The massive Beijing National Stadium, also known as the Bird's Nest, will host World's grand final this year. It's not hard to see why such huge brands are getting involved with Worlds: Riot reported 43 million unique viewers for last year's grand final featuring Korean juggernauts SKTelecom T1 and Samsung Galaxy, peaking at 14.7 million concurrent viewers (not counting the thousands of fans that filled Madison Square Garden, as well as all the fans sharing screens at huge, cinema-filling viewing parties around the world). This year, Worlds is heading to China, where it will visit Wuhan, Guangzhou and Shanghai before the grand final on November 4 in Beijing's 91,000-capacity National Stadium. As the champions of the Oceanic Pro League following a 3-1 victory over Chiefs Esports Club, Dire Wolves will be one of twelve teams competing in the play-in stage of the tournament at Wuhan. The top four teams in this preliminary round will move on to compete in the main event, but as a team hailing from a smaller region, the odds are already stacked against our Australian representatives, especially if their previous international ventures are anything to go by. At the 2017 Mid-Season Invitational, the Wolves finished third in their play-in group and missed the playoffs. Teaming up with other OPL teams at Rift Rivals, they couldn't overcome Vietnam's GIGABYTE Marines despite a solid group stage performance. Their opponents at Worlds will be the toughest competition ever faced by an Australian team, with North American heavyweights Cloud9 headlining Group B alongside Brazil's Team oNe eSports, who made history by becoming champions of the Circuito Brasiliero in their first season.

Mitchell 'Destiny' Shaw during the OPL 2017 season, which LG Dire Wolves would go on to win. Still, as the great Nelson Mandela once said, you don't lose. You win, or you learn. "Rift Rivals gave us an opportunity to put our learning from MSI to the test," says team captain and support Mitchell 'Destiny' Shaw, from Sydney. LG Dire Wolves captain Mitchell 'Destiny' Shaw. Credit:Giles Park "It was a sort of calibration tool to make sure we were heading in the right direction leading into the remainder of the split."

The results were plain to see: while every team made significant strides towards closing the gap over the course of the season, the "Wolfpack" we saw in the grand final was a completely different beast to the team that seemed to coast through much of the regular season. They were more decisive and more agile, playing with a calm fury as if the outcome of the game was already carved in stone. They were a far cry from the team they were in January: a roster brimming with talent but lacking in cohesion. "Ever since our first team bootcamp in South Korea at the beginning of the year, we've all come a long way as individuals and as teammates," says Shaw. "The relationships and bonds we've formed will last a lifetime, so having the opportunity to represent the region with each other by our sides will make it a special event." Saccharine stuff, but it speaks to their identity as a team. It's easy to look at the Wolves and their Twitter personas and see them as a squad of War Boys: unhinged, braggadocious mavericks united only by a desire to ride shiny and chrome into esports glory. But they're really more like the Straw Hat Pirates: talented individuals made more than the sum of their parts thanks to slick coaching and a healthy dose of the Power of Friendship. Power of friendship: the Dire Wolves consider themselves a family. Photo: Mitchell Shaw on Twitter.

In some regards, the Wolves' journey to Worlds mirrors the journey of some of Australia's national teams in other sports (although, as Shaw explains, "it doesn't really sink in that you represent a whole region until you're actually at the event leading into the games"). Like the Socceroos or the Boomers, the Dire Wolves are underdogs punching above their weight on the international stage, representing a sport that's only really beginning to flourish in recent years. Other Aussie talents have had to pursue their esports dreams overseas. In Dota 2, Melbourne's Anathan 'Ana' Pham became the first Australian player to win a Valve event with Europe's Team OG, while Sydney's Damian 'kpii; Chok came second at The International 7 with Chinese team Newbee (taking home hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process). Of course, local fans supported them with patriotic pride. But without a robust local scene to develop new players, Ana and kpii will remain unicorn talents rather than a harbinger of Australia's future in Dota 2. With the Dire Wolves, we don't just see five LoL players who happen to be from Australia and New Zealand. Rather, we see a product of Oceania: homegrown talent honing their skills against other homegrown talent. We made them, and we own a spiritual share of their successes and failures.

Perhaps that is why their journey feels heavier. The boys in green aren't just chasing their own dreams, they're chasing ours as well.