Irony is easily refined as: One Korean Team disqualifying themself based on impossible odds; While another Korean Team wins the championship despite impossible odds.

Irony:
One Korean Team disqualifying themselves based on impossible odds.
Another Korean Team winning the championship despite impossible odds.

You may remember the news that surfaced two weeks ago about how the finalists in the Korean Extreme Masters World of Warcraft 3v3 tournament, team Kill e A, decided to disqualify themselves from the global finals because they believed that "it is no longer possible for the Mage and Rogue character classes to remain competitive in a high-level PvP setting."

Read on and be amazed.

Yesterday - thanks to a ridiculous 2v1 win by a very talented Mage (more on that later) - the Korean Continental World of Warcraft 3v3 winners, HON, rose to become the ESL Global Champions in the arena of WoW. The second place team in the ESL Globals was the team that placed third in the Korean Continental Championships, team SK-Korea (formerly Council of Mages). If you'll remember, the only reason why SK-Korea was even able to participate in the ESL Global Championships, is because team Kill e A opted out of the tournament for the above reasons, so SK-Korea ended up going to the Globals by default.

Hold on, it gets better.

Of the top four teams within the Global Finals, all four were teams that played Rogue / Mage / Priest.

But wait! There's more!

Only two teams in the entire tournament relied upon the extremely powerful (some would consider overwhelmingly so) Death Knight / Paladin / Hunter combination. Even more surprising, one of the strongest predicted teams, SK-USA, with their own PDH (Pally/DK/Hunter) ended up placing 10th overall (of 12), ultimately going an overall record of of 1-4 in the tournament. SK-USA only managed to glean one win against fellow Americans, compLexity, who were playing a very unsuccessful Rogue / Mage / Druid team. Perhaps as a final poke to Kill e A's hasty decision making abilities, Realz, the hunter for SK-USA, noted that Kill e A should have seen the popularity of Rogue / Mage / Priest teams in the European Continentals, and they should have maintained the belief that "RMP can beat any team."

Despite the facepalm that comes from Kill e A's ironic decisions, however, two more remarkable stories overshadow the ESL tournament. The first was the incredibly poor showing of North American talent, with the closest American team, Evil Geniuses, tying for 7th, SK-USA tying for 10th, and compLexity with 12th (last place). Prior to the tournament, SK-USA's Hunter, Realz, said that even if he wasn't as good as the best Hunters in the world, he wouldn't have to be so good in the ESL Globals (a testament to his belief in the Hunter class). The other two players on the team, Serennia and Sck, were equally confident in their abilities, with Serennia being the leader of the US team that placed second at Blizzcon 2008 (Council of Mages of Korea took first by a wide margin), and Sck being formerly of Pandemic, long considered one of the best World of Warcraft Arena teams in the early life of competitive WoW.

The amalgamation of superstar talent in team SK-USA, however, did not prevent SK-USA from losing 0-3 to a mirror PDH (Europe's X6) that Serennia (leader of SK-USA) had called "amateur" a few days back. As well, after the loss to X6, Serennia was very vocal about the ability (or lack thereof) of his Hunter teammate, Realz, noting that every loss was because of Realz' ineptitude, and stating that "Dave [Sck] and I are pretty annoyed at him."

This unsportsmanlike conduct has lead many WoW-Arena bloggers to note that this is not the first time SK-USA has brought together superstar talent, only to see them lose to teams that play less powerful class combinations but have played together for much longer. If you can imagine, superstar talent leads to superstar ego; every significant loss suffered by team SK-USA in past tournaments (and they field a different roster every time) usually leads to rampant finger pointing and spectacular team dissolutions.

As one notable blogger, Jasi, points out; "I think the future of American representation is going to change. At this point, it's pretty safe to say that throwing 3 players together that on an individual level can be good, is completely hit-or-miss when it comes to LAN events. Not to mention, throwing three people together that are not socially comfortable with each other is usually counterproductive; clearly we've seen the real feelings surface when teams lose." Perhaps this poor playing and unsportsmanlike conduct marks the beginning of a revolution for competitive North American World of Warcraft teams; sponsors may begin to place more weight on team cohesion rather than individual talent.

To end on a much lighter note, the second remarkable story that is considered to be the absolute climax of the entire tournament was HON's Mage, Orangemarmalade's incredible comeback to sweep the ESL tournament and take first place (and $30,000!) out of the clutches of SK-Korea (Council of Mages).

After three contests that saw SK-Korea take an early 2-1 lead in a best of three series, it appeared as though the tournament was over when SK-Korea managed to take out HON's Rogue and Priest, while HON could only kill SK-Korea's Rogue. HON's Mage, Orangemarmalade, made his valiant last stand against the opposition, but even the broadcasters had given the match to SK-Korea.

And then, one string of lucky crits later, a stunned crowd watched as Orangemarmalade somehow managed to take out SK-Korea's Mage and extend the match to get the win. HON would take advantage of this surprise win to come from behind and win the next match easily.

Check out the amazing video here!

Christopher "Pwyff" Tom
Editor
ZAM.com