The now dominant Meet Your Makers started with Danish players, then added GoStop and Susiria, until they completely assimilated into a South Korean team with Lucifer, Storm and Moon.

SK Gaming became a household name at a time when they had the now “legends” MaDFroG, HeMaN and Insomnia—having someone like Sweet and Zacard in their team was just gravy. SK endured on with an all-European lineup with HoT, Deadman, Insomnia and XlorD after the departure of Zacard and Sweet, but then decided to give in and recruit the former World Elite Koreans. This catapulted them into overnight champions.

Before this “asian invasion”, we had teams such as 64.AMD, armaTeam, and 3wD. Asian teams slowly joined in by the 9th season—with NiP Gaming and LanFan/Fighting. Season 10 marked the entry of the most hyped up Asian team of all—World Elite. wNv gaming and Beijing E-Sports Team quickly followed suit.

Now most of the clans that stand out boast of a predominantly Asian roster—SK with the Koreans, World Elite with homegrown Chinese talents, Beijing E-sports Team with Koreans running from the army, WICKED eSports, and Clan GO.

Europeans (and a handful of Americans) are now left to struggle against players who are a notch (or two) better than their best. There’s a big gap between the top Asian clans and the hopeful Europeans. Then again, even with Four Kings around, the rest of the European teams are still left struggling against the Asian teams.

The closest thing we have to a semblance of the old Four Kings is mousesports—with ToD, SaSe, Happy and Hasuobs with Fly100% ala old-school 4K^FoV. They’re the only team that’s strong enough to defeat the superteams—as was proven recently by a 3-2 win against Meet Your Makers.

So the Warcraft III landscape has transformed from being predominantly European to predominantly Asian. Will the European teams die out? I honestly doubt that. The Four Kings were fortunate to have two of the most consistent players the European continent had to offer, when the rest decided to end their careers.

It was certainly a sad day when Four Kings died out. Nevertheless, this new WC3L presents us with more talented European teams without much Korean “mercs”, unlike the previous seasons when we saw the Korean players joining during the qualifying rounds and then leaving just a few playdays later.

This season marks pure ability and motivation with young teams such as aTTaX, hoorai and a more stable srs. While the “death” of Four Kings can mark an end of an era when a predominantly European team can go head to head against the best of them. But they have proven that it can be done. This time around, we can be hopeful that we're looking towards a European revival.