The Worlds 2018 in League of Legends have now begun. The “Play-In” stage has already claimed its first victims. It affects 4 teams from what are considered exotic countries for LoL. They have “monster stats,” but stand little chance against the big names.
The interesting part about the WildCard Games: In the Worlds 2018, “Play-In” stages are occurring. Here, the third-placed teams from strong regions and the strongest from “weak” LoL regions can qualify for the main round.
The Exotics are all monsters – in terms of stats
The interesting thing here is that teams emerge that are hardly known because they play in exotic leagues.
Pro player Reapered from the US team “Cloud 9” said, “If you only look at their stats, they are all monsters. They have a 90% win rate in their region and strong KDA. When you look at the stats, they are much better than us.
Last year I was really scared, but it is doable and it is also fun.”
And indeed it was doable for Cloud 9.
This has already happened at the LoL Worlds 2018: The first 4 days of the LoL Worlds have now been played and 4 teams have already been eliminated. The dream of the LoL Worlds 2018 is over for these teams:
- the Dire Wolves from Australia
- Ascension Gaming from Thailand
- KaBuM! eSports from Brazil
- and Kaos Latin Games from Puerto Rico
A highlight from the preliminary round: The triple kill by G2 eSports.
Fan favorites missing from the Worlds 2018 in League of Legends: These 4 exotics at least had the chance to shine in the Worlds. Many other big teams are missing completely:
- The finalists from last year, SKT 1 with star player Faker, are not participating in the Worlds 2018. They could not get past the tough competition from Korea.
- Schalke 04 also narrowly missed booking their ticket
- the fan favorites Team Solo Mid with Bjergsen could not qualify. They had ADC “Doublelift” released and replaced him with Mithy and Zven. In the meantime, Doublelift is with Team Liquid and is participating in the Worlds 2018 – TSM is missing this year.
The Play-In Knockout Games begin
What happens next? In the “Play-In Knockout” stage, 8 teams will now compete against each other who have survived the first selection process.
The 8 teams will face off in knockout matches to select the 4 teams that will make it to the main round.
Here, especially the “third-placed” teams from the major regions are favored:
- Cloud 9 from the USA went through the preliminary round with 4:0 – they will play against “Gambit eSports” from Russia
- The Spanish team “G2 eSports” will face “Infinity eSports” from Costa Rica
- Edward Gaming (China) will confront “DetonatioN FocusMe”, the champs from Japan
- And G-Rex from Hong Kong will compete against the Turkish team “SuperMassive eSports”, which is currently called “Bahçeşehir SuperMassive” for sponsorship reasons
Another highlight from the preliminary round that went viral:
Favorites enter in a few days
When does it really start? After that, it will continue with the “heavyweights.” The main round starts on October 10.
In the next week, the teams favored to win the Worlds 2018 in League of Legends will join the action. Among them RNG from China with star player Uzi and the defending champs Gen. G from Korea.
If you want to take a look at the music video featuring last year’s top players:
