There are a couple things still to address from the CEVO playoffs that I didn't cover yesterday. First of all, congratulations to compLexity for taking home the cash monies. It’s a little crazy how quickly they became the best team in Source, with no room for any kind of argument. They’re the best team like Michael Jordan’s Bulls were the best teams in that era. Everybody not being paid by Jason Lake is playing for second place.
One thing that hasn’t been talked about at all is the coL house. It’s hard to say what effect it’s had on their play, but it doesn’t appear to be hurting them like some people thought it might. At least I hope it isn’t, because if they’re playing worse by living in a house together, I’d hate to see what they’d be doing separately. There haven’t been killing sprees, emotional breakdowns, there haven’t even been any juicy stories. From an entertainment standpoint, I’m a little disappointed, but not surprised.
Oh, and speaking of coL, as part of getting Marcus “zet” Sundstrom a work visa they convinced the United States Government that competitive gaming is a sport. Up next for the organization is beating a team full of hackers, stepping in and finishing CSP, ending the war in Iraq, and maybe even turning a profit. Although I doubt that last one.
Outside of the champions, the story that got the most publicity in the playoffs was Hyper disputing verGe in the Lower Bracket Finals. Apparently verGe, as a team, decided not to record. I’d like to see something like this in real life. Can you imagine the fallout if Barry Bonds just decided not to take a drug test? Demos are the most reliable way of catching cheaters, and they’re playing for money. Nah, recording isn’t important. Even though it’s ridiculous not to record, I will say this: they handled it a lot better than the community did. verGe released a statement accepting the blame for their actions and agreeing with CEVO’s action of overturning the match. I don’t know if they were privately seething or not, but publicly they handled it very well.
That was in stark contrast to the community, who blamed Hyper like they were violating some code of ethics. I hate to break it to you guys, but when the difference between second and third place is $1,000, teams are going to dispute if they think something fishy is going on. And as for CEVO, what should they have done, let verGe keep the win and advance? People would be just as pissed about that because it would look like preferential treatment. Everybody that ever had a teammate banned would be up in arms because they had their match overturned and verGe was allowed to keep playing. Cheating is the biggest issue in online gaming with the harshest punishments. If they allowed verGe to keep playing, CEVO would have looked more whipped than Doug Christie.
Other than that, there wasn’t much worth discussing about the actual matches. 3D fell flat, coL dominated, and the rest didn’t seem particularly exciting – which is something we should never be saying about the playoffs. It’s bad when the event that’s supposed to be the most exciting part of the season is over in the blink of an eye. So bad, in fact, that it’s worth a separate blog post tomorrow.
