First day of EWC:
Good games overall, players were having fun it seemed (especially PRX and BLG).
- PRX v BLG - Best game of the day.
- G2 v KC - Nice to see KC doing good in a world class tournament; G2 however, Leaf's impact is very noticeable. They really need him.
- SEN v BBL - Nice back to back round trading game in the first half. Second half was alright, Zekken stepped up a bit, but BBL got the upper hand in the end - Lewn was probably the best -player of the day, in my opinion.
- DRX v XLG - First stomp of the day. XLG just couldn't stand a chance, to be honest. Flicker looked very good for his debut. XLG are really struggling with their players, unfortunately.
- NRG v TH - NRG looked very good, only American team to win a game today and looked dominant against the runner-ups of last year's Champions. Heretics seem to be struggling to find tactical plays and look like one of the worst teams of the tournament so far.
- RRQ v TEC - Another stomp. RRQ is just on a whole level above TEC. Looks like TEC needs to step up the game a bit in every sense of the game.
- -100T v FNC - Fnatic were dominating the first half, then 100T dominated the second half, although not enough for them to win the game. I think everyone looked good on that match, -especially Kaajak and Eeiu.
- -GEN-G v EDG - GEN-G just looked far superior than the reigining Champions. EDG look like they have been struggling to find a way to get into the meta ever since Stage 1. Being the best -team in China is now starting to be a bit questionable with everything that happened for the qualifiers for Masters, but, then again, it's been only 1 day for the EWC and they already have been playing on Stage 2, so we'll see where they go from here.
That's it about the games, now I'll talk about the rest of the event in general:
- Production quality looked outright terrible - Spectating someone and showing someone else on camera (Example: Spectating Mako and showing another player on camera, don't remember who); Tech issues; sound delayed on some of the games and NO SOUND for the DRX game (at least that I know of); Replay system was bad some of the times.
- The environment of the place where they played looked very dead, but I guess that's what happens when you play in an enclosed space where no one else is watching but the people that HAVE to be there. Hopefully that'll change when these qualifiers are over.
- Having 2 games playing at the same time is not good for attracting fans to see the games, since we need to choose between each stream we want to see and/or click between tabs to keep up with both games. I think one match at a time would've been enough, since it's only BO1s, so they would take about 40/50 minutes each. That'd give plenty of time to stream them all.
- Having BO3s happening on the same day is even worse, because, why would you put players playing against other teams in the same day without even resting? Sure, it was a BO1 first, but that is just mindboggling.
That's pretty much it.
So, in general, it was kind of a lackluster experience in terms of attraction, but, then again, it's the first time they do this, so maybe in the future it'll be better. Glad some of the games were good, though.
What are your thoughts about this event so far?
I'll keep on updating while the games are running their course.
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