The Team That Saved League of Legends

you know I think it's fair to say League of Legends eSports can be really boring I mean every year we see the same regions win the world championships and not in particularly close sets in local leagues one or two teams almost always dominate individual splits even in wildcard emerging regions there's almost always a singular team who is perennial e good and wins every title with ease it's kind of sad honestly how little competition exists sometimes today but back in the earliest days of league events things were maybe even worse in North America throughout season one the exact same two teams won nearly every tournament that occurred by wide margins Europe was considered diverse for having three separate teams that traded their local titles but that was about the most competitive we'd see things in China a dynasty was starting that would rule the eastern region for half a decade even when League of Legends eventually came out in Korea they almost immediately had two different teams who were favourites to win every tournament and those two teams mind you were sister teams from the same organization League has honestly always been like this but in its early years this caused the game to be in serious danger of having its competitive scene die if you don't have competition people aren't gonna want to watch your eSport they'll get tired of it and leave if this game was gonna have any kind of future somebody was gonna have to come along and make it fun [Music] [Music] much like the ancient Roman Empire League of Legends was built in its early years off a class structure the ruling class were the pro pliers which not many teams were able to reach this height in season one the difference between being a pro and being anything else was gigantic I mean if you ever saw one of these teams enter a tournament you would know that they were all but guaranteed to win it in the region of North America there were only two rosters who ever earned this title of Crowl team solomid and counter logic gaming the middle class consisted of amateur teams these were still filled with pretty good players who were sponsored by established eSports organizations like complexity or curse the reason they were classified as amateurs though was because they just weren't on the same level as the pros the skill gap between these two classes was honestly a lot bigger than it may look here for reference you might find the occasional amateur team winning a tournament here or there but that would likely only be if no real pros decided to enter our third and final class we have to mention were the plebeians otherwise known as the plug teams this class existed because tournaments in leagues early days were super easy to enter often times there was no registration for you or rating requirement all you needed was five players who could show up to your matches if you had that get your guys together make up a team name and you'll be seated up against plebs and pros alike with a chance to grind through bracket testing your skill because of the nature of how easy it was to become a pleb team there were a lot that existed in leagues early years and every once in a while one of them turned out to be pretty good one of the earliest tournaments that existed in league was the new egg winter wan fest of 2010 this was an online event that saw all three classes of teams entering and was probably the first major event to happen since the league's World Cyber Games appearance two months prior hosted on the NA servers the undisputed favorites going into the tournament were counter logic gaming who had just taken the aforementioned WCG title but plenty of competitors stepped up to the plate ready to challenge them one of which was a roster who played under the name rock-solid this was a team that was formed by four players nerrit rambo sam de ham and a 15 year old wunderkind named voyboy like many of the other pleb teams at the time they entered with hopes of having some fun testing their skill in this big tournament that was getting a lot of buzz on league's forums however they had a little bit of a problem League of Legends teams are made up of five players and they only had four to remedy this issue nerrit went off scouting the competitive ladder until he found a pretty interesting character who he thought could round out their squad there was a relatively unknown name who was ranked third overall in soloqueue at the time Ekaterina one-trick with a record of 21 wins and only two losses he added the player who went by the name skaara and asked if he wanted to join the team skaara agreed and rock solids original roster was born now this was the first time SCARA had ever played in a competitive tournament and he was a little bit nervous so he told the team that he would only play if he was allowed to be their support he didn't want to have the responsibility of the loss falling on his shoulders if he were to choke by playing a carry role like his native mid lane the team agreed and shuffled their roster around a bit officially entering the tournament so everything was lining up very well although SCARA still had a bit of an issue one of the reasons he wanted to be their support was because he thought he had a super strong off meta strategy that nobody would be able to beat him with zillion botlane this was pre rework zillion mind to you in season one he was mostly played as a mid laner but SCARA believed the revived mechanic coupled with his laning phase harass and boosts could work very well bot Lane the only thing standing in his way from success with this strategy was he didn't own the champion skaara had only played the character when he was available during a free week rotation and sadly didn't have enough in-game currency to buy the champ rather than spending real-life money on riot points to make the purchase the night before the tournament SCARA would grind out matches to get enough influence points to buy zilean which he eventually did and got to play him as support in the upcoming tournament it turned out ska resilience support was a genius strategy after being seated into their qualifying bracket rock solid stomped all their competition with 5 consecutive victories even beating future pro nat win along the way because this tournament was so big these were only best of ones which was meant to keep things moving quickly this played pretty well into rock solids hands though since they could pick their innovative zillion support every single game not having to worry about someone banning it in a game two or three after their qualifying success they would eventually make it to the main bracket and continued stopping all their opponents in best of ones until they were in the winners finals bracket where they would now have to face off against CLG for a club team like rock-solid this is normally where they'd meet their fate getting to Oh swept by the real pro team finishing out the tournament just happy to have made it this far but to everyone's astonishment they would crush CLG in Game one skaara in particular had a fantastic match on zilean giving him all sorts of confidence and cockiness but sadly this is when the best-of-three series began and CLG which is ban zillion the next two matches ultimately taking the set two games to one rock-solid would finish out the tournament getting a third place trophy behind counter logic gaming as well as team Opie which was an early Korean roster but that didn't really matter all that much the revolution here had already begun with their game one victory against CLG they now had the motivation and the faith that they could go toe-to-toe with anyone skaara in particular would later talk about how much this set inspired him he now had evidence that he's just as good as any other pro player out there they weren't all that special or all that good after all there was a chance that this class structure was based on a total lie and a pleb team could potentially rise up and overthrow the system over the next few months the team of rock-solid would continue entering online tournaments while simultaneously bringing in a few more dedicated players to try and form a main lineup one of the team's earliest newer members was a player named locust who was actually playing with his own squad in that old Newegg tournament but was friends with SCARA from back when they played World of Warcraft together on the same server they'd become friends in league shortly thereafter and Skaro would recruit him to rock-solid to be the team's main support this of course would allow SCARA to move back to his main role of playing mid lane the roster was shaping up nicely although the team still had a little bit of a problem their top laner boy as previously mentioned was only 15 years old and therefore still in high school he had a lot of real-life obligations at the time that prevented him from attending many tournaments so the team wanted to get an extra player on the roster who could serve as a little bit of a backup to him after looking around a bit skaara noticed a guy on a team names oh god bears who seemed pretty talented so he reached out to him asking if he wanted to join rock solid that player was not a top laner it was a little bit weird that he would be forced to play his not main role professionally but he was a happy and fun-loving guy who just kind of agreed to join anyway eventually that dude I'm a cutie pie would find a more permanent spot on their roster as the team's main ad carry lastly as rock-solid was ironing out their starting lineup one of their players Rambo was beginning to move away from competitively getting more into commentating league of legends tournaments when he eventually left to pursue a career in shoutcasting the team would again have another hole to fill on their roster but would again managed to do so this time they brought in a jungler who was a bit of an earlier one trick but was incredibly talented and a very smart theory crafter his name was jet and as he joined the team he would round out a five-man roster that would serve as the team's main starting lineup for the foreseeable future almost immediately after acquiring these new players rock-solid would put up some really impressive results in almost all the events they entered one of their biggest accomplishments was when they managed to upset TSM in a weekly gopher lull taking first place overall this kind of upset was still a little bit rare for them but they were able to consistently hit top for week in and week out in many different online tournaments maybe more importantly though they were also entering and winning a lot of different qualifiers for the few live events that started popping up such as the IPL IEM and MLG tournament circuits they were quickly establishing themselves as someone who wasn't just one of those pleb teams I mean this was a team that was gaining a lot of momentum and a lot of eSports fans really started to love these guys I know I say it a lot but I really cannot overemphasize how boring competitive league was with the same teams when everything over and over in season one rock-solid managing to find ways to topple these pro teams and overthrow the oppressive class system was a hugely welcome thing by the community they quickly gained a dedicated and loyal following who would keep their eyes glued to the screen for every tournament they played and especially because they weren't just beating pro teams but they were crushing them in super entertaining ways for example their support player locust would oftentimes run gangplanks support which that might sound like a weird strategy to you if you're only familiar with modern League of Legends but be rest assured it was just as weird and strange back in season one locust was this incredibly smart theory crafter and realized that the pre rework iteration of gangplank had a few skills that kind of worked well bot Lane specifically if he was played as a support namely his old ability raise morale was used by shooting one of your own minions killing it and then providing an attack damage and attack speed buff to gangplank and his surrounding allies this meant that every time you used it you would be denying a minion kill from your opponent preventing them from getting gold and experience and whatnot and alongside the buff it gave it made him a very strong bot laner who could consistently be used to go aggressive trying to get kills in laning phase while also denying farm from enemy ad carry's locusts gangplank was honestly one of the most fun things to watch in season one and will always be burned into the mind of rock-solid fans who got to see it live locust wasn't the only fun guy who liked to do weird things though I mean everybody on this team was entertaining in one way or another boy boy was routinely stomping on enemies with crazy entertaining champions like a collie skaara was still one tricking his Katarina - insane Kay DA's carrying the team and plenty of different matches jet was a dominant jungler with oh dear and trundle and had a fantastic understanding of jungle pathing and map rotations and of course cutie pie is pretty much the exact same person he is today a fun-loving goofy guy who was always having a good time in game and out eventually rock-solid had so much success and became so beloved by the community that an established eSports organization noticed before long they would be reached out to you and sponsored by Team Dignitas one of the more important early events Dignitas participated in was IPL 3 hosted in Atlantic City this was a big stepping stone for the team since it would be their very first offline tournament they ever attended back in season 1 this was always considered a consequential moment for a roster people would say sure you may be able to have successful playing in online tournaments but those are played from the comfort of your own home where you may have a ping advantage and don't have to worry about the stress of being on stage IPL 3 marks the very first time that rock-solid now Dignitas would be playing in a more high-stakes environment and this time rather than playing for $100 in prize money if they win there was a much bigger prize pool on the line unfortunately voyboy wouldn't be able to attend this tournament because of his schooling so the team would have to play with the substitution skaara would move up to top lane and a friend of Dignitas named alo cicero would end up swapping in to play mid lane for them even with this substitution though Dignitas showed up ready to crush they started off by sweeping team curse two games to nothing to make it to the semi-finals here they'd have to face off against CLG of course CLG were supposed to be one of these unbeatable pro teams but at this point dig were well above all that we only go on - it looks like he has focused eight vicious was this the right thing to do he is able to take a lot of damage they haven't taken anybody off a guy and big fat is kinda get cornered here who here finally Falls scar able to take to SCARA taken down three for the truck will kill all coming down the Haunted shaft there is the old command this is scary buy a soda dancer the pickup wanted because help me now is what everyone else Chester is low snarfer as well star could drop down extremely serious getting on to who dear he knows he can't fight this a room prison Bob to come back up Oh huge fight going up on his Walker shadows coming out all over the place hot just the flash on the other side of the bracket there was a bit of a surprise where the established power house of TSM lost a narrow two games to one series against epic gamer this sent epic into the grand finals where they'd be facing off against Dignitas which epic were on a little bit of a hot streak and did have a ton of talent on their team dyrus West Rice and crumbs would all shine very brightly in this series but still it wasn't enough to take down this new behemoth coming into this tournament you know a lot of people were just like Dignitas Dignitas it happened but it's it's it's gonna be soon be epic epic these teams are all using ringers so we're gonna have to see once they can get their final five together and get that roster on the field these are gonna be some high-caliber teams the next event Ignotus would be participating in was IEM global challenge New York this was another tournament that they qualified for while still playing as rock-solid and would be their first live event where they got to play with their full roster however sadly for Dignitas they would have a pretty unfortunate result although they'd stopped TSM in group stage they would lose to best of ones against CLG and fnatic due to the limited number of games in groups this was enough to knock them out of the tournament now this is something I personally dislike about the early League of Legends tournament circuits where I mean there were hardly any games that occurred in some of these group stages and you could very easily see really good teams getting a little unlucky and being knocked out in groups before given a shot to prove themselves and a real best of series I can only imagine how hard it must have been for the players themselves to travel all the way across the country to new city just to play three separate games and two disappointing performances sending them home already I mean for any normal team I can imagine players would be agonizing about what could have happened if they just played a little bit differently bumming them out to say the least but Dignitas were a little bit odd and here they would have a guardian angel swoop in to lighten the mood on one of the ESL hosts and interviewers who went by the name Carmack came up to SCARA after they were already eliminated asking for an interview now Carmack is known for two things firstly he's known as an incredibly professional eSports career man hosting events commentating tournaments running circuits and even having a high-ranking position at ESL still today but he's also known for polling all sorts of pranks on players and porce Cara was about to be his next victim you are right my name is Cara I'm on Team Dignitas and yeah that's two basemap ever right that's two best mom ever yeah yeah it's it's pretty cool and your team are here tomorrow big know that we are we're out weak weak link we can't go on which I know your team are here tomorrow big will be here but we won't be playing your team here tomorrow I am now to say yeah I get that mark translator over here this might be my teammate boy boy say say it again say we just and your team are here tomorrow big we're here tomorrow big your team are here tomorrow big not normal English no that's that's normal it's a little bit normal English you just gotta you gotta work Rhino understand American American see this is one of the greatest parts about Dignitas even if they got a super disappointing result their players would always remain happy and positive throughout it they had some level of joy that was just so contagious it was possible to beat them in game but it was impossible to keep smiles off their faces every time you saw these guys do anything you would find new reasons to love them before long people almost forgot how good they were as players their performances were irrelevant to their fans they started to love them just for their personalities alone but Dignitas were still really good it's important to remember and they had something up their sleeves that they'd be using to reward those fans soon enough one of the most popular tournament formats in season two was the king of the hill series this was a structure where two teams would play against each other on a particular week the victor then getting to defend their title against a new team next week and so on and so forth until one team was crowned king of the hill at the end the next event Dignitas would enter would be one of these king of the hill series hosted by rampage this had a ton of impressive talent who would be competing from both north america and europe sk gaming and fnatic who were Europe's top two teams would be playing alongside the five best organizations from North America which of course included Dignitas one thing to mention about this event was it actually had a little bit of controversy as surrounding it specifically with the prize money the white cash was doled out here was things would start off with two teams playing against each other in this case it's dignitas and complexity in the first game the winner then becomes king of the hill and gets $200 for each win they then move on to the following week and play the next Challenger but here's the catch if the king is dethroned the person to dethrone them then gets 50% of what the King won this means that hypothetically if there's a king who wins let's say the first four weeks playing in week five they will only have two hundred dollars in prize money on the line whereas if the challenging team beats them then they'll earn a prize of $600 because of that bonus this urged people a little bit since it would kind of punish a team if they were able to be the king for a really long time which seems like the opposite you should be rewarding someone for doing so well but then again I mean these are quite possibly the seven best teams in the world we have competing there's probably not any sort of way that someone's gonna win more than one or two games in a row right [Music] Dignitas played insanely well and quickly established themselves as quite possibly the best team in the world like in previous events they didn't just win these games but they crushed their opponents and did so with hilariously fun and weird champions boy boy was still styling with a collie top lane skaara was picking a heimerdinger mid lane into counter pick champions who were supposed to beat him hell even Jack played ramus in a decisive game 3 against fnatic we knew Dignitas were good and had talent on their roster but I think we forgot how good this team was when they were at full force in a best-of-three setting they could not only beat the best competition out there but they could do so in such fun and entertaining ways that mimicked their great personalities so well the only thing that you could maybe take away from the team at this specific tournament was it was played on any servers so the two European teams here had to play with much higher ping but to be frank everyone's ping was pretty awful back in those days and Dignitas were on such a hot streak that I would bet on them to win even if this was a LAN really everybody was rooting for dig here they were the newcomers who made League of Legends fun again who were now apparently one of the best teams in the world with everything riding high for them what could possibly go wrong [Music] one of the biggest yearly tournaments in leagues first few seasons were the World Cyber Games which you may remember this event which was pitched as the Olympics of gaming it had a lot of historical importance in the league seen since this was the very first lull tournament that ever occurred at WCG 2010 but it was also just a really cool and unusual event in later years seeing as it was the Olympics of gaming rather than the system we have today where players on teams will come from all different corners of the world WCG required that all teams competing have rosters entirely from the same country like the Olympics you aren't really competing as a team here but rather competing representing your country each country has online qualifiers to pick their representative all countries compete against each other at the main offline event which WCG 2011 was hosted in Korea and was a super hyped up League event for a few different reasons the biggest of which was this WCG forced almost every top league of Legends team to swap their rosters around and make new teams for example CLG and TSM who were lifelong rivals both consisted of American and Canadian players so to enter the World Cyber Games both teams would kind of merge their rosters counter logic gaming would enter the Canadian qualifiers with established CLG stars like hotshot GG elements and big fat LP who would team up with TSM's Canadian players K ox and odd one similarly the reverse happened with TSM where CL G's American players would team up with the TSM stars on a new team that they would rename to chicks dig elo sitting this sort of forced collaboration was a really fun thing for fans giving us cool what-if scenarios about roster construction that we would never really see anywhere else now Dignitas as players were off in the United States so they would be entering the American qualifiers but there was one little exception their jungler jad held dual citizenship as both an american and canadian real name joshua leasman jatt was born in canada and had some old Canadian friends who played league of legends that he still kept in contact with and one of his old buddies started a team that he wanted to play in the Canadian qualifiers for WCG and asked jad if he could help this team out now this is where things get a little bit tricky it's unclear whether jad actually played in some of the qualifying games or if he just practiced with the team but he would do something to help out his buddy in these qualifiers whatever it was it wasn't enough as the team would lose the Canadian qualifiers to CLG Canada who ended up grabbing the spot John was still playing for Team Dignitas at this time though and jungled for them as they stomped through the American qualifiers they would meet up against chicks dig ello in the grand finals of a big double elimination bracket where Dignitas were coming from the winner's bracket and chicks dig ello were coming from losers whoever won this best of three was supposed to be the American representative for the main event but this is where things get really really crazy some of the players on CD Eve namely TSM's owner Reginald claimed that Jack shouldn't be allowed to play on Dignitas since he already played in the Canadian qualifiers according to the WCG rulebook there is a rule against a player with dual citizenship representing more than one country the choice of which country is locked in as soon as they participate in any WCG competition according to Dignitas though they had already asked WCG admins if chat was still okay to play with them after his stint with his Canadian friend where the admins responded sure because his Canadian qualifying team quote wasn't serious on top of this jet was already on the USA team before the Canadian ones so if a team were to be disqualified it would be his friends team and not Dignitas as convoluted as all this was it seemed like it didn't really matter at first when it came to the grand final set that was about to be played the way it was structured was because Dignitas was coming from winner's bracket and CBE from losers did would be given a one-game advantage in their best of three series this meant that if they won a single match they would win the qualifying spot whereas CDE would have to win two in a row to win it themselves but in spite of this tough setback CBE would sweep dig two games to nothing to get the qualifying spot or at least that's what they thought it was then revealed afterwards that the American qualifiers supposedly had a bracket reset involved it appears that no other region had this but because Dignitas had never been sent to losers this first loss against CBE would in theory send them to losers and then reset the bracket creating one final best of three series to determine the winner this is a system that does occur in plenty of other eSports but League had not used it before and to my knowledge has not used it since there were claims that this rule was added retro actively by WCG or even riot since no other region used this system but honestly it was probably just an issue of the tournament not being run super well if you scour these old forums you'll find all sorts of threads filled with players complaining that they don't know who they're supposed to be playing next or when their matches begin either way though dignitas and CDE had to show up the next day to play their second set and finish out the series Dignitas then won it and were given the qualifying spot to WCG 2011 which i think you can imagine how the community responded to all this seemingly overnight the perception of Dignitas changed as everybody started rooting against them as they had now robbed a qualifying spot from some of the most beloved pros from north america's most popular teams CBE also didn't really help things themselves as they began complaining about how much everyone had screwed them out of their insane 2-0 sweep honestly the fault here was mostly on WCG staff for having incredibly unclear rules and a horrible qualifying structure but sadly of course it was Dignitas who had to take the heat for all this eventually to compensate for the situation WCG gave both teams qualification to the main event so two american squads would attend after both made it out of the group stage they would face off against each other in the very first round of the playoff bracket which i think you can guess who people were rooting for CBE would take the series two games to one advancing in bracket and would win the rest of their matches without dropping a single game the remainder of the tournament later on the jungler for CDE clg's player Singh Vicious said that this was the best team he ever played on on the opposite side of things for Dignitas this tournament was obviously a downer to say the least not only did they lose out on the gold and not get to place in top three but they also lost out on all the good favor the community had for them and their lovable personalities and ultimately this would cause quite a bit of fallout their jungler jet would leave the team shortly thereafter and in tradition with the team's older jungler Rambo jatt would move into casting he got a job at Riot Games firstly on the QA team working on game balance but eventually built up a career as one of the most beloved casters in the North American professional scene people obviously moved on from this scandal pretty quickly and it was largely forgotten as the years went by in the grand scheme of things that obviously didn't affect Jeff career or anyone elses on Dignitas for that matter but it was still a really sad thing to see happen this roster had just months ago been hailed as the saviors of league of legends who made the competitive scene fun again and brought really cool strategies into the limelight for all their fans to see but for all they did for us we would give them pretty crummy send-off at this point in our story I think it's safe to say that at the very least Dignitas have established themselves as a very weird team the things that they've been doing both as rock solid and dig are not normal whatsoever it's not normal for a random pleb team to be able to win major tournaments beating league's top pros it's certainly not typical for a random group of guys like that to earn the title of best in the world even for a brief period of time it's a million-to-one odds that so many great lovable personalities would all end up on the exact same team and it's almost equally impressive that those same guys found a way to become so loathed by the community at large when jet left the team it was a really sad watershed moment for the squad since he was the first departure from their original legendary five-man roster ultimately this ended up being a turning point for the organization since now there were some big questions about their future was this just a singular moment in history where we got to see this wacky team full of bozos together for a brief period of time is now the moment when they start to transition into becoming a more normal and ordinary organization as a whole well there's only one way to find out let's go ahead and meet jets replacement I will dominate when he first joined Dignitas dominate was still early on in what would turn into a long League of Legends career at the time he was only 21 years old stomping on kids in soloqueue and rising up in raiding to become one of the most promising junglers in North America he's also six for Andros for UC Davis now if you had any worries that Dobbs addition to this team would somehow make Dignitas more normal let me go ahead and put those worries to rest I will dominate have been practicing with the team for about a month prior but he would only officially join Dignitas the day before their next major tournament IEM Kiev now conventional wisdom says we shouldn't expect Dignitas to be super good since they have a fresh new face and they didn't even perform all that well at their last event anyway but then again this is dig we're talking about so we maybe shouldn't be all that surprised when they would be team cypher as well as against all authority in the group stage to make it into playoffs and then after losing to TSM beat SK gaming two games to one to get third place this was a shockingly good performance as Dignitas racked up another trophy that a lot of people didn't expect them to get but maybe more importantly this gave them last-second qualifying points needed for the IEM season six world championship and at that tournament dig would be nearly everyone in their six team group stage to make it out of groups then sweeping triple A two games to nothing before losing to Moscow five in the grand final the loss to m5 was probably disappointing but dig put on really great performances that almost nobody saw coming they were just moments removed from trying out a new jungler after losing to a team literally named chicks dig yellow but they had already recaptured the success of their previous roster and re-established themselves as possibly the best team in North America while certainly being challengers for a world title to the joy of their fans dominate was also just as wild and crazy' of a personality as any of the other players on the team which made it feel like he really belonged now with a stable roster once again the team had another new adventure to embark on this is the moment in leagues history where most people were realizing that Korea was becoming the best region in the world league of legends had only been released in the country somewhat recently but their infrastructure and competitive eSports scene left over from StarCraft brood war was already developing some of the best League of Legends players alive coincidentally the season two World Championships were right around the corner so most teams at this point in time decided to head off to Korea and play in their o GN Champions League taking it as an opportunity to improve as much as they could all the top talent from na Europe and even China would be going which of course included Dignitas most of the teams who made the trek to Korea got some sort of positive result out of it some of them placed quite well in OGN champions others managed to escape groups and even the ones who failed ended up still getting to experience esports culture firsthand but Dignitas once again would find a way to be the oddballs that they've always been this time it was their newest player dominate who almost immediately upon landing in Korea he would start to get sick like really sick it was as though his body was rejecting the prolonged exposure to non American soil Dom would be rushed to the emergency room twice during their stay which probably affected practicing and performance at least a little bit dig would narrowly miss out on getting out of their group getting one win and two losses in total and would be sent home fairly early this disappointing result would see another two roster changes to the team upon their return to the United States firstly their legendary support locust would move away from competitive league as he was replaced by a player named to put TOI after his departure Diggs top laner voyboy would leave the team to move to the more established counter logic gaming keeping in their tradition of forcing non top laners to play top lane for them Dignitas would sign a jungler crums to fill out their roster once again as the year passed by it started to seem as though Dignitas was just in a constant state of fluctuation see-sawing back and forth between being a good team one day and a bad team the next this wasn't exactly the best time for this to be happening since the competition in the league of legends was starting to get pretty fierce with each passing tournament more and more talented teams were showing up who would go on to become the future stars of the game if Dignitas wanted to recapture their rock-solid glory days and take home a major first-place trophy once again they would have to seize any opportunity that came their way soon the 2012 MLG summer championship was one of the last majors in league of legends before the end of season two and was incredibly important for a few reasons for starters it was just a big tournament with a first-place prize of $20,000 awarded to the winners that was obviously a nice payday but maybe more importantly than that this tournament was one of the last chances teams had to improve their standings for the season two regionals season two worlds was right around the corner and had a ton of hype building up to it since it would bow the biggest prize pool any lul tournament had ever seen everybody wanted to qualify to attend but to do so they would have to place top three in their local regionals the North American regional tournament was held shortly before with a single elimination bracket where the top three teams made it to worlds on top of that these qualifiers would also give those three victors a bid to the newly forming LCS a regular-season professional League that would serve as the main hub of competition for leagues starting in season three it isn't much exaggeration to say that these qualifiers were maybe the biggest tournament anyone had ever played and up until this point and seeding for them was really important because it was only single elimination it was imperative for teams to get a good matchup for their first round for example if a team got the number 8 seed of meaning that in round one they would have to play against the number one seed losing here which is likely would knock them out of contention entirely eliminating any worlds or potential LCS dreams but if that same team increased their seeding by even just a little bit and got an easier match for their first round that was a big deal not only would they obviously have an easier time winning but even if they lost their next round in bracket they would be given a second chance to qualify through the third-place match getting a good seed here so you dodged any bad matchups you may have in round one was a really big deal and this MLG tournament was the last chance anyone had to influence their seeding on top of all of this North America's two biggest teams TSM and CLG didn't bother to show up here their seeding couldn't be influenced by a win or loss so these organizations decided to just continue bootcamping trying to prepare for Worlds but that only gave more excitement to this competition since now anyone could win it all no matter who you were you could get a really big payday influence your seeding in a major way and be well equipped to qualify for Worlds as well as LCS on top of the joy that you would obviously get to have holding a first place trophy and it looked like Dignitas were ready to take advantage of this the way the event was structured was there were two brackets a red bracket and blue where each were both double-elimination and the champions of both brackets would meet up in Grand Finals in the red racket Dignitas started off by beating CLG black two games to zero they would then beat team dynamic twice in some fairly close sets which was pretty dang impressive as dynamic had a lot of talent on their team including future LCS stars of Zion Spartan and Zig but dig would still eke out wins against them to make it to grand finals and would have to face off against team curse again this was a really important match the way the standings were starting to shape up whoever lost this would likely have to play against team dynamic in the North American regionals who were gonna be stiff competition no matter what even though Dignitas did just beat them they were again an up-and-coming team filled with future LCS stars whereas whoever won this series on the other hand would likely play against Team solomid Evo which was a sister team to TSM who had recently been putting up some much weaker performances and shouldn't be quite as tough not to mention again if there is a ton of prestige getting to hold a first place trophy and $20,000 but there is something in the blood of Dignitas that prevents them from being normal funnily enough their old jungler jatt will be casting this grand final set with demon which as everyone was getting hyped up and excited for game number one giant noticed something kind of interesting yeah i mean going back to the tournament stabbed past their solving Sonique out we don't worry about that but this apparently is real if we hop over to champion select that's never real not in a million years if that's real I'd eat my hat because that is bonkers dignitas and curse had both picked all random champions and we're gonna run it down mid lane Game one of this ever important best of five long crazy poking him that's gonna be a great cat's aaron swartz a [ __ ] to say [ __ ] is gonna poke in there it's gonna dive in win the other day we get one that Barr's goes down safe [ __ ] drops as well curse is gonna catch off the toy that but toy goes down Westeros picking up a double kill that's gonna work very well they are they gonna get a colonic poke on sauce the tower they're going to get the slow on Westeros I'm a cutie pies go very deep he was sad eyes rest eyes he actually just wants to go fire that's all they're doing they just want to simply go back and buy so history tried to make a few slits ni Jackie should get taken out crumbs bunches to get the kill there again the e coming out from pat so just getting that slow down submissions going too deep with Leona that's good scar a business's to pick up the killer he's gonna get taken down manages to get very much as well the mushrooms should be enough he gets one he gets to can he get a triple no no Jackie's gonna survive this unit by will just probably the fact though he's been left to eat nowhere but don't worry because the super minions will end this misery for us yes finally stars going to shoot up again I'm a CUNY PI a Dignitas take Game one and what a strange game it was indeed 85 66 31 minutes gone thanks for making me cast an Arab guys the rest of the series that was played woodsy curse winning with the final tally being three games to two but that wouldn't really matter as MLG said this was collusion and stripped both teams of the prize money and circuit points awarding them to the teams below them now was this collusion I think probably not I mean I don't think that if these teams colluded to split the winnings or whatever that they would do so in such a blatantly obvious way I believe that Dignitas genuinely just wanted to have some fun here and what's more fun than a ramming Game one of a grand finals after all was said and done Dignitas would have to face off against team dynamic after all round one of the NA regionals but being the weirdos that they are they would just win anyway and in pretty handedly fashion two games to nothing this puts Cara and company up against CLG once again in the semi finals this of course was pretty reminiscent of the very first time they ever faced off in the semis all those years ago in 2010 and just like all those years ago Dignitas took Game one whoever won this best of three series would be off to Worlds in the LCS they'd effectively secure their future in competitive league the question remained though can rock-solid get more than just Game one I've been there and start a fight that's a natural sort of counter to the poke composition right on top of the water body slam through the wall explosive amount of damage away once again no rupture from casket that was out deep inside there and they try to play the fog of war on this one there is very low light now it has 30 by one big feet boy boy boy out of this fight big bass there's a lot of damage to send over the side baron is just doing damage that the big attack very nice job by crumbs able to think up a double kill burns up I found it's all right take you down from frame now go through the wallet be safe now alone damaged slightly to pick that one up and down in ago an inhibitor all the are available they have already spawned again once a strike can be really bad Dignitas there's a knock up dominate to it a lot boy way up in the truck on a star on the team of CLG as well chowster is still making himself take here over a 3,000 HP sona the initiation goes in fact Dignitas is on their heels most of the cooldowns have been used metal is part of the fight but can you give that get to damage dominate what is ultimate on is trying to bring them outside the base very smart play by him keeping them at bay from attacking inhibitors but it won't be far look for the game three months story boy goes down out of duty fighting for double kill the timers for responder very LG is first on this one they are getting completely flooded if any attacks is without the connection it is going to be cute the Nexus only losing 10% out at this point several men sports out of the fight the shots could be going down hotshot getting caught too far off and he's down to about 25% HP this could be the pan advanced mistake that's odd self in the season two once again Dignitas found a way to be the lovable weirdos that they are surprising everyone by not only beating CLG but doing so in a nearly eighty minute long game that might be one of the most back-and-forth games in League of Legends history they beat their old pal voyboy to make it to grand finals where they would end up losing to TSM two games to nothing but at that point it didn't really matter they had made it to Worlds and LCS continuing their streak of inconsistent and weird play Dignitas would get knocked out of worlds losing all of their games in group stage they'd even lose to the wild card team Saigon Joker's representing Vietnam which was pretty shocking to a lot of viewers and if that wasn't weird enough following this tournament I will dominate their jungler would be banned from competitive play for a year by Riot Games for flaming players in soloqueue I hope I don't have to tell you this is not normal none of this is normal other teams don't do this normal teams don't come top to a tournaments after signing players days before the event normal teams don't lose tournaments because their junglers body is rejecting the country he's in normal teams don't play gangplank support or get banned from competitive play or get caught up in hilarious interviews or make random ridiculous tweets that everybody just starts repeating across the internet because why nine if only one of these things happen to a team it would be odd but the fact that it's the same team throughout years of play throughout dozens of rosters the fact that they're the ones that keep getting involved in all of this is honestly incredible you know the ethos and spirit of Dignitas as a whole might best be represented at the MLG 2012 spring championships in Anaheim here a hyped up Dignitas after just beating CLG qualified for the winner's bracket finals where in response I will dominate stood up and smashed his head set on the table breaking it in the process his teammates sitting next to him SCARA responded by saying dude just broke your headset look to which dominate responds we dominate left the team due to his ban Dignitas responded by moving their top laner crumbs back into the jungle and signed a new support player to play top lane keeping with their time-honored tradition of never signing top laners who actually MainTop that support player went along with it though because he might be the nicest human being who has ever graced the earth his name is Kiwi kid Kiwi was sort of the anti Dom a super polite and wholesome guy who was so sweet towards everyone he would give you a cavity if you stayed in his presence for too long I just feel really lucky I feel really grateful every day I know I don't mean it like look down on others but you know I have a working body and everything I feel really blessed and I just you know as long as I can walk and I can think and I can sleep like people having song people have a lot of other things and yeah I'm not I don't really it sounds like I'm comparing myself to them but really I'm not I just really feel lucky and I always feel just lucky walking in the world this niceness also showed in his professional career as once he was on Dignitas he would stay loyal to the organisation playing for them the rest of his time as a professional league of Legends player Dignitas would then turn around and reward him by never taking first place in anything ever again at this point in history the LCS era for League of Legends had just kicked off and for the most part this was the start of a pretty boring era of competitive play league had moved on from the fun hyped up tournament circuit of old and moved into a more traditional sports model this includes a grueling regular season that only had a short playoff bracket at the end of spring and summer meaning a lot of games had very few stakes built into them with hardly any hype at all I mean a win or a loss in any regular season game doesn't merely carry the same sort of weight that a tournament set when our loss is gonna have so it's gonna be pretty tough for Dignitas to continue their weird streak of play on a completely unrelated note though let's talk about baron for a second [Music] so baron is a boss monster on summoners rift that's pretty important if you kill him getting the last hit you will get a big buff for your team that does a lot of good oftentimes getting this buff can win you a game the catch is because he's a boss monster he's really hard to take down and if you go in unprepared he might kill you himself or if the enemy team catches you trying to take him down when you're unprepared then they can oftentimes kill you and then finish him off winning the game just like that the point being it's very important that you only go for Baron if you know it's a safe and good idea and almost every team in League of Legends knows this almost every team from the Baron losing for health head to a thousand health oh my gosh detective steals it there's the shock would do they have the damage scar does not have sodium snorts tariffs will they get the blue around the corner there comes stars he goes into this one inhibitor has restarted the here they go in for the fight there's gonna have helped red team is flame ferragamo actually gets it in the fight now it's worse to run away that's a shut up for the backside that's some low HP bars I dig does xdg have the focus to pull this fight their favourite Cruiser goes down to Bailey qtpie dig why did you go for baron nobody in the history of League of Legends has been better at leading in a game going to Baron and then losing the match then Dignitas dig has managed to do this so often that people started creating montages of how frequently they would throw games at baron after only a single year of LCS play just one year of LCS and they were already doing this so often that you could populate a montage video with it but of course one year wasn't enough I mean they certainly didn't learn their lesson at this point they would throw at baron at IEM years later just tease a little bit about a TEDTalk way people fight you piadina can mmm reading some deputies you want that steamed bun Jessie's goes deep and a polite run to get a bullet pop up but he's he threw up ting he goes yeah the fee now he's after that they would throw a baron in 2016 na LCS the queue is in the queue assad he's gonna have to take it before wears off the queues off he goes is left wondering right now sweetie very low they would even throw it barren as recently as three months ago and it's a spite infer tricky Krabs the Baron but the teamfight is going all the way a hundred bees it's a complete ace as a trade for the bear and gold gamefreak but it's as if this is a part of their soul I mean no matter how hard they try Dignitas even today cannot stop themselves from being who they are there's probably something beautiful about that this kind of extreme gameplay is would allow Dignitas to continue being the oddballs they've always been even with the regular pedestrian structure of LCS like it's a pretty big joke in multiple fan communities that you know their team always gives them heart attacks with closed games but Dignitas is results and inconsistencies are honestly something of legend let's rewind the clock a bit to show you what I mean going back to the very first blood of LCS headed into 2013 Dignitas were a bit of a question mark in that they had just shown how good they could be with their beautiful regionals run but also showed the opposite end of the spectrum with their worlds performance their first week of LCS started off a little bit inconsistently with one win and two losses but after that they would shock a lot of people by quickly bouncing back going 3-0 week 2 and almost immediately established themselves as one of the top teams with a big win against TSM Dignitas would then go on to win nine games in a row before losing another which they finally decided to start doing again halfway through the season their streak of dominance continued despite these losses though and they were the very first team to qualify for the summer playoffs in week 7 being 1st place here it should mean that it's going to be easy for them to snag one of these top two seeds which would earn them a by guaranteeing a minimum fourth place in the playoffs although okay they're slipping a little bit here but it's okay just got two weeks to go surely you guys can win enough to hold on to this lead right the final week of the season Dignitas missed out on their bye and that meant they had to play in the first round of the spring playoff here they lost two games to one and we're now put into a relegation Series having to wreak Walla Fife or LCS before the next split looking back on these stats I honestly don't know how it's possible to go from this to this and we'll GG little stop this from splashing it lands the EQ then take you to Oak Lawn oh my gosh the first name is 420 falls over and there's ice party fights cutie pies well okay that kind of makes sense in 2014 Dignitas were shaping up to be a really good team once again they still had crumbs cutie pie and kiwi kid from their earlier roster but had now brought in a new superstar mid laner shifter as well as Zion Spartan Zion would be their top laner and was surprisingly someone who actually main top lane this team didn't need to wait at all for getting off to their hot start as the very first week of LCS dig would win three games only losing one at snagging second place again they would win all of their matches in week two to get first overall and again week in and week out they were crushing everyone in North America they might lose once in a blue moon but they were clearly a top two team never ranking lower than a tied 1st place in LCS oh where'd you go dig Wow Dignitas went to and ate their last three weeks of LCS to go from easily getting a buy to again just barely not being relegated in their playoff series dig would lose in the first round three games to one if repeating history these losses would cause them to miss out on not just a shot at an LCS title but a shot at qualifying for a world championship but okay this has to be a freak occurrence right they can't keep finding a way to do this a year later Dignitas acquired a roster that was loaded with talent once again they still had Kiwi kid and shipped her from before but at this point they started acquiring some legendary Korean import players to play alongside them helios was a Korean superstar who previously played on azubu blaze one of Korea's first two dominant teams in the region they would also get core JJ who joined their team as a support who was so talented and had so much potential he would go on to win a World Championship lastly their roster was rounded out with Dom Hsu their top laner who was again to everyone's surprise a top laner who actually maimed top lane again in week 1 Dignitas would start off a little bit weak showing that they were beatable but they would quickly establish themselves as competitors who were regularly bouncing between the top three teams in the standings once again as week 7 approached they were poised to qualify for the playoffs with just a few wins here're there come on dig let's see you do this for your fans once again Dignitas fell to barely qualify for the playoffs at all they were eliminated round 1 missing out on another shot at an LCS title and another shot at Worlds it's honestly insane how often Dignitas continued this see-sawing between being a good team and a bad team throughout even the most plain and boring league formats they were a gift of entertaining joy for fans for such a long period of time but after a while it looked like that time was about to come to an end in an effort to stabilize the structure of LCS Riot Games would be moving to a franchised system similar to other more successful traditional sports leagues starting in 2018 this meant the teams would have to apply for admission with the company while paying a big hefty fee if they got accepted while then getting to enjoy benefits of a franchise model if they did get in however Dignitas would have their bid rejected and would not be participating in the LCS for the foreseeable future it likely didn't have anything to deal with their wacky or wild play as honestly they were great entertainment for LCS while they were still there this team has always put out great products courtesy of the players but the organization of Dignitas itself wasn't always all that well liked if you talk to a lot of the old members of Dignitas especially the League of Legends team I think every single one of them dislike dick as an org they were well known to be one of the worst orcs to play for in the league and it's pretty like and although the players love are the fans love dig every single fan loved the players didn't love the organization it was a bit of an open secret in eSports that Dignitas wasn't really the best when it came to how they treated their players and managed the League of Legends side of their organization if you spend much time around eSports veterans they'll probably start throwing out plenty of horror stories about some of these early days of dig before you know it but honestly I don't think the story is really all that much about Dignitas at least not directly this story told over the course of 7 years is about a team but a team of players above all else players who were such odd goofballs that they reminded you what it was that made eSports so special in the first place it's not about the million-dollar contracts or playing in big arenas or winning tournaments or even trying to become the best in the world these sports are great because it's filled with weirdos nerdy kids who might not be much good at anything in real normal life but they are good at one thing and they can build a life here they can have a personality that they build up behind a new name and those personalities can mean something I mean they can make you laugh make you smile make you cry they allow you to get distracted from all the horrors of the real world even for just a second and you can get lost in silly adventures that they might not mean much but yeah they're entertaining and you know if you get some joy out of following it then maybe it does mean something after all at the end of the day there has never been a team with more personality on it than dignitas and rock-solid today almost every one of diggs original members are still around in a community which is a testament to how larger-than-life their personalities really were jatt had a huge cast in career and recently became the head coach of Team Liquid SCARA became one of the biggest teamfight tactic streamers and that games entire existence boy boy and dominate are still huge presences in the league of legends streaming scene and I'm a cutie pie is one of the biggest and most successful streamers of all time and I I don't know how this happened I mean how did all of these guys end up on the same team personally my theory that original creation of rock solids first roster it birthed something something that has permeated through sponsorship changes through roster swaps and tournament formats something that has blessed and cursed this team to always be beautifully weird call it fate call it destiny call it god but i swear something looks after them and prevents them from ever being normal [Music] just a few years after being removed from LCS it was announced in 2019 but Dignitas were returning one of the teams that had replaced them clutch gaming who was owned by the Houston Rockets would have a majority stake in the company bought by Dignitas and the team would rebrand themselves with their name of old now from what I've read Dignitas has been trying to change and move forward in a more progressive direction compared to their mismanaged past but whatever direction they may go in I'd like to believe that original rock-solid spirit is still with them I mean the clutch gaming roster they bought out had just gone to the 2019 World Championship and then when winless in group stage the exact same way Dignitas did all those years ago in season two in the following 2020 season it may be tough to believe that this name still has some magic in it but let's look and see what dig has done in league of legends so far they started off by giving an astronomical salary to a player who would then leave the team before even finishing his first split they then signed legendary old pros who everybody loves creating a team of adorable goofballs that team then crushed the LCS for a bit before sliding late in the season just barely losing tiebreakers to not make it to the playoffs yeah this is Dignitas all right this team is a fever dream they are blessed and cursed they have one of the strangest histories you'll ever find in any eSport but have brought joy to the faces of thousands in spite of it they will be remembered 100 years from now [Music] [Music]

Channel: Gbay99

Views: 475,491

Rating: 4.9430113 out of 5

Keywords: League of Legends, Dignitas, Team Dignitas, Documentary, Rock Solid, RS, League, Legends, Esports, LoL Esports, Esports Documentary, LCS, Voyboy, Scarra, Dominate, iwilldominate, IWD, Imaqtpie, Qtpie, L0CUST, Jatt, Gbay99, Gbay, LoL, Dig, History, stream, league of legends 2020, dignitas lcs, Team Dignitas LCS, Dignitas LCS 2020

Id: PahDjXMsJys

Length: 65min 52sec (3952 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 23 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/L0CUST]

Recently ran across some of my college notebooks full of strategy/tactic concepts for league. Figured I'd check in on LCS/reddit to see how things are going. This was a nice surprise :) thank you for the well-made video. My notebooks brought back memories, but this was better.

[u/Ma1vo]

Scarra asking for a Denmark translator always cracks me up

[u/Jamesbroispx]

Gbay in vid: "Was this collusion? I don't think so"

IWD watching this video on stream: "Yes, it was absolutely collusion, 100%"

[u/IWDominateLoL]

Amazing video man, i'll show this to my kids one day I promise.

[u/AlbatrossNecklace]

I can't believe I watched the whole thing but man it really takes me back.

Also kiwikid is a fucking angel and nothing will compare to the glory days of him and qtpie

[u/Lowsmithy]

I did NOT expect the team to be Dignitas

[u/Boardatworck]

I'm surprised the dyrus leaking the taric strat wasn't there. I know that most of the team has forgiven him for that and I know dyrus simply made a mistake, but that was one fo the reasons they did so poorly at world's from what I recall. Instead the video just treats it like a typical dignitas moment when instead they said it demoralized them really badly.

[u/IgotUBro]

Did you think about partnering up with LCS/LEC and do feature length documentaries they could air before the leagues or something like Dota2 with their documentaries during their International following the winning team etc?

I really like your stuff and hope you do an UOL docu someday.

[u/stvbles]

Just watched Dom reacting to it. Amazing video.

​

100% collusion lmao.

*edit* I miss old DIG.