Everything About the 2018 LOL World Championship

It’s that time of the year again when we’re going to spend days watching League of Legends instead of actually playing it. We’re just a month away from the League of Legends World Championship and we couldn’t be more excited. This post will be going through the entire format of the tournament as well as the early predictions and thoughts about some of the hottest teams heading into the World Championship. But, before we get to that, let’s talk a little bit about the history of League of Legends World Championship and why it is a one of a kind sporting event.

History

It all started back in the June of 2011 when a tradition was created to host the biggest League of Legends tournament in the world. Sweden was the place where a tournament with a $100,000 prize pool was hosted. Eight team participated and played in front of 1.6 million viewers with over 200,000 concurrent viewers to compete for the grand prize. Fnatic came out victorious, and fast forward six years later, the League of Legends World Championship is much greater than it ever was.

Just because of the extent of the love from the audience for the event, it is being seriously considered that to add eSports and specifically League of Legends to the Olympic Games. The League of Legends World Championship is nothing to joke about. It’s one of the most watched sporting events in the World, challenging things like the Superbowl, Wrestlemania and the Olympics as well. That’s why e-sports is already scheduled as a medal event in 2022 Asian Games. And, you have the League of Legends World Championship to thank for it.

The 2017 series was held in four different location in China. The Play-In and Groups in Wuhan, Quarterfinals in Guangzhou, Semifinals in Shanghai and the grand finals in Beijing. 24 teams participated from all corners of the globe to fight for the $5 million prize pool ( $2,350,000 contributed by Riot Games and $2,650,000 contributed by the fans) with Samsung Galaxy walking out with the trophy by defeating SK Telecom T1.

And, a year later, we’re going right back to the brass ropes to see Samsung Galaxy attempt to defend their title against 24 other teams in the beautiful country of South Korea.

The Teams at the 2018 League of Legends World Championship

Four teams have already qualified for the League of Legends World Championship while the other 20 will be announced in the weeks to come. The four teams are:

• Flash Wolves
• KT Rolster
• Fnatic
• Ascension Gaming

The Venue

As we said earlier, and as you’ve probably heard already from the officials at Riot Games, this year the World Championships will be taking place in South Korea. However, this year was quite difficult as compared to the past League of Legends World Championships as Riot usually announced all the venues and allowed the visitors to have several months to plan their trip. Last year, the details for all the locations, venues and timings came through as early as February. However, this time, we only have a couple of months to do everything. Riot spent the better part of the summer figuring out where to hold the League of Legends World Championships. This was because the World Championship wasn’t exactly supposed to take place in Korea. It wasn’t revealed what location Riot had in mind, but they’ve made it clear that Korea was actually their second option.

As a part of their negotiation tactics, Riot has to stay quiet about the ongoing developments that why we didn’t get any news over the summer. They couldn’t put out a statement because it could be used as a leverage to draft a plot that didn’t work in their favor. After months of rigorous negotiations, Riot finally skipped the venue they were targeting and moved on to their plan B, South Korea. This year, just like last time with China, the whole tournament will be held in four cities of Korea. A detailed analysis of the dates as

well as the location is given below:

Play-In Stages

The League of Legends World Championship will officially kick off on 1st October in the capital city of Korea, Seoul. The Play-In stage will take place during October 1 – 4 and October 6 – 7.

Group Stage & Quarterfinals

Right after finishing the Play-In Stage, we’ll be heading to the pristine beaches, sky-high mountains and ancient temples of Busan for the Group Stages and the Quarterfinals. The Group Stages and the Quarterfinals were cut down a bit to make the tournament slightly shorter. As you can probably guess, staying in a completely different country is quite difficult for the players as well as the faculty and the people with the media. They have to stick in Korea for over a month just to cover one sporting event. So, in order to make life easier for everyone involved, Riot changed their schedule. The Group Stages will take place over the course of 8 days instead of two weeks with a break in between. And, as for the quarterfinals, they’ll take place in two days instead of four. The exact dates are as follows:

• October 10-17 (Group Stages)
• October 20-21 (Quarterfinals)

Semifinals

Right now, only four teams will be remaining in the fight for the prestigious trophy of the League of Legends World Championship. The semifinals will take place in Gwangju on October 27 and 28.

Finals

Right after we’ve selected the finalists, we’ll be moving on to Incheon to crown the world champion. November 3rd is the day when the winner will be hosting the cup on the ground of Incheon in front of millions worldwide.

Early Predictions

It’s way too early to really say which team is going to be winning the League of Legends World Championships, but we’re going to do our best to analyze the four teams that have qualified already and see if they have a trophy in their near future.

Flash Wolves

2018 was quite a fantastic year for the Flash Wolves and they are determined to have more of the same success in the League of Legends World Championship. Flash Wolves was able to have an amazing season by placing first in multiple events. They managed to claim the top spot in the LMS 2018 Summer, LMS 2018 Spring Playoffs as well as the LMS 2018 Spring. They’ve showed consistent results and there’s never a match where we’ve seen them be dominated or just crumble down. They always put up great matches that just reminds us why we love League. Flash Wolves is our pick for the winners this year. Even if they can’t win, we can see them fighting in the finals.

Roster

KT Rolster

KT Rolster is a team that is the underdog heading into the League of Legends World Championship 2018. They’re one of the first four to qualify for the tournament, and they’re a team that couldn’t even make it to the event in 2016 and 2017. But, in 2018, they’ve made great progress to get themselves back in the spotlight. KT Rolster has been strategizing a lot as they’re one of the only team in the world that was able to make major breakthroughs without any change in its roster.

They’ve had quite the year by winning the LCK 2018 Summer Tournament, placing second in the Rift Rivals as well as placing third in the LCK 2018 Spring. The reason why we feel that they’ll do really good this year is because of the clinic they put in the Rift Rivals. They didn’t drop a single match in the entire tournament only losing to the LPL. We see them somewhere in the top 5.

Roster

Fnatic

We talked about how KT Rolster changed the way they played to make themselves better, however, Fnatic is a team ridded with roster changes in order to become a formidable opponent. The winners of the very first League of Legends World Championship have struggled a lot to gain some composure and be able to get their lost glory back. And, with their new roster, they’ve proved that they’re coming back to gain what’s theirs. Fnatic placed first in the EU LCS 2018 Summer, Rift Rivals, EU LCS 2018 Spring Playoffs and EU LCS 2018 Spring. If we had to bet on a team to win the Finals, we’d bet on this team right here.

Roster

Ascension Gaming

Ascension Gaming is a rather recent e-sports team that was only formed a couple of years ago in Thailand. But, their skills have proved that you don’t need to be around since the first League of Legends World Championship in order to be taken seriously. They haven’t had many roster changes in 2018 and have the success to show why they don’t need to make any changes. They placed first in TPL 2018 Spring Playoffs, GPL 2018 Spring, SEA Tour 2018 Summer and Thailand LCS 2017 Summer Season late last year. Ascension Gaming did great in most of the Regional Events, but in our opinion, they aren’t top tier League of Legends World Championship material. We predict that they’ll make it to the top 10, but that’s where their journey will terminate.

Roster

Closing Thoughts

These are just our predictions judged by the way the teams have performed throughout the calendar year. So, don’t be offended if we said that your team isn’t going to do good. This is purely our personal opinion, don’t hold us on our word. However, one thing we can indeed guarantee is the fact that the League of Legends World Championship 2018 is going to be epic. High caliber teams, amazing venues and some good old fashioned League is the recipe to conjure some of the best games ever. So, if you did buy a ticket to watch the pros from October 1st to November 3rd, we assure you, you won’t regret it. You’ll learn a lot too, so that’s always a plus.

Oh, and this almost slipped out of our minds. Do you disagree with our predictions and think we’re entirely incorrect? Don’t forgot to call us imbeciles and support your team in the commend section below.

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