March 21st was undeniably a busy day for those who worked in the gaming industry.
There were a total of 13352 matches in the first round of the Tournament for the Best S3. Even if one ignored the matches between non-professional teams, there was still an endless amount of battle reports worth following up on.
Of course, the most eye-catching news was the battle between [Gods] and [Order].
There were many things that were worth following in this match, and one of the hottest topics was — who will be able to stop Phantom Dawn?
Even though the general public had many different answers to this question, obviously … the answer of 'Feng Bujue' was the most common.
It was unclear when it happened, but Brother Jue had become a 'special solution' that people would come up with when faced with 'impossible problems'.
How to fold a piece of paper more than seven times? Let Feng Bujue try.
How to divide a prime number with a natural number other than 1? Let Feng Bujue try.
How to beat Phantom Dawn? Looks like only Feng Bujue can give it a try.
In other words, the things that Brother Jue had done in Thriller Paradise over the past year had finally borne fruit. This kind of 'popularity', regardless of whether it was good or bad, at least proved that he had the potential to be a king in the Candidate Game.
…
March 22nd, midnight.
The matchups for the second round of S3 were announced on the official website.
Similar to the first round, the matchups of the seeded teams naturally attracted a lot of attention.
However, this round, there wasn't a showdown between [Order] and [Brahman]. All the strong parties that the players could name, as well as those parties that had superstar players, were all skipped in the second round of the tournament.
Even so, the popularity of the competition was still very high. This was because … in the first round of the competition, there were many teams made up of "folk experts" who displayed amazing strength. They had already reached the level where they could threaten the professional teams.
Therefore, in the twenty-four hours after the list was announced, whether it was the data analysis team of the professional gaming studios or the think tanks of the non-professional teams, all of them were intensively studying the recordings of the first round of the opponents … The real "intelligence war" officially began from this round.
…
March 23rd, midnight. The second round of S3 began.
There were a total of 13353 teams participating in this round. Among them, 13352 teams would fight against each other. The remaining team would have a bye. Other than the bye team that would advance directly, the rest of the teams would still be in half-and-half. After the competition, 6,676 teams would be eliminated.
The opponent that Underworld Frontline encountered this time was called the Disputed Alliance. It was a party made up of seven 'former professional players'.
In a way, it could be said that the two teams were fated because these 'former professional players' were all veterans of Zombie Blade.
Speaking of Zombie Blade, over the past few days, many things had happened to the company.
A few months ago, the boss of Zombie Blade had suddenly disappeared from the face of the earth. A few days after that, their studio had been visited by various government departments. After a short week of 'investigation', Zombie Blade ended up in a state of being confiscated and shut down.
Even though it was just a gaming studio, the profit chain behind it was quite eye-opening. During that period of time, news about Zombie Blade had been leaked almost daily. They said they were in cahoots with illegal drug companies, smuggling organizations, and even some said they were in cahoots with a gambling organization. Some of these rumors were real and some were fake. Even the insiders had no idea what was going on, much less outsiders.
To cut the long story short, the investigation and handling of Zombie Blade was extremely efficient. It only took them two weeks to finish the job. The news on the internet did not last that long. After all, the netizens only had a week's worth of memory, so the people's attention soon moved on to other hot news.
After that, many people in the management of Zombie Blade disappeared from the public eye. They would never have the chance to return to the gaming industry.
The players who left Zombie Blade did not have a good time either. They were not that good to begin with, and they could at most be blue-collar players in a first-tier studio. After the fall of Zombie Blade, their experience there became a dark history. Other studios would not spend the extra money to hire a few blue-collar players. They would rather hire new players.
Therefore, most of these former Zombie Blade players announced their retirement and became 'former professional players' before joining the streamer industry.
The team that Hell Frontline was up against, Disputed Alliance, was made up of seven streamers who had once joined Zombie Blade.
Even though they were 'former professional players' and their characters were remade after Zombie Blade was shut down, as the saying went, 'a starving camel is still bigger than a horse'. The gaming skill and competition experience of these seven were undoubtedly at the professional level.
Other than that, since they had crushed their opponent 3-0 in the first round, in terms of intel, they did not reveal too much about themselves. They were a rather troublesome team.
Once again, to cut the long story short …
For the first three matches of this round, Brother Jue came up with …
"Vanguard Battle": Xu Huai Shang
"Backbone Battle": Ru Yu Ruo Li, Flower on the Rock
"Battle of Generals": Feng Bujue
… Such a lineup.
In less than fifteen minutes, Hell Frontline swept their opponents 3-0 and successfully advanced to the third round.
By the way … of these fifteen minutes, ten of them were breaks between matches.
…
Just like that, the second round of the competition ended in a lively but not intense atmosphere.
All the seeded teams advanced to the next round without any danger. There were no unexpected surprises, and there was no big fight like in the first round.
However, among the non-seeded teams, there were a few teams made up of casual players … or rather, normal players who stood out from the rest of the world.
After two rounds of battles, the hidden 'experts' had more or less figured out which of them were the real experts with stable strength.
On the morning of the 24th, the matchups for the third round were announced.
Finally, the battle that could be called the 'focal battle' appeared once more.
This time, there were two matches that were worth paying attention to.
The first match, Heaven and Earth against Mountain River … This was a battle between two top gaming studios, and it could be said to be a grudge match.
The second round, [Red Sakura] against [Heaven's Gate] … The former, after losing their trump card [Xu Huai Shang], still maintained a clean score and advanced into the third round. The new trump card that they were currently training was also highly anticipated. The latter, on the other hand, was a team made up of casual players. [Heaven's Gate] had also made a clean sweep all the way. Moreover, the four players in the team that had appeared so far had all displayed professional-level combat power … It could even be said that they were dominant-level combat power. This also made them a dark horse with great potential in the eyes of many people.
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