Weekly E-sports News Update #1

The last week has certainly been a busy one in the world of E-sports, including some big tournament wins, notable results, and some teary goodbyes to some legendary players. As promised I’ve taken the time to devour the never ending feeds of the internet, and have been left feeling like the fat kid in Matilda, ready to re-present that which I have consumed.

Starcraft 2

Following an impressive run during the recent Dreamhack Eizo Open, Jonne “Protosser” Sotala has joined forces with Mousesports. Although never taking a major tournament title, Mousesports’ management were clearly impressed with his performance against EG.Thorzain, and Mouz.Mana.

Although Mousesports fans will be delighted to hear this great news, I believe this may not be enough to lift their spirits following the news that Stefan “MorroW” Andersson will be leaving their ranks with no immediate team contract on the horizon. Morrow, who became the first major Starcraft 2 champion with a win at the IEM Gamescom Championship in 2010 was infamous for his race switching for certain match ups, and as one of the best foreign players in the Starcraft 2 scene, I’m sure I’ll be letting you know he’s joined a new team very soon.

Park “Fin “Ji Soo, also known as fOrGG has left team OGS to join the European team Millienium. The ex Broodwar player will join the likes of Millenium.Stephano, and DieStar only 3 months after their newest member Dragon.

Following the recent drama surrounding several departures from the team Eclypsia, Sasha “Scarlett” Hostyn has signed a contract with Team Acer. Scarlett managed to grab attention during an impressive run in the IPL4 open bracket, defeating big names such as EG.deMusliM. Scarlett was soon picked up by Eclypsia, but this team agreement ceased after only 27 days.

The Team-liquid Starleague 4 has kicked off to a great start providing daily entertainment for all. Quantic.SaSe has taken 1st place in the 3rd European/North American qualifier in convincing fashion defeating Pink 3:0 in a best of 5. During the 4th EU/NA qualifier the recent victor of Dreamhack Mouz.Mana took first place defeating EG.Huk along the way to the finals against Dignitas.Select to win 3:1. All the while the 2nd Korean qualifier saw NSH.Sting take first place, however the more impressive results came from Slayers.CoCa who managed to take out the favourite MarineKing.Prime, and FXO.GuMiHo, followed by Terius.Prime and MVP.Monster, and ending his run in 3rd place.

COD MW3

The Australian MW3 pro team Mindfreak have made some amendments to their team in order to increase their potential. Mindfreak have managed to replace Nikolai ‘Kritikal Motion’ Seth who recently left, with James ‘Macka’ McKenzie. As they now potentially hold the 3 best SMG gunners in the Australian scene, Mindfreak look set to achieve high results in the upcoming ACL and ESGN tournaments this July.

SK Gaming look set to retake a strong presence in console gaming after announcing that they have picked up the team Dominance to add to their roster. Dominance cast away any doubts in ability following recent performances at the  Reflex GT 8, EGL 5, and having now joined SK gaming they will surely been seen as a ‘dominant’ force in the MW3 scene.

DOTA 2

The GBM (Gigabyte Dota Masters) tournament came to its conclusion in an extremely tense final featuring Team LGD against Team Zenith. Having not lost a single game the entire tournament, Team LGD started with a 1:0 lead, but soon found themselves at a loss of 1:2 after some hard fought games by Zenith. LGD managed to re-focus however to bring this back to a 3:2 victory, to take home the ever so sweet $3000 prize money.

Team MtW (Mortal Teamwork) held a strong presence at the recent Dreamhack Eizo Open having placed both their top SC2 and DOTA2 players into the grand finals. Although MtW.Dimaga fell short of 1st place to Mouz.Mana, MtW’s Dota2 team out played the Ukrainian favourites Na’Vi  in an outstanding 2:1 win.

MtW’s Dota2 team winning Dreamhack Ezio Open

LOL

the IPL 5 League Of Legends qualifier had an abrupt ending for FnaticRC after they took a 2:0 defeat to Moscow Five In the semi finals. M5 went on to take the tournament with another convincing 2:0 win over Team Megashock, providing them with another 400 circuit points to keep them well clear in first place on the European Circuit.

HON

FnaticRC’s Heroes Of Newerth and Dota 2 teams currently find themselves a man down after having to part ways with the most iconic player within the MOBA community.  Jascha “NoVa” Markuse, known for his unique play style, and strong presence and involvement with the community has released the following statement:

“Over the past few months I had less and less time to devote to progaming due to other things that needed my attention, effort and time. I stopped streaming, coaching to an extent and had very little fan contact in general. Yet everyone else in Fnatic managed to train more than twice the amount of games I did.
This obviously hurt the team performance at least within Dota2. And even though most ‘other things’ have been resolved and completed by now, it would be somewhat delusional to force my team to wait for me until I have caught up. Combined with the fact that I still played a couple HoN games here and there it was time to go for a new chapter in my professional gaming career.”

Following Nova’s 4 consecutive HON titles, FnaticRC were of course sad to be parting ways, and have wished him the best in his future endeavours.

Now of course E-sports just wouldn’t be E-sports without the constant dramas that occur, closely followed by the flaming pitchforks of the Redditors worldwide. My personal favourite, and so the highlight for the week will be that of Total Biscuits’ thoughts on the reasons behind the foreign players performance in SC2. Whilst Total Biscuit was a guest on the show Real Talk hosted by MLG’s JP McDaniel, TB started to explain that he feels the difference between the dominant Koreans, and the foreign pro’s is all down to their attitude towards practice. Now rather than taking the more professional route of explaining that the Koreans maintain a much more strict, regimented approach towards their training, he decided to use the EG (Evil Genius’) training house, AKA ‘The Lair’ in a  rather insulting manner. TB decided to call out EG by suggesting that ‘The Lair’ is “more of a frat house, than a training house”.

Now of course the habitants of the EG house were slightly taken aback at this comment and felt this was quite simply unjustified. Retorts from two of the higher profile EG players Geoff ‘Incontrol’ Robinson, and Greg ‘Idra’ Fields, were soon voiced on DJWheats’ popular weekly show ‘Inside The Game’. Incontrols simple comment that TB had never even been to ‘The Lair’ soon shot down the argument, although the several comments made after this felt slightly petty for me and almost childish. Of course as with any red mouse matt drama this all soon died down with apologies from both sides.

So that’s it for this week’s E-sports weekly news updates. Make sure you check in for next week’s update and a full event write up for the Starcraft 2 World Championships Series UK Nationals this weekend. If you would like to get involved and watch the event live, head on over to the stream and feel free to let me know what you think.