With the League of Legends World Championships in full swing with millions of viewers, it’s time to take a break from politics, and take a look at even more controversial things.

The rapid rise of e-sports has seen the skyrocketing growth of the competitive genre of MOBA, or multiplayer online battle arenas, with DotA (Defense of the Ancients) and League of Legends taking the center stage within the genre. With prize pools up to 20 million dollars and viewership surpassing that of the World Cup and the Super Bowl, the world of e-sports is certainly becoming a force to be reckoned with. League of Legends, in particular, is currently thriving in the center stage, with millions of viewers tuning in to the world championship taking place currently. Fans, like myself, stay up to begin watching the competition at 3 a.m Eastern time alongside fans all over the globe to watch the thrilling action unfold in the Summoners Rift.

With the World Championship being held in China, there is a multitude of storylines, hopes, dreams, and ambitions (pun intended) heading to the World Championship. The conclusion of week 1 had its ups and downs, and was certainly not without its drama. But first, to understand the drama, one must understand the teams, and we shall begin with the tale as old as time: the rivalry between North America and Europe. With the hopes of redeeming the already damaged hopes of North America, the “stronger than ever” Team SoloMid, the always comedic yet surprisingly good Cloud 9, and the perceivably threatening Immortals squad certainly look promising this year. With the lambasting of legions of disappointed fans and an endless supply of memes signaling their failure, the dominant yet internationally meek G2 Esports, the Cinderella Story-ridden Team Misfits, and the wounded Fnatic upon their fall from grace represent the European hopes.

Next, we arrive at Asian lands, with China, Taiwan, and Korea to review. The permanently branded underdog of Taiwan boasts the performance of two historically strong and surprisingly impressive teams, with the semi-hyped Flash Wolves and AHQ e-sports taking center stage with high hopes of success in their wake. On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have the forever overhyped, yet inevitably disastrous, performance by the Chinese region along with the legions of fans demanding the teams to “swim home” from international waters as an act of atonement. With week 1’s hometown hero, Ming “Clearlove7” Kai leading the Chinese powerhouse Edward Gaming, the legendary Jian “Uzi” Zi-Hao returning to the Worlds scene for a fourth time with Royal Never Give Up, and the old-timers Worlds Elite returning into the world championship scene, China was expected to make a rather strong case for themselves on the Worlds stage.

Finally, we arrive at the titans of League of Legends and perhaps e-sports as a whole, represented by Korea. First, we have the returning Worlds 2016 finalists in Samsung Galaxy, off of a series of rocky performances and tons of scorn from Korean Fans. Next, we have yet another Cinderella story with returning semifinalists Kim “PraY” Jong-In and Kang “GorillA” Beom-Hyeon representing Longzhu Gaming. Lastly, we have perhaps the greatest team to ever play League of Legends, the three-time World Championship winners in the 6 previous short years of the competitive scene’s existence, SK Telecom T1. Of course, it would be sacrilege to not pay homage to Lee “Faker” Sang-Hyeok, the only remaining 3-time World Champion in SKT and perhaps the greatest player ever to pick up a mouse and keyboard, leading the team into their excursion for yet another World Championship title. Alongside this, we are also introduced to the Gigabyte Marines from Vietnam and 1907 Fenerbahçe from Turkey as wildcard teams from non-major reasons, rounding out the 16 teams competing for the title, who were divided into 4 groups of four.

Group A: The Fall of the Hometown Heroes

Now that descriptions are out of the way, we arrive at the aftermath of week 1, and what a week it has been. All 4 groups have had their fair share of drama. We begin with Group A: SK Telecom, Cloud 9, Edward Gaming, and AHQ E-sports. The most expected result out of the first week did occur, with SK Telecom leading the group with a perfect 3-0 record. The most surprising, however, was the crash-and-burn saga of EDG. With their first loss to AHQ, it was thought that EDG would be able to regain momentum, but the dramatic turnaround by SKT in their second game left the team almost disoriented, which was apparent in their game against Cloud 9. A 0-3 finish has left the Wuhan native captain, Clearlove7, at a state of disorientation presumably. AHQ has notably underperformed, as the poor performance of one of their star players, Liu “Westdoor” Shu-Wei, has left the team in noticeable disarray. Finally, the performance of Cloud 9 has been awe-inspiring, as they have shown quite a lot of potential in all 3 of their games, even giving SKT a fight in their loss.

Group B: The Fall of Fnatic, and Guerilla Warfare

Group B represented chaos at its finest, featuring a fall from grace of prior legends. Much like EDG, Fnatic’s 0-3 performance was extremely disappointing to EU fans, but the most glaring difference is that this was expected of them. Most predicted Immortals and Longzhu to outperform FNC, but the unorthodox and unpredictable playing of the Gigabyte Marines also took Fnatic aback to the point of losing a game against them as well. The prospect of the Season 1 World Champions, as well as Season 4 and 5 semi-finalists, to fall from grace in such a manner is certainly disheartening to see.

GAM’s chaotic playstyle took everyone aback, as they threw convention to the wind and brought out extremely unorthodox strategies that made for some extremely entertaining games, the most notable of which were against Longzhu and Fnatic, and left them in third place with a 1-2 record. Their plays have also brought about a legion of fans creating parallels between their gameplay and Guerilla Warfare. Upon revisiting the games, GAM indeed performed in true Vietnamese fashion, fighting with unpredictability, whilst giving Europeans a nightmare in living color. Immortals had a quite strong showing, putting up a valiant fight against Longzhu and securing victories against the other two teams, granting them second place with a 2-1 record. Finally, as expected, Longzhu proved why they were the group favorite as they displayed their might as a Korean juggernaut and secured 3 notable victories, leaving them first in the standings.

Group C: China’s Redemption

Group C had been the tamest and absent of much drama, with the wildcard team 1907 Fenerbahçe being the last in the standings with a 0-3 record. In this group, however, the might of China was truly shown through the performance of RNG (Royal Never Give Up), as they secured a victory over Samsung Galaxy and locked their place in the top of the standings with a 3-0 record. Samsung, however, performed far below expectations. Despite coming second in the standings with a 2-1 record, in all of their games, they looked shaky and did not show precision and efficiency in their play, leaving many fans with doubt in their performance in the upcoming week 2. And finally, as unfortunately expected, G2 Esports lived up to their reputation of being poor internationally, by putting on a display of relatively notable weakness and finished with a 1-2 record, planting them in 3rd place.

Group D: Group of Ties

Group D has brought about the highest level of contestation and unpredictability, despite there being a clear fan favorite. TSM, Worlds Elite, and Misfits all have tied in first place with a 2-1 record, with, shockingly, the Flash Wolves being in 4th place with an unfortunate 0-3 record. Flash Wolves has shown a notable drop in performance, with extremely lackluster showings against Misfits and AHQ and a particularly unfortunate loss against TSM, which showcased a stellar performance from one of TSM’s stars, Kevin “Hauntzer” Yarnell. TSM’s hype coming in was offset by an extremely unexpected but notable loss against the European underdogs, Misfits. Worlds Elite, despite whatever expectations were associated with the team, certainly managed to disappoint their fans with not very many decisive games against Misfits and Flash Wolves, and a very one-sided loss against TSM.

Week 2: What To Expect

With week 2 in the horizon, we have a lot to expect from each group. First and foremost, we can only expect the improvement of AHQ, and perhaps a salvaging performance from EDG to round out what has been a rather abysmal world championship run in their own home turf. If SKT and Cloud 9 both win one game apiece, EDG has no chance of progressing into the playoff stage. The same goes for Fnatic, which leads us to group B where the teams to watch would certainly be Immortals and GAM. LZ has proven themselves as the titans that they are (very akin to SKT), meaning any potential battles would be for the second seed going into knockouts.

Group C, however, is a bit more unpredictable. RNG and SSG would have to duke it out yet again to cement themselves as the more dominant forces in the group, with G2 being the unpredictable force with a fighting chance to make it out of groups, if we remove past performances from the calculus and analyze purely from this tournament. Group D is the most unpredictable, as the 3-way tie means anything goes, and every game from group D will have a notable impact in determining who goes through to the knockout stages. Everything is up in the air, making for an EXTREMELY exciting week 2 of Worlds.

Worlds is going into week 2 with all the hype and excitement in the world, and fans, like myself, cannot wait.