The great tiger of the east

Since MLG summer arena took place earlier this month there has been a lot of talk on how Azubu Blaze dominated the tournament over TSM, Curse.NA and BLACK. Was it because they are master tacticians or was it because they are robots with extreme mechanical skills?

I’m pretty sure they are as human as you and I even if they did play great. The tactics they used were definitely uncommon among the NA teams but not in the world of MOBA. When I saw them pushing hard and fast with their  carry and support on top and then switching to bottom lane to do the same, I felt like I was watching a DotA2 game. Push hard, get objectives, control the map and dominate the game. Never have one person split push and overextend unless he is covered by the rest of his team in case he gets caught.

Many times throughout the games there were three people trying to gang one or two members of Blaze and in almost all of them Blaze responded instantly turning it into 3vs4 and winning the fight. So they didn’t reinvent the game even if their tactics were top notch and the teamwork was solid, how did they manage to be so dominant then?

Let’s take it a step further. CLG.NA and CLG.EU along with Dignitas have been in South Korea the previous month (with both CLG teams still being there) and all of them had a hard time versus the South Korean teams with CLG.NA’s 0-2 defeat by Azubu Frost on August 10th being the most recent. Members of the aforrmentioned teams have stated many times since then that Korean teams are very strong and will definately be hard to play against.

Also keep in mind that the South Korean League of Legends server launched at December 12th 2011, before that South Korean players had to log into NA servers with 200-250ms pings (instead of the 30 that most of them have now).

How did these teams come so fast and so strong then?

Here I think lays an answer. For South Koreans eSports are not some “kids playing video games”, for them being a professional gamer is part of their culture, an actual career recognized by the majority of the population. Esports are as popular as football and baseball; they have their own association recognized by the government since 2000, watching Starcraft on television or in a sold out 10.000 people arena is a common sight for many years now. So for them to take on League of Legends and adapt to it was just a matter of time.

You might wonder how their culture can affect their performance. It adds to their professionalism, most of the players that play at the highest possible level right now, will keep working in eSports after they stop playing, they will be coaches, managers, organizers. It is not something that they do in their free time or until they graduate from college.

The top teams live in gaming houses with coaches and managers, training daily and following schedules. They train vs. certain teams (more often than not they will only scrim their “sister” team i.e. Azubu Blaze vs. Azubu Frost) without streaming those games keeping all their tactics as secret as possible. They take the game seriously and they play to win because that is their career choice, this can make or break their life, especially when there is a $3.000.000 prize pool at the end of the season with more to come (according to Riot) in season 3.

Don’t get me wrong here, I am not saying that NA and EU or other Asian teams are not professionals and they just “play a game”. What I’m saying is that NA and EU although they do have eSports as long as South Koreans do with great teams and organizations that frequently dominate the competitive scene (especially in FPS games), they are still in the early stages of being accepted by the general public and having something being generally accepted will breed more people that want to follow that path creating a constant stream of professional players.

In conclusion, South Korean teams are traditionally good in eSports so it is not surprising to see them perform well in League of Legends. Hopefully this will motivate everyone into getting better and provide even more thrills in the days to come. All we have to do is enjoy the show as it grows day by day.