But nobody knows how the OPC teams measure compared to EU/NA/KR. It's impossible to rank them, they never played in the other scenes. Rogue (and nV to some extent) is the only team that plays on all major scenes and it's kinda used as a benchmark to gauge how teams measure cross scenes. That's the weakness of those rankings, there's too few cross region matches. Hopefully most NA/EU will play at the OWL then those rankings will have more meaning. You probably still won't see teams from other minor scenes, unless they participate in tournaments that teams from other regions attend.

Some spots in those rankings are arguable, but overall it's a good list IMO.

SoOn is so inconsistent these days. I don't know what happened, but he used to have better tracking and better bombs. The former might be due to changing his sens, it's pretty high nowadays, as for the latter, well I don't know.. IMO he's a far cry from when he was considered the top Tracer. There are still moments where he will shine, but overall, he's not as good as he used to be.

The time zone thing is my personal hype killer. If they go with primetime West Coast, I'll never be able to watch a single match live, even during the weekend. I'll always be sleeping around 4-6am CE(S)T... I don't mind getting some results spoiled, but if it's all the time.. that sucks. Now they might consider other time zones and schedule accordingly so that more people around the world can watch events live, but if they want to sell as many tickets as possible, then primetime is what makes the most sense.

This time people were only allowed to vote for the committee members (no more streamer team yay) and Rogue is the best team you can make from the talent pool, so they got picked wholesale.

This sounds like the most likely scenario, I don't think Argentina has any pro player, it's doubtful they can even take a map.

EU scene is dead at this point. Eunited, Misfits and Laser Kittenz should move to NA before it's too late, nothing but stagnation awaits them in EU.

I don't think it matters what flag the org is, but I always find that funny when people are like "USA USA USA" as if there's some kind of national pride on the line for a team that comprises 0 American. :P

I'm no analyst, so maybe you are right, but the way I saw it, EFFECT had some great plays but was mostly countered and eventually he started to play alone, Mickie was kind of useless, Chips kept getting picked (not saying it's his fault though), Taimou wasn't convincing (probably burned out, this is a very real issue for foreign teams in APEX) and Cocco was well.. unremarkable, but then he kinda always is, even as Rein I always found him too passive. Route 66 was painful to watch, but yeah, they most likely had lost faith already and Taimou looked tilted. I also don't get why the tactical pause was focused on EFFECT when IMO he was the one playing best for nV. They didn't get stomped like some are trying to frame it, but I wouldn't say it was close either, nV tried different things and nothing ever seemed to work.

KDP vs LH should be a great final indeed.

OMG, I wasn't expecting nV to get rolled that hard. I haven't had the time to watch it, super busy with work, so don't downfrag me to hell if it was actually close. I'm gonna watch it now. :P But damn, 4-0 is rough, nV was looking great with EFFECT...
Well, this series confirmed that all the shit talking on Rogue was very much undeserved. At least they had a close match vs KDP, the same can't be said about nV. Still looking forward to that Contenders Rogue vs nV to see how they stand against each other now.

All matches streamed is the best news. And personally I can't wait to see nV vs Rogue. With EFFECT nV have a chance to win, should be a great match !

Great article. I wholehearted agree.
If they can't stream and cast all the matches, they could at least record them all and offer VODs with no commentary. Many matches I wanted to watch, but weren't streamed.

The real question is who is Reddit going to blame now for NRG's horrendous performance.

I was expecting NiP to be dropped due to greatly underperforming of late but I was hoping they'd give them a bit more time to make some changes within their roster and see if they'd get some results... Sad news.

Zebbo used to be the dedicated Lucio player for Misfits, pretty sure it will be him on Lucio and Chips on Ana/Zen.

This year's rosters are looking so much better than last year. Favorites IMO are Korea and France, but there could be some upsets, several other teams look pretty solid.