The Empire Story
Empires rise and empires fall, but this Empire’s fall feels like it came too soon and at a maddeningly unfortunate time. A little recap and observation on where things went wrong.
I’ve been a big fan of Empire (specifically Roman and Vladislav) since their first few matches in Heroes of Newerth. They weren’t just good, but they were ballsy. They broke the meta, they made the plays, and they won in style. Scandal’s Soulstealer was the stuff of legends, and Blow wasn’t the designated carry player back then but he brought the new heroes like Night Hound and Keeper of the Forest into play. The general consensus was that given better supports, Empire would be the best team in the scene, but their success rate was nothing to scoff at nonetheless. And then, just as suddenly they had appeared, originally as the Phenomenal Boyz (phB) before becoming Empire, they disappeared.
Through forums and posts by UniqFazer we learnt that the team had disbanded and gone their separate ways. But rumours were flying of DotA 2 in development, and Blow being an ex-DotA player. So I held hope that we would see both Blow and Scandal return in a DotA 2 team.
For the whole year after TI1, there was no sign of these guys. But after TI2, there they were. Along with some unknown players, there were Scandal and Blow. They were as inconsistent as before, but I was glad to see they had kept their other qualities as well. Matches were few, but I watched whenever they played.
On the side came the news of Darer and M5's disbandment, which was apparently a pretty big turn of events in the CIS scene. I didn’t think much of it, but soon after there was more news that Goblak, Silent and Funnik had joined Empire. I knew Darer and M5 were big and successful teams, so I decided that this was a good thing. Boy did I understate the new roster in my head.
Empire’s winning ways were worth writing stories about. But unfortunately none of those stories would go on to end well, as we all now know.
Empire’s history has been as peaky and inconsistent as their playstyle. I guess it’s what makes Empire the team it is — a bunch of talented prodigies without adult supervision. Think “Good Will Hunting”, and you’ll get what I mean.
I thought Goblak, with all his experience, was that supervision that Scandal and Blow needed to fall in line. It also helped that Funnik was one of the best at what he did, and something so few do at all. A team is lucky if they have one good play-maker, but Empire had two of the best in the western scene in Scandal and Funnik. With Goblak’s amazing leadership, the results were there for everyone to see.
But then, things started going downhill. Goblak’s drafts started becoming stale, Empire’s style was “figured out”, and they began to lose. Slowly at first, but soon they were winning only one out of every three matches. Then came the blow of Funnik’s departure. I’m still jaded by it, and it made me dislike Na’Vi even more than I already did. It was big, I won’t lie, but even then it wasn’t something that the team couldn’t recover from. Unfortunately, they were hasty during a sensitive period of time in their life as a team. And when such moments aren’t treated with care, things fall apart.
I blame it more on the fast approaching International. As Maelk pointed out, I think it worried Goblak and Silent that they wouldn’t get invited given their current state, and that they were better off finding a new team to try their luck in the qualifiers. Either that, or Empire’s management is dumb. Either way, the team completely fell apart 2 weeks away from the qualifiers, and while efforts were made to rebuild it in time, there’s only so much one can do.
I didn’t have faith in their new recruits — Twista and Mitch. Twista mostly because having spoken to him a few times and in general known about his play since his HoN days, I just don’t think he has the knowledge, creativity or talent to be a competitive player let alone a captain. Mitch, I had never heard of him or seen him play, and that’s usually a bad sign because the competitive scene is such a close knit group that if someone’s good enough to be top tier, there’s no way you can miss them as they show up as stand-ins or get mentioned in some way or another.
The result was again there for everyone to see; Empire was the only team not to have won a single match in the western qualifiers.
I’ve maintained the belief that all Empire has ever needed was proper leadership. When Goblak left, I immediately thought of Synderen. He would have been absolutely perfect for the team, but I don’t think Empire even approached him. I want to believe that they chose Twista because he was friends with Scandal and Blow back from their HoN days and they expected the chemistry to make-up for lack of skill, but who knows. I don’t even know where Mitch came from.
But it was very obvious from their first game with the doomed-to-failure roster in the Curse Invitational that it wasn’t going to work. I hadn’t seen such aimless DotA in a very long time, maybe ever. The only people who appeared to know what they were doing were the names we had expected to do well — Scandal, Blow and Light. Even Blow and Light eventually fell apart in the qualifiers, and Scandal’s back wasn’t strong enough to carry the team to any victories. The two supports seemed absolutely clueless, almost as bad as the pub supports I play with. No rotations, no teamfight co-ordination, no awareness in general; it seemed like, while they realised Empire’s weakness had been their transition into the mid-game from a strong laning phase, trying to fix that they completely forgot what the early game was all about. It was just painful and cringe-worthy to watch.
Now it seems that Twista and Mitch are no longer part of the team, and I hope I’m right about that. Unfortunately, I also think that they need to look outside for the proper leadership they need, unless Light steps up. Scandal and Blow are not leaders, they’re your star players who you can depend on to do their job. But they can’t decide what the game-plan should be.
I’ll remain a faithful fan of both Scandal and Blow as players. I do believe there’s very-rarely-seen talent there. But like a spurned lover, I can’t, in good faith, hope for a winning Empire in its current state. Personally, if I was the management I would get Goblak and Silent back once they lose their wildcard match at Seattle, then start actually supporting and marketing the team like Na’Vi does. I haven’t seen an organisation, having such talented players, give less of a fuck than Empire. Getting the players motivated to perform outside of their own will to win is big, and the management has done practically nothing to try and increase their fan base. Nor do they keep the existing fans informed as to what’s going on with the team. The players aren’t people we can identify and connect with. The players don’t stream, or do interviews, or anything else really. And that’s the management’s failure, not the players’.
There’s a lot of work to be done, but again, I’m not holding my breath for anything changing any time soon. And seeing such potential go to waste is a sad affair.
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