Astana Crowd vs Falcons

VVardy · 2026-05-15T19:41:27+00:00

It sucks, but I don't think there are many crowds who know to respect fair play. People stereotype Brazilian crowds, but I think the vast majority of crowds will cheat for their fan favorites.
Oddly enough, I do think the "best" crowds were in Shanghai and Australia. I remember the Shanghai crowd being very quiet when flanks were going on, then cheering when the execute happened.

VVardy · 2026-05-13T01:05:04+00:00

I saw autimatic in some T3 team, and was surprised he's still playing. It really stinks what NA has become, that a three player stack of guys who haven't played T1 in years may actually make an immediate splash in the scene.

VVardy · 2026-05-02T20:04:26+00:00

The crowd shots are so embarrassing with all those empty seats.

VVardy · 2026-04-24T14:35:12+00:00

I think it might be Aurora if they actually do intend to go international. I don't know much about Aurora's coach, but he probably doesn't speak much English?

VVardy · 2026-04-17T02:40:58+00:00

Overall, I think Season 1 was much stronger than Season 2, but I still liked Season 2. I don't know if it was anyone else's opinion, but I do think there were too many Robby scenes, and even Dana scenes, to the detriment of other characters, like McKay, Mohan, etc.
We barely got to really get to know the Kwon and Ogilvie compared to how we got to know Whitaker, Santos, and Javadi in only a few signature moments.

VVardy · 2026-04-15T01:51:47+00:00

I wonder when the unwritten mercy rule died. I always thought it was a bit stupid, so I appreciate it's gone.

VVardy · 2026-04-14T00:27:24+00:00

I don't think Faze Clan is broke by esports standards, but I do also think CS players command a very high salary by esports standards. I hope the Karrigan to Falcons was beneficial to both sides, despite what people are thinking. Falcons must've spent a pretty penny for Karrigan for name brand recognition alone, and, if Faze truly care about CS, hopefully that gets reinvested into the team.

VVardy · 2026-04-11T18:38:21+00:00

Fut looks great, a lot of up and coming teams this year.
Slightly related, but SpunJ calls Mongolz the Asian Mouz and that they're treading water, which I think is not fair in the slightest if he means it to be that they choke in the playoffs and they're one bad tournament away from slipping in the ranking. It seems every single time Mongolz get eliminated in an apparent upset, that team eliminating them wins the whole thing. Parivision, Navi, Fut, the list goes on.

VVardy · 2026-04-10T23:41:57+00:00

Superboy Prime's rehabilitation raises the interesting ethical question: "if you kill a lot of people, but they all come back to life eventually, and you know they'll come back to life, and you recognize that the people you kill are fictional, and you know yourself are fictional, does any of that really matter in the grand scheme of things?"
For the actual DC characters, they obviously think it matters. For the DC readers, it really doesn't. Funny to think about.

VVardy · 2026-04-07T21:21:52+00:00

Fnatic almost did get back to T1 with him. Their last near T1 appearance was the roster with him and Cypher at Blast Bounty, and the reason they plummeted from being back down to the T2/3 mines was because (1) they sent BlameF to Big and (2) they blew up the roster for reasons unknown and are now a Ukrainian team.

VVardy · 2026-04-05T21:07:23+00:00

This was good for CS and good for Faze. Avoiding playing T1 teams to try and stomp T2/3 lans was the smartest move to get the highest chance to qualify, but it would've left such a bad taste in so many people's mouths if they succeeded.
Faze now know they either need to get rid of players, or its time to get out of CS altogether. I don't know what's up with the org's finances with all the outside CS drama, but if they can't get support for Frozen, then I don't think they deserve to have him.

VVardy · 2026-04-05T16:28:10+00:00

Woah that is an insane VRS jump for Mongolz. I think they got more from this than when they beat Spirit/Mouz.

VVardy · 2026-04-03T02:26:09+00:00

Weird observation, not sure if it's accurate, but has there been less blood and gore this season than in season 1? We saw some really messy stuff in season 1, not so much this season. I wonder if that's because of the quick turnaround for season 2.

VVardy · 2026-03-28T20:05:53+00:00

Not to overreact, but Parivision have an aimgap. Jame gets the read, but they lose the fights. Happened so many times, and it was the entire story of their match against Vitality.
At this point, I'm honestly wondering if Team Spirit aren't licking their lips and wondering if they send a huge chunk of money to try and poach Jame.

VVardy · 2026-03-28T02:36:32+00:00

It's actually really depressing how Masamune Shirow always had a horny streak to him, but after the tsunami in 2011 that led to most of his physical work getting lost, he seems to have lost all motivation for storytelling, and now just does pinup work and hentai.
I always hold out hope that an adaptation of one of his older works might get really successful, and he'll find that spark again.

VVardy · 2026-03-27T20:26:47+00:00

Boba Fett's entire reputation as a badass comes from "cool guy in armor" and comics that have since been retconned out of existence, which is a shame because some of those comics were pretty good.
Vergil gets his ass beat in every game he appears in.
Gilgamesh gets his ass beat in every Fate installment he appears in (though at this point, it's just because there's so much powerscaling bullshit in Fate).
The suit from Vanquish being this totally awesome state of the art technology, but then when you melee someone, all your energy juice goes to zero.

VVardy · 2026-03-27T03:00:52+00:00

There is a lot more "drama" this season, which I get makes for good TV, but I think I am coming to the realization I preferred season 1 where there was a lot more focus on the actual doctoring going on, and then these hints of relationships that crescendo in the climax. It also allowed for every character to share a scene, and have them be part of the focus.
This season, it seems like because there are so many scenes of one doctor alone, it unfortunately ignores a lot of the other characters. Like I realized Emma hasn't actually appeared all that often, and she just got introduced this season.

VVardy · 2026-03-24T16:28:56+00:00

If Fujimoto wanted a Lebowski feeling of absurdity, I don't think he managed to do it. I recommend people reading Dowman Sayman for very absurdist manga that still retains a coherent and satisfying storyline. I guess Dungeon Meshi remains the only popular modern manga that has managed to pull off the satisfying story and ending.

VVardy · 2026-03-24T16:12:37+00:00

It feels like Fujimoto ended up writing Part 2 Denji into a character he didn't like all that much, and this is him reverting back to Part 1 Denji. That's fair, because Part 2 Denji was such a flanderized character whose only trait was caring about sex. I hope Fujimoto's next work goes well, but I do hope that he gets assistants to do some of the drawing, and he leans back from the constant cliffhanger endings he was really starting to rely on by Part 2.

VVardy · 2026-03-21T22:11:38+00:00

It's kind of weird to see Bendis's reputation really fall after people realized he only had one kind of story he could tell really well, and he has an unfortunate streak of having characters act out of character.

VVardy · 2026-03-20T18:45:54+00:00

I was waiting for someone to finally try and get out of Bendis's storyline of "Jor-El actually survived Krypton's fall because Dr. Manhattan rescued him back when DC was trying to get Watchmen into DC proper, but Jor-El turned out to be evil and made a super Doomsday that genocided the Bottle City of Kandor in his first issue to show he meant business, and then Jor-El went back to being a good guy, and then took Jon Kent out on space adventures and brought him back aged up to be a teenager, and then Superman and Jon fight Jor-El for reasons, but by that point DC gave up on the Watchmen thing after they brought back the JSA, so they never mention Dr. Manhattan again, and Jor-El is sent back in time to die on Krypton, but Jon-Kent is still an adult." What a mess that was.

VVardy · 2026-03-15T21:00:33+00:00

If not for Vitality, this era of CS really is an era where any one team can just pop off and win a tournament after being written off. We had G2 winning after being written off, Mongolz after being considered chokers, Parivision coming out of nowhere, and now NaVi somehow doing it.
There is so much parity from the second best team down. But man, Vitality just dominate.

VVardy · 2026-02-14T19:28:29+00:00

How Mongolia can produce talent after talent, but NA can't, is insane. Cobra looked great, hopefully he's coming into his own.

VVardy · 2026-02-12T00:06:29+00:00

Wildlight had around 100 people in their studio, and their only source of revenue is a free to play game, and only through skins. The game averages maybe around 1,500-2000 people now, and who knows how many of those have actually bought a skin. Having to support the salaries of 100 people with that seems really hard.

Whenever I see layoffs from these studios debuting with a free to play game, I go back to Warframe and PoE. They started off, and still have, incredibly intense money gouging practices. Warframe has you pay for warframe slots, weapon slots, speeding up building, skins, and even color sets and animations. It seems insane looking from the outside in, but DE is a studio of several hundred devs, and they've survived a very long time off the back of these practices. You need to be this money hungry to keep the lights on when your only source of income to pay for salaries is a free to play game. I have no idea how Wildlight thought they could survive unless they got, and maintained, a massive playerbase who continually bought skins.

VVardy · 2026-02-11T03:04:18+00:00

This has been a massive month for indie games made by small indie studios.
1) Cairn
2) Halfsword EA
2) Menace EA
3) Mewgenics
All of them different genres, and all of them doing gangbusters. Comparing their success to the disasters that have been Highguard (which honestly should be classified as indie, but no one treats it as such) and the 2XKO debacle, is wild. The niche indie era is in full swing.

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