of European teams, which did pretty well, and then only three American teams - EG, CoL & SK US.  Complexity came out of it with no wins, SK US had one (against Complexity), and we managed only two wins against European teams... a very sorry showing for North America.  This year I'm looking for us to bounce back, but who knows what will happen and with so much riding on this upcoming tournament I am excited to find out.

As for the European tournament, the VoDs from the first day of competition are up, and I believe they're much further along into the tournament than that.  You can check they out HERE, and they're pretty entertaining matches.  There's a good assortment of setups and teams which is a lot more fun for me to watch simply because when you're seeing an RMP mirror for the 7000th time you can pretty much tell exactly what's going to happen before it begins.  It's seems pretty apparent that some of the teams are definitely a tier below the competition so the results are probably fairly predictable (at least as far as the well known teams are concerned), but it should still be fun to watch.  I am pretty confident that we'll be seeing SK EU and GODMODE (Hydra's RMP) at the global finals, as to who will be joining them... I would say x6 is a good guess, but it's up in the air.  Either way Europe should have very strong representation at the Global Finals and I doubt we'll be seeing an all Korean final this year.




A Taiwanese player has finished every achievement in the game... and reached 10850 achievement points.  The amount of effort put into that is pretty mind boggling, as with a massive amount of normal playtime my warlock is sitting at ~4500 achievement points.  I have gone out of my way to get the odd achievement, and got a bunch of raiding ones while with Deus Vox, but admittedly all the ones I have are pretty easy.  To think of the amount of time that he would've had to put into finishing all of the achievements is pretty nuts, especially getting all of the ones requiring reputation, or things like loremaster where you have to complete basically every pre-bc quest.

To me it seems pretty pointless, but I guess when I take a step back I'm sure that people feel the exact same way about arena rating.  Hopefully he's getting a lot of satisfaction from being the first to finish as this is probably the PvE equivilant of getting a rank 1 title, but without the added benefit of getting the title.  If you're interested you can find his armory HERE.




With the ridiculous amount of competition on BG9 this season... the rank one title from 3v3 will probably be the most sought after in WoW's seven seasons.  When you consider that pretty much every single good North American team is on the battlegroup, and that even further 99% of them are on the same server and the same faction you realize it will get pretty ridiculous.  I know that our team has a very good shot at it, especially with how strong Wizardcleave is on live, but there are tons of other top teams running Shadowcleave, Beastcleave, PMR, etc and it will get very competitive.  The last night should be absolutely insane as even if one team develops a solid lead over second place, the amount of points that will be shifting around will allow teams to move up (or down) hundreds of points.  Teams will definitely be coming out of nowhere trying to get it, and I wouldn't be surprised to see tons of players who team hop trying to put together a solid three to go for the title.

Whatever happens it should be a blast for all teams involved with every good team likely to be queueing until the server finally goes down and only one team is standing.  Although rank one titles really don't mean all that much, it will certainly give whoever gets it a lot of bragging rights and likely a lot of attention.  It's certainly a great chance for an unsponsored team to get their names out there if they're able to get the title as you're guaranteed to not only be sitting on top of the SK 100 and Arenajunkies lists for 3v3 teams, but also to have articles written about your team on Gameriot and elsewhere.  It'd also be a great title to be able to tell a potential sponsor that you have when you can list off a plethora of well known American teams that you beat out to get it.  As for those teams who're already sponsored, it's yet again another chance to show everyone why you have that sponsorship, and to affirm your sponsors decision to keep you around.  All in all, there's a lot reasons for any competitive player to try their best to get it so it's something to keep an eye on.

That's it until next week...