(Orlando, Florida) - MLG San Diego was the first WoW LAN of 2008 and also the first WoW LAN for many top teams. It is a very different experience from playing at home, and can be a bit overwhelming, but with one tournament under their belts you can expect teams like Frag Dominant, Evil Geniuses, GotGame East and West, and SK USA to come out much more prepared and ready for the tournament environment.

Additionally, having seen their competition in action, expect teams to have gone home and corrected what went wrong and to have fine tuned everything that went right. Let's take a look at what we can expect from a number of the top teams going into MLG Orlando.


Conrad "Zyz" Lope
Dan "sp0h" Street
Isaac "Azael" Cummings-Bentley

I talked with the champs about their upcoming plans, and it seems they more or less think they have a recipe that works and just need to continue to play well while making good decisions in order to bring home another championship. While the team's druid Spoh is a tournament veteran, Azael and Zyz were both newcomers, and now have LAN experience that is all so valuable. The team has also undergone quite a bit of pressure, battling back from the losers bracket, with the whole crowd watching, and have come out on top. One concern the team did have was that being the defending champions paints a big target on your chest, as everyone feels they need to beat you to make it to the finals. At San Diego, they felt a lot of teams were surprised by how well they could run multiple group makeups, but now the cats out of the bag. Still, they feel that because of their quality, depth, and intelligent decision making things will be fine. They also expressed their desire to run their "main" makeup of Rogue, Warlock, Druid more as they feel it is a powerful comp they run well, but did not get to showcase enough in San Diego. In closing, Zyz mentioned he felt that their toughest competition in Orlando would be Frag Dominant Duelists and the new GotGame lineup (Sodah,Venruki,Happyminti).

Keys to Success:

Have an answer for Warrior Warlock Druid. On their road to the finals, EG did not have to play either of the strong online Warrior Warlock Druid teams (MoB and GotGame West). With Hafu's team and GGW both in attendance, I expect these guys to run into a Warrior, Warlock, Druid team somewhere along the line. It won't be easy, and if EG doesn't play well you can expect a "Who's the Boss" out of Hoodrych.

More consistent Druid play. Spoh's a top tier player, but in the past has been prone to making mistakes that cost his team rounds. At San Diego, he played amazingly well, and if he can keep it up, his team will be on a fast track to another championship.

Intelligent play calling from Azael. Having spoke with him, he made the majority of the calls on what lineups to run, as he was the utility player and wanted to be comfortable against whatever team they had to play. If he continues to make the right choices, and play his role well, he'll continue to hear MVP praises. Make a mistake, and you'll be easy pickings for the people looking to blame someone.

Known Comps:

Rogue, Lock, Druid
Warrior, Rogue, Druid
Rogue, Rogue, Druid


Vance 'Serennia'
Corey 'Glorin'
Neil 'Neilyo' Mosunic

After watching MLG San Diego, I really felt like SK blew a great opportunity to win the tournament with some poor strategy decisions and a few gameplay errors. With two of the most individually skilled and well known players in the game, I think it's only a matter of time before this team manages to win a championship. They managed a 3rd place finish last week at WWI, against an arguably tougher field, while using a substitute player (Inflamez) they had never played with. Serennia was absolutely confident that had they been playing with Glorin instead they would have won WWI, and that this time around they won't make a mistake and will capture the gold in Orlando.

Keys to Success:

Neilyo's Warrior. He's one of the best rogues out there, and has been working his warrior game up as well. At San Diego, things seemed a bit rocky, and his team captain didn't have full faith in his ability to perform, but he has been improving. I actually got the opportunity to play some arena with him on his warrior recently, and was quite impressed with how well he played. If he keeps it up on LAN and Serennia has enough confidence in his game to switch to a warrior instead of a rogue when needed, they team will be much better off.

Earthshock and Tremor WRU? Playing a shaman without addons isn't an easy task, but if you want to win a championship you have to deal with adversity and learn to play without them. In San Diego we saw a significant lack of tremor totem and earth shocks from Glorin, and it's one of the most important parts of winning with their group makeup. Sodah went to town on Neilyo's warrior with crowd control, as GGE beat them 3-0, putting up more rounds on their team then earth shocks Glorin cast in the series.

Serennia. The team captain often makes off the wall strategy decisions for his team that sometimes works well, and other times loses rounds. Hopefully, for his teams sake, we'll have more of the former this tournament. His druid game will also need to be on point, avoiding getting caught in bad positions and dying instantly

Winners Bracket. An early trip to the lower bracket will be worse for this team then any other. Serennia's a great player to have on your team when you're winning, but when you start losing, things are not so pleasant. If SK starts playing the blame game, I find it hard to believe they'd be able to make a long trip through the lower bracket to come back and win.

Known Comps:

Rogue, Shaman, Druid
Warrior, Shaman, Druid

*Preview continued on the next page


MLG Orlando Viewer's Guide
GotFrag TV MLG San Diego VoD's
GotFrag TV
GotFrag MLG PC Circuit Edition
Official MLG Pro Circuit Website
Official MLG PC Circuit Website