Recently, Australian League of Legends team Chiefs headed over to Istanbul to terrorise the Turkish tournament with gory ganks and flashy wombo combos, in the hopes of qualifying for the World Championships later this year. The Chiefs didn’t quite make it — but they got the furthest we’ve ever been in an international competition, and that should be celebrated.
Riot has been taking steps globally to lift the game in quieter regions to the level of international competition. It sees itself performing a FIFA type role, giving everyone an avenue to eSports success. Local pro players get paid for every game, which is unlike anything Australia has had in eSports yet.
With a dominant second half of the season going nearly undefeated, the Chiefs were our best chance yet to knock ’em dead overseas. After attending the packed Australian finals at Luna Park in Sydney to watch them convincingly beat Legacy eSports, I was excited. I don’t play League or even really care about it, but I know enough about the game now to understand the good plays, but I was getting excited about the prospect of the Chiefs doing well overseas. And they didn’t disappoint.
Fast forward to Istanbul, and the Chiefs had an intense series against rival team Bangkok Titans. In the group stage, the Chiefs started out winning the first game, with something like 10 kills to 3 deaths, when technical difficulties caused the match to halt, forcing a later replay and making our local commentators show their skill in expertly waffling on while waiting for issues to be resolved.
If I had to restart a match I was already clearly winning, I’d be a bit mad. Luckily, the Chiefs won the replay. You can watch that below.
Alas, it wasn’t to be. Not yet. After doing very well in the group, the Chiefs would encounter Bankkok Titans again in the final, and this time things went a little differently:
Well done to the Chiefs for getting us as far as we’ve ever been, and hopefully next time we’ll get to the World Finals. The experience gained will be invaluable and will hopefully lift the local community as well. If you want to watch some more of what went down in Istanbul, you can check out the game vs Detonation FM and the game vs Dark Passage.
In the meantime, we’ll be keeping an eye on our next potential overseas win, as Team Immunity heads to the Americas Championship to compete in Heroes of the Storm. Wish them luck — their first opponent is Cloud9.
Comments
3 responses to “Watch Australia Get The Furthest We’ve Ever Been In International League Of Legends”
OCE will never add up to anything in esports, but in LoL it’s a particular waste of time and effort thanks to Riot’s horrific bias when it comes to giving out worlds places. The 4 main regions (NA, EU, Korea and China) get 3 placements EACH, the Taiwan/Hong Kong/Macao regions gets 2, the entire rest of the world have to fight tooth and nail over a mere TWO places between all of them. Doesn’t give you much incentive to try, does it?
Besides, we have to put with Riot OCE, the lamest, slackest, most useless branch of the company in the entire world. They never gave us Dominion queues and even disabled Normal Draft mode (forcing every fresh level 30 noob looking for their first taste of draft mode to get it in Ranked) because they couldn’t be assed, although they made some pathetic bleating about “server population and general interest being too low” (total bullshit of course).
Couldn’t agree more. This paid shameless plug is a far cry from the reality. Riot has made an absolute mess of the OCE region out of utter disregard and contempt for hardwork so many in the community have put in to lift our game. But as usual in the clamor for recognition its thwarted by a select few with self serving intentions. Its great to see the Chiefs get somewhere without iM involvement. The other blight on the OCE region.
Sorry, I don’t get the hate. Sounds entitled tbh. Riot is bankrolling player salaries, accomm, and travel. Players get paid for every match. They can’t live off it, but it’s a great investment given our size. Go back 10 years and play Counter-Strike, the most played game in the world back then, when we had to pay for ourselves to go overseas and get hammered by modern day Scandinavians. What was Valve doing for us? Nothing, same as now. If you would have told me back then a company will invest in eSports at this level, I’d be cheering.
And if you think this region hasn’t performed well in eSports competitions, back to school with you.
Sigh, where the hell have u been in the last 10 years. Riot backs teams to remove the middlemen, we get that. But please dont talk like the chiefs performance like its the best Oceania has produced. Talking about the last 10 years, best u school yourself and look at Oceania’s achievements in HON at Dreamhack before big noting some lame attempts in LOL. The fact of the matter is, those achievements back then were due to the participation levels that to date has never been matched. This was because organization where given even opportunity, if not the fairest to have a red hot shot at being at the top. Riot is paying peeps to just to remain relevant not out of true merit.