I finally managed to catch up with the last games this morning. Here are a few random thoughts from the first day of the tournament.
- The Korean teams are very good, but far from unbeatable (both SK T1 and Ozone already have losses). If you read the discussion forums at places like Reddit, the OGN fans constantly tell everyone that all of the teams in Korea are simply better at everything than everyone else. That doesn't appear to be the case. Ozone is very lucky not to be sitting with an 0-2 record right now. These teams are definitely skilled, but Korea is not destroying everyone in the way that many of the casters and analysts suggested.
- Group B is completely wide open right now. Anyone other than poor Mineski could make it out of that group. It looks much more interesting than Group A, where the Korean and Chinese teams seemed to be noticeably better.
- Vulcun and Gambit both had impressive showings yesterday. They play each other today, and that is going to be fun to watch.
- Despite all of the time to scout teams, there have been some amazingly bad choices in the picks/bans phase. Some of these games are being won or lost in the picking phase. Solomid's decision to first pick Sona (over Ahri) was a game losing mistake; I think they would have had a decent shot to win their match against OMG if they had avoided that error. Reginald's Fizz was truly terrible in that one. Fnatic's last pick of Yorick in their game against Vulcun was equally bad, Yorick not fitting into their team comp at all, and leaving an easy lane matchup for the opposing Nasus. Weird stuff. You'd think that at this level of play, teams would avoid such obvious errors.
According to the people tracking the numbers on Reddit, there were well over 1 million people watching the games live yesterday, once the 500k watching on Korean streaming sites get added to the Western ones. Over a million people live concurrently for the FIRST day of the tournament is pretty insane. I can only imagine what they'll get for the final. There's no question that events like this and DOTA's International are becoming big time sporting events.
- The Korean teams are very good, but far from unbeatable (both SK T1 and Ozone already have losses). If you read the discussion forums at places like Reddit, the OGN fans constantly tell everyone that all of the teams in Korea are simply better at everything than everyone else. That doesn't appear to be the case. Ozone is very lucky not to be sitting with an 0-2 record right now. These teams are definitely skilled, but Korea is not destroying everyone in the way that many of the casters and analysts suggested.
- Group B is completely wide open right now. Anyone other than poor Mineski could make it out of that group. It looks much more interesting than Group A, where the Korean and Chinese teams seemed to be noticeably better.
- Vulcun and Gambit both had impressive showings yesterday. They play each other today, and that is going to be fun to watch.
- Despite all of the time to scout teams, there have been some amazingly bad choices in the picks/bans phase. Some of these games are being won or lost in the picking phase. Solomid's decision to first pick Sona (over Ahri) was a game losing mistake; I think they would have had a decent shot to win their match against OMG if they had avoided that error. Reginald's Fizz was truly terrible in that one. Fnatic's last pick of Yorick in their game against Vulcun was equally bad, Yorick not fitting into their team comp at all, and leaving an easy lane matchup for the opposing Nasus. Weird stuff. You'd think that at this level of play, teams would avoid such obvious errors.
According to the people tracking the numbers on Reddit, there were well over 1 million people watching the games live yesterday, once the 500k watching on Korean streaming sites get added to the Western ones. Over a million people live concurrently for the FIRST day of the tournament is pretty insane. I can only imagine what they'll get for the final. There's no question that events like this and DOTA's International are becoming big time sporting events.