My early CLG history along with some clarifications on events! #Nostalgia

After reading Chausters history of early CLG it seems he's missed some details and got a couple things wrong. He seemed to blame me for being called "Scumbag Chauster" and losing his fan base etc.. While I am cool with the story telling from his side I am not cool with having my named put down over something that happened 5 years ago.





With that being said this is going to be mostly CLG history from the early days (with old vlogs too!) with a bit more detail. I am just going to tell my side of early CLG and fill in the little CLG history that he left out that I still remember.





Back in the day the very first League of Legends tournament for real prizes was the Razer Twisted Treeline Tournament. That's right, it was a 3v3 tournament back when the map was better balanced and Riot was trying to push it to the public more. I had been playing with Reginald and AoN (TSM) for quite some time leading up to this in normal 5 queue (as there was no such thing as ranked back then) and we decided the best team for our 3's tournament would be Regi, Myself, and a guy named Unversable. We played Hotshot, Dan Dinh, and Chauster in the finals under the team name "Dan Dinh's team. We ended up beating them as AoN practiced 3v3 all the damn time.





http://lol.gamepedia.com/Razer_Twisted_Treeline_Tournament





CLG had just formed at this point and was only really a website for Hotshot to stream on at first. After the 3's tournament there really wasn't much going on other then the announcement of WCG a few weeks later. Reginald wasn't all too interested in WCG while I was looking to play. AoN was already starting to slip and eventually lost a few of it's members before I chose to leave as well.





Hotshot and I were already friends at this point and after leaving AoN I asked him if he was going to create a team for WCG. He said he'd been thinking about it and that we'd need to get a roster ready. From there we asked Chauster, Kobe, and lastly jiji who was reluctant to leave his Korean / Chinese premade pubstomp group but he eventually came around. Thus was born the original CLG. Although snatching me up purely to hurt TSM sounds like a better excuse for how I ended up on CLG XD.





Either way CLG was now a team and we had qualified to be the USA representatives. We just had to go through the qualifiers at Universal studio's in LA. The other team that qualified was Dan Dinh's team Epik Gamer. We go into game one with Matt Marcou allowing Miss Fortune who had just come out being allowed to be played. Epik Gamer had a player showed up on a later flight who had already been playing her knowing how broken she was on release. Despite us saying how it's unfair that we haven't played her, she's new etc.. Matt allowed MF to be played in the tournament despite all logic and reasoning.





None of us knowing how strong MF was at this time allowed her through the pick and ban phase with Epik Gamer first picking her right out the gate. We had to play them on probably the worst ping of all time for any LAN. We're talking 250-300 ping the entire time and it was a sloppy, sloppy, slugfest. Somehow after 50 mins the game was over and CLG had somehow come out as the victors. We had qualified to represent the USA at WCG. This is also where Dan, Salce, and I's bromance started. Never had a bad time hanging out with Dan Dinh and Salce and at Universal studio's it was no different haha.Win or lose we always partied.





https://www.facebook.com/CrsElementz/photos/a.165209813526552.30597.165209750193225/189373781110155/?type=1&theater





Got a picture of us being hooligans ruining Universal studios fountain together haha.





Onto WCG. This was the first time I had ever been on a real stage in front of people. It was surreal. People standing around asking us for autographs and wanting pictures. I had never experienced anything like this before.





We beat the Chinese team, the SEA team, and actually end up losing to SK in the group stages. We end up still going to the finals as both Asian teams we're actually bad at league of legends at this point (crazy right? NA and EU > Asia lol)





The finals are a BO3 and we go into the first game 0-1. We then come back and win the next 2 games going 2-1 final vs SK. Never have I been happier in my life. I had a grin that wouldn't stop going across my face and I'll never forget that. The meta was also crazy back then with no ADC/Support lanes. I played stuff like Shen, Garen, Morgana, Annie as I was actually a solo lane player before S1 when I moved to the support role.





After WCG was over there was a solid year of very small tournaments for 100-300 bucks maybe every other month. CLG beyond smashed these tournaments every single time. We were so good, and so far ahead of everyone that literally nothing touched us. Regi and Dan were picked up a few months before S1 was announced to try and create an all-star team but clashing of ego's between Hotshot and Regi lead that team to disband within a week or two. CLG formed back to it's original roster with the addition of Saint and we headed into S1.





Coming up into S1 we were all so full of ourselves from being big shit for so long that we didn't practice ever. The entire team just wanted to solo queue and not practice as a team. Solo queue was the mentality and that's all you needed to do to keep staying good, or so we thought. At the time it was an okay way of playing but ultimately lead to our demise. Chauster and I's laning synergy was very poor here as he refused to duo with me and chose missy instead. Expecting results without practicing is a very silly way of going about getting results. After some stupid choices and some bad games we ended up placing 5th overall. Not the CLG performance we were used too.





We continued to play as a team despite getting our asses handed to us at worlds. We actually had a lot of success after that. We placed well or first in a lot of tournaments from MLG's, IPL's, too IEM's. CLG had come back together and we started winning and doing really well. We were always a top 3 team for over a year after that. Chauster can say the golden age of CLG was when DL and Saint joined but before that CLG actually won tournaments ayyyy lmao.





My most memorable event was actually Gamescom which I believe was an IEM. We got first place this tournament and it was actually without Chauster as he couldn't make it so Salce filled in for him. One my favorite memories is going on stage just before we're about to play Salce runs off stage and goes outside. He runs back on to stage about 30 seconds later and we ask him what's up? "Oh I just threw up, I am good to go now" haha. Here's a couple fun times we had as a team.





Breakfast of Champions (vodka redbulls for breakfast before our first place match lol.. ): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keXyZSxa11I





and another one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWb7vSqRmpY





My favorite line from Saint (Yeah it's cold, stick your dick in there and see what happens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Vkeo1xnOB0





Exploring Cologne's Church: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3nn2YPahV0





My personal favorite Vlog "The wake up call": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaxwXhpx_BY





IEM Gangzhou, IEM New York, and IPL 3 I believe was the beginning of the end for CLG. We were on the road for over a month traveling from China, to Atlanta, to New York. As Chauster stated our problems started with jiji losing confidence in himself and he stopped dominating the mid lane. This performance lasted over these 3 tournaments in which our decline started. We got 3rd, and two 4th place finishes. I started playing worse at this time too as Chauster and I really didn't get along in game. My play was already on the decline and I was fearful to make mistakes as I would be belittled and scrutinized over every mistake. I was playing poorly just like jiji and you're not going to be doing very well when 2/5 of your players aren't playing well. After being a top 3 team for a year since S1 it was time for the team to change.





As Chauster said a skype call went down in which I was told I was removed from the team. He then talked to me in chat for a bit to explain some stuff but as he said ended up insulting me more then anything. I however didn't screen shot that I just said in my post that he said Missy was better then me. I was playing the victim to an extent but I also felt betrayed by people I thought I could call friends at that point in my life. I too said things I shouldn't have in which I made a follow up post after apologizing for what I said and how I slandered CLG and Chauster.





However this isn't why Chauster got the nick name "Scumbag Chauster" it just added on to what was already there. He got that nickname for posing as a girl in his GF Missy at the time's all girls tournament. She had stacked the odds with him filling in as one of the players and then got caught doing that. He got caught playing in his GF's all girls tournament to make sure his GF's team won. Thus began Scumbag Chauster. That combined with the no filter attitude when it comes to talking about people in a public forum is the basis for the nickname.





Girls4lol reddit thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/moprb/the_truth_of_what_happened_with_girls4lol/





So if you're going to blame someone for losing your fan base you should be responsible for your own actions. As always, you needed to handle your shit Chauster :p https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edcTH2UD1Fg





Now I couldn't find my old CLG post as the website it was hosted on no longer exists but I was able to snatch this quote from an old reddit thread that still rings pretty true today for a lot of eSports teams that I wanted to share. Here's how I was feeling at the time and I think a lot of players can relate to this. Teams need to start building their players up and having their backs, not breaking them down when they're already low.





Thread here: http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/moi73/elementzs_thoughts_on_clg/





"I all knew they didn't respect me and what I did for the team. They never built me up, they never gave praise when something was done right. I come from a background of competitive sports (Lacrosse and Soccer) and on those teams when you screw up, people don't blame you. People don't get down on you. They try and build you back up as fast as possible because guess what? The person who screwed up already knows that they messed up. They messed up in front of an audience and you want to put them down even more? God no. Even the players on the team I didn't like as people I still gave them morale boosts because that's how you succeed as a team. A true team supports one another to the end no matter what. As you guys see from our scrims, CLG likes to play the blame game as soon as shit turns south for a moment and we downward spiral into a loss because people would rather argue then play and finish the game. How do you keep a positive go getter attitude when this is the environment you play in?"





Now that's all the history I got for CLG and myself as it covers everything there from when I was involved. I wish CLG nothing but the best in the future as HotshotGG is actually a good dude with a good heart. Despite the Chauster corrections from my side in this post, I got no bad blood with anyone and wish all my old team mates and friends from back then success. Hope you enjoyed this little history tidbit, and I'll leave you with a couple more vlogs from back in the day.





IEM New York Vlogs:



1.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14v-NLXiCRg (The event)



2.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pf3aFqafQjc (NYC walking)



3.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=454oDXZJZJA (My favorite Dan passed out)





IEM China





1.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEP7zw5uEsk (Hotshot can't use chopsticks)



2.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo-esS-rt_A (Saint giving no fucks)





IPL Atlantic City





1.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXa6DUCbIsc (FK Saint!)



2.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNf1h17R08Y (Phreak sings Evanescence LOL)



3.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8lTgk6a8yw (Eating a 500 dollar meal that we got for free as we stacked up vouchers from IPL staff for real cash to be used in the hotel GG!)





A lot of great times were had back in the day. Not going to lie I am getting all nostalgic watching all these vods ;'(















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