A little background on why I was at WCA. I helped to contact the western teams and WCA was really nice to invite me to attend the event as a spectator; I didn't go to WCA for a particular team or to be a translator. I thought that it would be a really fun trip, but I had in mind that I should give a hand to NAVI and Cloud9 if needed, since no one from either team can speak Chinese. If you're still wondering who I am, yes, I am the girl with the purple hair in NAVI's videos.
I am not trying to point fingers at anyone (or side) since it’s not up to me to decide who’s right or wrong in this situation, but I really want to tell everyone what I saw, instead of having to keep all this to myself.
According to the schedule I received upon arriving Yinchuan, there were 4 matches planned for day 2 of WCA. After NewBee defeated Cloud9 I left the venue to find hand warmer patches. When I got back to the hotel around 6 PM, the admins wanted me to go back to the venue to ask if Cloud9 would be okay with adding another round of lower bracket matches for that day. Later Cloud9 and VG both went back to the venue as well, to wait for the NAVI vs LGD match to finish.
I wasn't there for the first half of game 2 between NAVI and LGD, but at some point all players were disconnected and they tried reloading the game for over 5 times. The admins moved both teams to off-stage PCs. After starting the game, LGD had lag issues, so they moved to the same side of the venue as NAVI. The disconnecting issue continued and at that point everyone just wanted to finish the game somehow. The head admin came and asked for both teams’ managers to negotiate on a solution. I called for Igor from NAVI and admin Lulu went to get xiao8. The head admin suggested a few solutions and Igor went to talk to his players. Lulu asked xiao8, "do you need to go talk to your players?” and he said no. Both sides agreed that the game should be finished; it was possible since Vanskor suggested that we load the game in local lobby. However, Igor asked the head admin and xiao8, if game 3 could be played tomorrow and xiao8 agreed.
After game 2 ended, NAVI players started packing up thinking that they could finally go back to the hotel. I can’t remember exactly how it happened but LGD’s manager, xiao8 and Yao all came over to talk to the head admin. The conversation then moved else-where and I ended up going with Igor to translate for him. LGD’s manager said that they never agreed to postponing game 3 and Igor insisted that xiao8 agreed. LGD’s manager asked why the admins didn't call for him but xiao8 instead. I asked Lulu after the tournament ended why she asked xiao8 to the negotiation, she told me that she had no idea who was LGD’s manager, since xiao8 was with the team since first match against Cloud9 and he introduced himself to her as the coach.
LGD’s manager spoke decent English so I didn’t have to translate for them, but at the end both teams agreed to flip a coin to decide. NAVI and LGD ended up playing the third game. I remember leaving the venue at 12:30AM with NAVI (we stayed in the same hotel while Chinese teams stayed in another).
I am really happy that the tournament is all over. Big thanks to all the volunteers who helped me out during the event.
It's at least a little bit funny that xiao8 still speaks for LGD in situations like this. Thanks for the report, nice to hear how that all went down - we had some tweets on it but not a lot of real info.
thanks for the insight helen, just goes to show how messy that whole event was....head admin not knowing who a team's manager is, really? I thought that's the first thing you make sure....
also with this context, xiao8 laughing in that one video makes him even more douchey
Nice post, good to know some unbiased "facts" about what happened. Makes xiao8 look like a little bitch, but also poor form on the tournament admin's part for not knowing who the LGD manager was supposed to be
Well, if he isn't in a position to make decisions for LGD he shouldn't presume to do so anyway, especially not without consulting the people who are. Then laughing in the face of the Na'Vi manager later after he had succesfully messed shit up isn't the nicest touch either.
Obviously it makes the WCA organisation look even worse than before because they didn't even know who the right person to talk to on the teams was, but that was kinda expected, you'd be more surprised if they'd gotten something right.
Can't blame Na'Vi really if it's true, they thought they had an agreement with both WCA and LGD and then suddenly they didn't. Not sure if they should have played the game after all that, in my opinion rather not as it's probably harder on the players to go on playing in this situation than it is for WCA to fit an additional game into their schedule the next day. Because honestly, it couldn't have fucked up anything much more and they didn't really mind playing like 4 series simultaneously before.
Looks like LGD played mindgames with Na`Vi or maybe it was just xiao8. Either way it's nice to hear first hand account rather then people just randomly speculating.
Was never a fan of LGD to begin with but this whole tournament becides giving the players a nice cash pool was really poorly run imo. From Hearthstone to Warcraf3 to Dota, it was really sketchy and just plain blah.