Back in 2009, when I was just another high school student not knowing what I wanted to do in my life, an online friend messaged me to check out this random video. It turned out to be the intro of the most recent OnGameNet Starleague, featuring Kelly Clarkson's "My Life Would Suck Without You" with Korean males in colorful jerseys splashing around in water.

I never looked back.

From that one video, I would go on to watch the whole slew of amazing intros OGN put together for their premiere Brood War tournament. This would of course lead me to wanting to know more about what competition these videos were for, pointing me toward the direction of TeamLiquid.net. As a sports fan growing up, I was hooked from the start when I found out that Korea was mixing television-quality production with competitive video games.

My love affair with Brood War would go on daily for the next year, learning thing daily about the game, characters and scene from the articles on TeamLiquid.net. I would stay up up until 2:00 AM every night, foregoing sleep and school to watch re-streamed 144p broadcasts from various members of the community. There was no English commentary (unless Moletrap or Klazart came to the rescue), or a stable streaming site like what we have now with Twitch, but I didn't care. I would continually press F5 when the live stream would go down, watch Jaedong play against Flash in Proleague without knowing half of what they were doing in game, and love every second of it.

I didn't start writing about eSports to get famous, make money or have a job in the industry. My first article for Liquid, written in the middle of 2011 when Starcraft 2 was thriving, wasn't a main news post on the site. I never applied for any recruitment posts or tried to get in contact with any of the sites runners to be a writer. I simply wrote that article because I wanted to get people excited for a tournament that I found compelling character-wise. All I wanted was to give some people who weren't following the tournament closely a chance to immerse themselves in the story lines and unique characters.

Three and a half years later now with LiquidLegends, I want to continue that mindset. In a day and age where everyone wants something new now, a lot of times quantity can overtake quality, and my mission is to bring our new community articles that get you excited about the current landscape of the League of Legends professional scene.

Outside of the regions everyone knows and loves, I also want to explore and do new things with the growing scenes like Oceania, Turkey, Japan and Latin America during 2015. I want to spotlight and give writers the chance to have their voice heard about their region that might not always get the front page during a week two popular teams play in the more-commonly-watched North American region.

In terms of community, I want LiquidLegends to be a place where you make new friends, talk about your favorite teams and players, and discuss tournaments as they're going on in our Live Report threads. Your favorite player is Dyrus? Make a fan club about him in our Players & Teams forum and meet other like-minded Dyrus fans who have his face printed out on their bed pillows. This forum is for you guys to make your own -- from the tournament threads, to topics, and building the community into the strongest in League of Legends.

Honestly, at the end of the day, I want this site to be fun. I'm sure there will be drama, bans, and fights over favorite teams playing, but I welcome the new challenges with open arms. Whatever happens in my life, I will always love eSports, and want to share that with anyone who will give it a try.

So with all that being said, let's have a blast, okay?

- Fionn

Hello, everybody.

I would like to welcome everybody on the new Team Liquid League of Legends website. I hope that we will see many new faces joining LiquidLegends. Personally, I am very excited and happy that finally TL got a League of Legends team and dedicated website. In the last few months I have been talking to Nazgul quite often and kept him up-to-date with events and changes in the League of Legends professional scene. This lead to us trying to sign UoL, and a few months later, Nazgul surprised me with the news of the merger between Team Liquid and Curse. As Moonbear already wrote in his editorial in 2012:

And he was right. Now we are here! We have prepared content for you guys and we will have a steady flow of new articles, interviews and other community events in the future. Some things might break or don't work yet but they will soon once we ironed out all the bugs. In case you find bugs or other issues you can write me or Fionn a PM or just post it in the thread.

Along with our new site focus and sleek League-infused look, there are a host of changes and features that have been reworked from the TeamLiquid site layout. Some are smaller forum components, like how the post bars are now more vibrant and display the necessary information (quote, edit, report) cleaner, or how our favorite team logos showcase beautiful team art in their full size. Some are complete reworks or additions, like our calendar sidebar and Live Streams. So please join us and lets start together into League of Legends 2015!

Best regards,

Chexx

Event Sidebar

The most noticeable change is the column on the top right which displays live and upcoming events, namely in that it displays all of the information needed to follow a league’s matches at a glance. The images below come from Dota2 due to no events currently happening in League of Legends:



On the Live Events display, you can now see league title, stage, as well as the individual teams that are currently playing or will play during that broadcast. In addition, there are links to the league’s Esportspedia page (could change in the future), as well as the Live Report topic to talk with other fans. The Upcoming Events section will show a condensed view with the most important information (league name as well as team matchups).



Clicking the title brings up a control panel with expanded information and ways to control the event that anyone can use. The base page shows all of the games associated with the event and a way to set the status of each game - ‘Pending’ for games that are upcoming, ‘Live’ for those being played currently, and ‘Done’ for anything that is finished. Anyone can set these one they have an account that is a week old and with 10 posts. If you notice a game has started but isn’t update on the list, get it up! As a community-based website, we aim to let the fans control as much as possible for the best experience.



The Edit Matches page gives further options, for situations where changing, editing, or deleting a match is needed. Any of the teams on the list can be edited through the drop down in addition to their time, with a setting for matches with an unknown start. Clicking the “Add Match” button will bring up another, unfilled slot where anyone can add more games to the event.



Finally, the History tab shows the changes that have been made to the event and shows the user associated with each edit, so it’s possible to report malicious changes.

It’s important to reiterate that anyone outside of a 1 week, 10 post restriction has the ability to edit or add to these events. We have always been dedicated to serving the community and the needs of the fans, with pieces like user-controlled Live Reports and open calendar submission and this is the next step in that process. With it, live tournaments like NA LCS or LCK should be constantly up to date as they play out the bracket so you can always follow along.

New Calendar View

More than the new sidebar, we also completely revamped our event calendar view. We now have it split into two views - a 7-day listing which will show the next week’s worth of games starting with the current day, and a monthly view which will show all games in the current month.

The 7-day view will display much of what is on the sidebar listing, with each event having a name, stage descriptor, and the individual teams in each match and start times for games. The monthly view is condensed, and will display only the leagues playing in addition to their start times.

The calendar views also feature a filter option, where you can select a team, individual league, or both and only list the broadcasts set by that criteria to easily find all the matches from any single entity.

Live Streams

We will also feature pro gamer streams and streams of other famous League of Legends streamers. AzubuTV, Twitch and Chinese streaming sites will be included. Once the streamer goes live, it will show up on the sidebar under Live Streams. If you notice that there is a famous streamer missing, please let me know via PM or any other means of communication. At the end of this week, I think I should have most of them added

Champion Icons & Favorite Team Icon

In your profile you can select your favorite League of Legends Champion. You can't change it - choose wisely! Also in your profile you can select your favorite team logo. With every post you make the team logo will show up on the bottom right of your post. Support your team, show some colors!