I enjoy pottering around the pretty, hand painted stylings of Summoner's Rift, love many of LoL's character designs, and find some of the world lore pretty interesting.  I'm certainly no competitive player, however.  Casual as you like, me.

Pro League is great though, really enjoy it.  But I gotta admit, I do prefer watching Dota.

Oh, meant to post this a while ago, but forgot about it. I was looking for details on Puyo Puyo eSports, and found this video of a Puyo championship match from 1997.



Worth watching just for the defending champion's entrance alone.

All 8 of the Overwatch League Season 2 expansion teams have now officially presented themselves to the public, and damn, the hype train ain't stopping anytime soon.  

With the success of Season 1, the expansion slots look to have gone for between $30 million and $60 million, depending on the location.  As with S1, the new teams have backing form big business and established sports franchises, with eSports orgs being brought in to take care of the day-to-day running.  The whole thing kicks off in February.

Once again, the branding is on-point, with only a couple of team styles I'm not keen on.  

The teams themselves are looking very capable, being mostly made up of Contenders (2nd tier tournament) players and a good few transfers from the established teams as they bring in new blood.  Of all the new teams, my money's on Vancouver Titans.  They bought all the players and coaches from the Contenders Korea and APEX legends, RunAway. 

I fucking love RunAway.  A team founded by streamer, Runner, and financed on a shoe string budget by him and his wife (with Runner also playing for the team, and his wife, Flowervin, managing them), they dared to take on Korea's eSports elite in the APEX tournaments, the highest level of competition pre-OWL.  After a couple of years of highs and lows including just missing out on the APEX Season 2 and Season 4 titles, they finally took the S2 Contenders Korea crown and then went on to beat the South Korean World Cup team in an exhibition match.  In October Flowervin announced on stream that her and Runner has secured the entire team positions with an OWL franchise.  Unfortunately, Runner, who's currently serving his mandatory military service, will miss out on the chance he's helped to create for his friends.  I can only wish the team, Flowervin and Runner, the best of luck in whatever comes next.  

Anyhoo, here's the current look of the 20 teams in the OWL. 



And here's a lil piece on RunAway. 

Wizards are definitely serious about Arena, the $10,000,000 prize pool for MtG tournaments includes Arena events in 2019. Odds on 90% of the decks in the early Arena events are black/white life-gain vampire decks. #bitter

https://magic.wizards.com/en/competitive-magic

Cross-posted to the CCG thread.

Now, they own Dungeons and Dragons, Magic the Gathering, and the Pokemon Card game....

I wonder how much money each of those properties makes each year? Magic must make fucking megatons?

SpaceGazelle wrote:

Who knew Wizards were so rich? Actually I think I did know wizards might be rich. Something about gold.

That’s dragons mate

I got told off by the wife for saying the game looks shite.

"But it's popular, so it can't be."

I pointed out she watches Love Island. The debate did not reach a satisfying conclusion.

Shoulda been Dota

I've been watching it, the high level play is pretty cool. Singles today.

It's derivative in the same way any game that's not the first of it's kind is.  But like Dante says, the building is a great addition and is every bit as important as the shooting.  And yeah, watching what the high level players can do with all that is crazy.  

I don't think I can properly convey how high the skill ceiling is to someone who's never tried to play the game, but beside the usual BR looting and shooting there's a mind meltingly fast and complex free-form puzzle building and editing game to contend with.  

It's the toughest PvP shooter I've ever played by a long, long way.

Well it’s a kid’s game so of course they’re gonna be young lol

Aye, all the big community names are older and a year ago all the top players were in their 20's, but the kids have taken over.  Most of the best players at the moment seem to be in the 14 to 16 age bracket.  

Huge congrats to Wolfiez for that 2nd place in duo's.  With him and the likes of Mongraal, Benjyfishy, and Itemm, the UK has some of the very best players in the world.

Fortnite’s a fine game, but at that pro level and tbh pretty much any level now it’s a speed building game, not BR as I’d want. I’d always hoped for a non-building mode to come along but don’t think it ever did. Blackout ftw.

They've done a few of these 100 player live tournaments now, the early ones weren't without their issues but they do seem to have most things sorted.  I think the stadium holds 23,000 but don't know if it sold out.  The online viewership seems pretty solid though, over 1 million have been watching on Twitch and YT tonight.

Bugha wins it, 16yo, 3mil. Dominated from game one. Fair fucks.