Tomorrow night at 5 PM PST State of the League will air as usual, but because Hannover is next week, I wanted to put together something special for the event. As such, tomorrow night will feature captains and allstars from many of the teams participating. Right now the confirmed list is as follows: 

• CLG HotshotGG
• SK Ocelote
• Dig Scarra
• Fnatic Mellisan
• Sypher Skyyart

I was hoping to have Elementz on, but he's unavailable. I'm hoping to grab someone else from Curse. I've also attempted to contact Reginald a few times, but haven't heard back from him. I'm assuming TSM is in lockdown for prep. =)

Either way, it promises to be the best episode of State of the League yet, so I wanted to let everyone have a bit of a heads up beforehand!

Oh, and apologies to the Europeans for the rough time. I'll try and get it up in mp3 and YouTube formats as quickly as possible. 

               -Travis

The Fiora patch notes were just posted up on the League site, nothing too surprising, considering most of these changes have been listed in the PBE notes for a while now, but we've stuck some of the more interesting things into a Red Quote below. If you want to find out all of the rest of the stuff, be sure to hit that source link. 

There's been a slew of new information about the League of Legends IPL 4 event in Las Vegas that's come out recently, including the location: The Cosmopolitan, which is a pretty swanky resort that opened a little over a year ago and is located near the Bellagio and Planet Hollywood. That's actually my favorite part of the strip. I'm super excited, you should be too. Just in case you aren't though, here's a cute little video they put together:

Sadly, they didn't really include any footage of the League of Legends aspect there, but who cares? eSports is eSports and the event will be fantastic. 

The neat thing about that video though, is that the description announces how much money will be up for grabs in League of Legends. A nice $50,000 prize pool! Domenic previously covered what teams are attending in his Weekend Recap. 

If all of this extra information made you more interested in attending the event, note that IPL 4 takes place over April 6th - 8th and that tickets are half off through this Facebook page. As for me? I'll be making the drive from Southern California to Nevada on the 5th, so I hope to see you there. 

[Source: Team Liquid]

Chinese team Invictus Gaming (iG) will be replaced at the IEM Grand Finals in Hannover by German team ALTERNATE due to having their visa application rejected.

ALTERNATE was tied in points with against All authority (aAa), but has a higher seeding due to playing at IEM Cologne, which had a higher ranking in Global Challenge events. IEM Cologne was ranked higher than IEM Kiev because the teams that played at IEM Cologne collected more points through the season than the teams that were present at IEM Kiev.

The new Group A will be:

• CLG
• Fnatic
• World Elite
• Team Dignitas
• Millenium
• ALTERNATE

[Source: ESL World]

Given the relatively brief lifespan as well as the myriad events available, it's pretty rare for an esports professional to jump from one game to a completely different game. However, today we learned just that: storied Starcraft: Brood War professional YellOw/Storm has un-retired from the world of esports and is entering the realm of League of Legends. In conjunction with KyuHoon Hwang and Xenics Ltd., JinHo "YellOw/Storm" Hong will be the coach for new Korean team Xenics Storm.

"After a while of retirement from pro gaming career, I finally found a place to nest. I am currently focusing on <LoL> and starting a new challenge as a coach,” said Hong. “Thanks to a lot of fellows, Xenics Storm was able to launch. I deeply appreciate Xenics for sponsoring us and KyuHoon Hwang the chief of oGs for supporting us."

Xenics Storm entered OnGameNet's "The Champion's Spring" league last Friday. Given the dedication to esports the Korean community has, it's likely we'll see more of YellOw/Storm at future <i>League of Legends</i> events.

It will be interesting to see the development of this team. Few professional League of Legends teams have coaches or managers that aren't players themselves (Goose/mTw and Absolute Legends come immediately to mind), and even fewer have professionals from outside the League of Legends arena working with them at all. Do enough elements from one game translate to the other when you're at the professional level for this to be considered significant? Does having a coach (or manager) provide enough advantage to justify the additional person (and thus personality) on the roster? Will YellOw/Storm's fame prove a boon or a distraction for Xenics Storm?

Time will tell, I guess. Though Time could stand to hurry up and answer.

[Source: ThisIsGame]

WCG was a couple of months ago, but Razer posted a pretty cool interview with Scarra right around that time. Since we just saw Dignitas kick some ass at the Curse invitational, I thought it might be appropriate to post this up and get some insight into how their team captain looks at the game as a member of the professional team. He shares insight into improving as a team and as a player and competing at the top tiers. 

Another weekend, another round of competitive League of Legends events for us. Before diving into the recaps, I have to say 2012 has been pretty great for competitive League, and we're barely even into the year. The number of tournaments and events we've been able to see has been simply fantastic, and most teams have stepped up to stream more of their scrims. That said, things are definitely getting tense; whether you're watching tournaments, scrims, solo queue streams or, y'know, something else, the teams prepping for the IEM World Championship definitely seem more on edge than those that aren't.

With all that in mind, there was a lot going on this weekend. Since you probably have a life and probably couldn't watch it all on your own, we're going to recap it here. So, y'know, spoilers. You've been warned, mofo. If you want to watch the games without doing the reading, click those links and they'll take you to the VODs.

The qualifiers for IPL4 wound down this weekend, with the four teams to make it past the qualifying round and into the Las Vegas tournament being decided. As has been the case throughout the qualifiers, this round had its share of upsets. Can you call them upsets when we're at the quarterfinals? Anyway:

• The Kings of Europe, Counter Logic Gaming.EU, battled the, erm, not kings of Europe, against All authority. Turns out it doesn't matter how royal your team is, as aAa came out ahead in this one. Upset level: minor. While many had pegged CLG.EU to win it all, aAa is a very good team. It's like when Dignitas beat CLG.NA during the Curse Invitational; you probably didn't expect it, but you knew it was possible.
• KoE runners up Moscow 5 (so... the Dukes of Europe?) took on Monoesports. Again, past results cannot guarantee future success; Mono came out on top in what was a rather bitter matchup. Upset level: Major. M5's had North America's attention lately, with many feeling they're among the best teams in the world. Mono was relatively unknown coming into this event (see: SotL ep. 24 for proof -- 18-minute mark), so for them to take down M5 is significant.
• TCM-Gaming competed against Curse Gaming, who were busy with two competitions this day (see below). Curse came out the victor of this one, ensuring a trip to Vegas in the process. Upset level: Nonexistent. Curse is among the top five NA teams at the moment, so to see them qualify shouldn't have come as a shock to any.
• v8 esports faced Team EZ. EZ had performed well in this tournament, previously beating SK Gaming, but v8 has performed even better, coming out over Sypher and, ultimately, winning this matchup. Upset level: Not there. v8's been gaining steam over the last few months, so it wasn't too shocking for them to come out ahead here.

Update: It looks like v8's the winner of this tournament, defeating aAa in the final round (Curse, sadly, was forced to forfeit due to coinciding travel resulting from the Curse Invitational). The v8 boys will have their expenses paid when they head to Las Vegas.

Wrap up is over! Here're the teams you'll see at IPL4:

Meanwhile, also in San Francisco, Team Dignitas took on Curse Gaming for some serious cash: $20,000. For those who prefer reading to watching (people after my heart, by the way), Reign of Gaming's Kelcytastic has a write up of the event. Otherwise, you can take a look at this video of the first game. I'm sure the second game will be right behind. Right, Curse? Right?

Oh. Um... if you just want to know who won, it was Dignitas. Dignitas won the money.

[Sources: IPL; Reign of Gaming]

Hey, remember that IPL 4 event that was rumored to be in Vegas at some point, the one that everyone's been doing qualifiers for? Well, the head of the IGN Pro League just announced that the event is confirmed to take place in Las Vegas, during the Easter Weekend of April 6-8. That weekend will be big for League of Legends, as PAX East will also be taking place in Boston during said timeframe, and that's ignoring any religious attachment you may have to those three days. No word yet on prizing, or the exact location of the event, but maybe we'll get a chance to hear about it more over the IPL Qualifiers taking place this weekend.