Riot $1m Season 2 Championship Final Today: Azubu Frost vs Taipei Assassins

By Rod Breslau

The world's best League of Legends teams in North America, Europe, and Asia battle it out for $1m today at the Galen Center in California.

After nearly eight months of international competition between the world's best League of Legends teams in North America, Europe, and Asia and an emotional rollercoaster for some, it all comes down to this. Korea's Azubu Frost and Taiwan's Taipei Assassins are to battle it out today for $1,000,000 at the Galen Center at the University of Southern California.

Each team has had its own rough road to the finals. For Azubu Frost, much of it has come from the controversial moments in the quarter finals, rather than the matches themselves. After quick wins over Invictus Gaming, CLG Prime and SK Gaming in the group stage, Azubu Frost found themselves with America's best, Team SoloMid. SoloMid had been preparing for Azubu Frost ever since it was dismantled by Azubu Blaze at MLG's League of Legends Arena. That wasn't much concern for Frost, who quickly swept SoloMid in two straight matches.

Shortly after, evidence arose of multiple teams cheating by looking at the mini-map during the Internet outages, most notably from Azubu Frost Team Captain Jang "Woong" Gun-woong. An investigation by Riot led to a $30,000 fine imposed on Azubu Frost, but no overturning of the match itself. Azubu Frost then went on to knock out CLG EU a second straight time, advancing to the finals.

“We've played with TPA before many times, with each team having about equal information on each other. Because of this I think it'll be a very interesting game”, Azubu Frost AP Jung "RapidStar" Min-sung told GameSpot. “This is the world championships we've been preparing for. Now that we're here, we want to make sure we win it all.”

On the flip side, not many people expected the Taipei Assassins to be just one win away from claiming a million dollars. Not only that, but they are one win away from the first ever major eSports title for the nation of Taiwan across any competitive game. After getting a seeded-bye into the first round of the bracket, TPA managed two dominant performances when they were seen as the underdog in each. First came the destruction of the second Korean team NaJin Sword, a powerful squad who couldn't find a way in against TPA. No one was prepared for what would come in the semifinals though, against the other tournament favorite, Moscow 5. After a first game loss and being one map away from elimination, TPA turned the heat up on the back of top lane Wang "Stanley" June Tsan, who's Nidalee performance got them back in the game, and two dominating wins to clinch a finals shot.

Taipei Assassins Toyz interview.

"It was interesting to face M5.BenQ, since they are a strong team," Stanley said. "I have not played Nidalee in a while because she was never compatible with our strategies, so it was great picking her up again in this tournament. I know I'll have to continue this in the finals to maintain advantage and be stable throughout the matches."

1 Match. 1 Million dollars. Who will walk away the champion going into Riot's highly anticipated Season 3? Watch it all LIVE here on GameSpot starting at 5:30 PM PST/8:30 PM EST, and get up to speed with our coverage hub, which includes player interviews.

Watch live video from riotgames on www.twitch.tv

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Slinqy 135 pts

Wait, this stuff actually exists? lol

Mr_BillGates 35 pts

Lol. Typical PC gamers on display.

GH05T-666 124 pts

How much is League of Legends or is it a free download?

nogger01 5 pts

 GH05T-666 It's free feel free to play.

 

http://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4e4b3931413dd155115606

 

Here's the sign up if you want to try out the game. :P

 

GH05T-666 124 pts

 nogger01 thanks ill download it and give it ago

SolidTy 1306 pts

 GH05T-666 FREE man, just go and DL it. The community is very welcoming to new players, lol.

 

I mean, LOL...as in welcome to League of Legends, lol.

GH05T-666 124 pts

 SolidTy Thanks ill download it and give it ago

JillV 14 pts

What do I care about this news, Gamespot?!

mastergundam 130 pts

 JillVits about gaming tournament , LoL is one of the famous games in the world. Are you jelly of asians?

BeateDrabing 224 pts

This is going to be one of the worst Basketball games ever.

Suikogaiden 790 pts

Do people actually pay money to watch Korean kids play League of Legends?  

SS_Gokou 7 pts

I'm really surprised at people being surprised at TPA. If you're into LoL and LoL e-sports history, in the South East Asian tournament at least, TPA's doing big time.

 

And oh, I see. That's the reason why they everybody's calling AF cheaters. Lol they just lost most people and more people to cheer TPA then? :D

This comment has been deleted
dnguyen3 96 pts

I wonder how these guys got their start into pro gaming? Did they enter tournaments and did well?

MisterAmoc 59 pts

So what you're telling me is if outright cheat to win and get caught, you just lose $30k but you still get to win the $1 mil? That... doesn't make sense. Why wouldn't everyone just cheat all the time?

killa32130 125 pts

 MisterAmoc They turned their heads around to try and see the other teams map, so part of its Riots fault for not having a better setup.

alenth 262 pts

I don't understand why some devs force some games to be e-sports when they aren't designed for that in the first place.

 

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/10/11/the-summoners-guidebook-lols-world-championship-fiasco-aliena/

nurnberg 578 pts

That's one thing I don't like about e-sports.  The more money you can win, the more people will cheat and hack, thus ruining the experience for everyone else.  People will do whatever they can for a 1 million dollars price.

SirNormanislost 279 pts

 nurnberg

 turning your head to see the other peoples screen was only possible due to riots poor setup and that the only real way you can cheat when your sat in a same room but how are you suposed to use hacks and not get noticed?

Cabose420 17 pts

 nurnberg This can apply to any competition where money, especially a lot of money, is up for grabs. Steroids in baseball is a good example of this. It is essentially "hacking" by making you stronger. 

 

To deter cheating, eSports venues have people walking around the players to make sure they aren't doing anything wrong. If they do they'll be punished, like the $30,000 fine a player from one of the team's received. Personally I think they should have been more harsh, but it was partially Riot's fault for allowing the opportunity to cheat in the first place.

 

Traditional sports can also be considered worse as they're more prone from crooked referees than eSports. Referees are mainly there at eSports events to make sure players aren't hacking or using exploits that could be considered cheating. They have no say in calls in the game, such as touchdowns or interceptions.

BladeStrike1234 140 pts

Too many badasses in one picture. My head might explode!

redness19 138 pts

 BladeStrike1234 Don't pop your top yet. The winning team gets to walk away from an explosion in slow motion. O YA!

Fursnake 111 pts

 BladeStrike1234

 I laughed...only because of the silliness of competitive gamers being referred to as "badass".

Saidrex 34 pts

"biggest geeks" vs "biggest geeks"

Psychokillaz 84 pts

E-Gaming is only MOBA's and Fighting games atm. They need to expand to every genre imo. Shooters, even single player with fastest time to 100% complete or something as the winner. MMO's with PVP or Fastest raid etc So many possibilities.

alenth 262 pts

 Psychokillaz Yeah, but mmo's are really hard to be e-sports, the main example: blizzard, they don't care about their pvp even if when they have a big and competitive community giving feedback all the time, MOP is a complete mess (people dying in 2 sec.) and they care more about fixing crap like pet battles or farmville than important competitive aspects of the game, GW2 has more chances of success imo because of the good start although they need to polish the game a lot more (the announce of custom arenas is a great start).

saint311 12 pts

 Psychokillaz ehh, shooters were very big in the e-sports scene just a decade ago, dude.  Then players realized they actually take skill to be good and instead picked up LoL.

Cabose420 17 pts

 Psychokillaz there are a few factors to why LoL is so popular compared to other games. I could put a wall of text, but just going to point out the biggest one.

 

LoL is free to play. since there's virtually no barrier to entry to play the game, a lot of people can and do play it. Since so many people play it, if we assume that the % of people who play also like to watch is the same as other games, then it's easy to see why so many people watch it.

 

If you saw the infographic that came out you know that LoL has about 3X as many people logging in per month than WoW. that's a crap ton of people.

 

compare that to retail games, where over 1 million is great. Halo 3 sold about 11 million copies in total. compare that to the 12 million who log on daily for LoL, and you see just how much smaller their player pools are, which means less people interested in the game's eSports scene.

 

I would love to see other games, especially in other genres, take off in eSports, but the developers of the game need to be behind it 100% for it to make it in eSports.

Psychokillaz 84 pts

Where is the guy claiming the the USA had the best players? I told him the Far East has been kicking our azz for years. Yea these 2 teams look like they are from the USA?!..

redness19 138 pts

Love gaming but I'll never get into this "professional" gaming scene. As much as companies want this to succeed, since it's another way to advertise gaming, I don't see it ever becoming anything more then a niche market. It's a very limited market. You're not just just limited to gamers, you're limited to gamers who would want to watch other gamers compete against each other AND enjoy the game they're playing.

 

If people have the numbers already, I'd be curious to know how many people are watching this.

Kr3isen 44 pts

 redness19 I remember back in the day people used to say the same thing about gaming itself.

It may not be this gen or the next but i think its only a matter of time before youll see people compete in the olympics or whatever playing games.

TwinSnakes1989 124 pts

Can't stop laughing at the thumbnail XD

Kravyn81 461 pts

 TwinSnakes1989 My thoughts exactly.

Talavaj 192 pts

Thousands of dollars for doing something you like while being followed by bitches, lots of them is not considered a job nor a social life ?

 

Well, have fun at McDonald's with your equally unsuccessful coworkers then !

MADPADDY 141 pts

 Talavaj Yeh because you wouldn't like to make a living playing games would you, maybe if your grammar was better you would have a better job and not be so jealous of others living their dream.

shaniac132 7 pts

Well E-gaming is becoming  big thing now. Besides history has proven that people get paid to play games. Look at any professional sports team, when sports became a mainstream form of entertainment PLENTY of people said that the players should do something more with their lives. So really is that bad for professional gaming to become a thing?

MADPADDY 141 pts

 shaniac132 The problem is we live in a very envious world and all these people that have shit lives working 12hr days in some shit hole factory want everyone else to be as miserable as them and hate the thought of anyone making a living and been happy at the same time.

 

I would love for my children to make a living traveling the world playing games meeting new people,too many haters in life that worry about what others have instead of try to improve themselves.

XxDaRkNiNjAxX 13 pts

the winners are just the biggest losers... so what does that make the losers?

Shawn45 207 pts

 XxDaRkNiNjAxX 

 

I wouldn't mind being a loser if it meant I won 1 million dollars, and an additional 150k~ for every match leading up to it.

kawaiiflonne 10 pts

 Shawn45  XxDaRkNiNjAxX  That is true, but we don't know how much they get because all that money is divided between the players, then the couches and other things. Still I would say they still get a nice 150k each and about 20 k each for the matches. So is still nice.

KoLBEH 5 pts

 XxDaRkNiNjAxX Alright "XxDARKNINJAxX"

saint311 12 pts

I have nothing against getting paid to play video games.  However, I do have something against getting paid to play LoL.

wezkilla 153 pts

 saint311 so you do have something against people being paid to play video games since LoL is one

Kronspik 10 pts

 wezkilla  saint311 I don't think you understand how logic works.

mastergundam 130 pts

 saint311i don't think those people just play to get paid, if you play well, you think you can earn some money, why not? do you think who attended tournament are not truly gamers? or are you just jelly of those people?

 
Sardinar 430 pts

So many opinionated xenophobes in the comment section who can't accept that things exist outside of their common understanding in life. Sigh...

Bartrentenaar 39 pts

Why the heck are there so many articles about freaking game championships and for 1 million dollars?? Let those work for their money instead of encouraging them to sit on their ass all day playing games and (probably) not having a social life besides that? Things really need to change in this world..

mrbogden 6 pts

 Bartrentenaar Says the man reading and then posting on a video game forum.  Irony.  

 

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