GGL Wire

For the first time in history, the Four Kings WC3 team failed to qualify for the Warcraft 3 Champions Leauge LAN finals. The two teams have guaranteed themselves a spot inthe finals in Cologne in November are Meet Your Makers and World Elite.

This news is shocking, given the history of the Four Kings team in the WC3L. Up to this point point, 4K have won four titles, qualified for every LAN final and always ended first or second. The only on exception was one of the 2004 seasons, when the team was in Korea and did not attend the finals.

Now, not only do Four Kings not qualify, but they also have to play an additional game to avoid relegation and having to re-qualify to the league!

Despite all of its tradition and having Manuel “Grubby” Schenkhuizen and Yoan “ToD” Merlo on the roster, the team had it coming for a long time. Not even the second place at the XI WC3L finals could conceal it.

After Dae Hui “FoV” Cho left the team in late 2006, 4K avoided making expensive signings having to rely on ToD and Grubby. Whenever one of those two slipped, no one was there to pick up the pieces. After ToD moved to China and broke his 2vs2 partnership with Grubby and Olav “Creolophus” Undheim retired, things got even worse.

The result is a seventh place this season and a match with Fnatic to stay in the WC3L. The other two teams in a playoff match to avoid having to re-qualify to the league are Defining Stars and mTw.

The teams qualified to the finals are, not unexpectedly, last season’s bronze medalists Meet Your Makers and title holders World Elite. SK Gaming with their new Korean players will play Mousesports and We are Go, the team of “the best Korean unknowns” has to face the Beijing E-Sports Team. This means that whoever qualifies, the finals will be dominated by Asian players.