China's Dota 2 pros explain why Chinese LOL teams can't beat Korea

With the group stages for groups A and B having drawn to a close in Taipei over the weekend at the League of Legends Season 4 World Champiponships, we got our chance to see how China’s best team stacks up against Korean competition.

Edward Gaming, the winner of consecutive LPL championships in China, played Korean team Samsung White twice during the group A round-robin last week, and the results were…disheartening. Samsung White won both games in very convincing fashion, and Edward Gaming even shocked fans by losing a match against Taiwan’s AHQ, forcing the Chinese team to win a tiebreaker match to earn its ticket to the quarterfinals.

China’s Star Horn Royal Club also advanced, and OMG will have its shot at moving forward this week when the group C and D stages begin in Singapore, but after watching EDG get stomped by Samsung White, many Chinese fans feel that we’re in for another year of China’s teams being seriously outclassed by their Korean competition. The following tweet, posted by a well-known Chinese eSports writer, got the attention of the country’s Dota 2 community and has sparked a bit of a debate about eSports in the Middle Kingdom:

Everyone always blames [China’s] eSports environment [when Chinese LOL teams lost to Korean teams], but I want to ask: how many Chinese professional junglers can use the Jarvan flash E-Q to initiate a teamfight? How many Chinese teams have shown us the strong initiation and fighting power of Jarvan IV and Fizz? The truth is that [Chinese] players’ mechanics are not as good as theirs, plus [Chinese players] are so terrified during the pick/ban phase. I’m calling on casters and players to stop blaming China’s eSports environment! [Chinese] Dota 2 and CF players aren’t having any trouble…

Of course, numerous commenters have pointed out that CrossFire and Dota 2 aren’t nearly as popular as League of Legends in Korea (where it has been the most-played game in internet cafes for more than two years straight).

(See: The top 10 hottest PC games in China (September 2014))

xiao8 knows a little something about winning in eSports

But the recently-retired Newbee captain xiao8 had something to say about that:

It’s not about how many Koreans are playing, it’s about the attitude of our [Chinese] players.

Chinese Dota 2 pro xB also had something to say on the subject after another commenter suggested that Chinese Dota teams would be crushed just as badly as its League of Legends teams if more Koreans played Dota 2:

That’s bullshit, tell them to come start playing it then and we’ll see.