Every tournament ever played teaches us something about World of Warcraft. Sometimes it’s the strength of a new comp, sometimes we discover an up and coming talent. And sometimes we learn something a bit broader. Sometimes it’s just something that other games and sports have known for quite a while.

IEM was a tournament that taught us many things. Primarily, it taught us the peril of the sponsor-lead model which esports currently follows. What reason could there be for tagging ESL’s flagship event onto CeBit other than exposure for their sponsors? For players especially, this year’s IEM finals were a bit of a disaster. Not just because of the delays (which, in fairness, were not ESL’s fault) but because of the accommodation… again.

I stayed with SK US in the “hotel” – you will have noticed a lot of blogs and coverage surrounding the word hotel with speech marks, and with good reason. It honestly seemed like some kind of ex-Hitler youth camp with three people per tiny room and bunk-beds that could barely accommodate a dwarf. Two showers between 15 or so people meant that morning showers were as competitive as the actual tournament. Add the paucity of the shuttle service (“you’re not playing today, we aren’t picking you up”) and you had a pretty frustrating state of affairs for the so-called stars of the show.

Despite the teething problems, there was still an incredible tournament played out. Fans saw some of the best games of WoW ever played. In my honest opinion this was probably the best tournament so far in terms of pure skill and entertainment. We saw without doubt that the landscape has changed after the resilience fix. Nearly all of the teams I interviewed claimed that it would make no difference and yet the top eight had a very strange look to it. Hell, rogue/’lock/shaman won the whole thing!

But the biggest thing that I took away from IEM is the way mistakes are so much more visible at an event like this. Look at SK Sansibar’s quarter final match against Dignitas. Sansibar had been in white hot form since the start of the European finals, where they beat Dignitas in the final.

Flash forward to a tied 3-3 game in Hanover which is as close as the scoreline suggests. Moldran – who has had an almost flawless tournament so far – thinks he sees a chance to end the final game quickly and charges straight into Dignitas’ spawn room on Ruins. The sound of palms slapping against faces in the crowd is almost deafening and Sansibar’s tournament chances are over in an instant.

As I mentioned, Moldran had close to a perfect event last week but what is he going to be most remembered for at this event? That’s the price that top level stars have to pay in any sport. Imagine if he’d done the same thing on a live realm, or even in an un-streamed group match. Nobody, save for the five other players, would have even known about it. Being a professional gamer has never been glamorous, but last week showed me that it is actually hard work sometimes.