SEA HoN Tour has its first controversy with the admins handing out punishment against the Malaysian team Orange eSports for unsportsmanlike conduct. The team has to accept a deduction of points affecting their current bid for a playoff spot in the first HoN Tour Cycle.
?Orange eSports is one of the trademark teams of the SEA region, but the admins of HoN Tour decided that their status does not elevate them above the law.The former DreamHack Winter 2012 semifinalist has received an official punishment for unsportsmanlike conduct in their match against iMpunity.Storm two days ago.
According to officials the team around MrGhost and Shuiyu did not only delay the start of the match and challenged the authority and the rules by arguing server choices, but they also intentionally threw the game and therefore took away from the attraction that is HoN Tour. The match was supposed to be the highlight of Day 2, but lag and disconnect issues on both sites made the expectations come up short. The official statement says that iMpunity.Storm and Orange eSports had to overcome lag, but only one team handled the situation with the professionalism expected from them - Orange eSports wanted to test several servers and find one with better circumstances.
On top of that behavior Orange eSports destroyed the Token of Life and dropped items in their fountain once the game was close to the end - which is viewed as trolling, taunting and intentionally throwing away the contested match. Those evidences gathered by the admins warrant the handling of the situation as ORGE did not only showcased poor sportsmanship and professionalism, but also sully the integrity of SEA HoN Tour with their actions. Orange eSports is disputing the accusations citing the ping and lag responsible for the Token deny, as the player that ultimately destroyed the Token suffered from a massive delay and was not purposely killing the drop of Kongor.
As for the item drops, the team of ORGE had already crossed the point of no return and just waited till their Shrine got destroyed, their actions or lack of items had no impact on the outcome of the series from that point forward. The server choice arguments were done by ORGE, because the team felt that the handling of the situation and the choice of the server was a truely unfair act against them. They had to deal with around 200 ping and close to 3 seconds delay - something that is clearly visible in the gameplay that some particular plays show in the replay. Still Orange eSports has to accept the penalty and the deduction of the three points from the active cycle. This drops them from 7 to 4 points and makes them lose their status as front-runners in the competition. Before the penalties were in affect Orange ranked on a split place one together with Turtle Master and iMpunity.Storm, now they are dropped to the middle of the pack with some room to spare before the "demotion zone", but also with a deficit towards the playoff spots.
