Stream quality
The tournament organizers provided two stream options for the community. One was streamed through Twitch, while the other was using the Dailymotion platform. The community’s feedback was that the Twitch stream, which was the main platform for most of the CS:GO event, had a much lower quality than the Dailymotion one. And not just the video quality but the sound production as well; in fact, during many of the matches there wasn't any sound at all. Producers were switching pictures in the middle of the matches to something irrelevant like the crowd at the venue or the French casters who weren’t even casting at the main English stream. One of the main English casters at this event, Auguste "Semmler" Massonnat, was showing a support to the community feedback regarding this matter. He said that he’s also surprised by some of the production’s bad movements and he was indicating that they will try to fix it during the event.
Commentating
The choice of the commentators for the CS:GO event was pretty much weird. The organizers had some of the best commentators at the scene, like the aforementioned Semmler and Anders Blume who were doing their job at the highest possible level, as they've already habituated us. They were supported by Corey Dunn who was also doing an incredible job, though he had to deal with some really weird choices of his co-casters at a couple of times.
Bringing in a female co-caster would usually be a really good move by production - as other eSports genres have proven times and again they are just as capable doing a good job as men - but ESWC were unseccessful at picking the right ones. The wave of reactions was more than obvious when viewers were presented with the casting of Dunn and MissRage, the latter mostly commentating through interjections and even failing to pronounce the team’s name correctly.
As the event was going into the final stages, we could've seen more entertaining co-casters. The more obvious choice was to bring in the pro players of already eliminated teams to help Anders or Semmler, which they in the end did. Cloud9 player Jordan “n0thing” Gilbert showed once again that he's as gifted a caster as he's a player.
The schedule
The Electronic Sports World Cup 2014 main event is one of the few LAN events which had their schedule almost perfectly kept as planned, which many really doubted upon seeing the timetable of the event and the large number of simultaneously played games. ESWC diaplayed a strong discipline and brought the delays to minimum level, for which admirations are in order.
Anaconda dance and the prize pool
The trademark of this event was arguably the anaconda dance which was performed during the grand finals opening at the main stage. The organizers brought in some professional dancers who left everyone shocked during their performance and the face of Anders pretty much summed up everything.
At the same time, the community was actively discussing how the costs of these dancers could have been used to increase the prize money, which was set to $50,000. As it was mentioned multiple times, ESWC could've possibly had a prize pool larger than other notable LAN events, despite being one of the few non-Valve associated competitions in the game.
Well, they didn't do that, but at least we had the anaconda dance.
The era of Ninjas in Pyjamas is over
Coming to ESWC with big expectations, the Swedish dream team, Ninjas in Pyajamas, once again showed that there's something seriously wrong with their line-up, gameplay and results at the moment. NiP were eager to prove that the recent slump was only a bad period, with Christopher "GeT_RiGhT" Alesund making a social media post just before the start of the event, stating that their fans can expect many new things the next day.
But NiP wasn’t looking like the same team which won the last major in Cologne. They ended up at the very disappointing fourth place in their group having HellRaisers, Titan and even Copenhagen Wolves above them. The last nail in the coffin was during NiP's last match of the day where the Swedes had a chance to actually advance into the playoffs if they managed to win against Titan but the French punched them directly in the facem demolishing them with the score of 16-1. This result caused GeT_RiGhT to make a new tweet:
Not. Any. More.
— Christopher Alesund (@GeT_RiGhTcs) October 31, 2014
Only a day after the ESWC, Fifflaren announced his retirement from the competitive scene which left NiP down to four members. However, the next day Maikelele was introduced as his replacement.
Mousesports failing once again at a LAN event
Mousesports are considered as one of the top online teams at the scene, but their LAN performance was once again at an unbecomingly low level. Once again, this is expected to bring up the numerous discussions and rumours which were surrounding this team and their players. Last time, CS fans saw Mouz failing to win the latest edition of EPS Summer Germany where they were absolute favourites over Planetkey Dynamics. This time they grabbed only three wins where all of them, except from the one against 3DMAX, were against some lower tier teams and even those didn't come easy. When it came to the real test against Team Dignitas and iBUYPOWER, Mouz couldn’t put up together a 16 rounds in both duels. The often line-up change can’t be excuse for this result, since the same group of players were giving much better online results.
Cloud9 losing their superiority at the North American scene?
Cloud9 was considered as the best North American team, especially after the last major in Cologne where they surprised everyone with great team play and results which placed them among the best teams in the world. Ever since then, they have been struggling to repeat the same performance.
First in line were the CEVO Season 5 Playoffs where although Cloud9 were up one best-of-three series they still managed to lose the grand finals. The next one was the FACEIT lan event where C9 shared a group with Team LDLC and Virtus.pro. Even after winning the first map of the deciding duel against Virtus.pro they still failed to grab enough rounds at the second map and got eliminated. Here at ESWC they just repeated the same mistake from FACEIT where they had 5 on 1 situation against Planetkey Dynamics and a 15-6 score in their favor. Instead of closing this match they decided to go for a knife kill which costed them four more lost rounds and a place in playoffs. They were tied with the other two teams in their group, but they had the worse round difference and therefore they got eliminated from the further competition.
K so maybe we shouldnt have tried to knife him, we're human. We make mistakes... Like this baguette I just bought... mistake.
— Jordan Gilbert (@c9n0thing) October 30, 2014
Titan and Team LDLC showing a slight inconsistency
Both top French teams were at one point considered to be the best teams in the world, but they couldn’t maintain the consistency in their results. After winning Dreamhack Stockholm Titan couldn’t put it up together to make any major results, until they crashed Team LDLC at ESWC France to take the first place. However, Team LDLC didn’t mind it much since they played incredibly well during the group stages, scoring almost all wins and qualifying for the playoffs where they had their ‘sweet’ revenge over Titan.
This was followed with one more easy win against Na’Vi in the semi final but at the point where they had a chance to prove to be the best they failed, which is now the second consecutive lan event where LDLC couldn’t make it to the top. Fnatic just routinely demonstrated who is holding the top at the CS:GO world rankings. There is no doubt that both of French teams have a potential to be the best, but they are still not showing it.
Fnatic showing pure perfection
There is no doubt that Fnatic is currently the best team in the world. Their team work, game play and results have been consistent during the last few months. Looking at the events post Cologne, we could easily say that they were a bit unfortunate at ESL One where they lost in the finals to Ninjas in Pyjamas but their consistency ever since has been amazing. They are no mistakes, just new surprises - the good kind - in every match. They were cold blooded against Team LDLC during the ESWC grand finals where they orchestrated some incredible fakes and strategies which left Team LDLC totally shocked. Fnatic players weren’t even showing any emotions on their faces even when it was all clear that they will win this event.
Pictures in article are from ESWC and Mousesports facebook pages.
