League of Legends: Season 2 World Championship

The Season 2 World Championship occurred from October 4–13, 2012 in Los Angeles, California and was the second iteration of the annual League of Legends World Championship. The tournament was won by Taipei Assassins over Azubu Frost in the finals.

Background

A group picture of the Taipei Assassins, the champions of season 2.

After Season 1, Riot announced that US$5,000,000 would be paid out over Season 2. Of this $5 million, $2 million went to Riot's partners including the IGN Pro League and other major esports associations. Another $2 million went to Riot's Season 2 qualifiers and championship. The final $1 million went to other organizers who applied to Riot to host independent League of Legends tournaments.^[1]

The Season 2 World Championship was held in early October 2012 in Los Angeles, California to conclude the US$5 million season. Twelve qualifying teams from around the world participated in the championship, which boasted the largest prize pool in the history of e-sports tournaments at the time at US$2 million, US$1 million going to the champions, until The International 2013 beat it the next year. The group stage, quarter-final, and semi-final matches took place between October 4 and 6. The grand final took place a week after, on October 13 in the University of Southern California's Galen Center in front of 10,000 fans, and were broadcast in 13 different languages.^[2] In the grand final, Taiwan's professional team Taipei Assassins triumphed over South Korea's Azubu Frost 3-to-1 and claimed the US$1 million in prize money.^[3]

Over 8 million viewers tuned in to the Season 2 World Championship broadcast, with a maximum of 1.1 million concurrent viewers during the grand final, making the Season 2 World Championship the most watched esports event in history at the time.^[4]

Top four

Format

Several top teams missed out on the World Championship, including fnatic and Azubu Blaze.^[6] The IGN Pro League 5 tournament has been touted by some as the true Season 2 World Championships.

Cheating incident

During the quarter-final round of the Season 2 World Championship, Jang Gun Woong of team Azubu Frost cheated by turning his head to look at the big screen which was positioned behind him. The screen, which presents an overview of the game, is meant to be watched only by the crowd, as it displays elements that are supposed to be hidden from the players inside the game. This led to Azubu Frost being fined US$30,000.^[7][8][9]

Technical issues

During the last quarter-final best-of-three match on October 6 between European team Counter Logic Gaming EU and Chinese team World Elite, multiple technical difficulties occurred. Roughly twenty minutes into the second game, the network connection in the arena went down, terminating the live stream on Twitch.tv and disconnecting all ten players from the game, forcing a remake of the game. Then, roughly sixty minutes into the third game, the network went down again. A final attempt was made at finishing the third game, but due to more network outages and technical issues, including a player's defective computer which had to be replaced, the last game and the following semi-finals were rescheduled to be played on October 10 in the Galen Center, which was still undergoing construction work. The cause of the connection issues is uncertain, but is suspected to have been caused by faulty hardware.^[10][11][12]

Qualification

The Participants qualified through the Regional Finals:

• Mainland China: July 26 – Shanghai, China at China Joy – 2 teams
• Europe: August 16 – Cologne, Germany at Gamescom – 3 teams
• North America: August 30 – Seattle, United States at PAX Prime – 3 teams
• Taiwan/Hong Kong/Macau: September 1 – Taipei, Taiwan at G1 – 1 team
• Southeast Asia: September 9 – Da Nang, Vietnam at Tien Son Sports Palace – 1 team
• Korea: September 21 – Seoul, Korea at the OGN eSports Stadium – 2 teams

Group stage

Group A

Group B

Bracket stage

Final standings

References