SK’s new WoW tournament hit a rocky point last night when TSG (the supeh gosus) accused SK of fixing its own tournament. The Battlegroup 9 tournament sponsored by SK features some of the top teams in North American WoW including fnatic and SK. TSG and SK where facing off in the Winner’s Bracket Final when the issues began. After a night of arguing the final verdict is TSG will have a lead of 2-0 when the match restarts tonight.

TSG’s team leader Veex sent an email to SK about the situation and in it he described his frustrations.

“We then joined a private IRC channel to discuss what had happened, but it was quickly apparent to me that there would be little to no reasoning. They had already made up their minds and were intent on using their privileges and power as the tournament host to make the final call,” said Veex.

The situation all started in the second game of a best of five maps. The first game went to TSG 1-0 and the second game while underway saw SK’s priest, Mykke, die making it extremely clear TSG would go up 2-0. All of SK left the match and according to Veex all of them but Mykke showed up ready for the next game.

This is when things got interesting. According to the tournament head admin, Trance, a member of fantic’s team also in the tournament, he informed TSG that they would need to replay that second map because Mykke had lagged out.

“During this period of time the lag spike happened Cox Cable(An internet service in Orange County) had spiked throughout the whole region. I also was in my own arena practicing 5s and Azurewrath and Agnos were complaining about lag spikes, and coincidentally Azurewrath and Agnos(They're roommates) live in the same arena as Mykke (Orange County, CA),” said Trance.

The rules of the tournament then dictated that the match must be replayed when “instance server crash, severe lag conditions or game-altering disconnect” takes place.

This is where both the community and TSG seem to have a problem. The supposed “four-five second” lag spike by many was not considered a “severe lag”.

“I'm gonna say the 4-5 seconds of lagging prevented me from most effectively getting on pronne (SK’s other healer Druid),” said Mykke, “I was also unaware I was being focused until I came back which I probably could of alerted pronne to it.”

SK in an email response to Veex quickly distanced themselves from the ruling and incident.

“After talking to the SK members and reading your guys statements, I can't really say anything that it's your words against eachother. SK claims that the disconnect affected the match while you guys don't. Unfortunately I can't really give you an opinion on what should be done since I wasn't there. However trance is running the show and we have absolute faith in the great job he's doing with the tournament. You have to know that trance is working for our website, which is a totally different part of SK, and has no connection with the team,” said Gosey, SK’s WoW team leader.

TSG demanded a 2-0 lead or will forfeit the match to SK. TSG has been the surprise team of the 8 team invite tournament beating MoB Turtleforce TFO in their first game 3-2 and then beating favorite Capslock Crew 3-0 in their second game.

"We have appealed to the powers that be and achieved nothing, so now we are left with two options: do whatever they say or drop out of the tournament," said Veex, "If this was a 1v1 tournament I personally would have already dropped out, because it absolutely disgusts me to see a team of players (or at least one player, Neilyo) try to get away with something so low and dishonest like this. No matter the outcome now, many of their names and the tournament itself is already tarnished in my eyes."

In the end Trance and other tournament admins decided to reverse their decision and go with TSG giving them a 2-0 lead heading into tonight’s final game(s).

SK USA
Neilyo (Rogue) Team Captain
Mykke (Priest)
Pronne (Druid)
Mattyo (Mage)
Gumbot (Warlock)


TSG
Veex (Warlock) Team Captain
Valrath (Mage)
Elcanadiense (Druid)
Zenoth (Warrior)
Czaafum (Paladin)

A video of the match in question can be found here from the PoV of Neilyo.