Two groups consisting of the best 4 teams of the world have been drawn.
The finals will have a total of 8 teams contesting for the lion’s share of the $500,000 prize-pool with the top 4 HLTV teams (Astralis, Evil Geniuses, Team Liquid and Fnatic) in the attendance after qualifying from a total of 10 weekly cups, five played in North America and five in Europe. Other teams in the tournament are MIBR, Sharks, Ninjas in Pyjamas and AVANGAR.
The groups were decided with a team-selection method where the two qualified first-qualified teams (AVANGAR and Sharks) picked teams for the opposite groups and the groups look the like:
Group A
Evil Geniuses
Team Liquid
Ninjas in Pyjamas
Avangar
Group B
Astralis
Fnatic
MIBR
Sharks
The tournament will be played in a BO1-BO3 GSL group stage format which will lead to a single-elimination BO3 playoffs stage and will be played at Esports Arena in Arlington, Texas for the second time from November 28 to December 1 with last 2 days open to public.
The schedule for the tournament is as follows (Indian standard time):
After a brilliant show at Delhi, the PMCO Regional Qualifiers came to an end and Entity Gaming, after a carnage filled dominant performance finished with the highest points and the second spot was claimed by India’s most renowned Pubg Mobile squad, Team Soul. Both teams secured a birth at the PMCO Global Finals 2019 and Synerge Team, INS and Team IND will get a second chance at the preliminary round.
Naman Mathur also known as SouL Mortal took to social media to thank the home crowd for their enthusiastic support as well as congratulated fellow participants. He went on to add that he will be donating the entire amount of his part to the Indian Army.
Naman also received the website Fan Favorite Player award for which he had a few words to share.
It feels great! I was not aware of vote stuff, but later on the Tencent guys came to me and handed over the goodies saying that you have won the fan-favorite award on the website
Team Entity and Team Soul have secured a confirmed berth at the Global Finals and we wish Team Synerge, INS and team IND the very best of luck for the preliminary round.
The League of Legends Worlds 2019 came to an end yesterday in Paris, with the finale game between China’s top seed FunPlus Phoenix and Europe’s top seed G2 Esports. The final was memorable for the viewers as the underdogs, FPX easily trampled the European favourites G2 with a quick 3-0 victory.
But that’s not all, the highly anticipated
matchup was able to pull 3.7 million unique viewers at its highest, with the
whole series sitting at a comfortable 2.9 million concurrent viewers count.
This year, the concurrent viewership almost doubled over the last year’s World
Championship, which had a peak viewership of only 1.6 million.
This viewership largely comprised of
Western viewers, who were hoping to seethe European team, G2 Esports, winning
and taking home the Worlds title for the first time since 2011.
G2 were touted as best of the European
scene and their journey to the finals also proved that, with them dominating
almost every event they attended and were poised to complete the first everGrand
Slam of League. Prior to the Worlds, G2 had won the Spring Splits, Summer
Splits and MSI in the same year i.e. 2019. They only needed Worlds 2019 victory
to become the first team to ever attain The Grand Slam Title in League of
Legends.
But FPX proved too strong of a roadblock in
their houseful victory run. With the help from the budding star Gao “Tian”
Tian-Liang, who was the MVP of the game, FPX controlled the whole game from the
start and didn’t give G2 anychance to overpower them. The game went smoothly
for FPX and they secured the trophy in a 3-0 victory, second time in a row for
the Chinese region.
The Groups have been revealed for ZOWIE eXTREMESLAND 2019, with Entity being handed the short end of the straw. The Indian stack have been grouped with Chinese powerhouses Vici Gaming, GTV.Revolution and BREN Esports.
Vici Gaming are, along with Tyloo and MVP.PK, the favourites to win the entire event in China. Vici gave ENCE a good fight at IEM Beijing, taking a map off of them and will look to use the experience gathered from the event to persevere through the regional competition.
GTV.Revolution are known to the Indian scene, with four of the five players having played against Optic.India at eXTREMESLAND 2018 finals in the match that saw the forsaken incident unfold.
BREN Esports are an emerging group of players that have recorded decent results of late. Their most recent showing was a Top 4 finish in the OMEN HP Challenger Series finals, having also taken a map off Grayhound in the process.
Progressing to the next stage is not a mountain Entity cannot climb here. The players will have to be wise and tread with caution but vigour.
We wish Entity Gaming the best of luck going into the event, which starts on November 14.
October 2019 saw Counter Strike Global Offensive to top the steam charts for the most played title on the platform. Counter-Strike edged out Dota 2, which reigned the number 1 spot for a long time. CS:GO saw a player count of 747,937, followed by Dota 2 with 739,924 and both maintaining a comfortable cushion over PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds with 637,870 concurrent players. This also recorded the highest average player count for the game.
One of the key points behind this rise is the Starladder Berlin Major in early September which brought back the occasional players interest back in the game, seeing the best teams perform a lot of the players were attracted back to the game. Besides the Major, Valve decided to make CS:GO a free to play game in December of 2018 with garnered the interest of the casual gamers who wanted to try it out and by the looks of things, they stayed behind. One of the most favorite maps in the game, de_cache was revamped by Valve, although it is not available for classic matchmaking, players can enjoy it in scrimmage,Deathmatches and 3 Party Client servers like ESEA and FaceIt, which also counts as one to reason for players to tune back.
CSGO is considered to be a dead game by many. Those numbers sure do look impressive but they aren’t the highest in the game’s history, post-MGL Colombus Major saw the highest player count of 850,485 which is just over 100,000 players above the current situation.
DreamHack have returned for their second installment of their flagship event in India, previously held in Mumbai. In association with NODWIN Gaming and Viacom 18, DreamHack are now coming to the ‘Desi Capital’ of India, New Delhi.
The event is set to feature primarily, a CSGO tournament that will have six teams battle it out, with four direct invites and two Indian teams (likely) – one from an Indian Open Qualifier and the other being the leader of ESL India Premiership Fall Season.
The Indian Qualifier will be held on Sostronk on purely Indian servers. But teams from the APAC Region are eligible to register for the same, which makes things interesting.
There will be other competitive disciplines at event which is set to take place between December 6 and 8 at the NSIC Exhibition Ground, New Delhi.
It will be interesting to see which Indian teams make it to the Main Event and how they fare against the direct invites.
Acceptance of esports as a traditional
sport has always been a point of debate. Even after the growth in popularity of
esports justifying it as better than any other traditional sport, some people
are still contend that esports isn’t a “true sports” and would argue that careful
planning, precise timing, and skilful execution” ought to be what
classifies an activity as sport, and that physical exertion and outdoor playing
areas are not required by all traditional or non-traditional
“sports”.
Even after many setbacks, the popularity of
esports haven’t slowed down. In 2019 , Esports industry saw big gains in total
number of audiences, which at current easily surpass any traditional sport. It
was estimated for the viewership to grow to more than 450 million and revenue
to increase over US $1Billion.
This steady rise in popularity of esports
have actually made many countries to change their views about video games and
to actively work on a model to recognize esport as sport and a viable career
option.
China was the first to recognize esport as
sport in 2003, despite the concern about games being addicting raised by the
same government. The government also encouraged and facilitated the growth of
esports in the region. Currently China is home to biggest crowd for esports
industry with more than 700 million people being interested and/or connected
with esports.
Early in 2019, China also announced
acceptance of esports as profession. By July 2019, more than 100,000 people had
registered themselves as professional gamers, which is estimated to reach 2
million is less than 5 years.
But the China isn’t the only country to
have a working model. Other Asian countries have also worked on a working model
to recognize esport as sport and promote it among their population.
South Korea published a declaration to recognize esport as sport soon after China made its announcement. The South Korean government also invested hugely in esports and made gaming hubs and also formed Korea e-Sports Association to overview the esports activity in the nation.
Sri Lanka is latest to accept esport as sport by passing a declaration on 2nd October 2019.
The Olympic Games committee had also put
forward several ideas and methods to legitimize esports. In 2017 they
acknowledged the popularity of esports and suggested “ with the rules and
regulations of the Olympic movement” esport might be included in future
Olympics.
As for the other side of Globe, Schools and colleges in America and Europe have also started integrating esports in their curriculum. Schools such as University of California Berkeley, University of California Irvine and University of Utah, are not just teaching students about the competitive skills but also for sales, business administration roles.
The message is clear, Esports is not just
about gaming and gamers, one doesn’t need to be a gamer to work in gaming. With
a little effort and help anyone can start a carrier in esports and add value to
this ever growing industry.
After an extravagant show at Delhi, the PMCO Fall Split regional qualifiers have concluded and all teams advancing to the Global Finals have been confirmed. PMCO Fall Split Global Finals will take place from November 23rd-December 1st at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Global Final teams
The Putra World Trade centre in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia will host all the winning squads from regional tournaments as well as runner ups from South-east Asia and South-Asia finals. Previous year’s winners, Top Esports have directly qualified and the host country, Malaysia also received one guaranteed slot.
The prelims of the PMCO will be held from November 23rd to 25th. Teams securing second place from wildcard region, Japan, Korea, South America, and MENA will be playing in the prelims. The runners-up and third-placed squad from North America, and Europe region as well as three teams from Southeast Asia and the third to fifth-placed teams from the South Asia regional finals will be competing in the prelims. Here’s the complete list:
SynerGE (South Asia)
Team Insidious (South Asia)
Team IND (South Asia)
Tempo Storm (North America)
OMEN Elite (North America)
Asterion Myth (Europe)
Futbolist (Europe)
SWAT69 (MENA)
RED Canids (South America)
Kimchi Kids Café (Korea)
DeToNator (Japan)
Nomad Gaming (Wildcard region)
Bigetron (Southeast Asia)
Orange Esports. CG (Southeast Asia)
MEGA Conqueror (Southeast Asia)
Victory Five (China) (Direct invite)
The top three performers from the Preliminary round will advance to PMCO Fall Split Global finals.
A new CS:GO champion has been crowned at IEM Beijing 2019 in the Beijing University Students Gymnasium.
Astralis defeated 100 Thieves in the grand finals 3-0 at the $250,000 event, taking their fourth international title of the year in front of chinese crowd. During the map veto process, 100T picked Vertigo and Train, while Astralis chose Nuke and Dust II. Inferno was remaining map, with Overpass and Mirage being the only bans in the best-of-five series.
Grand finals: Astralis vs. 100 Thieves
Astralis won Vertigo 16-14
Map one Vertigo was a back-and-forth between Astralis and 100 Thieves, with Astralis barely leading 8-7 at the half. 100 Thieves picked up the second pistol round and subsequent rounds until Astralis got onto their first buy round. Then it was smooth sailing on the Danes’ T side as they sealed match and championship point. Vertigo went to Astralis at a 16-14 scoreline. Nicolai “device” Reedtz did the most damage to start with 29 frags and a 107.4 average damage per round.
The teams went to Nuke for Game 2, where Astralis promptly pulled ahead with a 11-4 lead before switching sides. gla1ve led the way with 22 kills and only 13 deaths in the map, as Astralis eventually sealed the deal with a 16-5 score.
Today, it was announced that 100Thieves have parted ways with their Head Coach, Neil “pr0lly” Hammad. While there is no information on the exact reason for his departure, or who will replace him, this may be the first of many changes for the organization. In a video posted on their YouTube channel, new General Manager Chris “PapaSmithy” Smith said:
“And now it’s a case of with kind of the first era of 100 Thieves, that first two years of LCS coming to a close, and pr0lly leaving is definitely a — a sign of that, it’s a case of really goal setting what 100 Thieves can be in the future because two years is not a lot of years in League of Legends.”
And those two years have flown by. Pr0lly joined 100Thieves in November of 2017, right before the inaugural spring split for the team. And despite getting to Worlds last year and qualifying for the Group Stage, the team has had a few shakeups in their roster, the first one being William “Meteos” Hartman leaving the team in July of 2018.
When Meteos left, he was quite vocal about his departure, taking to Twitter to say that he had been traded to FlyQuest without being given a starter spot, and this was announced before 100Thieves had an announcement or press release prepared, which caused many to speculate on the reasons.
According to pr0lly, Meteos’ desire to leave the team was after they explained to him and top laner Kim “Ssumday” Chan-ho that they would not be playing at Rift Rivals 2018, but he was still surprised that Meteos wanted to look for other teams. You can watch the video of his interview with Travis Gafford below:
Another major shakeup that the team experienced right before Worlds 2018 was the benching and subsequent departure of their AD Carry Sun “Cody Sun” Li-Yu. Despite the veteran player not being perceived as a top AD Carry, fans were shocked and upset when he was replaced with Richard Samuel “Rikara” Oh. Cody Sun had even gone with them to Korea for Worlds as a substitute but was never put on the roster for a game, despite Rikara only being a rookie and not having much experience in a main stage or international setting.
And although fans wanted to know the reason for Cody Sun’s benching, pr0lly did not want to speak on it, saying:
“There’s really no positive side to it because no matter what, it’s going to be, like, not completely truthful, because it’s going to be, like, only my perspective or only the organization’s perspective, and then there’s no benefit to it because it doesn’t change how the outcome is. It would only be like airing dirty laundry because no one is removed from the team, it’s like ‘Oh, we loved it and it was great and we were winning everything and this terrible thing happened where he just wasn’t allowed to play with us.’ Like, it’s always “something bad” happened, so that’s the result of it… it’s kind of inappropriate to talk about that stuff.”
Pr0lly’s departure comes after a lackluster 2019 for the team, where they finished 10th in Spring Split and 8th in Summer, not even getting a chance to run the gauntlet for a possible 3rd seed to Worlds. With two veteran and well-known players leaving the team, ending in 3rd place in their group at Worlds 2018, and leaving each split near the bottom of the lineups, it’s not surprising that a change in management staff was needed. It is not known if PapaSmithy made the call or if it came from the team’s founder and CEO, Matthew “Nadeshot” Haag. The video where PapaSmithy and Nadeshot’s discussion regarding the future of 100Thieves is below:
We will continue to see in the off season what other changes are on the horizon for 100Thieves and other League of Legends teams.
