COD World Championships - Los Angeles

[Chookes 965]

I'll update this thread with more info when I can but I thought I'd give some basic info as a starter, considering the most well known North American teams have just been confirmed.

 

The event's qualifiers started on January 18th and the team have now been confirmed, to compete for the World Champions in LA, on 28th-30th March. There are 32 teams in total, a quarter of which are NA teams.

 

This weekend, the final NA qualifiers took place. 16 teams qualified for a double elimination tournament with the top 8 qualifying for the World Champs. This meant that to qualify, a team had to win two games out of three. A double elemination works as so:

 

Each team start in the winner's bracket. If you win your game, you move on in the winner's bracket, the losing team drops to the loser's bracket. If you lose your game in the loser's bracket then you're out. The winner of the loser's bracket takes on the on whoever is undefeated from the winner's bracket. Simples.

 

This is who qualified:

 

Strictly Business (who won the event)

Complexity (runners up)

Team Kaliber

EnvyUs

Xfinity Gaming

OpTic Gaming

FaZe Competitive

Rise

 

Teams that missed out:

 

Curse LV

Curse NY

The Denial Teams

 

The main games from the weekend (because qualifying was the primary goal for all teams):

 

In Round 1, OpTic beat Denial West, putting them one game away from COD Champs. They took on EnvyUs in Round 2, losing 3-1, dropping them to loser's bracket. This allowed EnvyUs to qualify.

 

Curse LV had a shock and lost to Rise in round 1. This put them in to loser's bracket (3 of this team are the current World Champs). Curse NY also lost (although I'm not sure who to). This meant that at least one of the Curse teams wouldn't make it as they made in round 1 loser's bracket. The winner of that would play OpTic, with the winner of that game qualifying for COD Champs. So, one qualifying spot, would go to Curse LV, Curse NY or OpTic. These are all top 8 teams, and two were going.

 

Curse NY beat Curse LV 3-2. LV went up 2-1 in the series after Blitz but NY took Dom and a comfortable SnD to go through and play OpTic. The OpTic game was huge for them. Lose, and go home.

 

OpTic took the game 3-2, with a really clutch game of Dom and SnD in games 4/5. I'm not Nadeshots biggest fan but his SnD start, 7-0, was huge. This meant that there will be no Curse teams at COD Champs. What happens to both Curse teams now will be interesting. Killa LV expected to retire.

 

I'll update it with more info about the event in the next bit. All the matches are available on YouTube at MLG Official COD.

 

What I will point out about the UK teams is that 4 qualified, and one of those teams was ALMOST a bunch of pubstompers. TYT, made up of FearCrads, BennyCentral, QuickerThanU and Insomulus were one game away from qualifying, losing to Team Orbit (who they beat previously). The top team from the UK, Epsilon, will be in OpTic's pool at Champs, that will be an interesting game.

[Diddums 4,346]

Bout time you started posting again.

[Chookes 965]

Back to normal now man, hectic 2-3 weeks.

[tronic44 3,642]

Wh00p champs time! 

 

I look forward to viewings

[Chookes 965]

Next week (I think, I'm lazy and I can't be assed looking it up), OpTic Gaming are hosting SB (Strictly Business) in a week long LAN scrim at their house. They're also flying out Benson, a pro COD caster to cast over it.

 

I'm not sure if this is great practice or shooting yourself a little in the foot. Playing on LAN and online are two different things completely. So playing against each other, on LAN, with your team-mates sitting beside you is a really good thing. The negative to this is you might show your hand early on to an enemy, SnD plays, opening routes, a week long LAN against one team and they might figure you out. The opposite applies and you gain advantage against them too. It'll be interesting anyway.

 

I don't like SB, mainly because Censor is a complete and utter dickhead, so hopefully OpTic smash him. And Scump punches Censor in the throat.

[Chookes 965]

So we're down to the final day of a fantastic COD Champship. I was updating the shoutbox (alot, sorry if you were interested) but I thought I'd give a quick run-down of whose left and how they got here.

 

The winner's bracket final has been confirmed, it's OpTic vs Complexity. They play at around half GMT in a best of 11, I think. Complexity had a pretty easy road getting there. FaZe was the only top team they've played against and they beat them 3-1. OpTic, on the other hand, had the toughest draw after only finishing second to Epsilon in their pool. First, they 3-0 tK (a T2 team) and then they beat Strictly Business 3-2, who was the US Regionals and came in here as number 1 seeds (although Complexity are the best team). I said before the OpTic/SB game that the winner of that will play Complexity in the winner's final, as the semi-final game was not against a top team. OpTic played T1, an Aussie team, and they couldn't cope in respawn game modes, with OpTic coming out and winning 3-1.

 

In the loser's bracket semis, Envy take on T1, Faze take on sB. I expect Envy and sB to go through in those games, and sB to go through and meet the loser of OpTic/Complexity. You can see some of the vids here:

 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcvfG1CSFo-e2FZkv5o9gAA

[Stretch616 697]

Nice update Euan. The winners/losers bracket thing confuses me. Seems odd that the 2 winners play each other and the 2 losers. Would've thought the semi would be winner vs loser. Harsh to Optic or Complexity to go out at semis after performing so well.

Not managed to catch as much of the tourney as i would have liked but enjoyed what i have watched. Alot of teams really playing well and some surprise results as well

What time is the Optic/Complexity match? You didn't put the time in yoyr last post!

[Chookes 965]

Match is around half 4 apparently.

 

That's not how the ladder works Stretch. It's double elimination, with the winner's bracket for those who haven't lost, and the loser's bracket for those that have lost ONCE! You have to lose two games to go out. If Complexity defeat OpTic (hopefully it's the other way round) then OpTic would drop in to the loser's bracket. They would then play whoever comes out on top of FaZe/sB/Envy/T1. The winner of that would go on to play Complexity in the Grand Final. Complexity would then have to beat the loser's team by one series to win, for the loser's to win then they'd need to beat Complexity over two series (basically beat them twice).

[Stretch616 697]

Ahhh that makes more sense. So the winners of the losers bracket play the loser of the winner's semi. Seems fair enough when put like that.

Here's hoping for an Optic vs Complexity final

[Chookes 965]

Yeah you have it right now.

 

The OpTic game kicks off at 6pm. Then you have Faze vs sB and EnvyUs vs T1 Dotters.

 

Prize Money:

 

1st $400,000     2nd $200,000     3rd $120,000     4th $100,000  

5th $70,000       6th $50,000        7th $35,000       8th $25,000

[Plumbers Crack 4,062]

$1 million prize pool to play CoD? Insane!

[Chookes 965]

Yes, it's a huge amount but I think they ended up getting a huge amount of viewers. They doubled last year's viewers.

 

I missed the OpTic/Complexity game but apparently it could have gone either way. And considering how poor OpTic have played against them in the past year, they did well. They lost the first DOM on Octane, not by much. They started poorly on both sides and ended well. The SnD was superb. A bit of controversy where the game disconnected with Complexity in a 3v1 vs Scump but the game finished 6-5. OpTic were leading 5-3 but lost the next two and in the final round they rushed Complexity, their best play all week. They then went on to beat Complexity 8-7 in Blitz (Complexity are the best Blitz team in the game) and took an 18 point lead in Sovereign DOM. I don't know if they bottled the second half but Complexity hammered them, and then hammered them more in the final SnD, 6-0.

 

OpTic then took on EnvyUs in the loser's final. They won the first DOM and Envy took the SnD. The Blitz games were incredible. I'm not sure if it was a choke but Optic should have won both Blitz's. They were up in both but ended up losing a couple of key gun fights. The first one ended 6-6, the second ended 6-5 in Envy's favour. I missed it but theykeep talking about Scump's failed knife. Apparently he knifed someone on the defence Blitz cap but the knife didn't do anything. If he got the knife, Optic would have won (I think it was in the first game). Nameless was incredible, MVP for the tournament. He pretty much won it for them. Every game he turned up.

 

The final was just boring. Rambo was 0-10 at one point in the first DOM, not good enough. Complexity took it pretty convincingly, 3-0. It was a really good Championships. The streams were pretty hit and miss, I had to keep refreshing which meant I had to keep watching the same ads over and over again. At one point, I got the same ad 4 times in a row.

 

Ghosts is an OK game but, for Competitive, it's miles behind Black Ops 2. Blitz and Dom can be good but they're not the same as Hardpoint/CTF. Shame Treyarch aren't making the next COD because 2015 for COD eSports would have been incredible.

[Diddums 4,346]

I've tried to take this seriously. I really have, but I just can't. Having seen some of the egos, loudmouths and just general disrespect some of those idiots have, I just think it's a waste of time and those punks need to be taken down a peg. Not all of them obviously, some seem to be genuinely nice chaps but the fact that the idiots get away with the shit that they do just discourages me from being interested.

 

I also suck at cod and they don't, so fuck 'em.

[J4MES OX4D 10,036]

I've tried to take this seriously. I really have, but I just can't. Having seen some of the egos, loudmouths and just general disrespect some of those idiots have, I just think it's a waste of time and those punks need to be taken down a peg. Not all of them obviously, some seem to be genuinely nice chaps but the fact that the idiots get away with the shit that they do just discourages me from being interested.

 

I also suck at cod and they don't, so fuck 'em.

Agreed. I used to love the competitive scene but there just seems to be many gobshites dragging it down now. There's plenty of mature veterans on show but also too many immature little pricks mouthing it in a disrespectful way to their opponents and fellow team mates. It's just embarrassing too often and hard to watch for me. I like a bit of gaming banter but some of the chit-chat is cringeworthy.

[Stretch616 697]

The stream was shit last night all the way up until the final strangely where i only had to reset it about 10 times!

Complexity just looked awesome though. Deserved champs for me, just a shame the NV team that was seem for the earlier part didn't show up. Pleased to see Optic up there again and running these teams close. Not sure if they choked or were just beaten by the better team but either way a 3rd place finish is alot higher than i expected