Call of Duty World League – Seattle Recap
The 2018 Call of Duty World League (“CWL”) is well under way with its fifth event taking place in Seattle, WA over the weekend. Over 160 teams attended the Seattle Open that was presented by Sony’s PlayStation 4 with a $200,000 prize pool. For the first event to be hosted in Seattle in the history of the CWL, you could call it a success. Three days of intense action took place in Call of Duty: WWII, ending with Rise Nation taking the crown, and the lion’s share of the prize pool.
Pool Play
Open bracket play took place on Thursday and Friday (April 19-20), with the top 4 teams joining the four Group brackets alongside the rest of the regulation teams. At the start of Group Play, the divisions looked like this:
Pool A
- Echo Fox
- FaZe Clan
- Rise Nation
- Tainted Minds
- Lightning Pandas (Open Play Team)
Pool B
- Team EnVyUs
- OpTic Gaming
- Unilad
- Epsilon
- Ghost Gaming (Open Play Team)
Pool C
- eUnited
- Complexity
- Mindfreak
- Luminosity
- Enigma6 (Open Play Team)
Pool D
- Team Kaliber
- Evil Geniuses
- Red Reserve
- Splyce
- EZG Blue
Lightning Pandas, Team EnVyUs, eUnited, and Team Kaliber all finished first within their pools ate the end of pool play, and the top two teams from each pool were placed into the Winners bracket, with the bottom two teams placed in the Losers Bracket.
Bracket Play
Winners Bracket
The Winners bracket took place after the pool play matches, and it had to be one of the most unusual in CWL history. Top teams that were expected to be on the Winners side of things – such as Luminosity, FaZe, and OpTic – all started in the Losers bracket after a poor showing in Pool Play. Pushing their way through the first round of the Winners bracket were eUnited, Evil Geniuses (with a new roster), Echo Fox, and Ghost Gaming. eUnited and Evil Geniuses duked it out in the Final, with the latter securing their place in the Grand Finals.
Losers Bracket
Probably one of the most insane loser brackets to date, with top teams such as Rise Nation, FaZe, and Splyce starting here on the bottom, it was an all-out brawl that surely entertained the crowd at the Century Link Event Center. For the first time since Black Ops 3 Champs, OpTic Gaming was eliminated in the top 16 after getting ousted by Luminosity 3 to 0 in the first mach. Rise Nation, FaZe, Red Reserve, and Luminosity all successful move forward to the fourth round of the Loser’s bracket.
The Losers bracket finals saw eUnited pitted against Rise Nation, with Rise Nation having an outstanding run this weekend, taking down eUnited with a hot 3 to 0 win, advancing into the Grand Finals to take on Evil Geniuses.
Grand Finals
The Grand Finals of CWL Seattle. The main event. Evil Geniuses vs. Rise Nation. Geniuses came out strong in Game 1, Hardpoint, but Rise ended up tying the series quickly with a win in the second game. Continuing their hot streak, Rise took the first series (played best of 5) 3 to 1.
In the second series, Rise Nation’s energy and momentum carried them through as they dropped a hammer on Evil Geniuses, defeating them 3 to 0, not only winning them the series, but their second tournament win of the Call of Duty: WWII season. Congrats guys, and good luck in the next (and final) round of the 2018 CWL season, hosted in Anaheim, CA and again presented by PlayStation 4. For more info and tickets to this event, visit www.MLG.com.
