Though we’re jumping back into the domestic regular seasons, we’re a long way off from international competition. Let’s reflect on the history of WildCard teams and what it means for the future. What I’d like to do is not only compare the performance and history of WildCard team of each world championship since their official conclusion, but also assess the trajectory they are headed in and provide some fun facts in each year. It’s worth noting that although teams from what would now be labeled Wildcard regions have played in World Championships prior to 2013, it wasn’t officially categorized as such until then. Eventually, these regions would find themselves having their own special qualification prerequisites. ___________

2013 (Beginnings)

Brazil, LAN, Turkey, Oceania and CIS were the first labeled WildCard regions. The initial qualifying teams hailed from CIS (GamingGearEU) and Southeast Asia (Mineski).  It was a slow start for WildCards as neither of these teams got out of their group. Not only did they fail to escape their group, but were more or less utterly obliterated.  Mineski exited the group stage with a 0-8 score, while GamingGear.eu won 1 game in Group A vs. Team Solomid—the caveat being Reginald went Teemo and TSM’s fate was already sealed. Other notes of interest:

• There was a lot of conflicting discourse from the community about GamingGearEU qualifying to be labeled WildCard when they could very well just be in the EU LCS if they were strong enough.
• GG.EU did not bootcamp at all because Mazzerin was 17 years old and still had school obligations.
• Mineski took the spot of Exile. Transportation issues kept a then largely powerful Exile from attending the Season 3 Southeast Asia Regional Finals.  It might not have made a different for the collective WildCard performance representation, but the potential to take a game off Fnatic or Gambit Gaming was there.

2014 (“The” Grand Upset)

The WildCard teams featured in 2014 Worlds were Dark Passage hailing from Turkey and KaBuM! from Brazil. Looking back, KaBuM’s victory seems overrated now because it’s just one win, but everyone remembers it.  It’s noteworthy in that it was taken off a team considered to be very good whereas in 2013, TSM was TSM, and the game had no weight in the turnout of the tournament, so one could assume it wasn’t tryhard (if the Reginald Teemo pick didn’t give it away already.)   Alliance was considered the #1 team out of Europe and the west’s only chance against the mighty Korean teams—who possibly had the greatest disparity between them and the rest of the world out of any era in this time frame of professional League of Legends, even to this day. Other notes of interest:

• Community perception changed from thinking Worlds would be better without Wildcard teams.
• The KaBuM upset was so popular, the post got to #1 on r/all in 2 minutes and stayed there for 5 hours.
• The match prevented a 3-way tie breaker in their group, which means it killed Alliance’s chance of making it into the playoffs.

2015 (Delivery)

Brazil returned in 2015 with paiN Gaming representing them. Joining them were Bangkok Titans hailing from Thailand. It wasn’t as easy for the WildCards to impress this year when the precedent to live up to was the KaBuM vs. Alliance upset. However, where this year lacked in surprise factor for the representatives, it made up for with presentation. Popularized hype videos started to become developed by Riot, adding a very human element to the teams and their players.  In fact, the segment for brTT is one of the most heartfelt ones we’ve ever seen. Bangkok Titans went 0-6 at Worlds, but their journey to get there was a feat bred from persistence.  Even making it there was an accomplishment for the org, who formed in Season 2 (over 3 years prior to this tournament) and started their first run domestically with a 4-36 record. They lost 31 consecutive matches before their first win; making it to Worlds was its own prize in this context. Other notes of interest:

• paiN Gaming went 2-4; however, one of their wins was vs. group winner Flash Wolves. In a 44 minute game, the carries of paiN Gaming had fantastic games, with brTT going 6-2-5 and Kami’s Twisted Fate wielding an astounding 5-0-7 score over Maple’s Ahri.
• paiN received their first win before LGD, China’s first seed who smashed LPL. This marked the first time in history for a WildCard team to not be last place in their group at any time during the World Championship.
• Kami only used one summoner spell for the first week and didn’t die.

2016 (Culmination)

The representatives for Season 6 Worlds  were INTZ from Brazil and the mix Russian-Ukranian Albus NOX Luna. Worlds Season 6 featured the most iconic performance historically, and perhaps of all time in relation to other teams attending. Albus NoX Luna exited their group alongside ROX Tigers to make it into the playoffs, which marked the first (and only?) time a WildCard team became a quarterfinalist. The feat was hardly a fluke, either.  While CLG was a weak team coming in (4th place finish in the Summer playoffs), G2 Esports were the first place team from EU LCS and ROX Tigers were a Worlds contender, who themselves dropped a game to the WildCard squad. Although ANX did make it into the playoffs, they were quickly eliminated by H2K 3-0, who were able to study them and prove the resourcefulness of an LCS squad. This is worth mentioning because a chunk of ANX’s success can be credited to others “sleeping” on them by denying them scrims.  LCS Team perception following this World Championship would shift to grant more due to ANX’s accomplishment. Other notes of interest:

• Due to being denied scrims, much of ANX’s “practice” time was just playing World of Warcraft
• While INTZ’ collective performance wasn’t noteworthy, the win they took in their group was against Chinese powerhouse Edward Gaming

2017 (Recognition)

Showing up at the previous Worlds were the Turkish 1907 Fenerbahçe Esports and the Vietnamese GIGABYTE Marines. After the year prior, expectations were set exceedingly high and, frankly, unreasonably so. The WildCard representatives in 2017 were incapable of capturing the magic brought by ANX in the year prior and pulling through in the group stages, with GAM going last in their group (but at least tying North American team Immortals) alongside 1907F, who suffered a crushing 0-6 defeat. However, where results were missing, new trends arose in their stead. It was the first World Championship to feature play-ins for IWWC slots. This was what I’d consider a decent compromise between representation and qualification via meritocracy. Additionally, this marks the first time where any major regions had serious interest in talent from WildCard regions.  Most notably, this was the year of Levi to show his potential, and convince fans of the possibility of legitimate world class talent erupting from WildCard regions.   Only a few people were capable of boldly predicting his performance against far more established regions. But for most, they had to see it to believe it -- and Levi delivered. Other notes of interest

• Levi played with a $5 mouse from a flea market at MSI 2017
• Levi eventually ended up on Chinese org JD gaming alongside the legend Imp
• It’s worth noting that despite the scoreline, people were impressed with 1907F, namely due to their performance against Samsung Galaxy while using a sub.
• 1907F had the powerful Korean midlaner Frozen, which likely led to overhyping their potential performance before the tournament.

2018 (Hypotheticals)

Our most recent world championship didn’t bring in any new-blood regions once again. It featured the same play-in style format as the previous Worlds; the only official “WildCard” team to make it through were the Vietnamese Phong Fu Buffalo. Their performance was relatively unremarkable with a 2-4 finish in group stage, but what we’ll talk about here is the extreme “what-if”. There’s a lot of history backing Gambit Gaming. While they aren’t the same team that participated in EU LCS and prior, the 2018 play-in roster still retained original Moscow 5 members Diamondprox and EdWard. The team didn’t make it through the play-ins, but what we can do is approximate where they could have ended up. While it’s a bit of a “transitive property” hypothetical scenario, it’s still fun to consider. If we consider the opponents of those who didn’t make it in based on their respective actual Worlds placements, Gambit Gaming had the hardest qualifier. Of C9, EDG, G2 and GRX, Cloud 9 was one of the two teams to make it into Worlds playoffs. Not only did they make it to playoffs, they smashed the quarterfinal against Korean-team Afreeca Freecs 3-0. Gambit Gaming were also the only team in Round 2 of the play-ins to take their opponent—the team that would convincingly knockout Afreeca Freecs later, to a 5-game set. It’ll always make you wonder… Other notes of interest

• While not directly related to WildCard teams, it’s entertaining to note that one performed better in a series than a Korean team whose coach made claims of how important hard work and grinding is.(Afreeca Freecs were possibly the hardest working team, whereas Cloud 9 was under scrutiny alongside other North American teams for playing too many other video games

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2019+ (Future)

It’s hard to make an argument that things will strictly get “better”.  An infrastructure—while definitely possible for it to be improved upon—has already been established in the smaller regions.  Also, sponsorship opportunities and franchising have catapulted the major regions to an advantage I’d be hard-pressed to convince anyone Wildcards could catch up to. A lack of exposure to scrimming better teams also is harmful; for instance, VCS were not scrimming with LMS teams. While we may not get the results and upsets we’re looking for (although let’s hope we do for entertainment factor alone), the talent pool is not far off.  This could prove, again, harmful to WildCard regions, as no doubt scouting is taken more seriously in the underrepresented areas after Levi’s pick-up. Not all hope is lost; with a little extra push, Gambit Gaming could have hypothetically made a top 4 finish.  But still, while raw results have stagnated, a top 8 finish has justified the inclusion of WildCards into the World Championship, and ever since, fans can be excited by the sheer possibility the future holds in upsets - a viewpoint far more optimistic than one where we, the viewers, must slog through what we know will be utter annihilation.

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Michale 'Drexxin' Lalor is the Editor-in-Chief of Esports Heaven. Follow him on Twitter at @ESHDrexxin. Images courtesy of Lolesports Flickr and Gambit Esports. EDITOR'S NOTE - 2019 section updated on 1/19/2019 at 8:20 for clarification purposes.