Thursday, October 18, 2012

HoN Marketing Event: Zenith to take on Impunity in HoN matchup

There's been a little bit of hype around this on the forums. Apparently iceiceice of Team Zenith (DOTA 2 professional team) will be organizing a match against Impunity from the SEA region. I've read some of the posts on the forums about this and one really sticks out to me as being accurate:

Originally Posted by TheMikey



"Is it just me or does Zenith have a big free roll here. I mean they are "expected" to lose simply because 6 weeks of practice is nothing compared to players on Impunity some of who have been playing for over three years now. At this point, the basics just become second nature to them.

So if Zenith loses, no big deal, everyone will say - "oh they were supposed to lose, but they were close, lets see how impunity would fare at Dota", but if Impunity loses, all hell will break lose, and people from entire Dota scene will think they are superior to HoN players."


Truer words have never been spoken TheMikey! The reason I really don't like this matchup is because there is already a lot of "HoN vs DOTA 2" talk that has died down since The International passed and with HoN Tour coming up, it seems like people from both camps are content.

I think we all understand this is supposed to be a marketing event by Garena SEA to try and cross pollinate between the two games and draw some of the DOTA loyalists in SEA into Heroes of Newerth. But I do have some concerns:

1st. Who is going to watch this? I can't really find information about SEA viewership when it comes to streaming outside of their twitch channel (http://www.twitch.tv/garenahonsea) which has ultra low viewership numbers even for huge matchups.

2nd. What does Zenith and iceiceice have to lose from this matchup? Just like the poster from the forums said, if Impunity loses to Zenith then its going to be "hontresh" all over again. And if Impunity wins, they don't really gain anything as 6 weeks is not really the longest amount of time in the world to practice a game in an attempt to beat a top tier SEA team.

3rd. Marketing goes both ways. Any marketing partnership (in this case between Zenith and Heroes of Newerth) is going to strive to effectively reward both parties. 99% of the time one party comes out ahead further, but still. Zenith vs Impunity will inevitably draw attention to Zenith as well as DOTA 2. Maybe because HoN already has a strong hold in SEA they aren't worried about that?

This reminds me of when TGO (Puppey, Loda, Kebap and others) formed a short lived HoN team back in GameReplays Season 4. During one of the qualifier round, TGO beat EG in a Best of 1 matchup. Now granted this EG was a complete joke (YoDa, DoDo, Bdiz, Riser_ before he was good, and Fujiapples who had just returned from 3 months without internet) they still had the old reputation they had with Chu and Bkid and good Fujiapples and this lead to Puppey being able to talk about how "with 3 weeks of practice we were able to beat the best team in HoN." Of course he never talks about the times he got pooped on by unZ, wahlin and tons of other dumpy teams in the GosuCup Amateur brackets, but why would he? He beat EG! This really is similar. If Zenith wins this, it will be nothing but NEGATIVE attention for Heroes of Newerth and Impunity. So yes, Zenith has nothing to lose and everything to gain from this matchup.

I know this is a Garena event, but Zenith has been a Top 5 team in the WORLD in DOTA for the past two years. Why are they playing Impunity? I know a few of their players and I hate to sound like an asshole, but Impunity wouldn't last 30 minutes against a top 5 HoN team right now.

Here's hoping Garena hasn't completely dicked over Heroes of Newerth in the international scene, regardless of what happens with HoN.SEA.

10 comments:

  1. Zenith are apparently (maybe just talking themselves up) putting absolutely 0 preparation into this. Maybe they will get screwed over by not knowing that lockpick exists and lose game 1 and then win the next 2.

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  2. Well put Phil. This is an drama event where HoN's pride/community basically has nothing to gain but quite a bit to lose. I dont know much about Impunity so no offense to them but I dont think they are close to the level of the teams going to DH for free and the other teams in the DreamHoN finals. So Impunity (a 2nd tier competitive team in the world) is representing basically all of HoN vs one of the best DotA team. Iceiceice was talking big in vid. Just challenge one of the top 4 HoN team and watch the 15 min cc come out (if the game has not ended by then)

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  3. Definitely agree with the way you've described the situation.. The SEA teams which as seen in the last Dreamhack Summer with teams such as OGRE competing, are without a doubt no where near being on the same level as the Int Hon teams, such as coL, Ttes, Tdm to name a few. Impunity, a team that is good but far from the best, is representing the HoN community as a whole against (arguably)the best DotA team in the world. Looks like nothing to lose and everything to gain if they win.
    Hopefully Zenniths won't be able to replicate what Fntic did in the last Dreamhack Summer prior disbanding and use heroes that are practically interchangeable between the two games, such as Arma/Polly/Glacius/Corrupted Disciple and so on to win.

    I would prefer to them playing against TteS on Garena, a team that shown their mettle time and time again and would cope on the servers.

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  4. I don't think that there is something bad with having storylines in scene, be they artificial or not. After all lots of people who still give a damn about Hon's scene as spectators care more about swindle being jew and two-face than someone making big plays.

    Now easiest way to create drama is to clash dota2 vs hon. Can they make Hon look "worse" with this event? Sure but i guess they are going to be handling Dota2 as well so momentum won't disappear, it will just go to another property.

    Also lets not pretend that this is only in Zenith's favor. Impunity, hello? When was the last time you heard about them? In some passing that Garena had HoN tournament and Impunity participated? Or in some international competition were they were eliminated in first round?

    That little video generated more buzz in "international scene" than their plays for two years or whoever long they are playing.

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  5. Am I the only one that thinks impunity is a dumpy match? they should've let them play vs complexity or something

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  6. I honestly had no clue that Impunity was a HoN team. I thought it was 2 Dota teams who were gonna face eachother for...advertising..reasons...??? makes no sense. but, I really had no clue LOL...
    and I even watch a lot of HoN streams etc... guess that just shows how unknown impurity is T_T (for nooblings like me)

    Thanks for telling it pretty well Phil! Feeling less like a n00b now :3

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  7. impunity has been the second best sea team for a while afaik, although that's not saying much.

    Zenith is getting rocked by nonames atm in Hon so I doubt they'll even beat imp.

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