Reign of Gaming

Happy new year RoG'ers! 2013 is sure to be even better than 2012 for both League of Legends and e-Sports as a whole. We here at Reign of Gaming have a huge year planned in terms of comprehensive coverage for 2013, but it's good to take a look back at where you came from sometimes. 2012 saw the entire world get involved in the competitive scene, and different parts of the world dominating at different times of the year. TSM went on a dominating streak, M5 did the same and then Asians took over by crushing everyone in their wake. With Season 3 right on the horizon, let's take a look at the biggest stories of 2012 and see what shaped the year.

TheRainMan leaves TSM and Dyrus replaces him

Rewind the clock to early March and TSM was certainly a popular team, but nowhere near the stars they became later in the year. They had long been a team that couldn't really win the big games or close out tournaments, and much of that fairly or not was attributed to then top lane TheRainMan. Tensions ran high in the TSM house between everyone, and things finally boiled over resulting in TRM leaving the team to be replaced by Dyrus.

TSM went on to win the 6 consecutive LANs with Dyrus and really put a choke-hold on the NA scene. They cemented their spot in fan's hearts as the team with the loudest fans at events, and though they faltered towards the end of the season, were certainly the most successful team in terms of overall tournament wins in 2012. 2013 will be a harder nut for the baylife bros to crack with the rise of the Asian scene.

The NA Shuffle - Saintvicious joins Curse, Voyboy joins CLG, Crumbzz joins Dignitas

This is maybe the biggest thing that happened all year, as for many fans it came out of left field. Saintvicious was on top of his game, but everyone knew of CLG's problems dealing with each other in Korea and it all came to a head after their first OGN loss. Saintvicious was told HotshotGG would be jungling and that Voyboy would be CLG's new top lane. This set off the chain reaction of roster that reshaped the entire North American scene after TSM.

Curse is the only team to win a LAN event since the roster move, winning at the MLG Summer Championship in Raleigh over Dignitas (although both teams were disqualified afterwards due to collusion). Every team has since shuffled their roster around a bit since, trying to find the right mix to get back on top again, but one thing that is safe to say is that no roster moves are likely to happen that quickly with that many big name players again for awhile

Asians ascend to the top

At the beginning of 2012, it was hard to believe in Asian teams because they were playing on several patches behind the rest of the world and were largely unknown. The argument was between North America and Europe, and even though World Elite knocked off CLG in IEM China in 2011 it wasn't viewed as a win for them as much as a CLG throw. That changed by the end of the year as we all know. the Azubu each took an OGN despite other big name teams from around the world competing, and that was just the start of the success.

We all became believers of the Asian success after the world championships. A Moscow 5 team that had been dominant all year ran into the eventual champion Taipei Assassins and lost a hard-fought series 2-1. North American teams only won 1 game at the entire World Championships. Fast forward to the last big tournament of the year at IPL 5, and almost every big name team was there. World Elite triumphed over Fnatic and looked dominant the whole way through. Europe might have talent at the top, but the success of the Asian teams can't be ignored and is surely to extend into 2013

2013 will surely be an even bigger and better year. We saw a year that had a tournament winner take home $1 million and stream record numbers shattered. Controversy spiked all over the place. I could include 10 other stories from IWillDominate getting banned from competitive League of Legends, to Reginald's almost retirement, Moscow 5's dominant run, to even the cheating scandals at the World Championship (and the disconnects) from different teams but that's a year's worth of news. Those 3 are just some of the biggest story-lines of the year, and were the ones I had the most fun reporting on.

So RoG'ers what are your top stories from 2012, and what kind of predictions are you making for what will happen in 2013 both good and bad in the e-Sports scene for League of Legends? Let us know in the comment section and be sure to stay tuned to Reign of Gaming for all your news, e-sports, and theory-crafting related needs!

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