Semi-Hiatus from League Of Legends Casting more ventures later on!

So I announced on twitter that I would be stepping down as a shout caster (possibly a tournament streamer) for season 4 and there a few reasons why. I've put in alot of time into league of legends and I will still put more time with different shows incoming in 2014; but as a caster I don't feel i'm as effective as others in the scene. But there are more reasons after the break to see!

Aftermath of the Season 4 Spring Group Stage, Predictions for Relegation Tournament

The giants of the challenger world (Quantic, To Be Determined, compLexity) faced off against the new hope of challenger titans (vVv Gaming, COGnitive Gaming, The Walking Zed). Many rose above adversity and unfortunately many giants fell down with them. The weekends madness was admist some contraversary, switching from tournament realm to live realm, and maybe some decisions teams would regret. One teemo abound and the others well played there hearts throughout this whole tournament. Overall this weekend was a historic step for these teams to get one step closer to the ultimate goal, becoming a League Championship Series team.

The group stages are done and here is how everyone did!

2014 Season 4 Promo Group Stage Tournament - Part 3

The youtube run down of all the teams and my predictions are on youtube, but if you must they are on the blog as well!

If you want to check out the information on the teams:
Seeds 4-6 (Quantic Gaming, The Walking Zed, vVv Gaming)
Seeds 1-3 (To Be Determined, compLexity Gaming, COGnitive Gaming)

Games have already finished on the Wellplayed Stream!! The VoDS are posted per LolEventVods!

Otherwise here are my predictions and i'm sure they will not disappoint!

2014 Season 4 Promo Group Stage Tournament - Part 2

This is the continuation of the preview for the Season 4 Spring Promotional Group Stage. We previewed the first three teams on here, and now we'll look forward to the next teams duking it out in order of how they got to the group stage. Just a reminder these are short summaries of the many numerous teams, i'll be doing a vlog of this on my youtube to explain a bit more on my thought process.

So lets go back and recap briefly on perceived calculations on who will make it through the group stage.

2014 Season 4 Promo Group Stage Tournament - Part 1

Today we'll be looking at the preview's of the Group Stage phase of the NA Challenger scene going through the rankings to get through here. 4th-6th (vVv, The Walking Zed, Quantic Gaming) and 3rd-1st (Cognitive, CompLexity, To Be Determined). Although the scouting has been limited with all the changes, especially with 3.14 determining alot of the play of the players. I'll still bring you what I are important points to the teams and there chances with moving on through!
It will be interesting to predict the success for each team, just cause there are a lot of unknowns even after seeing these competitors fight it out for a long time in the challenger scene.

Little explanation on the group stage, the 6 teams will fight it out for a spot to face the 3 LCS relegated teams (Curse, Velocity, Coast). The teams will fight it out in a round robin format with the top 3 moving on to be chosen to face the bottom 3 Summer LCS teams. The LCS teams in order from 6th-8^th pick who they will choose as there opponents and then duke it out in a best of 5 series to determine who will get the LCS spot.

Without further ado lets look into the first 3 competitors of the Group Stage.

History of Challenger Tournaments in North America and Group Stage Preview

Brief History of how the North American Challenger Scene Grew

The Challenger scene of North America has been growing ever since the start of season 3. The first few challenger events like the Do It ourselves cup and long standing tournaments like National ESL - Pro Series exposed a few but did not really break viewers interest. Although great community inspiration only under 1,000 people watched the scene during that time until a new tournament came around. Mobafire a long standing community resource site of League of Legends partnered with some great content creators to create the Mobafire Challenger Series. Led by the direction of @solosideLoL it created a weekly league having constant content of Challenger NA teams fighting for a grand prize. Although it was a non-riot sponsored tournament, the series promoted competition for more teams, brought in viewers, and gave more exposure to the challenger scene. The players of well known teams also helped raise awareness not only to viewers in NA but also gave other nations an outlet to watch competitive games while there were no competitions going on. At this time the challenger scene in EU had a longer foothold and has stayed consistent in its content when it was up, but the NA scene had many story lines of teams to keep the viewer interested while keeping them tuned in each day. While most tournaments before this were only once in a month occurrence, Mobafire saw the outlet to keep viewers interested. The weekly best of one season format, similar to the way NA/EU League of Legends Championship Series, was a familiar way to entice viewers to keep teams fresh but also keep the content new. Also at this time there was additional challenger content GGLA Arena weekend cups plus NESL Pro Series, which had moved the Challenger tournaments into a bigger lime light.

It was announced before season 3 world championship that the challenger scene would be getting a Coke-Zero/Riot sponsored league coming up for season 4. This created a rift with many organizers to question whether they could continue on as it seemed that this league would be helping and unfortunately disbanding some of the work done by others. Due to the lack of enticement for challenger teams to stay with them, especially with sponsors like Coke-Zero. This news caused plus sponsorship situations unfortunately caused the Mobafire Challenger Series to disband, but this did not break others from trying. The once GGLA Arena led by @Morbuzaan now had added a few sponsors and help found the North American Challenger League (aka NACL / Salt League) and new tournament ALCS (Amateur League Championship Sereies) led by @10ktournaments to some what fill the rest of the days schedule for the week.

Overall these all the events have kept the NA Challenger scene a float plus ESL still producing the Pro Series content have kept it super busy with all the challenger scene action. The addition to let LCS relegation teams play in these tournaments have helped the NA Challenger tournament scene grow even more so in viewership of popular well known teams. The scene is growing but how much of it will be community driven content? Its a question we may have to answer but maybe another time.

Enough of the history talk, the real question at hand though is the moment every Challenger team wants to partake in. NA challenger teams have been fighting to get to the spot of a LCS team, and have been playing in the @Wellplayed Season 4 Spring Qualifiers, now only 6 teams remain to try and challenge the last 3 spots.

vVv, The Walking Zed, Quantic, Cognitive, CompLexity and To Be Determined.

All the teams are relatively great in there own way, but what really makes them who they are, and what are there chances in the end where they will have to face the likes of Curse Gaming, Team Coast, "Velocity Esports" (Rumors still being that it's the hybrid of Evil Geniuses plus Innox/Pobelter). These are the questions i'll be trying to muse about this week as we lead into group stage games where on December 6, 7, 8 they will be fighting for there lives to get top 3 and then get a chance to be drafted to face a LCS Relegated team. Follow along, comment on who you think will make it through and keep up with previews coming all this week for each challenger team!

It's the most wonderful time of the season for League of Legends, and season 4 has not even started yet! 

l3ird's words re-opening for 2013

As a shoutcaster/streamer/esports watcher I've been trying to find a niche to really hone in on for myself. So many times have I have been just going from tourney to tourney not really having the information/storyline on each team and not being so involved with the scene.

Luckily, I've been working in the NA challenger scene for minor tournaments but I did finally get picked up in the summer as a caster for Mobafire Challenger Series to really develop storylines/history and knowledge about each team. Now streaming/casting with Amateur League Championship Series, I have a greater understanding on how the challenger scene looks and where the teams might clash in there ultimate goal of LCS. Relegation is coming soon and not many things are known about each team other than maybe the notable players.

So this blog is re-opening on the basis of talking about ALCS/NACL/EPS and all the NA challenger stuff that is happening, the teams that are coming up to fight in the end for those 3 LCS Spots (Velocity, Coast, Curse) , and well random things and sightings of esports life.

Hopefully you guys do get to follow cause there are so many things to really look forward to in the coming months plus we do have other international tournaments going on!

Until then, hope your around, comment below if you want to add more content!








This is also the official entry into the Thanksgiving giveaway =P.