MLG Orlando

*Spoilers*

Another MLG has finished and for a whole month Huk will reign as champion until MLG Providence in mid November. Who would have predicted that two out of the top four would be foreigners and that the grand final would be a PvP? The final might have been a bit anticlimactic but the road to it was full of some of the most epic series I have ever seen. I thought that Huk was going to be kept from the grand final by TheSTC and that Idra was going to get knocked out by Bomber, but both gave a great showing and showed that the Korean dominance can be stopped.

Huk looked at the top of his game after disappointing results recently.

What Was Great

The addition of more streams was excellent as it allowed them to show more of the games played. During the finals the new streams showed the games from player perspectives which was a nice touch and a great use for them when the other games had finished. New streams meant that more casters got to showcase their talent in front of a larger audience and I think it's a good thing to offer a diverse range of options. However my personal favorite casters where still Tastless and Artosis, but I didn't get much time to check anyone else out.

After his recent success at IEM Guangzhou Idra continues to impress.

If my internet was good enough to handle  four streams at once I think it would have been great to watch though maybe a bit overwhelming; you cant pay attention to that many games at once. As there was so many streams there was normally something interesting going on so in my eyes it doesn't matter so much that the time in between matches was just crowd shots. The last time I watched MLG they seemed to have quite a lot of audio/visual problems with constantly changing sound levels and the stream audios getting mixed up. This time, however, I didn't notice any problems and the whole event benefited greatly from it; this is especially surprising as they introduced more streams.

Apparently the audience was larger than Raleigh's; but then there was no hurricane this time.

What Needs Improving

At the moment if two competitors who have played before face each other again later in the tournament they have to play an extended series starting with the score from the previous game. To me this system isn't fair as both players have worked their way to this match through the MLG league system so deserve to start off at an even footing. Don't get me wrong it can provide some epic games as players that start two games down fight tooth and nail to win, but at the end of the day I don't see why this system is in place.

The Idra Boxer series was brilliant and I couldn't decide who I wanted to win.

Compared to the recent IPL the stream quality for both the free and the paid for service were quite low quality. It's a shame that MLG is still behind on this considering that they have been around for longer. It would have also been nice to have a regularly updated schedule so that it's easier to jump in and out of the matches you want to watch.

Conclusions

It's not easy to pull of the perfect tournament and it seems like MLG is constantly improving, it may be slow going but I think that MLG is getting better and better. Considering the size of the event it's impressive that it went down so well, but tournaments like the IPL show that a higher standard is possible. Competition often leads to innovation so I see the recent success of IPL as a good thing and I hope it continues to drive the MLG producers to try bigger and better things.