MLG Raleigh Preview
In just a few short days, the Raleigh stop of the MLG Pro Circuit will take place in the Raleigh Convention Center – another can’t-miss event. With recent mentions of the StarCraft scene in the Wall Street Journal, major electronic sporting events are starting to receive the recognition that they truly deserves. The article talks about how the bar scene – yes, the one where you drink at – has changed. Avid gamers and professional gaming followers have made incredible showings in local bars across the entire country to watch all of the live games for major events such as MLG, Dreamhack, and GSL. In fact, the turnout has been so huge that bar owners have kicked out sporting fans to make room for this new audience. Raleigh will absolutely see its own fair share of bar viewing events across the globe.
As for the event itself, the Starcraft scene grabs a few more Koreans that are now invited to join the ridiculously talent-packed pool brackets. Invitee CoCa joins FnaticMSI.Rain in Pool A, Bomber joins Pool B, coL.MVP.DongRaeGu and invited Tester joins Pool C, and lastly NaDa was placed in Pool D. Some may argue that invited players were not as strong as some of the players at Columbus or Anaheim, and while that may be up for discussion, players that originally were in the open brackets that have now placed in the upper pools nearly undoubtedly created the hardest pool play brackets to date – specifically players like Rain and DongRaeGu.
In the Call of Duty and Halo scenes, the story-lines really have not changed in any huge dramatic fashion. Both Halo Reach team Instinct as well as Call of Duty team Leverage are looking to defend their previously earned titles. A huge question in the air will be whether or not any team in the entire Halo tournament can take a game off of the unstoppable squad of Roy, Lunchbox, Pistola, and Ogre2. While there have been some minor player changes here and there,I cannot really point to anything that will really change the pace of the tournament for this MLG in all three of the mentioned games.
For the first time ever, MLG will be hosting a League of Legends tournament. Speculators have said that there was a partnership between Riot games and MLG for the game to be featured at the Raleigh event. However, the event will not be very large, as only four teams were invited to compete at the event. Depending on the viewer response, MLG could possibly include League of Legends as a circuit game in the upcoming season.
GamerFront will be there for an action packed report of the event. Stay tuned to read the recap and review of the event! For those of you interested in watching the games and see the event unfold in live action (along with the other hundreds of thousands of viewers) be sure to check out www.mlgpro.com; also there many listings for bars across the globe hosting MLG Raleigh viewing parties over at www.teamliquid.net.
