Illusions of Grandeur

“The West is best."

To be precise, the amount of revenue that goes through Riot Games and the Western teams in terms of stream viewers and global attention compared to the East is staggering. Furthermore, the amount of attention Riot brings to its Western teams, that is, Europe and North America, dominates the amount of attention that Riot brings to any other region, both Major and Wildcard regions. China, Korea, Brazil, Oceania, Taiwan, and many others get much less support and attention than NA and EU do. In media terms, all regions suffer from not being North America.

In the beginning of League of Legends, international tournaments came down to North America versus Europe because they were the first regions to acquire a server, and thus were the most dominant with optimal ways of practicing. Fans and spectators who were aware of the state of both Starcraft: Brood War and Starcraft 2 were initially afraid of the Korean teams upon their entry to League of Legends. But even with the dominant arrival of eastern teams, at 2012 Worlds, their fears were allayed when the Taipei Assassins, a seemingly no-name team, came out of nowhere to destroy the entire tournament.

Still, fans had to worry when that hammer was going to drop. Season three was a clear wake up call for western teams that they needed to play catch-up with the Chinese and Korean teams. While it is true that the West was dominated in Season Two, all manner of excuses were offered to explain the failure away. A player on Azubu Frost cheated at a key moment in game one against TSM, the morale and mentality of Dignitas was ruined because of a leaked strategy, and CLG.NA failed to flip the coin in their favor and were unable to execute their cheese strategy on purple side for all three games of group stages. These were just samplings of North American fan reactions.

Reality is sometimes the Greatest Medicine

Despite the spotlight, North America, which understandably gets the most attention since it is directly next to Riot Games HQ, is the worst major region competing at Worlds this year. In the group stages, North America won a combined total of 6 games out of 19 games. That’s a total record of 6 wins and 13 losses; in other words, a 31% win rate. Not only that, but all six of their wins came from the first week of games which means they lost every single game they played in the second week of groups.

To compare this to other Worlds results, North America only won 12.5% of their games in the 2012 World Championship, in which their only win out of eight games was against SK Gaming who went 0-3. In Season 3, North America won six out of nineteen games totaling a 31% win rate, and in Season 4 they won ten out of eighteen games for a much better 55% win rate.

This is the first year that North America has not competed in the bracket stage but this is actually the third year, not including Season 1, that a North American team has failed to make it out of the group stage. In both seasons 2 and 3, North America along with every other major region (unless you were last place at All-Stars in season 3) had a guaranteed seed going into the bracket stage. Because of this context, the argument can be made that this is just as bad as North America has performed at almost every worlds except for 2014.

An Abundant Dosage of Despair

So what went wrong? NA seemed to be on a pretty good track at Season 4 Worlds; being knocked out by the Samsung teams was an excuse of itself as they were the strongest teams there. Furthermore, NA were winning more of their games per year, but we dropped back down. After a strong showing at Worlds, TSM dominated IEM Katowice and beat a Korean team for the first time as well. Well you see...

MSI was the catalyst of North America’s destruction. TSM looks so dominant heading into MSI after destroying the North American LCS and IEM, that their complete flop that tournament left them looking like a shell of their former selves. They dropped several games in the subsequent Summer LCS and struggled through playoffs only to get swept at the hands of Counter Logic Gaming.

At Worlds, TSM had a difficult group with LGD, OG, and KT -- so when they failed to make it out, no one was really surprised outside of the truly faithful fans. Speaking of faith, CLG made it to Worlds for the first time since 2012 and for the first time since the LCS started, they did  not crash and burn in the playoffs but instead won the whole thing. Fueled by a renewed conviction, CLG fans rushed to their only hope making it through group stages as TSM looked like a shell of their former self, and somehow the 7th place C9 took the third slot through the gauntlet.

Just based off of the domestic timeline alone, CLG was North America’s best and only chance at making it out of groups. They were matched with Flash Wolves, KOO Tigers and paiN gaming. Second place in the groups or even first seemed to be more than a likely possibility. But almost as if it was within the genetics of every CLG roster, they crumbled like a dried out sandcastle of broken promises and dreams. Their drafts and play were extremely subpar throughout the two weeks at group stages compared to the showing they gave during the NA LCS Playoffs.

NA fans heartbroken over TSM and CLG being knocked out of group stages, it fell upon C9 to be their only hope once again as they had swept the first week 3-0 in groups against all expectations. Who could have reasoned their way to a 3-0 record against ahq, or let alone FNC or iG? Even if they made major mistakes against C9 or let them have the same power picks each game, it gave NA fans a single beacon of hope. It was the kind of cinderella story that minstrels would have made songs about if this were in the middle ages; fairy tales are just that.

On the last day of group stages when Group B concluded their games, the floor fell and the sky came crashing down as Cloud 9 lost every single game they played including the tiebreaker match. They only had to win one game to advance, but they let North America down after everyone jumped the sunken ships of CLG and TSM to supporting them.

What’s the diagnosis, Doctor?

The first step to solving any problem is admitting that you have a problem. North America is the worst major region in competitive League of Legends. As for tackling that problem, there are lot of things to consider, such as the reason why NA performed the best in Season 4 compared to every other year. What are other regions doing better than NA? But for now, North America with their early exit out of worlds has a head start on fixing their problems as a region, and fans should be supporting their next favorite teams immediately for the rest of Worlds 2015. To tackle any of these issues all at once would leave holes and be a rushed process.

The prognosis isn’t good for North America. We’ve sat at the bottom for so long that a “weak” wildcard team beat our top seeded team in an “easy” group at worlds this year, and NA used to pride themselves as better than LMS but it doesn’t look to be the case anymore. To move forward and stop falling into this pithole of failure, examination of past mistakes and failures need to be made in order to make a plan for the future.

That’s a lot easier than it sounds, and nitpicking every mistake over the last couple of years won’t help just because competitive League of Legends is forever in a state of fluctuation. So instead of focusing on the mistakes of 2012, 2013 and 2015 that led us to abysmal win rates at Worlds,  we should look at what went right for the North American region in 2014. They won the most games compared to any other year attending, even when China and Korea were much stronger regions that year compared to now. Further examination will be about LMQ’s effect on North America, despite not being the best team during their stay.