Warcraft III’s NGL-One Finals are underway, showcasing four top tier teams colliding and trading spells at the offline finals to prove their power.
The NGL format is unique, using a king of the hill format instead of WC3L’s individual match tally. Each team selects a player to play a match, with the loser being eliminated. The loser is replaced by a teammate to play, with the process repeated until a team loses four players.
What does this mean? Managers/team leaders have to be very selective of who plays when. Before matches even begin, captains have to strategize. Should they send a player for an all kill? Do they match players for each match, picking off the other team’s powerhouses with surgical selections? Multiple factors enter the process, putting more pressure on everyone.
NGL-One’s finals run today, Feb. 22 through tomorrow, Feb. 23.
Contending Teams
Meet Your Makers
An outstanding lineup of players that seems to take more second place finishes than first. Moon is the epic Night Elf hero, with more victories in each year than some pro players could make in a lifetime. His strategies revolutionize the game, but with his reported hiatus, will he be in shape to play in NGL? Lucifer rose up in 2006, but has yet to be in the same shape since. Susiria plays on par with Lucifer, meaning MYM might have to struggle to take the win. Continued…
After the disbandment of 4Kings’ Warcraft III squad, the ‘net was rife with rumors and speculation about where Manuel “Grubby” Schenkhuizen would end up. Wait no more: Grubby has officially joined MeetYourMakers, rounding out a powerhouse lineup.
The team’s full roster looks like this:
MYM.Moon (Night Elf)
MYM.Shy (Night Elf)
MYM.Eve (Night Elf)
MYM.Storm (Human)
MYM.Lucifer (Undead)
MYM.Susiria (Undead)
MYM.Focus (Orc)
MYM.Ciara (Orc)
MYM.Konna (Orc)
MYM.Grubby (Orc)
They seem a bit low on Human players, but it could just be me. Having Grubby, Moon and Lucifer under one (proverbial) portends bad things for other teams.
The end of an era is upon us, and it’s safe to say the writing has been on the wall for over a year. 4Kings, one of UK’s foremost superteams, has disbanded its Warcraft III division, leaving Manuel “Grubby” Schenkhuizen and Daniel “LiiLD.C” Claesson clanless.
The official reason given for disbanding was “a lack of players and other things.” The squad has been steadily losing star players since Nov. 2006, when Dae “FoV” Hui Cho left the team.
FoV’s departure to Beijing E-ports Team signaled an inability for 4K to compete on the free market for its own players. According to Warcraft III superfan/expert and former GGL contributor Jos “Zerter” Buyvoets, this was the true beginning of the end for 4K’s WC3 squad.
Despite FoV’s absence, 4K still had a bevy of stars on its roster until Olav “Creolophus” Undheim decided to retire after winning WCG 2007. Undheim’s decision was right for him, but wrong for the team.
“Creo going inactive probably ‘did it’ as it put a lot of pressure on Yoan ‘ToD’ Merlo and Grubby who failed to qualify for the WC3L finals without him,” said Zerter. Continued…
Tom “SeeD” Conerly of Imbalanced video fame has just finishes his analysis of the Grubby vs. ToD match in the Intel Extreme Masters II qualifiers. Watch his take on the match below!
The depths of the internet have got many a word written about the balance in Warcraft 3, but very few from people who understand the game as deeply as Manuel “Grubby” Schenkhuizen. The Dutch Warcraft 3 superstar has written an article for esportsglobal.com about it, proving that playing a video game is only one of his talents.
The column called “Fickle balance” shows a very interesting perspective on several issues, in particular people’s attitudes towards perceived imbalances in the game. The piece is well worth a read. Here is a taste:
Which strategy is balanced and which is imbalanced? It seems there is an opinion for every grain of sand in the Sahara Desert and like the sand; they are blown away just as easily with every gust of wind. Indeed, I find that the balance in Warcraft III can be viewed just so: waves ripple through the community with a fresh wind every few weeks and completely shatter our previous suppositions. Those people that stick with their earlier conclusions find themselves outnumbered by the ones who ride the wave, unless their mind stays unchanged until the next wave when a strategy becomes imbalanced – for the second time.
Continued…
June “Lyn” Park has won his second Warcraft 3 major within a month by beating Jang “Spirit Moon” JaeHo 4-0 in the grand final of the Make Games Colorful tournament in China. Does the Orc race have a new Emperor?
The MGC started with a unique round robin stage, followed with a double elimination playoff bracket. In spite of the presence of Manuel “Grubby” Schenkhuizen, Yoan “ToD” Merlo and Kim “SaSe” Hammar, it had four Korean and four Chinese players. Continued…
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! Continued…
One week away from the International €100,000 Electronic Sports Tournament in China we found out nine out of twelve participants of the event for Warcraft 3 and StarCraft respectively.
The competitions will have six players from Asia (three invited Koreans and three qualified Chinese) and six players invited from all over the world. The invitees from Europe were announced some time ago and the list of Koreans was made public today.
The Korean trio for WC3 will be Jang “Spirit Moon” JaeHo, Lee “SoJu” Seong Deok and Chui “FoV” Dae Cho, all of them very accomplished players with over a dozen prestigious titles between them. Continued…
The World Cyber Games grand finals event is underway in Seattle. With group play still going on, everyone is watiing for the playoffs. But before you have a savory meal in a fancy restaurant, you want to have a proper appetizer.
The WCG group phase in Warcraft 3 does exceptionally well to whet our appetites for the playoffs phase. Half of the elimination bracket is already filled with the names of the players. It goes (the names in square brackets are Wire’s predictions):
XyLigan vs. [player from E2]
ToD vs. [player from F2]
XlorD vs. [player from G2]
SoJu vs. [xiaOt or Grubby]
[SaSe] vs. HoT
[Fly100%] vs. Spirit Moon
[Creolophus] vs. HasuHasi
[xiaOt or Grubby] vs. Sky
Continued…
The most imbalanced match-up in Warcraft 3 is Human (and not Night Elf!) vs. Orc, if you are to trust statistics. If you are to trust statistics, Manuel “Grubby” Schenkhuizen should hope to meet Night Elf players only if he wants to win the World Cyber Games. GGL Wire has counted!
The question of imbalance in the most popular RTS game worldwide is as old as the game itself. In order to get to the bottom of the problem, we have decided to collect the statistics from the deciding stages of professional level Warcraft 3 tournaments in the last 12 months, starting with the 2006 WCG finals.
The findings were interesting to say the least. Continued…
The LAN finals of the ClanBase EuroCup XV tournament ended the way everyone expected - the winner in Warcraft 3 was Manuel “Grubby” Schenkuizen and the victors in CS 1.6 and CoD2 were Team NoA and Tek-9 respectively.
Warcraft 3
Only the lower bracket finals and the grand finals were played on Sunday. The first games ended for Warcraft 3, where the last-minute standin Przemyslaw “Paladyn” Wadon played Grubby for the title. Paladyn was a replacement for Radoslav “Diesel” Kolev who withdrew from the tournament two days before the finals. Paladyn beat Daniel “LiiLD.C” Claesson in the lower bracket final 2-1 today. Continued…
The finals of the ClanBase EuroCup XV are taking place in Enschede, the Netherlands, this weekend. The best Warcraft 3 players and the best Call of Duty 2 and Counter-Strike 1.6 teams of the competition have gathered in the WZRRD gaming center to duke it out for €20,000 in cash sponsored by PokerStrategy.cc and SteelSeries. Continued…
