With the League of Legends World Championship 2014 kicking off tomorrow with the group stages, now’s the perfect time to take a look at the participating teams as well as the groups to remind you who’ll be facing who as well as how the the tournament works.
Now’s also the time to put together your ESL Fantasy team for Worlds, so be sure to do before the first game kicks off to ensure maximum points potential!
Click here to get started!
The teams
| North America | Europe | Korea |
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| China | Southeast Asia and Taiwan | Turkey, Russia and Oceania |
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| Latin America and Brazil | ||
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Teams are sorted by their seed, going down from one to three. The first-seeded teams won't face each other in the group stage, giving them a potential advantage in passing the group stage.The top teams in North America, Europe, Korea and China being constitute pool one, with the second-placed teams in America and Europe as well as the other teams from the previously mentioned regions and Southeast Asia and Taiwan filling up the second pool. The third-placed teams in North America and Europe as well as the two wildcard winners will make up pool three.
The teams are sorted into four groups (seen below), which were drawn on the 8th of September 2014, giving us an overview of the matches that will be played during the group stage. Only 8 of these 16 teams will advance, putting a lot on the line from the very beginning and meaning there’s no room for slacking for any of the competing players.
Once the group stage is over, the respective regions’ strength will be a lot clearer and more concrete predictions easier to make. At the moment, most seem to believe that a Korean team will triumph yet again and claim the championship prize. However, the other regions have definitely shown a lot of potential in their regular season games, and there are a lot of strong contenders out there.
Who will stand and who will fall?
The first matches begin in Taiwan on 18th September 2014. The group stage games will be split into two locations, one being the aforementioned Taiwan and the other Singapore. Each of these will host two group stages in which every team has to play their opponent twice, once on blue side and once on purple. This means there will be a total of six games per team in the group stage, adding up to 12 games per group and 24 games per location.
The advancing teams will then move on to South Korea to battle out the quarterfinals in Busam and the semi and grand final at the Sangnam Stadium, which hosted the FIFA World Cup in 2002.
Click here for the schedule or head over to lolesports.com for more information, and be sure to stay tuned for more coverage here at ESLGaming.com!
Who do you think will manage to advance and who will have to pack their bags right at the beginning? Let us know in the comments below!
