From March 6th to March 10th the Electronic Sports League hosts another of their famed Intel Extreme Masters events. After the IEM have treaded on new grounds by sending the players to the South American subcontinent - São Paulo, Brazil specifically - for the first time merely three weeks ago, they return to a place they are more familiar with. The IEM World Championship will gather the most renowned players in Counter-Strike, StarCraft II and League Of Legends in Hannover, where the biggest names in the entertainment and technology meet up in the course of the CeBIT, one of the world's biggest conventions in that regard.
In the following three pages I will provide an overview over who's playing, where to watch and when to watch and I will chip in my own two cents about who I think is worth watching throughout each tournament. Since I am not an avid follower of Counter-Strike myself, I would appreciate if those of you more familiar with the scene could share their views in the comments section.
An overview of the tournament schedule can be found here.
:O)
About the CLG.eu thing: my first instinct was that CLG didn't want to pit two of their own teams against each other (although sending the EU team would've made more sense in hindsight, my logic is flawed). Then I read into it and you can barely say "they didn't manage to qualify". They got screwed over by regulations which make no sense. They qualified as a team that was not contractually bound to mTw, yet mTw was granted the qualification spot, despite having no team. While the decision was ultimately lawful, the set of rules applied make, and I repeat myself, no sense. They certainly deserve participation since they qualified, yet politics forbids them from going.
anyone knows?
cuz LoL pwn shit