I was fairly liberal with my use of hyperbole in part one. Group B spent its initial Worlds week and latter week, fairly one sided in regards to its mid lane performances. Group D began with some incredible performances and Week 2 saw it become a lot closer. GODV, as with the rest of his team, greatly underperformed on the world stage after their initial bout with Origen, but came back to match both his European counterparts. Nagne, while never considered to be an elite level mid laner in Korea, had a chance on Azir to show up.

Their challengers were Season 3 veteran xPeke, and Season 3 veteran Bjergsen. One has spent the majority of the season allegedly dropping form, while the other has inhabited North America for an extended period and struggled with his team for the last split. Both leaders, xPeke took his own team to the world stage for the first time under the Origen banner and Bjergsen took over the majority of the team’s in-game shotcalling. The struggle of maintaining a high level of international play with veterancy has always been a losing one, but the mids of Group D proved that they have more staying power than others for a reason.

The surprising thing for the majority of the public was that their efforts were enough. These two struggling, aging veterans born of the European meta were more than enough for their counterparts and they did not just face them on the stage, but faced them on their best champions in situations where they should have been at their best. Both have struggled at various points, but even in their failings both have shown that they are more than a match for some of the best that the international stage has to offer.

This is the Season 3 European old guard come anew.

The Old God: xPeke

I’ve spoken of the Old God’s a lot in my work, that of Froggen, Alex Ich and xPeke. While Alex Ich has seen much of a resurgence in the North American scene, he is actually yet to be tested on the LCS stage again. Froggen’s downfall has been well documented. But xPeke has lived on and endured, matching up to mid laners of each successive generation and culminating a defining performance at the end of every season. That performance is typically International xPeke and though public perception is that he acquires a nonsensical skill buff come Worlds, playing against a disrespecting GODV, Bjergsen and Nagne constitutes a tier or two below playing against Febiven/PowerofEvil/Nukeduck.

Nonetheless, xPeke has shone like the brightest star in this group stage. A stellar week one performance that is attributed to putting former tournament favourites LGD on tilt and out of commission, the final Old God has shown he can be proficient against these international mids in his unfavored control mage meta while bringing back the old Fnatic special: double teleport. It seems like every season we are reminded of this global pressure game that comes to define xPeke/sOAZ’s ventures, but this year they are not alone - the double teleport pressure game was adopted by the LPL teams and Origen are no longer that team.

Regardless, a Twisted Fate pick would come to be xPeke’s defining moment in the Group Stage. Against Korea’s KT Rolster, Twisted Fate’s pre-existing double teleport rendered the Korean squad’s vision-centric style useless in the mid-game. Despite early advantages that were taken due to Origen’s risky drafting, KT were being led around the map and essentially manhandled by the Fnatic of old, and neutral objectives could be taken without challenging KT’s vision dominance. All the risks had paid off and Origen had played their win conditions out with a discipline only a true veteran can give.

This isn’t necessarily about Origen though, but rather xPeke. Twisted Fate marked a game where the composition was very much xPeke/sOAZ’s rather than another Niels (playing Sivir this time around) show. In the regular split, xPeke had been criticized fairly heavily for underperforming, but it was often overlooked that, unlike previous seasons, he was no longer the team’s priority in any manner. The ‘wave clear for 15 minutes’ mid lane meta had hit Origen in that regard. If you could play bot-centric, it was better to, and xPeke found himself off his high mobility champions of previous seasons and onto ones with a far lower early game impact.

The illusion of an underperforming xPeke carried on until Worlds. Even on his supportive Orianna he was able to pull off a beautiful Quadra Kill as part of Origen’s well-executed teamfight combo. On Anivia he formed the bread and butter of a kiting composition that effectively shut down TSM’s Darius and held his own in lane against Bjergsen’s counter Viktor matchup. Had he done these things in the LCS, they would likely not have been as highly regarded, but in the context of the supposed relative strength of the mid laners he was playing against the world could say that xPeke had returned in their hour of need.

It was not all to be. LGD and KT bounced back in the second week and even weaker drafting placed Origen at a disadvantage in each game. Even in their victory, they played against a TSM with multiple win conditions but were able to take a victory by being far more pro-active in the slow, methodical way they had to win. It was a difficult week for Origen and a difficult week for xPeke. The weaknesses of Origen’s prioritization and the mage play of their mid laner re-surfaced. Though whereas xPeke was not in a position to carry, he certainly did his best to hold steadfast. The Old God is mortal but he is far from dead and far from spent. Misjudge him and you will still be punished.

The Wonderchild: Bjergsen

Bjergsen is a player that should be very easy to criticize but has often escaped criticism in favour of rapturous appraisal from legions of adoring fans that hold him up as the West’s answer to Faker. That has never been the Bjergsen I knew. The Bjergsen I knew was a prodigal talent, a backbone in the next generation of European mid laners that threw away his chances of being a true genuine contender for the title of the best in the west in favour of monetary gain and a prolific self-branding. I was incredibly harsh in all of these sentiments, and I was incredibly wrong in many of them.

The Bjergsen that entered the Season 5 World Championships was more than just the player putting the ‘solo’ in Team SoloMid, but a genuine force to be reckoned with.Though IEM San Jose had lead me to consider that a full year of North American mid lane meta had dropped his experience of the eternal pressure environment that is the European mid meta, Bjergsen at Worlds showed true to his roots and his opponents had to be on edge from the first level. He dismantled GODV’s Diana (both on one of his main champions and a counter-pick to Bjergsen’s Twisted Fate) with an impressive scoreline of 11-0-17 to bring home TSM’s only victory. The rest of the tournament, unfortunately, was business as usual. TSM would come in with solid early game plans and collapse into passivity in the mid-late game. That much would also be on Bjergsen, the team’s dedicated shotcaller.

Being one of the youngest members of his team, while being called upon to be it’s in-game leader and relied upon as it’s main damage dealer, is almost too much responsibility to be placed on one man’s shoulders. Bjergsen’s burden has only increased the more the North American scene improves in Season 5, and internationally bar a strong IEM showing. At Worlds this year, Bjergsen found himself accounting for 45.5% of the damage halfway through the group stage, ending at a more comfortable 37.6% but still the highest in his role. It’s not the brightest hope that Team SoloMid’s walking justification to it’s name only becomes a progressively stronger argument that the team has become a caricature of itself.

By no means is Bjergsen a bad player. He is one of the strongest mids in the tournament. Perhaps not as consistent as Febiven, or as disciplined as xPeke, but he is certainly stronger than both in some aspects. He used to be everything TSM needed him to be. Now he’s simply not good enough for TSM’s expectations, but that is on his teammates and not him. He too benefits from the pressure game as his TF pick showed, though it is possibly in how shotcalling can be affected by having such a global presence. On his old flames, LeBlanc and Syndra, he was still riding strong. It’s just not good enough anymore.

TSM have an incredibly strong core player in Bjergsen and with Dyrus leaving the mix, they have the opportunity to improve their roster as a whole. But take some of the burden off of Bjergsen. Sure, give the team multiple roles that can carry, but allow Bjergsen to focus on himself and perhaps step up in leadership when he has to, rather than that being the first and foremost. On more passive mage champions, the shotcalling should take a backseat too. Who could forget in the regular split how TSM’s entire behaviour changed during the meta of poke in mid lane. Bjergsen is a star, but he was a star that could put the ‘solo’ in ‘solo mid’ in a weaker NA and a weaker world stage.

The rest of the world has moved past the time of the solo mid. It’s time to focus on the ‘team’ part of the name instead.

Season 3

There’s a lot of development that both of these players have gone through. xPeke was the Season 1 world champion, and truly came into his own among the Old Gods in Season 3, as his playstyle aligned with the changing meta. Bjergsen emerged as a serious contender at the same time. Both have remained active on the world stage ever since, inexplicably dominating their region. One deal with a lot of personal change, the other deal with a landscape ever evolving.

Both have had uneven group stages. Both began with a large amount of hope. xPeke has made it to the Worlds quarterfinals from Challenger. His huge gamble in leaving Fnatic has been justified. The ground gained in his first three days was enough to carry through, though weaknesses exposed in the second half of the group stage need to be patched up. Bjergsen’s hope was a glimmer, but showed that when allowed to impact the map, he could still be the carry his team needed him to be.

Both are struggling. But neither should be worried. What both of them have become is a legacy unto themselves. Wherever Origen’s run ends, xPeke will have proven that his success is owed almost entirely to himself. Wherever TSM goes from here, Bjergsen will always have been that carry that was strong enough by himself to take his team to the world stage. His performance was still strong. It just wasn’t enough.

The ghosts of Season 3 are still echoing into Season 5, with voices that demand attention. The world is still watching them.

Michael “Veteran” Archer is an EU writer and former analyst/coach who gets a bit ahead of himself sometimes, but luckily his region actually made it to the bracket stage. You can hate him on Twitter.