LOL World Championship 2017 Review
The League of Legends World Championship of the 2016-2017 competitive season is over. With 24 participants and a prize pool of 4,1 million dollars, the competition was truly spectacular.
Worlds 2017 took place between September 23 and November 4. The competition was held in 4 locations from China and the Grand Finals were played in Beijing. Unlike its previous editions, it featured more teams (24) and an additional stage (called the Play-In Stage), which preceded the Group Stage.
The competitors came from all over the world: Korea, China, Europe, North America, Latin America, Japan, Southeast Asia, Oceania, Turkey, CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States), Turkey, Taiwan, Macau, Hong Kong, and Brazil. Of course, the stronger regions (such as Korea and China) received more seeds that grant direct access to the tournament’s Group Stage. But thanks to the new system and the introduction of the Play-In Stage, every region was given the opportunity to send one or more teams to the most prestigious League of Legends tournament in the world.
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Twelve of the 24 teams had qualified directly for the Group Stage, while the other 12 had to go through the Play-In Stage first.
The Play-In Stage teams:
• Group A: Team WE, Gambit.CIS, Lyon Gaming.
• Group B: Cloud 9, Team oNe Sports, LG Dire Wolves.
• Group C: Fnatic, Young Generation, Kaos Latin Gamers.
• Group D: HK Attitude, 1907 Fenerbahce, Rampage.
The Group Stage teams:
• Group A: EDward Gaming, SK Telecom T1, ahq e-Sports Club.
• Group B: Longzhu Gaming, Immortals, GIGABYTE Marines.
• Group C: G2 Esports, Samsung Galaxy, Royal Never Give Up.
• Group D: Flash Wolves, Misfits, Team SoloMid.
At the end of the Play-In Stage, only 4 of the 12 teams were left: Cloud 9, Fnatic, 1907 Fenerbahce and Team WE. Each was assigned a group, where 3 other teams were waiting for them.
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The Group Stage was spectacular, with beautiful matches and unbelievable upsets. In particular, Fnatic managed to qualify into the playoffs after losing their first 4 matches!
At the start of the Knockout Stage (playoffs), 8 teams were left in the tournament, each of them playing a single Bo5 elimination match against an assigned opponent. The matches were the following:
• Royal Never Give Up vs Fnatic -> score 3-1.
• SK Telekom T1 vs Misfits -> score 3-2.
• Team WE vs Cloud 9 – > score 3-2.
• Samsung Galaxy vs Longzhu Gaming -> score 3-0.
In the semifinals, SKT defeated Royal Never Give Up (score 3-2), while Samsung Galaxy won their match against Team WE (score 3-1). Subsequently, the tournament’s Grand Finals were played between two Korean teams, as most people had predicted.
What was shocking, however, was the result. Almost everyone was expecting SKT to take the series and become world champions for the third time in a row. But it wasn’t to be. Samsung Galaxy simply crushed their opponents without dropping a single game, a result which made Lee „Faker” Sang-hyeok (SKT’s famous midlaner) burst into tears.
With Samsung Galaxy crowned as the new world champions, an era came to an end. However, the battle for supremacy in the great League of Legends arena has just gotten fiercer as a result.
