J.P. McDaniel is back with his next article entitled “WoW: Wait and see time.”
(This is an editorial. The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of compLexity Gaming or its parent company.)
The past two week’s we’ve seen three U.S. teams gain sponsorships. SK-Gaming picked up Serennia, Sck, and Realz. CompLexity picked up Venruki, Happyminti, and Sodah. MoB Gaming picked up Fisker, Nick (the hammer), and Hamchookz. We all know who these players are, but do we know who is going to win come tournament time? Not a chance.
Unpredictability will be the theme for the first tournament of 2009, the ESL Finals in Hannover (Thanks Till, I’m stupid), Germany, which to remind you is a month away, also to remind you that only two of these teams will be in the tournament (figure out which two and you win a prize! OK, not really). The only team that has actually played at a tournament with their current roster will be CompLexity, formerly GotGame.East. But will their pre-WotLK composition of Rogue, Mage, Druid be as strong as it once was? Kintt said it best last week with “the best team right now is Rogue, Mage, and any healer” so perhaps the synergy between Venruki and Happy will be enough to take a tournament win.
Or maybe the team with the biggest ego SK-Gaming will simply stomp them, that is if they don’t verbally harass each other on Ventrilo before the big tournament comes around, showing up and grinding their teeth having to play with each other. It’s a funny thing when the biggest worry about your team isn’t whether you can play the game, it isn’t whether your composition is strong enough to beat the others, and it isn’t if you have the tournament experience or previous tournament wins (edit: Serennia doesn’t fall into the winning category, it’s nice to remind him about it). It is whether the three players can sit together at a tournament in a foreign land and deal with each other for three days. This is the number one thing that people are questioning with this team.
They just might be able to do it though. I’m not going to go out and call tournament winners but between the two veterans, Sck and Serennia, and rookie all-star Realz, you’ve got quite a team. Granted we haven’t really seen Realz on a hunter in the tournament scene (explosive shot tuff yeah?) and Serennia on a death knight either, but Sck has enough play time on paladin to hold up his side of things. But enough about this team, they’ve had their press already.
Nick. The Hammer. Can you handle the tournament pressure? I should be writing about Hamchookz really since he is well known. But I like Nick, only because people call him the Hammer. How do you earn that name? You impress people on the PTR. He’s got quite a history between some of the professional players. Zyz (Rogue, Team EG… yeah, that gangsta wannabe) said he was one of the hardest people to beat in a duel before AR/Prep was patched in.
Then you’ve got Hamchookz. What to say about this player that hasn’t already been said? Is he the U.S.’s Cherez? Is he better then Cherez? Both debatable, but one thing is for damn sure: he’s good. Kintt watched how he plays when Nick was streaming on Xfire and couldn’t say a bad thing about him, mentioning he played the game at an extremely slow pace, something he had never seen before. Oplaid even has a Hamchookz shrine (he’ll deny it if you ask) and practices the Hamchook call on a daily basis. In a way these guys are the underdogs, but I think that is discrediting them too much. This team might be a fan favorite going into their first tournament and they might even end up winning the whole thing. We’ll have to see as no tournaments besides ESL have been announced for 2009.
And all this talk about level 80 arena tournaments? Yeah, that just might all be bullshit too. Blizzard isn’t going to give ESL a tournament server at level 80 until they launch their own tournament server. Maybe we’ll see one launch in February and they are just keeping their mouth shut. Or maybe the ESL final will be at level 70 and throw everyone for a loop. We’ll just have to wait and see.
Maybe the first half of 2009 should be called “Wait To See” time, since that’s all we’ve been doing, and will continue to until a tournament.
To read more by JP and learn about his ArenaCast podcast, click HERE.