“What’s on this week?” Released every Monday to let you know just what’s going on in the wonderful world of esports in the next seven days. Each week, ESI will pick three to four events and provide a brief overview of what’s going down, where it’s taking place and how you can watch it.
Last week we focused on MOBAs with our “MOBA Madness”, it’s hard to avoid doing the same again with Leagues’ World Championships nearing an end and Blizzcon featuring a MOBA, although Blizzard has tried to move away from that term. SMITE is our wildcard for the week, the console quarterfinals get underway this week ahead of their big showing at DreamHack Atlanta.
League of Legends World Championship Final
So here it is, the long awaited final of the League of Legends World Championships 2018. Whilst League might not be for everyone, it’s hard to argue that LoL isn’t one of, if not the most, influential esports title in the world. The weekend just gone saw European hopefuls G2 fall 3-0 to Invictus Gaming (IG) while Fnatic conquered C9 by the very same margin..
Fnatic and IG both started this tournament in the same group, and it always looked like a battle for first between these two titans of their respective regions. With a 1-1 record in their regular group matchups, Fnatic took the first seed out of groups when the two teams fought in a deciding game, a game in which Fnatic dominated.
Now the two are set to lock horns once again. A best-of-five is a very different proposition from a single elimination game, however, Fnatic will take some confidence from their back-to-back victories over IG. Their dismantling of Cloud9 in the semi-finals will also provide them with the perfect boost as they head into the Grand Finals confident of making history.
Stream: Twitch – Location: Incheon – Date: Converted time – Sponsors: MasterCard – Organiser: Riot Games – Prize pool: $2.2m(£1.7m)* plus additions based on in-game item sales
Blizzcon 2018
Blizzcon 2018 is a stacked affair. With World Champions on-the-line in WoW Arena, Heroes of the Storm, Hearthstone and Starcraft 2, plus the Overwatch World Cup and WoW Mythic Dungeon Invitational All-Star event. Blizzcon 2018 is set to offer fans of all Blizzard games and genres something to dig into.
The main action starts on Friday, November 2nd just after the Blizzcon opening ceremony, but action has already got underway. The HoTS Group Stage has kicked off, while the WoW Arena event will begin later today (Oct 29th) and continue into the early hours of the 30th for those in Europe. We will be bringing a special Blizzcon overview later this week to go over everything that’s happening at the game developer’s flagship event.
Stream: Blizzcon – Location: Blizzard Aren, Burbank/Anaheim Convention Center – Date: Full Schedule – Sponsors: ASUS, CORSAIR, HP, NVIDIA, NZXT, Razer, T-Mobile, Cisco, DXRacer, Intel – Organiser: Riot Games – Prize pool: N/A
SMITE Console World Championship 2019 Quarterfinals
Despite the name, the SMITE Console World Championships will, in fact, take place in 2018. The quarterfinals are our focus today, with sides from Europe and North American doing battle on both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One for their shot at the final event of the year which will run alongside the SMITE World Championships, which take place at Dream Atlanta.
Taking place on November 3rd, European sides Imnsonia (PS4) and Noxious (Xbox) will face off against North American sides InControl Gaming (PS4) and Flash Point eSports (Xbox) from the Hi-Rez Studios, before being given two weeks to recover and fly out to Atlanta for the main event at DreamHack.
Stream: HiRezTV – Location: Georgia, USA – Date: 3/10/18 at 17:00 CEST – Sponsors: – mixer – Organiser: Hi-Rez – Prize pool: N/A
That’s a wrap on this week’s picks, be sure to check back next Monday for another edition of the ESI weekly picks.
We want to feature at least one smaller event each week on the ESI weekly picks. If you want an event included in a future edition, send an email to [email protected].