WCG Finals USA

[Thrawn]

Janna, Kog, Kennen, Shen, Udyr vs Heimer, Amumu, Miss Fortune, Annie, Taric

No idea what the format and stuff is because I can't imagine what bans were with those teams.

It's also being broadcast from a spectator mode, the guy casting and commenting has full map view in the 5v5.  

[Kail]

Tourney format seems fucked up on a lot of levels.  From the weird observer mode hack (essentially they made SR a 6v6 map, and gave the 6th player a summoner spell with full invisibility and map view) and the inability to know what the fuck is going on in the games (the finals were streamed, but good luck finding anything about the other matches) lack of replays, and patching continuing through the tournament (seriously, Epik was running Miss Fortune, a character who was released like what, three, four days ago?)... ugh. 

The game itself was pretty epic, though.  Thought CL was boned for the first half, there.
That was the second game, BTW.  I didn't catch the first one, but I guess the bans were different (Amumu and Kog Maw were banned, for example).

[Xeyi]

There are recordings of both games here:

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/9507051
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/9508719

The bans in the second game were mostly influenced by what happened in the first one.  I'm pretty sure Garen and Vlad were banned at least.

(the finals were streamed, but good luck finding anything about the other matches)

They had a forum for this for a while on the main site, http://www.leagueoflegends.com/board/forumdisplay.php?f=30.  There was a general lack of info the whole way through though.  I think CLG streamed a few of their games but it was pretty impossible to find out anything else beyond the final scores.

[Thrawn]

Hm, watching the first game too.  Is it just me or do they just need the one announcer?  Whoever the second guy is he hardly says anything and when he does it doesn't add anything.  Although I guess in the first cast he does ask some basic questions that people might know if they don't play LoL.

[Xeyi]

From what I saw the first guy was the main presenter for the entire weekend, they swapped in the second spot to someone with more specific knowledge of whatever game they were showing at the time.  

I watched a bit of Counter Strike and Starcraft as well and he said a bit more while those were going on, I guess he's just unfamiliar with LoL.

[Hoax]

That's Phreak from Riot Games (he does the champion spotlights and is the one legit very high level player at Riot) and the other guy is DJ Wheat who does lots of Quake shoutcasts, has a gaming podcast and has been involved with the fighting game community a bunch as well. Basically he was doing the well known voice and asking the noob questions.

Interesting games, feels like Mrs Fortune let EPIK down in game two, which it also feels like they gave away.

Also http://www.epikgamer.com is a new content light forum where Dan Dinh is currently trying to build a community and is giving out some really helpful free advice if you have some ask a pro style questions.

[Malakili]

I briefly watched some of this, (stumbled upon it at DJ Wheats site), and thought it was fairly interesting as a spectator game.  I'm only the least bit familiar with it though, so I couldn't enjoy it quite as much as I could Quake Live or Starcraft games.  Still, seems solid.

[Kail]

That's Phreak from Riot Games

He was driving my brother nuts as we were watching it.  "Jesus, someone stop the match quick, that man is having a seizure!" every time a team fight broke out.

Thanks for those video links, btw.  I can never find very many recordings of LoL for some reason.

[Thrawn]

Also http://www.epikgamer.com is a new content light forum where Dan Dinh is currently trying to build a community and is giving out some really helpful free advice if you have some ask a pro style questions.

Hopefully this takes off, it seems to be headed in the right direction and personally I'm not a huge fan of any of the current LoL sits I can think of.

[Hoax]

He's obviously making a huge effort to actually be helpful which is a change of pace from the way most pros treat questions.

[PkProjects]

Anyone seen the finals? Apart from some of the commentary falling away, it was really epic to follow live.

[Xeyi]

I did catch most of it.  While interesting to see what's going on at the top end of the spectrum the games just last too long to hold my interest for the entire time.  Particularly with the laning phase, good players very rarely make mistakes from what I've seen, so it can take upwards of 20 minutes to even get first blood.

For me LoL is alongside golf, darts and snooker as games that are a blast to play but a snooze-fest to watch anyone else playing.

That said it could all change when/if they finally implement replays and I can watch in fast forward through the boring bits