League of Legends: Michigan plays Robert Morris Sunday at 1 PM
This past January, a League of Legends team composed of Michigan students won their regional qualifying tournament to send them to the North American Collegiate Championship playoffs. This placed them as one of 16 teams (4 from the North, South, East, and West regions of North America) competing for a piece of the $300,000+ scholarship pool. Last week, they played their round robin of the remaining teams from the North region, going 4-2 after splitting against Robert Morris University and University of Chicago. This gets them out of the group stage and into the 8-team single elimination bracket. Their first match is a best-of-3 against Robert Morris University, broadcast live on their Twitch stream:
http://www.twitch.tv/wellplayed
Robert Morris should be favored, since they're the only school that has a scholarship program for a League of Legends team, and they recruit nationwide. That being said, Michigan is one of the few teams to actually beat Robert Morris this year. Should Michigan win their regional final, they play in a live "Final Four" event no later than the end of May.
I'm a long ways away from having enough information to do a proper preview, since Riot Games isn't promoting this event a fraction the amount they promote LCS. Still, it involves Michigan; hopefully MGoBlog LoL fans can follow the event for more than one day.
Uh... What?
Yeah Time ran an article about video gaming becoming a varsity sport
The DotA2 Asian Championships a couple months ago had a $3m USD prize pool with the winning team Evil Geniuses (North America) pocketing 1.3m
The "superbowl" of DotA2 is called The International, held in Seattle every summer. This summer, tickets to attend the live event were sold out within 4 minutes. The demand bogged down TicketMaster servers.
The early estimates for the prize pool of TI5 (The Interntional 5) is around $9.5 million USD
Last summer ESPN2 did a special leading up to the Grand Finals of TI4, and broadcasted the Finals on ESPN360, I expect something similar this year as well.
eSports are a real thing and some of the top tournies get tens of millions of poeple streaming for major games.
I do not know any of the words you just used.
It is going to be huge and it is not pretty. But, you should be aware:
http://www.vice.com/video/esports-part-one
Robert Morris gives scholarships for this?
a real school or online only?
When's the Mario Kart 64 tournament though?
It was planned for but then Beerio Kart happened.
Frat.
Robert Morris was the last school I was expecting to hand out gaming scholarships...
I thought it would be UCLA or some California school where there are high numbers of Asian students since they kick everyone's ass at games like Starcraft and LoL.
Edit: And no this is not me being racist, eSports teams from China and South Korea win 99% of these tournamanets. The 1 or 2 non-Asian teams to win were from Europe. Many of them are based in California. Hence the comment. So quit the downvoting.
One of the reasons South Koreans win at these is they have the fastest internet in the world. Puts us to shame.
They are also psycho plugged-in. Not pretty.
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Whats UofMs team name? You failed to mention it... I play League occasionally and would like to catch a bit of their stream.
I can't find their team name aside from this. I do have their roster, though. I may be able to find their team name from the client based on its members.
Roster
- Ryan Choi
- Wardrium
- aGambit
- A Sleepy Tony
- lo4chicken
Cool, thanks man!
"Michigan Premier 2014."
Edit: Looks like an old team. Even ignoring the wrong year, their last match on the client is in February. They likely remade for this tournament.
I've thought about starting League but it just feels like the learning curve is wayyyyy too steep and the games are too long
Try out Blizzards attempt at MOBAs when it comes out. I've been in the Heroes of the Storm beta and the learning curve is way less steep and games last about 20min.
They're not hard, agreed. But the community around them typically demands that people jump in and be immediately proficient. I think that's where a lot of the nervousness comes from. I would also say, as far as mechanics go, sure they're not difficult. As far as overall strategy, knowing when to push, when to retreat, they can be pretty complicated and the only way you learn is through experience.
Yep and there is a reason why only the same teams and players make it every year to the championships, whether its LOL or DOTA 2. Not *EVERYONE* can jump in and play at the same level some of these people do. Like you said, strategy is key, mechanics you can learn but if you don't know how/when to push or how to build, your going to be in bad shape in end game.
ED : Grammar is hard
Try out Blizzards attempt at MOBAs when it comes out. I've been in the Heroes of the Storm beta and the learning curve is way less steep and games last about 20min.
It's manageable, if you play games you should learn pretty quick. It's very accessible now, too. I played in closed Beta and now with all the streams and youtubers playing, you can pick it up very quickly.
Nowhere near as steep as DOTA 2. It's pretty tough to play.
Blizzards MOBA is arcade-y and very noob friendly. I got into closed Alpha and I have went back to it a few times, but it's missing something. Doesn't feel competitive enough.
Nah League is the easiest MOBA to get into from the getgo. Don't get frazzled.
DOTA2 is the hard one.
Heroes of the Storm by Blizzard is the cell phone mobile game equivalent of DOTA2/LoL.
I don't know I think SMITE is pretty easy to get into and learn aswell.
Forgot about SMITE. Eh the whole camera angle thing is just odd to me personally.
There's money in this, believe it or not. In the biggest tournament ever in the genre, the winning five person team took home $5MM.
Even more crazy is that some schools give people scholarships to run around on a field with a ball. Then pay an old guy millions of dollars to make the kids the best at it. Can't get my mind around this nonsense.
Too many people should take a break from the boards.
If a post on a message board bothers you, maybe you should be taking a break.
(this isn't for the post above me, the post I was responding to apparently only shows up on mobile.)
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Follow the money, right?
World of Warcraft, huge, famous massively multiplayer online role-playing game, costs about $15 a month for a subscription. There are about 10 Million people playing this month (and just about every month for the past 10 years).
[aside for folks who already know this, I am simplifying the account stuff to make a point, I know subs fluctuate, and I know international subscription costs vary, so relax]
So, this one game brings in about $150 Million. A month. Every month. For a decade.
Minecraft was sold to Microsoft for $2.5 BILLION.
Video gaming is a multi-BILLION dollar industry. There are MILLIONS of gamers. The industry is simply extending into live competition. This is a very small investment of the overall industry. It makes the fans more excited, it gets them to play more, it fosters a community of people devoted to the games.
I am astonished that people continue to be unaware that the market for games and gamers is gigantic and loaded with cash.
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Anyone else play? There's a great community of dads that play at casual level. Look up LolDads chat room
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