Duncan “Thorin” Shields, SK’s editor-in-chief, has released an article of epic proportions. Shields puts forth a gargantuan effort to disseminate an extensive amount of information into an attempt to determine the greatest Counter-Strike 1.6 team of all time.
In undertaking the task, Shields distills notable data for use with four critera; these are prestige, competition, dominance, and additional context. From there, the necessary rationalization and logical analysis takes place as each is broken down with the candidates in question.
The candidates are predetermined under somewhat basic aspects that few in eSports can object to. They are as follows:
SK.swe – circa 2003-2004
mTw.dk – circa 2008-2009
fnatic – circa 2009
AGAiN – circa 2006-2009
A small excerpt from the article in question can be seen below:
Prestige
In this context prestige is defined as how important an event is considered to be and the level of status bestowed upon the team who manages to win it. Factors defining the prestige of a tournament include:
The degree of efficiency the organization is known for, the quality of the hardware used, the history of past champions, the players’ opinions and the attention the event receives from the community.
As tournaments and organizations have grown and shrunk over the years the prestige of SK’s achievements may, and perhaps should, seem less daunting in a modern context than they once were. At the time the two CPL seasonal event victories made SK.swe the undisputed best team in the world and their gold medal at the WCG Grand Finals not only added to their personal legacies but helped increase the prestige of the WCG itself as the best team in the world, and history to that point, had become a champion of its event. Winning the CPL European event also helped cement further that SK.swe were the best team in Europe, beating teams along the way who may not have had the financial backing to attend the bigger American CPLs.
To view the article and use the information to draw your own conclusions, click here.