The Tragedy of Hope and Faith – A Drama in five Acts

Five protagonists, each with different expectations and different dreams. But what do G2 Esports, Team Solo Mid, ROX Tigers, Edward Gaming and Flash Wolves have in common? And why are they all featured in this article?

The answer is rather simple. They all were the first seed coming from their respective regions into the 2016 World Championship. They all had the hopes and the faith of their region and fans behind them. And sadly they all could not live up to it.

Let's start with the least disappointing teams: two of them, namely ROX from Korea and EDG from China, managed to scrape out of their groups. Not convincingly but they did it. In case of the Tigers they still managed to secure first place. Both teams still have a chance to prove that their performance in the group stage was just a bad episode. That is what their fans hope for.

However Korean fans will not be happy if their first seed loses two games in the group stage and has to play a tie breaker for first place. They simply expect better of their summer champions than losing a game to CLG and ANX each. While they will be happy that their team made it out of groups their performance left a lot to be desired. So far ROX looked like the least impressive out of the three Korean teams. Even though they placed before them in the regional season and won the summer finals.

For EDG the consequences are worse. Yes, they made it out of group C and are still present in the quarter finals, but were not able to secure the first spot. Two losses to H2K on the final day meant that they now have to face a team that won its group. In the end that team will be the ROX Tigers. Additionally they have landed on the harder side of the bracket as analysts agree. Had they been able to win their group they would be playing ANX instead and probably have a much easier path to the final.

The other three regional champions cannot even do anything anymore. G2, the number one seed from EU finished with a horrible record of 1-5 in last place at group A. TSM, for some the best western team in history, got knocked out in group D, the group of death with a record of 3-3 due to losing the head to head against Chinese RNG. And Flash Wolves, the supposedly best team from the LMS placed last in their group as well with a record of 2-4.

All the three teams have in common that they were drawn into a group with a Korean team. That might excuse some of their losses due to Korean teams being highly favored to win it all. Additionally Korea is considered to be the best region and produce the best players and teams by almost everyone in the League of Legends world. However that does not excuse not being able to get out of groups. Even when falling short to the Korean overlords there are two other teams remaining that a regional champion should be able to overcome.

The reasons why they did not are different from team to team. In case of TSM it were crucial mistakes against Samsung Galaxy and Royal Never Give Up that cost them two games on the last day as well as the fact that Royal had their only good game against TSM. Combined with a very much improved Samsung team that beat everyone on the final day TSM was just a margin away from making it out of groups. The amount of practice they had allowed them to come so close to making it out but in the end the pressure seemed a bit too high on that day.

G2 on the other side seemed to lack effective practice. They simply appeared to be not good enough to have a realistic chance at making it out of the groups. At no point their fans had the feeling that G2 could potentially get it together and become the strong team they seemed to be in Europe. Was it the lack of experience for some of their players on an international stage or their lack of discipline during preparations in the weeks before? We will potentially never know. But what we know is that for most of the games they looked like the weakest team of the whole tournament.

Lastly the Flash Wolves looked really good in some of their games, especially when they managed to overcome SKT and hand them their only loss of the tournament so far. But more often than not they seemed to lack a real plan and rather run into their enemies face first and be smashed. Especially their two losses to the Chinese number 3 seed IMay ended up costing them a shot at the top eight. Had they won even one of those games they would force a tie breaker with C9 for second place and winning both would even automatically qualify them for top 8.

So what can we conclude from having seen that all five first seed teams could not reach their expectations? And from teams in seed 2 and 3 surpassing them? Mostly that regional results are not as meaningful for the World Championship as it seems. With a month of time between the regional finals and the beginning of Worlds plenty of challenges arise. Within a month the meta in League of Legends can shift drastically, especially if Riot Games schedules large gameplay updates during that time.

Thus teams that had an advantage over their competition before may no longer have it. In case of TSM for example months of hard practice become partially irrelevant if long prepared strategies suddenly do not work anymore. When every team has to start from scratch again to find out the best possible way to play the game the enormous advantages in infrastructure and experience which Korean teams have suddenly matter a lot more. This would also explain why ROX, who have a weaker infrastructure compared to SKT and SSG are struggling more in that regard.

In the end the tendencies are clear. Teams who built an advantage over a year in their region are not necessarily going to keep that when suddenly the environment and the game changes. Thus those first seeds matter less in terms of determining the strongest teams for Worlds from each region but instead mostly generate hype for those teams together with expectations and some prize money.

While the latter is certainly a good thing the former two can be a double edged sword, as these worlds have shown us so far.