A FanZone GoodBye

by Jodi "PunkLit" McClure

Back in 2013, when the LCS first took steps to become the more polished and organized entity we know today, I created a blog called LCS FanGirls. For a year, it was just a place for me to post weekly game schedules and pictures of the pros, and, like the LCS itself, it was enjoyed by a very small handful of fans. If I saw even 50 views a week, I was surprised - and the site would likely have stayed that way if not for Snoopeh, Bjersen, and the Cutest Pro NA contest.

Snoopeh, the undisputed leader of said contest, retweeted one of my tweets about it, and he and Bjergsen joked about the results, and suddenly, my little fangirl site exploded with 50,000 views. I was a bit giddy that day, and not just over the numbers. It was the fact that Snoopeh and Bjerg had even responded to one of my tweets!

Determined to take advantage of the views that week, I started to write actual esports articles. While I was no journalist, I was a novelist, so it wasn't a hard jump for me to make. The views, of course, waned off after the contest hype, but I had gained a small new audience who stopped in weekly for the 'at-a-glance' schedules and standings and I was very happy with that. This new audience had opinions though, and the one that registered the most with me was that, in this mainly male dominated LCS scene, the 'fangirl' theme had to go.

So one year in, I redesigned the site. I changed the name (to LCS Central,) the logo, the layout, got rid of the pastel color theme, and added a question of the day and LCS fan art page. The weekly viewer numbers started to steadily grow and, in a bout of ambition near the start of Season 4, I reached out to the community to see if anyone would like to join me in writing. That initial inquiry brought me budding esports writers Joshua Kon, Jeremy Heimann, and Pieter 'antdriote' Cnudde, and together, we took our first unsure steps towards trying to create a 'real' esports news site. The views were still small...I think we averaged maybe 300 views a week then...but whenever we posted articles, we'd see a little spike. This also brought about my first attempt to post one of our articles to Reddit (which was immediately removed by a mod who cautioned that linking to a blog was a no-no.) I had a ton of LCS twitter friends though, and I was the only person at the time posting about esports on Google+, so we still found ways to get views.

A few months later we were joined by Andy "Bloodvayne' Del-Ray, and since he expressed interest doing interviews, I reached out to a few LCS pros. Sjokz was our first, followed by YoungBuck (whose response brought about several hours of our unrestrained joy on Skype) and Gambit's Darker, whose interview made the front page of r/LOL. That brought in an even larger audience and our views began to hoover around the 20k monthly mark. And that's when I started thinking the site could actually be something. I bought the FanZone domain name, moved the site, redesigned it again and made it a logo..and in June of 2014 I put out another request for writers. That brought me Chase Wassenar's LCS podcasts, Hussain Moosvi's brilliant analytics, Louis LeMeillet's awesome topics, Jerrod Steis' mega-successful support guides, Matt Lee's great writing and Reece "SabrewoIf" Dos-Santos' infamously prophetic weekly predictions. It also pushed us into the realm of 50k monthly views for a little while...but holding those numbers proved difficult in the long run.

Our weekly views jolted up and down so hard, our charts looked like something you'd find in a cardiac unit, and after half a year of trying to keep that beat from bottoming out, I ultimately failed. Because the fact is, FanZone was still a small site with a single owner who didn't have the money to put into its growth and promotion, and after too many months of dwindling numbers, the work it took to maintain it started to feel thankless. This depression worsened when, after multiple attempts, I couldn't even get a single response from Riot for media passes to cover MSI. At that point, between editing and making graphics and keeping all the schedules, results and standings updated, watching 20 games a week and trying to keep up-to-date on all the latest news on Reddit, etc, I started to resent the tax on my free time and ultimately, I stopped caring. There was a time when my passion for the games and players outweighed that time commitment, but lately, I haven't had the same passion for it, and I think the combination of those two problems has led me to this point. It's clear that right now I can't move forward and I don't care to go back, so FanZone, for now, is going to go into hibernation, and if at some future point, I find that passion again, we'll give it another try. 

In addition to the names above, thanks to Anel Musinovic, the only one of us who ever really mastered Reddit, Michael "Tribble" Godani and his extensive and relentless coverage of the LPL, my dear friend Sandie Gade, who snagged the first interview with Santorin after he was picked up by TSM, and excellent writers Ethan Akey, Kennan French, Tristan Jakobsen, Josh C. and Jeremiah Egbert. And again, thanks to Matt Lee and Reece Dos-Santos, who both handled a shit-ton of stuff for me when I wasn't around.

Everyone who contributed here was part of our family, and you guys all stuck around through thick and thin and I'll never be able to aptly express my gratitude. I've been damned lucky to have every one of you write for me!

Lastly, thanks to my beloved LCS twitter friends for your support through the years. This is a difficult field for amateur writers to break in to, and support can be pretty sparse for people who don't write for corporate sites, so you guys were the true stars! 

In the meantime, Twitter is home...and that's where I'll be. ;)

And now, because he's awesome, I leave you with an Andy'ism:

What We Learned from EU LCS Summer Week 1

by Reece "SabrewoIf" Dos-Santos


1. Origen are as good as they were made out to be.

Origen-ally I was sceptical about how xPeke's team would adapt to top tier competition that they haven’t yet been exposed to as a group. I thought that against some of the best EU has to offer, they might have some flaws exposed which they could later build upon. Instead what I received was a 2-0 trash of a week where Origen brushed away the likes of Giants Gaming and then proceeded to steamroll H2k - what I believed to be EU’s second best team and practically guaranteed worlds squad.

While Mithy is no Forgiven and opted against declaring himself as part of the best bottom lane in EU…by far, the duo pair of him and Niels has been crazily effective with the rookie marksman picking up the first MVP award of the summer split. But with so much attention on the oppressive dominance in the bottom lane duo, the good work and Peke, Soaz and Amazing are not to be overlooked. Aside from the occasional positional hiccup from Soaz, the top three members all held down their roles spectacularly showing that they’re still able to exhibit a top level of play. This will be especially warming to the top half trio as they all shouldered their fair share of doubt towards their ability to perform near the end of their last splits on Fnatic and TSM respectively.

I’m now excited to see how Origen fare up against some of the wilder teams in the LCS, as both H2k and Giants are quite tame and telegraphed in their style compared to the likes of UOL or Fnatic who aren’t afraid to shake the table.

2. The Copenhagen Wolves are still consistently inconsistent.

This team is about as consistent as my solo queue MMR, which by the way could be mistaken for an analogue radio wave. On their best days they can pool together a dominating performance and completely clean house against the best teams in EU, the next day or even literally half an hour later, they’re a mess of basic mistakes that can’t retain any control against a team that hardly looked like they knew why they were winning.

Although Freeze’s pure mechanical ability has been a shining point in lost moments along with areas of inspiration from Soren, the team needs heavy focus on regaining their flow and recovering from a loss of tempo if they want to be challenging for any of the spaces in the top half of the table this split.

3. Forgiven ruins the flow of any team he graces.

Although a tad bit harsh, there’s no way to express this without flat out saying it, Forgiven has proven to me that his playstyle appears to be unadaptable for everyone who tries to tame it. While the benefits of his presence are more than evident in having one of the best skilled ADC’s the west has to offer, it seemed like Gambit this week put themselves into a Piglet/Team Liquid situation where they tunneled on the acquisition of a world class talent and tried too hard to pool themselves around making it work. What Gambit need to avoid is the situation that has followed Forgiven like a dark cloud and it’s the internal collapse of teamwork, trust and synergy due to the clash in personalities. While SK Gaming held on for the best part of a split, it was too much for them as was with the Wolves. Personally with the history of how emotional Diamond and Edward can be, I’m a little worried as to how the team will recover if they don’t pull off a momentous upswing like last split.

4. The right Elements may have finally been blended together.

What an upgrade! This team looks to be with the right players in the mix alongside the right mentality. No joke, the KaBuM! incident obliterated the original lineup of Alliance and alongside the embarrassing worlds exit that followed, really tore apart the civil colleague relationship between the team. Only with the purging of the teams members and eventual rebuilding with the return of Tabzz, has the team finally begun to show the spark it showed in the summer of Season 4.

Dexter, Jwaow and PromisQ bring a new fresh feel and dynamic to the playstyle of the team and also seem to mesh with the rest of the team in a much better fashion than the previous trio of Wickd, Shook and Nyph who were simply Mission Impossible, Froggen’s waiter and some guy no one listened to. Rotations were good, the top laner actually looked like a member of the team and Froggen wasn’t giving off the vibe that he believed he was in elo hell.

As to how far this team can go, it’s still unknown as EL’s first game was a stomp over the currently broken Gambit and while they put up a good fight, they were ultimately taken down by the Unicorns. If EL wants to sneak in for a worlds spot, they need to overcome potential rivals for the spaces. Now it looks like they can, and not just on paper.

The question is, will they?

5. Roccat still have many problems that need to be addressed.

Woolite’s positioning has been the cause of many LCS face-desk moments for me and we’re only two games into the split. Whether or not he’s upped his poor positioning game to make up for the loss of his partner in crime, P1noy, is beyond me, but it’s hurting his team’s chances of being anything but relegation zone bound. It’s also apparent that every time Roccat change their top laner, it only seems to make the situation worse. Steve has yet to show why he was worth being selected as Roccat’s new top laner in place of Overpow, who went from the team’s shining star to a quickly ousted unmemorable top laner.

In fact, Steve’s biggest impact upon the LCS so far is the crowd chant of his name which follows a particular pattern of Roccat crowd memes when underperforming, one example being the ward chanting at LCS Wembley last season. On top of this, Jankos and Vander are mere shadows of their former selves and it’s been a very long time since I’ve heard anyone even try and call Jankos the “best jungler in the EU LCS”. Last but not least is Nukeduck, being the one returning Lemondog who isn’t a valuable asset to their new team. Out of the meta and completely out of his depth in most matchups, it’s a surprise Roccat chose only to make a change in the top lane, it’s even more surprising that it doesn’t seem like they’ve made any headway to addressing these issues which have carried on from the last split. In both management and player mentality, something is clearly wrong.

The Difficult Life of a CLG Fan

by Jeremy "Ne0 Jets" Heimann

Growing up with an older brother, I learned to be competitive at a very young age. I always wanted to win, no matter what, whether it was video games, sports, or board games. Memories as a child included watching my brother root for his favorite teams. One day, the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame, a favorite of his, were playing the Michigan Wolverines, and I started rooting for Michigan just to compete against him. Read more...

NA Summer 2015 – Can TSM stay on top?

by Patrick Garren

The top of the North American competitive League of Legends' landscape has been dichotomous since Cloud9 arrived on the scene a few years back, trading blow for blow with their NA heavyweight counterpart, Team Solomid. TSM has gotten the better of the staggering former champion lately, with two straight NA LCS titles and some international exposure to show for their roster rotations and coaching changes. Up until a couple of weeks ago, Cloud9, unlike their rivals, had maintained a steady roster and with the  addition of Incarnation to their lineup, are now on the road to resurfacing as the primary powerhouse in North America. But can they overtake TSM?

TSM have not been shy about roster swaps. Ever since Reginald stepped back to coach and brought Bjergsen across the pond, they have had a revolving door of replacements at the support and jungle positions. Having finally settled on Korean import Lustboy at support, TSM continued to search for the band-aid that would stop the bleeding that TheOddOne’s retirement started. European jungler Amazing would see an NA LCS title with the team, but with poor international play and mounting criticism from the "always poised to strike" League of Legends community, Amazing decided returning to Europe and his family would bring more happiness to his life. This opened the door for Santorin. Coming from the floundering Team Coast, Santorin would see a quicker bit of success than the former TSM jungler, with a decisive win in the championship of the NA split. Ultimately, TSM’s Mid-Season Invitational proved extremely disappointing, and many fans were unable to decide whether to lay the blame on top laner Dyrus or on Santorin’s aversion to top lane ganks.

Which brings us to the Summer 2015 LCS split. Having made no roster changes, Reginald and coach Locodoco presumably have plans to counter the new and improved Cloud9 line-up, who increased their potential skill level in mid lane by several orders of magnitude with Incarnation’s arrival. While I personally agree with the lack of roster moves, it’s up to the management to continue to guide Santorin in the right direction as he grows and matures as a player. Decision making was not at its best in Tallahassee for Baylife, so some ideas definitely need to be thrown around, all the while fostering a synergistic team attitude, if they hope to continue to reign atop the North American LCS.

However, Cloud9 is not the only team in the North American scene that has bolstered their roster. Several other teams have their eyes on dethroning at least one of the usual finalists from North America. Since former mid-laner Link left with a massive bridge-fire, CLG has made huge moves to improve their shot at showing up in the post-season this summer. With the introduction of former Winterfox wunderkind Pobelter and Korean ringer Huhi, CLG hope that an SKT-like approach to the mid lane position will allow them to be more flexible in terms of their game-to-game strategies, although this will not be readily apparent until we see how CLG plays with both mid laners, and also gets into a relevant best-of series. On the less flashier side of things, Team Impulse has shown significant growth over the course of the past 4 months, led by solo queue superstar Rush, who as of this writing is tied with Faker for first place on the Korean ladder, and will bring the same 5 starters into the Summer split looking for a shot at going to Worlds.

One thing is for sure, though. If North America wants to become an international threat, the middling talent of its leagues needs to step up. Impulse, CLG, Gravity, and Team Liquid will need to continue their improvements shown week-to-week last split if they hope to challenge for the NA title, and Cloud9 and TSM need these teams to become better to put the onus on themselves to improve and compete on an international level. 

Three Reasons CLG's Two-Man Midlane isn't like SKT's

by Kennan French

Counter Logic Gaming recently announcing that they will have both Pobelter and HuHi playing mid lane on their main roster, and it's hard not to draw comparisons to SK Telecom's system of rotating Easyhoon and Faker in between games. Personally, I’m glad to see an NA team having a roster with more than five starters. However, there are plenty of differences in these situations that are important to keep in mind.

First, SKT has a distinct strategic decision when choosing Faker or Easyhoon, since they have very different styles: Faker plays aggressively, always looking to make plays and draw pressure, whereas Easyhoon is typically a more passive laner who looks to enable his whole team to get fed. CLG won’t have such a clear decision; both HuHi and Pobelter are most at home playing aggressively on assassins. Now, this may work if CLG wants to really prioritize a certain pick (Zed, for example, is considered to be one of Pobelter's signature champions, while HuHi has seen better results on LeBlanc) but they generally share most of their champion pools so one champion isn't likely to change this much, especially since the other team can just ban it away. 

Second, the caliber of player isn't the same on CLG as it is on SKT. It's not that Pobelter and HuHi aren't good mid laners - they are - but this is Faker and Easyhoon we're talking about. Faker has won a world championship, and Easyhoon is widely considered to be comparable to Faker in skill; Pobelter has had to play to keep his team in the NA LCS twice (and only been successful once). HuHi was winless during his time on Bigfile Miracle when he played mid lane for them in Korea. Of course, one good player does not a good team make, and both Pobelter and HuHi are good players, but it would be hard to argue that they are better than Faker or Easyhoon. Also, while they would have this same problem with only one mid laner, this problem adds another element of uncertainty to their decision about who to play.

The last, and most important, difference between CLG's situation and SKT's is that the NA LCS games are all Best-of-1 series (during the regular season, at least) whereas the OGN LCK it's OGN, let's be real LCK games are Best-of-3. This means that SKT can play Easyhoon in Game 1 and then Faker in Game 2 if they want to try a different strategy or counter something unexpected that the other team did, or one of them is tired, or for any number of other reasons. CLG will not have this option. They have to choose one player for each game and hope they made the right choice, with no recourse if they didn't. 

This leaves us with how CLG will use their rotating mid lane roster this coming season. It's likely that, if they want to run a split-pushing composition, they'll put in Pobelter. Pobelter has also shown more prowess on more supportive mid laners; he has 10 Orianna games to HuHi's 0, and a considerably higher win rate on Lulu with more games. If they want to run a mid lane AD carry, HuHi would be the one to put in. And, as a final prediction and without knowing much about the team dynamic the past split, having two mid laners will likely be a boost to team morale if one of them tilts (assuming they are both mature about being subbed in and out).

So yes, there are some similarities between the mid lane rosters of SKT and CLG, but it's important not to take their situations as identical; to do so would be ignoring the teams' strategies, the skill of the players, and the formats of the respective leagues that the teams are competing in.