By Nevan Shum
Staff Writer
As we near the last quarter of the year, major e-sport tournaments are kicking off left and right. Both games from Riot Games, Valorant and League of Legends, have their final and most important tournaments of the year. These competitions have massive prize pools of millions of dollars and trophies specified for winning that year. The creators of the Worlds trophy, Thomas Lyte, list that their trophy is made of brass and silver plate with 24 carat gold accents.
Because North America is a major region for any professional video game scene, they are often spoken about even in other regions and countries. Despite this, North America has only seen the semi-finals, reaching third and fourth place in the World Tournaments.
This year, we see teams who won in the North American League Championship Series (LCS), 100 Thieves, Team Liquid, and Cloud 9 participating in Worlds 2021. Of these three, Cloud 9 is the most famous in the League scene for making it into the semi-finals during the 2018 Worlds Championship and winning half a million dollars. Although these three teams did make it into Worlds, the best North American team by first-place results in LCS. TeamSoloMid lost to Cloud 9 this year.
However, before teams can enter Valorant’s Champions Tournament, they must progress through Valorant’s Masters Tournament. This is because the Masters Tournament decides which teams enter the Champions bracket. Currently, the highest ranked North American team, Sentinels, and the second-best by points, Team Envy, are qualified to enter Champions. Because of North America’s large representation, they qualify for three teams. The third team is still to be determined, however, from the remaining ten North American teams participating, the one with the most points for the qualifying tournament currently is 100 Thieves.
Both events — League of Legend’s Worlds and Valorant’s Champions — occurring at the end of the year brings excitement to all Riot fans, and although in-person viewership is still not allowed, Riot still brings entertainment to their fans every year.
FEATURED IMAGE (at the top of this post): Riot Games Headquarters in Los Angeles [PHOTO CREDIT: wikimedia.org]
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