ATLANTA -- As cars speed on Techwood Drive by Hank McCamish Pavilion, the venue for thousands of basketball games, another much-anticipated sporting event is ready to kick off across the street for its second season of the year. ELeague, a collaborative project between television network Turner Broadcasting and sports management agency WME|IMG, is set to host four teams in its first group as it prepares for its second season of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive action.
And for Jason "Moses" O'Toole, a former Counter-Strike player of analyst and casting fame, he prepares to once again provide analysis to hundred of thousands at home watching on television and on livestreaming platform Twitch. Moses, for his part, is known as one of the best, if not the best, North American analysts, often partaking in the analysis desk of most events within the Counter-Strike scene.
Today, he's set to analyze a wide array of teams as North America's Cloud9, Brazil's Immortals, Germany's mousesports, and European-mixed team FaZe Clan have upcoming matches. This group, ELeague's group A, has some key differences from its sister groups.
"Group A lacks some of the strengths and [brand] names like some of the other ones," Moses tells ESPN. "It doesn't have the Ninjas in Pyjamas, the Fnatics, Na`Vi, Virtus.pro obviously, but it still has some very interesting storylines. Can mousesports repeat? What are they going to look like after the [Tomáš "oskar" Šťastný] situation? Cloud9, obviously, can they continue this run? How are they going to continue to look as they go on? Immortals, who I think is a dark horse, they dropped their first map. There is kind of some cool, interesting storylines without the strength of name."
Moving forward, two of the groups, in particular group B and C, pit some of the best -- such as G2 Esports, Ninjas in Pyjamas, and Virtus.Pro in group B and Natus Vincere (Na`Vi), SK Gaming, and Astralis in group C -- against one another. But only two teams can make it out of each group alive and move on to playoffs.
"With the way [ELeague] has cut the groups down to the four groups of four, there are a lot of groups out there where you can't predict a winner," Moses says. "There are very, very good teams that are going to be left out of the playoffs just because [there are groups] that are basically only good teams."
ELeague's format change for this season, shortening the season from six groups and a last chance qualifier to four groups who automatically seed into playoffs, comes after feedback from teams, such as Virtus.pro, who had to stay for extended periods of time in Atlanta last season. Now with the new format, many teams have been seeded in extremely difficult groups.
But if previous Counter-Strike tournaments are any indication, group B may be one of the best tournament groups any Counter-Strike competition will see this year. Polish team Virtus.pro, who is expected to top that group, is the best team in the world right now, according to Moses.
Its rise to contest for first comes after the previously undisputed first place team, SK Gaming, who won both Major League Gaming Columbus and ESL One Cologne, have been in a slump since the departure and now return of Fernando "fer" Alvarenga; he was absent from the team for an extended period of time due to nasal surgery.
"I think also part of it has to do with those couple of months off [SK] took when fer was out with his surgery, that natural decay over their spot from just not competing in too many tournaments while Virtus.pro is doing a massive tour of the world," Moses explains. "I wouldn't put Na`Vi up there as a danger to take the number one spot yet, just because I think they have critical issues in their map pool that looks very weak; I think that's what's going to stop them, despite the amount of skill [they have] and [the fact that] they've been able to overcome [map pool weakness] to a certain degree."
The Counter-Strike scene, for the past few months, has taken a swirling change with massive roster moves on both major continents, North America and Europe. Some teams, such as Cloud9 and Na`Vi, have seen improvement from said changes, while others like Fnatic and Godsent -- who made a swap with one another for several players -- have taken a hit in their performance.
North America has seen improvement this year as well, particularly with Team Liquid, who took third-fourth at Columbus and second at Cologne, as well as a third-fourth recently at ESL One New York, showing moments of fantastic play. But Liquid's lacked consistency and Cloud9, at least online, has recently shown that it too should be taken seriously.
Despite these small weaknesses, Moses, a former North American player of the game, has an optimistic outlook.
"It's obviously the best we've seen North America; this region is the strongest it's been," he says. "Still, I think there are a lot of question marks. I'm not sure, this Liquid team is like the eternal tease of North America, where all the roster changes and coaching changes they've gone through over the entire year, they've always been poised to get there."
He says his questions lie in that of Liquid, Cloud9 and OpTic Gaming, each of which have had some good performances, but have failed to remain consistent. Consistency will be key if North America, as a region, wants to perform well at the upcoming ELeague major, the first of 2017, at Atlanta's Fox Theatre. Moses has a pick for which NA representative will go the furthest.
"I don't think we're going to see an American team in the final again [at the major in January]," he explains. "Cloud9, it's going to see how things shape up with the group draw goes; I would still say at this moment that Cloud9 is the best hope [for North America] right now."
He says he won't count out Liquid though, who has had two great major performances in 2016. But with a roster change in July of adding Jacob "Pimp" Winneche, the team has looked off base from its previous outings with former player Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev. Additionally, Liquid has just parted ways from coach Luis "Peacemaker" Tadeu, who signed on in May.
"I think Liquid, if they can fix some of their issues, if they can find a way to get [Josh "jdm64" Marzano] a little bit better, continue to improve with Pimp, I think they're going to be the best hope come January," Moses says. "I still think that that roster still has better pieces to be a stronger team, they just haven't realized it yet and that's been the story of this core of [Nicholas "nitr0" Cannella, Jonathan "EliGE" Jablonowski and Spencer "HiKo" Martin] ... since mid-2015, since whenever HiKo joined on basically."
But as Counter-Strike moves into 2017, a glaring issue within the industry has come to a head: oversaturation. With many investors and tournament organizers taking interest in Counter-Strike in 2016, events have become plentiful, too plentiful in many cases. Often times, teams don't get breaks nor much time to practice before competing online or offline. Many players and teams complain that there are too many events, something Moses agrees on.
"To end this year, we have, even outside of ELeague: minors, the major qualifier, there's another DreamHack event, there's IEM Oakland, there's like four or five events coming in the end of the year and there's only two months [left] in the year," he says.
Recently, one team, Australian squad Renegades, had to cancel its trip to the ESL Pro League finals in São Paulo, Brazil, as they have to travel to Johor Bahru, Malaysia instead to compete in the Asian Minor. There they will play to earn a chance to play in the major qualifier for the ELeague major in January. Much of the Counter-Strike community was outraged by this scheduling issue when it was announced.
"That's atrocious, the Renegades situation should never happen," Moses says on the topic. "This team qualified for a huge event with the ESL Pro League and they should never be forced to choose between that and going to a minor. Unfortunately, you look at it and who can you really fault? That's the tough part because these minors have to get scheduled at some point and with the way we're going at it, and I've heard about this same issue with different tournament organizers, where they're looking for space to fit their league or tournament or whatever it might be, but no matter where they put it, someone's getting screwed."
But there's no easy solution and Moses says that he's certainly not in the position to come up with one. Some of the Counter-Strike community on social media has expressed that teams should just not attend events, but Moses says that doesn't make sense.
"That's just, to a certain degree, not realistic when you don't know in esports how long Counter-Strike is going to be around, when you get a tournament that's $250,000, $500,000, we're starting to get some high prize pools," he explains. "As a player and being competitive, you want to go to all of them. It's not always realistic, whether it's sponsors, whether it's the exposure of an event, whether it's your organization wanting you to go. It's not always a simple yes or no answer for players, especially considering the fact that when you're a team performing well -- we've seen it with multiple teams -- that your window to win championships is very, very small."