Your Community. Your Report.

Balance changes keep flooding in. Everyone looks for the new OP. Another champion joins the League. More teams get a chance to play against the pros. All this and more in this week's Tournament Showcase.

Greetings Summoners and welcome to this week’s Torunament Showcase. This week we will cover the 4PL, The IGN Face-off qualifiers, the Siege, the ggClassic, the Elite of Europe, and the IPL Showmatches.

More balance changes came out this week causing the teams to start trying out the less picked champions. Teams that are new to the esports scene are only causing more changes to the metagame with unusual picks. Tournaments come and go matching up pros against joes as they pass. Season 2 finals are approaching rapidly and every team is aiming for the $1,000,000 prize. The most important thing to remember is to have fun, and that is just what the professional teams do, even when the stakes are high.

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Pulsefire Ezreal changes the meta. New lane compositions. Good sportsmanship all around. Teams show what they are made of. All this and more in this week's Tournament Showcase.

Hello Summoners and welcome to this week’s Tournament Showcase. This week we will cover the IPL5 qualifiers, the Solomid Invitational, the 4PL, and the in2lol King of the Hill.

Riot continues to maintain League of Legends as a top esport with quick maintenance and fair updates. Balance changes, new skins, and even new champions keep LoL feeling fresh and new. The balance changes have always proved able to change the metagame, but this week it was a skin that brought new champions into the tournaments. With a new patch bringing balance changes and a new champion the players were eager to try out new strategies and champions.

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More tournaments aim to make it big. Teams come from nowhere to aim for the stars. What does it mean to the meta? You could be the next big caster. All this and more in this week's Tournament Showcase.

Hello Summoners and welcome to this week’s Tournament Showcase. This week we will cover the IPL5 qualifiers, the Solomid Invitational, the 4PL, and the in2lol King of the Hill.

League of Legends is growing as an esport with many, many teams showing up on the scene. Naturaly, as more teams show up there more sponsors showing up to support them, and of course, more tournaments for them to play in. Plenty of weekly tournaments pop up and offer chances for fame and prizes, proving League’s strength as an esport.

The Solomid invitational is just starting up and is already doing well. There are some kinks to be worked out but the teams are happy to play and the sign-ups are nice and easy. They are looking to get some solid casters so if you have a good computer and want to get on the scene. The Solomid name is trusted by the teams and spectators but they are missing a few people behind the scenes to help make it a smooth viewing experience. If you know a sponsor looking to get into esports, Solomid could be what makes it big for everyone.

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European Challenger Circuit - Poland kicks off. Solomid offers up a prize. Dig heads off to Korea. IPL5 qualifiers heat up. All this and more in the week's Tournament Showcase!

Hello Summoners, and welcome to this week’s Tournament Showcase. This week we will be covering the IPL5 and ECC Qualifiers, the 4PL and the Solomid invitational.

The time of year has come where the tournaments grow thin and teams start practicing new strategies. We are not left with nothing to watch however as more and more tournaments keep showing up. Larger tournaments opened their sign-ups to the entire community and have a lot of teams to go through. The IPL5 still does not have a date, but we are finally starting to see the higher seeded teams match up. The European Challenger Circuit – Poland is the stop for the European teams in the season 2 track. Solomid is starting out their own regular tournament and they have already had good number in views and participants. The 4PL is still a great place to see your favorite European teams face off and see what new strategies they will need to learn for the season 2 championships.

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North American and European teams standing apart. What have we learned since MLG? TSM on top of North America. Who are the kings of the European meta? Team play shows the way. 99 champions you should be playing one. All this and more in this week's Tournament Showcase.

Hello Summoners and welcome to this week’s Tournament Showcase. This week we’ll cover what happened at Dreamhack and the Gigabyte E-sports Lan.

There was a real separation of competition this weekend with the North American and European teams split into different tournaments. IPL5 kept wearing down competitors sending more unknown teams against each other to see who gets a shot at fame. Dreamhack and the GESL had great showing of fans and teams. A lot of brand new teams had their first time on the big stage this weekend proving that you do not need to be on the scene for a long time to challenge the pros. If you have 4 friends who love League of Legends don’t be afraid to sign up and take a shot at playing against your favorite pro team.

The Gigabyte E-sports Lan had fierce competition between the major North American teams. The weekend had a rough start with the venue having many issues. Luckily the were able to quickly sort out the issues and get the games underway. For those that attended the event there were plenty of giveaways and interviews brought to you by the great sponsors of the event. The problems were not over however, as the NA servers the tournament was hosted on had major issues for the finals. Though the tournament realm was available for play, the spectator mode had issues. Despite this series of unfortunate events the players were more than happy to give you a first person view for the finals.

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No more elo loss for queue dodging. Does it mean you don't have to waste a game with a troll or longer queue times for all?

Hello summoners, you are going In The Lane with Crimson

Many of you have probably heard that Riot intends to remove the elo loss from queue dodging in “about 3 weeks”. They spoke slightly of punishing you in another form, though I can see very few options with the mechanics of matchmaking. It may be accurate to say that dodging doesn’t reflect a loss in your player skill level, but it does reflect the attitude and mental state of the community. The system we have can only punish players with bans or steps towards bans. That or preventing you from entering a game for a set period of time. The current system where elo is lost is enough to commit you to a game, while not causing you a great loss of money or time you invested into champions or runes. Elo is simply a number to help the matchmaking system find you equally skilled opponents and teammates. It costs you nothing and can be easily gained through playing the game. Elo may have gained a certain clout for the players, but more commonly indicates how much you play the game more than how skilled you may be at the game.

First hearing about this change you may think that dodging that guy who had a bad game last time without penalty is nice, but how often would you dodge? Are you going to get to play more or less game with constant dodges without penalty? There’s a clear problem with afk players or disconnects in queue though placing the burden on the other 4 members of the team is not the way to go. Riot has always had a lot of faith in the LoL community to be happy and cheerful and work together to defeat their opponents. Anyone who has played solo queue knows that this isn’t always the case, that one bad apple can spoil the bunch. Maybe one day a guy can get 9 reports for negative attitude or afking and you will never see them again, but that is not currently the case.

League of Legends has always had trouble with down time. From queue times to loading screens to death timers there’s a lot of time you spend between games with little to do. Without a significant penalty the queue times will be even longer to player who may already be waiting 20 minutes to get into a game. Players who had little choice but to play with insta lock Kayle will gladly dodge when they could of had the chance to see the next Dyrus in action. You may think you’re dodging a troll, but he just sit in his queue and can troll all he wants. He won’t be forced into a game for at least 20 minutes anymore. You could come back from a 15 minute break just to have to dodge away from that same troll again. Riot should really consider finding a way to target the more negative influences rather than place the entirety of the burden on people who just want to play the game.

The center of hate and joy from solo queue is elo, the imaginary merit badge that says you’re better at this game than those with less elo. You get angry at someone that causes you a loss and are always happy to see someone do well and carry. The unfortunate thing is that it is almost impossible to create a system where an unskilled player will lose games until he finds a suitable elo. You could do nothing in your lane aside from last hit and then a 9-0-0 Jax could come down and destroy any lane he wants. This case may do little to reflect your skill level but what did that Jax for nearly breaking it down to a 1v5? He gains the same elo and everyone loses the same elo against him. Trying to judge a players skill is a very difficult thing to do. Riot is in the right area having it just be wins and loses being what makes your elo and they understand that what the community wants is just to play the game. The reason the elo loss for dodging was there to give people a reason to stick to the game and give them more of a reason to try to work out the differences of one player to another and communicate in a positive fashion. Constant dodges will just limit the time player will have in game and build the animosity between the community.

Thank you for reading and you were just In The Lane with Crimson. Hat’s off to ya’

Can anyone challenge TSM? Top bans at MLG. M5 lurking in the shadows. What to expect from Dreamhack. All this and more in this week's Tournament Showcase!

Hello fellow summoners and welcome to the first ever Tournament Showcase. In this weekly segment we will be reviewing what happened at recent tournaments, updating you on what’s coming up, and keeping you up to date with games played by your favorite teams that you may have missed. But that’s not all, we will also showcase all the tournaments we can find and show you where you and your friends could take a shot at entering the competitive scene.

MLG was a huge event this year with 20 teams from around the world competing for a $40,000 prize pool. We saw a few unknown teams going out in the first round, but what does that really mean to you? It means that players like you and your friends have a real chance at competing with the pros on the big stage. Don’t be afraid to get together and get out there. You could be the next Moscow 5 or Team Dynamic.

Speaking of Moscow 5 they were not at MLG this year, leaving us down one top team. In addition, many other teams are still recovering from all the trading and lane shuffling between the players. Second place team CLG.NA could not even get their new dominant top lane player Voyboy to show up! It was easy to see that these teams were struggling with their coordination. Teams that have been together longer, such as TSM and CLG.EU, saw this weakness and used it to their advantage in rather dominant performances through the tournament.

While the big names stayed on top, there were surprisingly strong performances from some newer teams on the scene. Team Dynamic has a nice sponsorship and showed that they are indeed worthy of being considered a real threat, at least if you don’t know what to ban. Curse.EU showed up after a series of fallout in the European scene. Though they didn’t manage to take home any prize money, they had a real presence, keeping other teams on their guard. But who could forget Dignitas? The team that came from no where and rose to the top instantly still showed their tournament winning level of play. Without Voyboy, however, and with more teams knowing their strategy, they had a difficult time at MLG.

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