October 19th.

In the first group of the quarter-finals, BF successfully advanced to the tournament with a 3:1 advantage.

October 20th.

In the second group of the quarterfinals, the battle between GNR and ZA teams has officially begun!

One is the GNR who is born like a gun and dies like Nirvana, after Alex (Alex) has been away from GNR for a few years but suddenly returned, the team that once won the S1 World Championship has undoubtedly regained its life, although the S1 World Championship is jokingly called the basement champion by many league fans, but in fact, S1 is not without merit.

The attention of the S1 finals in China can be said to be completely zero, at that time, this game was not completely popular in China, let alone a series that did not even have a Chinese team, if you ask a person who pays attention to the history of lol, he may be able to recite the teams and schedules from S2 to S9 to you word for word, even if it is a qualifier.

But if someone asks about S1, he might only say three things:

1. The scale is very small.

2. The bonus is very small.

3. There is very little information.

Indeed, there is hardly any information about S1 left in the country, and many news outlets will only mention S1 in passing when referring to GG (the predecessor of today's GNR), and perhaps for those editors, they don't know who the runner-up of S1 is or where it is held.

Even the champion skin made by Riot officially for it was reissued after 3 years, which shows how much gold the champion of S1 is, but it is not as unbearable as the online media said, at least they didn't really play in the basement in the finals.

The S1 World Finals is a competition held in Sweden, of course, the participating teams at that time did not have LPL and LCK, to be precise, the national service and Hanbok were still in the internal test, and even the teams that had been patchwork together could not be gathered, how could it be possible to cross the ocean to Sweden to play a game that no one cared about?

The S1 World Finals are from 2011-06-18 to 2011-06-20, yes, you read that right, the so-called finals only last for 18, 19, and 20 days, compared to the current S-Series is a 30-day World Cup-scale competition, and the treatment of players playing three days and one week off like a World Cup superstar was simply empty talk three years ago.

At that time, S1 was more like a large-scale Internet café competition, and it was solved in almost a weekend from mobilization to the beginning to the end of the awards.

At that time, the prize pool of the S1 World Championship totaled $99,500, which was the prize money of the top eight teams by today's standards, and it was all the teams who shared the money, but it was probably the second highest prize money in 2011 for the esports environment at the time. (The highest is Dota 2's Ti1)

Of the $100,000 in prize money, the winning team gets $50,000, which is $1 per team member before taxes, which is probably not necessarily what you would have in a year for a 2011 professional (no exaggeration).

(At that time, the team was basically all Internet café teams in various divisions, so there was no substitute for the team, and there were only five teams participating in the competition, no substitutes, no coaches, no sponsors, and even inferior to the current domestic Internet café league)

However, the prize money at the time was not as bad as it was belittled on the Internet, and it was a good conscience that Riot could put up $10 to run a series with an uncertain future under the circumstances, after all, it was 11 years. (By the way, the sponsor at the time was alien)

In addition, there is a certain reason why the S1 World Finals can be called the World Finals at that time, and there were eight teams participating in the world at that time, namely 3 North American teams, 3 European teams, 1 Singapore team, and 1 Philippine team.

Yes, you read that right, at that time, being able to play in the S1 finals meant that you were directly in the quarterfinals, even if you were directly beaten to the roll and went home, you could boast after returning home that you had won the quarterfinals of the World Championship, the only problem was that there were only eight teams in the competition.

Suddenly remembered a joke, a poor student was originally ranked 39th in the class, at that time there were 40 students in their class, and the student number was ranked according to grades, but after moving to another school, the poor student directly became the 10th in the class, at that time his mother happily asked him why he had made such great progress, and the answer was that there were only 10 people in the class of the poor student after the transfer......

However, although there are only teams from four countries to compete, it is not too strange that Riot still dares to call the S1 World Finals an international competition, after all, for the IET, where the matches of 7 Chinese teams and 1 Hong Kong team can be called an international competition, even the S1 World Finals Riot still has done enough face engineering, of course, the soy sauce level of the two Asian teams from Singapore and the Philippines respectively is a later story.

[IET full name InternationaleSports Tournament, translated as Yiwu International E-sports Competition, is sponsored by the Sports Information Center of the General Administration of Sports of the People's Republic of China, Zhejiang Provincial Sports Bureau, China Sports Newspaper Group, Yiwu Municipal People's Government, Beijing Huaao Star Technology Development Co., Ltd. hosted by comprehensive professional events, the competition items are Hearthstone (individual), FIFAONLINE3 (individual), League of Legends (group)]

The former was once brilliant, but now it is gradually declining, while the latter is simply fishing, under the banner of the world competition, but in fact the low-level is not good, if you take an example, CG that has been canceled by the Korean government and IET, which is still slowly developing (maybe), is a true portrayal of the above two concepts.

[CG stands for OrldCyberGames, which translates to World Esports Series, is a global esports event known as the "Esports Olympics", which is hosted by South Korea's International Electronic Marketing Corporation (ICM) and sponsored by Samsung and Microsoft (since 2006). With the slogan of "BeyondTheGame" and the goal of promoting the global development of e-sports, the competition aims to promote people's communication, interaction and exchange in the Internet era, and promote the harmony and happiness of human life. On February 5, 2014, the current CEO of CG, Li Xiuyin, announced through an official email that the CG Organizing Committee will no longer hold any events, including the CG World Finals, and the 13-year CG has come to an end. ]

E-sports should be an official event in international competitions, and should have the same status as other sports, rather than being banned everywhere in the country. This sentence is still followed by fans and players who paid attention to and even participated in CG at the beginning, and it has become a reality until now......

To this day, many League of Legends players remember a line from the Barbarian King Tydamir: Summoner, when was your glorious moment? Is it CG? And my moment of glory was ...... When it's time to open the ultimate!

Turning the perspective back to the previous topic, there are only eight teams participating in the S1 World Finals, of which two teams from Singapore and the Philippines are basically bastards, and the other teams are also not regular teams, that is, the motley bandit army of millet and rifles.

The format at that time was to determine the teams participating in the S1 World Championship through qualifiers

The S1 Qualifiers will start in April and end in May, with a total of four regions, North America, Europe, Singapore, and the Philippines, among which the top three in North America, the top three in Europe, the first in Singapore, and the Philippines will be eligible to participate in the S1 World Finals.

Let's talk about the Philippines first, if I tell you that the qualifiers in this region are played in one day, will you believe it?

That's right, the Philippines' thousand-picked team was really selected in just one day, and the final was still a special BO1, and the winner was determined by one game.

A total of eight teams, divided into two groups of AB BO1 round-robin, the first group advanced to the finals, and the final BO1 was over, and what was even more ridiculous was that the way of the Philippine qualifiers at that time was online, that is, people did not need to gather offline, and they directly collected five people online like friends to open black, and everyone played the game together......

Then there is the qualifiers in Singapore, who said that Singapore does not have a team, when the team goes abroad to compete, what LPL or LCK, or Taiwanese server LMS is still pitiful, and there is no regular server of its own!

The format of the Singapore Qualifiers is the top 32 single-to-odd competition, which is played from April 8th to June 6th, and it takes so long to determine a top Singaporean team, which shows how much Singapore attaches importance to LOL.

Do you really think I'm going to say that?

The rummaging of records from three or four years ago in foreign forums told us one thing, Singapore's qualifiers are based on registration, that is, if you think you can do it, you will go, first come, first served, as for why it has been played for so long, it seems that it is because the number of places in one and a half regions has been delayed until June (that is, no one is willing to sign up), and the qualifiers in Singapore are also online like the Philippines......

To be honest, it is indeed a must for such a weak chicken team cobbled together by such two strange divisions to represent Asia, I am afraid that even the entertainment team of Wanwan can beat them dizzy, and they can't even distinguish between the southeast and the northwest, but unfortunately at that time, whether it was the national costume or the Korean service, or the Taiwanese costume was still just a flower in the mirror.

In contrast, although the teams in Europe and North America are also Internet café teams, they have at least been run-in for a period of time, the team cooperation is quite tacit, and the game is at least played offline, and the number of folk high-level gods in the team is also considerable.

After the qualifiers are the group stage, the 8 teams participating in the global finals are divided into two groups A and B for BO1 double round-robin, and the last place in each group is eliminated, and then the first place in the group directly enters the semi-finals, and the two groups of 2 and 3 cross matches for one more round, the loser enters the loser's group, and the winner enters the semi-finals, and the second place in the group has a one-point lead. All competitions are BO3 (except for the 5th and 6th place races, which are BO1)

At that time, the group stage, knockout round and final were played on one day respectively, and the Philippine tourism team was unsurprisingly straightforward, and the Singapore team was still eliminated after beating one of the North American teams, and finally the GG team defeated the other participating teams with an unstoppable momentum under the leadership of captain Alex to win the S1 championship.

Due to a lot of technical and inexperienced shortcomings at the time, the S1 World Championship was full of various flaws, but the ratings of 200,000 people at the time were actually quite a testament to the popularity of League of Legends at that time, and Riot has continued to improve the format since then.

The teams participating in the S-Series, the highest level event of League of Legends, have also evolved from the original four major regions to 24 regions or even more, and the prize money has also evolved from the original $100,000 to nearly 10 million US dollars. (This data is a slight exaggeration, the real situation S7 prize is 5 million US dollars, but it may be possible to reach 10 million after three years)

And according to official statistics, only last year's S9 World Finals watched a total of 680 million hours of live broadcast of the game in a total of 64 hours of competition time, and in 18 match days, the cumulative number of unique viewers around the world reached 570 million, once again setting a new record for the S8 Finals.

Among them, the BF vs. SS championship attracted more than 80 million unique viewers, and the number of online viewers reached 36 million, significantly exceeding the S8 Finals, which also broke the record of all esports competitions again. (Regardless of any competitive game, the same is true in the real world, which is slightly exaggerated in order to conform to the development process of esports, but it is basically in line with the facts)

In the history of e-sports, League of Legends has actually become an irreplaceable and indelible existence, and today it dominates the e-sports, such as other interstellar, dota 2 and other games, although there are also many fans, but the fact is that League of Legends has indeed successfully surpassed them and stepped on top of their heads, which is an undeniable fact.

Maybe there will be a game that will replace the status of League of Legends in the long future, but now League of Legends is the undoubted number 1 in the world e-sports circle, and this is actually enough, even if you can't do it, just the unprecedented is already worthy of being recorded in history!

In fact, if you think about it, in the terrible esports environment of the year, was it bad for Riot to host that S1 game? Anyway, if I could compete like this in 2011, I think at least for a professional player, it's a happy thing.

Because it's not just a game and a competition, it's a kind of respect, a kind of recognition, and for professional players who have been discriminated against by those around them and their parents, these things are more important than the so-called money and fame, and they don't even care about paying their youth for it, because esports is all they have, isn't it?

In addition, in fact, League of Legends actually landed on the national server as early as the end of S1, but S2 was only in public beta, at that time, in July 2011, the server was just opened for internal testing, and 2888 gold coins were sent for registration, and no one cared about League of Legends at that time, and the activation code only needed two cents. (It seems to be this price, I hope some hardcore players can see it)

However, there were not many domestic players participating in the closed beta at that time, and later when S2 officially opened the beta, in order to compensate those players who reached more than 1400 points in the S1 season in the closed beta, they gave the Taurus skin of the bull's head. (At that time, there was no rank, and according to the ranking score at that time, this compensation was almost the same as the skin that would be rewarded for the season above the gold rank at the end of the season now, that is, the rank score of the gold rank reached the closed beta could receive this compensated skin, to be honest, players who have been playing since the closed beta are the real hardcore players, and the account value is self-evident and priceless!) ）