EPTIf there's anything to be taken from this tournament, it's that teams in the Eastern scene are about as volatile as Western teams. It would be unfair to say that any team in this tournament besides Alliance and LGD showed their potential. Alliance's opening game against DK was absolutely brilliant, and despite it being their shakiest (as told by [A] themselves to me) it set the tempo and struck fear in the Eastern teams (Eastern teams asking us for advice against Alliance/taking notes on our game vs. them). IMHO Alliance has been on their 'A-game' (hehehe) this whole time and it has shown that they would be a favorite for the title if TI3 were to be held right now. What a lot of people don't realize is that TI3 is in August and there's still a couple months AS WELL AS a balance patch in the works. I believe this LAN was a huge wake up call for the Eastern teams as well as a crucial learning experience for us. Without sounding arrogant, I think that we could have beat Orange, Alliance, and DK with better preparation (1 week of real practice) and given LGD a decent game/win instead of the thrashing that occurred. To address all the doubters who think TI2 will be like TI3: there is absolutely no way the top 8 split will be that heavily Eastern favored with teams of Alliance’s caliber in the Western scene. Anything can happen between now and TI3 and I would not be surprised to see another team rise to their status. And I can't stress this enough: the balance patch as well as teams practicing/bootcamping to be in their top shape will have TI3 as the most amazing tournament to date.
The tournament: The staff was incredibly helpful and accommodating. To the viewers/fans: The communication barrier was probably the biggest reason for the Allstar game's mishaps. However, every game breaking complaint we informed them about afterwards was fixed for the first game (Alliance vs DK) and thankfully it allowed Alliance to pull off their magnificent Rosh strat. (The issues: booths weren't completely sound proof, and with no noise cancelling headphones it was easy to hear the cast/in-game sounds. These were both addressed by turning down the in-game sounds/sound in general in the stadium as well as having the casters show hero movement/item progression rather than say it out loud.) Any delays that occurred were due to technical difficulties, such as Dota 2 crashing, hardware bugging out, etc. and were not the fault of the organization.
Teamliquid and Chinese teams: I believe we were our own worst enemy this tournament. The performances of yesterday/today do not accurately display our potential. For example, and I’m sure this is obvious by the results, Wisp+CK was our only strategy that we were confident in. In these online tournaments we either played a back and forth game with different unpracticed strategies, or we picked naix and destroyed most teams. Personally, I felt that I had a lot of holes in my gameplay and I have to attribute it to both bad plays (which I believe can be fixed) and to a certain degree—nerves. Although, I don’t think nerves affected me as much as others. We had no naix games this tournament. For our first LAN together, I don’t think it went as bad as it could’ve. There are huge internal issues within iG, and minor ones within the other teams.
Fun!: This tournament has been extremely fun and a vital experience for all of us on TL. Ixmike is definitely the most charismatic guy on our team and I think he has the biggest fan base in China out of us now. I want to give a special shoutout to G-1’s Carson for being the nicest and most helpful guy ever. Seriously, if we ever meet outside of China I’ll buy you dinner every night. Other shoutouts to Kellymilkies, LGD’s Helen, TL’s Flamewheel, LGD.int (they came and watched/supported!), the few foreigners who came out and chatted with us, and Alliance for being helpful and supportive as well as great company in a foreign place. Also a shoutout to that one cute ‘booth girl’ for being the only person this week who wanted to take a picture with me individually (according to fw, she thought I was cute. I don’t have a pic of her, but fw managed to creep one from the side.) Also: obligatory shoutouts to Razer, Twitch, Barracuda, Shiny Things, and pizza.gg.
Please excuse any mistakes/incorrect statements, as I can’t guarantee that these are free of them. I will be rooting for Team USA (kidding, Sweden’s Alliance) tomorrow in the G-1 finals.
TL will see you guys in Sweden for Dreamhack in a couple weeks. We’ll be bootcamping for TI3 in July.
Thanks for reading,
Korok
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/0hWy8Ow.jpg)
