WGL Finals – How I saw it…

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Hello everyone,

now, you know I generally don’t write anything about e-sports (simply because I don’t follow it), but in this case, I think it’s worth writing a few lines. Last three days, we had the possibility to see the WGL finals in Warsaw on stream and I think it was a good thing there actually was an official stream of this event.

At first, I had no intention of watching the stream itself (basically, I only considered it my duty to get as many codes for you, readers, as possible on time) but in the end, I did watch some of the matches and I would like to share some of my impressions from the entire event with you. My point of view is the point of view of a newbie, who knows nothing about the qualification, teams and such, I only identified the teams by their name and the flags on their sleeves.

What I liked in particular:

- the entire thing looked professional. Commentators, moderators, match analysis, guests… I really had the impression I am watching Champion’s League, not some local 3rd league with local pub dwellers acting as match experts. It was clean and neat.
- the English commentators during the matches were fantastic, I liked them a lot – especially the fact that they talked a lot and they talked fast, they genuinely created this “sports feeling”. The only small issue with them was the woman, who occasionally made strange sounds when the guy was talking
- the hall was relatively full, it seems the show did draw quite a lot of people. Of course, this varied from match to match, but still.
- some of the matches were amazing, specifically that one where Lemming Train was 1v1 with Synergy (I think) and that guy finished him with one shot, that was really cool. Lemming Train played really well I think, I decided at one point it was my favourite team (so of course they lost, next time, I cheer for Navi!), the “Batman” was funny as well – you might think it’s silly, but every sport needs such colourful characters, they make it fun (much more so than the sullen bored faces of some other teams)
- the “twitter girl” was really pretty (but she didn’t interact a lot, did she)
- great soundtrack during breaks, some of the songs I loved

What I didn’t like:

- well, first and foremost, the entire gold code screwup. Leaks, the idiotic QR code system, the fact that WG staff was saying something (“there will be codes, just watch!”) and it was a lie (Support: “There will be no codes” – ooops, next morning, two more codes). I don’t mind the fact that someone screwed up that much (after all, Wargaming EU…), I mind the fact they lied about it. Also, getting a code was pure lottery, not in the sense you had to be quick to catch it, but both WoT and WoWp portals collapsed and whoever managed to get on the page was the lucky one
- crowds of gold beggars on chat, rendering it unusable until the moderators deployed a bot – seriously, who is dumb enough to think that begging for codes will bring them any faster (or at all in this case)?
- the chat profanity, including some Hall of Shame material (“Poles, go to Auschwitz” during LTR matches)
- some matches were nasty campfests. Cnnk (moderator and e-sports expert) commented that it was because Russian rules were used and non-RU teams weren’t used to that – something about draws and points encouraging camping, I don’t know, can’t comment on that
- after Poland lost, a lot of people from the audience left (understandeable)
- sometimes, for a person who doesn’t know anything about WGL, some teams were hard to identify (at first I had no idea which country/league some of the teams were representing), specifically why the fuck is Virtus Pro (completely Russian team) considered to be “European”? That’s stupid. Some argue that a Russian team belongs to the European league because Russia is a part of UEFA too and whatnot. Yea well, so is Azerbaijan…
- the amount of NAVI worshipping – okay, I got it, these guys are good and deserve praise, but honestly, calling them “gods of WoT”, “titans” etc. all the time, over and over. Ugh.

Additionally, I heard the final ceremony was just weird, too short… don’t know, didn’t watch it (sorry, I just can’t bring myself to care about finals, where I have noone I could even remotely care about).

Overall however, it was a nice stream experience. Won’t make me follow e-sports (what’s with the term anyway, it’s a game, not a sport), but it was okay. Hopefully, next time it will be without the massive fails, maybe it would be wise not to post gold codes during the streams at all (and announce it), you’d get rid of the gold beggers.

By the way, the event was massively popular in Russia, I think the total peak for all WoT streams is 100k, with 80k being Russians.

40 thoughts on “WGL Finals – How I saw it…”

  2. Well, I don’t know how it is in WoT, but when it comes to Counter-Strike, it indeed is a sport. Best teams train for weeks before championships and such. The only difference between them and “real” sportsmen is that they are not widely recognized. And well, they don’t earn as much money, but it’s enough to make a living I guess. And well, they don’t run around after a ball and do more acting than actual playing. :D

      • well, everyone brings up this chess argument when talking about esports being/not being sport, but its a pretty weak argument if you ask me.
        I would rather compare it to formula 1 for example. Theres also this man+machine against other men+machines element. just like in esports.
        The ultimate solution is to stop comparing proffesional gaming and sports and just accept the term E-SPORT.

        • Why do you consider it a weak argument? What is the difference between a Tower and a Overlord, a pawn is just another name for cheap infantry, the “jumper” are the Tomahawk TELs, the horses the Comanches…the King is the MCV and the queen the Commando.
          Sorry, don’t know all proper english chess terms..

  3. The only small issue with them was the woman, who occasionally made strange sounds when the guy was talking
    that was PansY probably, she recieves a lot of hate regardless the game she casts – dont really get it, she seems cute

    - the “twitter girl” was really pretty (but she didn’t interact a lot, did she)
    that was probably m3lly. And yep shes hot <3

    - the amount of NAVI worshipping – okay, I got it, these guys are good and deserve praise, but honestly, calling them “gods of WoT”, “titans” etc. all the time, over and over. Ugh.
    well thats because they really are THAT good. they won almost everything.

    • “well thats because they really are THAT good. they won almost everything.”
      Oooooh another SK Gaming? Or another 4Kings? Or another Pandemic?
      Nope… they are not good. Their tactics and “synergy” are good.

  4. What I didn’t like was the rules of draws. In the end NAVI got to choose if they want to be a defending or attacking side. That was weird since they are the ones who played passively and forced most of the draws.

    • Please stop spreading lies, it was V-Pro who chose attack (they had more overall damage dealt, so they had the right to choose attack or defense), and since attack was almost always successful on that map in assault mode – they chose that.

      Except, Na’Vi are better and they just proved it once again. They won 2 battles in the grand final, even if they started by losing 0-1 to V-Pro.

  5. SS you should realy try this game mode. (team battle)
    It is much more fun for me than CW. (Maybe becouse my previous clan was a CW fail ;) )
    But playing 7vs7 gives a lot of satisfaction. I don’t need to gring tier X to loose credits.
    MM is based on skill most of the time. So if you have good winning streak you will se better and better teams on your way.
    Teams that participate in ESL recognize each other in random 7v7 battles.

    But try it with some team that actually play in ESL with some sucess. Not some random stuff. It is completly different experience.

  6. I watched some of the matches and I found the whole thing very good. Maybe I was lucky but the matches were not that specially camping. I had a little bit of trouble following the action as when the focus on a tank, all the tanks in the match are visible so it is hard to know what the player is currently aware of. It is a tricky one, maybe they should display two different maps or something.

  7. I was “on the ground” there, and I also liked it very much. Even though there were no gift packs on the stage during the final day, the room was full of people, and there was an actual queue forming at the entrance. I also won an M3 Light code. :)

  8. The final was boring, one decent victory in the first match, then only boring draws and tie break.
    The ceremony was short and awkward, looked like nobody knew what to do and say and Navi guys wanted to get the hell out of there ASAP. V.Kisly didn’t win the crowd either :P

  9. WGL were fine, SS you said that english speaking commentators were good and I agree. But polish speaking commentators were terrible, during the fight they were speaking about completely different things, they were unprofessional. And they final match, I didnt liked what Natus played, It was campfest. They won in terrible way. I understand that they just wanted to win but they won in bad style.

    • I guess you watched completly different PL stream.
      Stream done by binio and later by Carmon were very good and profesionall.
      Binio was very emotional.
      And Carmon was very pro and funny becouse during battles he was showing how he thinks as a leader.
      He was analyzing the camp fest well, pointing our atention to the facts not visible at first glance.

  10. I watched the vast majority of the streams.. for the games.

    I would have really preferred it if they just weren’t giving out gold codes. It was impossible to talk about the actual games in chat due to the speed it moved with ‘giv coed’ being spammed constantly. While I got a few hundred gold out of the first day, the QR system is massively awkward, and clearly having images publicly hosted somewhere is what lead to the so-called leaks.

    The matches were great, the commentary was good. The scheduling could have been better – they had a nominal schedule posted on the website, but they appeared to run ahead quite consistently, and not keep to schedule at all. This is relatively minor, but if I had been trying to see a particular match, it would have been frustrating.

    I agree with you on a few of the negatives. Matches being campy is a bit inevitable with the way draws are counted. I think this could be mitigated substantially through rules changes, and I hope it will be. The chat was a tragedy, as I mentioned, as was the gold. It would have been nice if they told people there were no codes, didn’t fuck the codes up, or didn’t have the codes to begin with.

    The biggest thing, for me (from your list of negatives) is the teams. I watch F1, and one of the things that makes it so watchable is how easy it is to get to know the teams and the people within/behind them. Even through some googling during the event, I found it difficult to figure out who these people were, and the ‘official’ wgl site had really shitty team bios. This contributed to the slight racism – at some point, all you can do is cheer for the team you know/the team from your country, as there is no way to get to know others. This can (and hopefully will) be resolved by more higher profile events being streamed.. and even more smaller tournaments, so people can recognize some of the teams that aren’t associated with vast multi-game esport groups.

  11. Anyone knows the name of the girl comentator? i see everyone is obsessed by m3lly, in my opinion she is so dumb,…….. i couldn’t find a single clue about the blonde, i think she is so cute and also not dumb…, they probably showed her name during the stream but i wasn’t payng attention…

    • The blonde commentator – I found her boring and dumb. She was repeating herself a lot, she was saying obvious things and she kept asking the male commentator about the game like 2-3 times every single map… Doesn’t she have her own opinion?

      The two male commentators were much more interesting!

  12. To be honest after few games I found it boring…
    1. Tank line ups boring as hell! 90% of the time the same tanks (IS3, AMX 13 90, AMX 50 100 etc.) with mirrored tanks on both sides… I know that are the best tanks and most popular ones but still…
    2. Every single game the same maps…
    3. Team can discard the map the don’t like…
    4. Draw tactics :/
    5. I couldn’t find any useful information about the teams on the official website – I would like to check their game stats, server they play, country, age etc

    I wish there was more randomness in it like:
    - teams cannot choose the side where to start
    - let’s allow the teams to choose one map they want to play during the game but make the third (+ following ones) a random map and they found out about it while game loads…
    - T7 or T9 games for a change ;)

    To sum up – More randomness and less of cold calculations… :)

    • Tier 8 is the most balanced tier by far, mostly because WG doesn’t bother balancing other tiers much at all. Only if a tank is blatantly overpowered even if focused they will react. The fact that gold shells are used a lot in tournaments mean that unless you have ridiculous armor or armour angles it means nothing. IS3 has the angles, T-32 has a ridiculous turret with the Perching having a fairly decent one against gold shells.

      Tier 7 games are a no go: T71 and T29 are reliably stronger than their competition. ( gold shells )
      Tier 9 games games would be full of E75 + Autoloaders, it would change nothing.

  13. That’s exactly my point, well written SS! ;)

    However, I saw some WGL competitions before. Commentators are great pair from ESL – Lauren Scott aka “Pansy” and Oliver Maxfield aka “Laughter”. The “twitter girl” is awesome Melek Balgün aka “M3lly” from ELS, too. :)
    I drew them during WGL EU Season 3 and won Type 59. :D
    Check this out – http://s29.postimg.org/6phh29uc7/IMAG1578.jpg

    Pansy – https://twitter.com/TheyCallMePansy
    Laughter – https://twitter.com/LaughterWoT
    M3lly – https://www.facebook.com/m3llytheone

  14. - after Poland lost, a lot of people from the audience left (understandeable)

    Are u sure thats is understandeable?Their attitude at least most of them is excactly the same they have in game.Example most of them never say hi (English speaking server), instead the say siemca-siemanco?something like that.

    And now i wait the fire posts for Polish people but i dont care.

    • Rosbif spotted.

      Curio detail: Englishmen abroad were getting into trouble over language (or more specifically their limited skills in such) *at least* as early as the Hundred Years’ War…

      That said I do dislike the clannish mentality overly nation-specific jabber betrays – irrespective of the language. (For the most part I roundly ignore other Finns’ attempts to get chatty, too.)

  16. Compared to Valve’s The International 3, WGL Grand Finals is bad. : /

    The player booth was covered by what, a curtain? It also seems players are not able to use their preferred keyboards all thanks to the meddling of that terrible company Razer. Prize is bad too! 100k? Seriously? Valve gave $1M to the 1st place of TI3!

    Wargaming should watch how Valve did The Internationals 3 so they can know how to properly do a grand tourney.

  17. Agree with Joe Edge
    - Chess have accurates rules… But more random game mode sound great :
    like “BAGMAN”or “ZONE CONTROL”
    - Some dirtys minds about “obscurantisme” but i just don’t gonna explaining them

  18. The only glimpse of fun were PVP super friends and Lemming Train tbh. Also props to RED UNITY and Lucique trying to take unusual tanks, but again the usual tanks dominated. Dull and boring most of the time… 8 minutes of waiting and last 2 min of fight.

  19. ” Won’t make me follow e-sports (what’s with the term anyway, it’s a game, not a sport), but it was okay.”

    Well, Frank, judging by the way sports are defined today, when even Poker is considered a “world-wide SPORT”(like it requires a lot of physical workout…), even going high can be considered a sport…

  20. you should follow SIMP, they took lemming train out to losers bracket(but then they got back and won, so bleh), US teams always underdog in these euro things….

    one fo the VERY bad things is the convoluted shitty “rush” point system with “money pot” and who knows what else they implemented to prevent camping, i see they failed hard.

    Also, a final where they implement russian rules that the rest of the teams don’t know… how terrible!(i’m one of the first “e-sports” players in wot and we got uber screwed by that back in our “grand final”)

  21. I dont see a difference between a sport and a game.
    A sport is just a glorified game with moar money involved… and usually some viewers…
    Ergo, E-sports (the name is stupid) are a sport :) . Same way F1 is and Chess and Tennis and Football are.

  22. The only small issue with them was the woman, who occasionally made strange sounds when the guy was talking
    ___________
    Maybe it was her first time out of the kitchen so what you heard was probably sounds of excitement. Leave the poor girl alone, fegots.

  23. The Chat admins ( the ones not working for WG ), just used the info we got from WG so please dont blame it on us the codes where not fixed, we got told they were.

    We did our best to manage the chat and keep it nice and all. The camping is just because of the big money prize, the difference only already between place 1st and 2nd place is 20 000 dollar. For the rest in the EU we have the 8 tier point rule and in the russian server you only win when you cap or you kill all enemies thats why some teams camped hardcore because one lose could already cost you alot of money. About the russians being considered as EU, no pro league team is really happy with that.

    Greetz,
    TheDeadZone
    Qualified for 4th season of Wot EU pro league
    Chat Admin at The Grand Finals.

  24. “- some matches were nasty campfests. Cnnk (moderator and e-sports expert) commented that it was because Russian rules were used and non-RU teams weren’t used to that – something about draws and points encouraging camping, I don’t know, can’t comment on that”

    If you watched the finals, you’d see what’s meant exactly – both teams get one point for a draw. So Na’Vi got from 0:1 to 1:1 and then three matches(!) they played campfest. Either attack in last 2 minutes, so you had that one guy running away, or no fighting at all. Once it was 4:4, they had the only one game that mattered, and Na’Vi won it. All in all, 2 interesting games, 1 quite interesting game (rush in last minutes) and two draws where they almost didn’t see each other…

    It’s a good rule, I’d say, leads to the fact that you don’t have full day of replayed draws, but it leads to too much camping as well…

    “- crowds of gold beggars on chat, rendering it unusable until the moderators deployed a bot – seriously, who is dumb enough to think that begging for codes will bring them any faster (or at all in this case)?”

    This is something I pretty much hate about WoT community – gold for everything, give us, give us, give us…

  25. It took me a while to get into watching the WoT esports, but after a lil I actually started to enjoy watching it like a real sport.

    Also The total viewer max i saw was 108k for for WoT

  26. “Won’t make me follow e-sports (what’s with the term anyway, it’s a game, not a sport)”

    Lol, so what? Football is a game as well. So is chess or curling. Do you really think that you need players to get all sweaty in order to call what they’re doing “sport”?

  27. “specifically why the fuck is Virtus Pro (completely Russian team) considered to be “European”?”

    Because they are training and playing on EU server. So if they had won, there would be double xp for eu servers.

  28. I was one of the English commentators for the event and I read your blog religiously. Thanks for the feedback, it’s hard to find well thought out opinions on wot esports. I expect that one way or another esports will bring big news you won’t be able to avoid in the future.

    I hope you caught some of the press releases from VK himself at the event.