This weekend’s League of Legends Worlds in San Francisco saw an exciting finish with the underdog DRX taking home the world title. League Worlds is often referred to as the Superbowl of Esports, and the stunning opening ceremony at The Chase Center clearly demonstrated why. As the anticipation for Worlds 2022 grew, the artist lineup of Lil Nas X, Edda Hayes, Louis Leibfried, and Jackson Wang was a masterful display of talent and production. Don’t worry if you missed the amazing Worlds climax; we’ll catch you up.
The running plot of T1’s Faker aiming to repeat his 2016 Worlds victory while DRX’s Deft had to travel for ten years to get to Worlds set the stage for a challenging competition between the two teams. T1 won Game 1 quite simply and without much resistance thanks to their ability to hold a lead of 10,000 gold over DRX, eliminate all three inhibitors, and wrap out the game fairly soon.
Even though T1 had several fantastic team battles, like Keria leading a 2v3 team fight and winning, DRX fought back valiantly in game 2. In the second game, DRX was able to extend the match and prevail. Similar match speed was shown in Game 3, as DRX appeared to have finally woken up and was giving T1 a run for their money. T1’s victory in Game 3 came about as a result of their ability to twice take Baron from DRX.
The grand finals entered an exciting Game 5 after Game 4 when DRX finally managed to get a Baron kill for themselves and T1 failed to steal it. Since both teams gave equally strong performances, Game 5 was truly anyone’s game. Four T1 members were eliminated by DRX, however T1 later returned to seize their Baron once more. Faker attempted to kill their Nexus single during the subsequent Baron fight, but he was penalised for it, and DRX was able to use the Baron buff to push into T1’s base and win Game 5, securing Worlds for them.
Worlds 2022 was a remarkable tale that rewarded the underdogs for giving the formidable T1 a tense battle in the championship match, which DRX ultimately defeated 3-2. The Chase Center was completely sold out, and Twitch had 2.8 million viewers and YouTube had 1.7 million on Riot Games’ official channels, setting new highs for viewership. According to Esports Charts, Riot surpassed their previous record of 4 million viewers last year by a new record of 5.1 million.
We congratulate DRX on an amazing 2022 League performance, and we expect equally amazing things from DRX and T1 in the 2023 season. Stay at geometry dash for more games.
