EPTSeeing that the days of Brood War were coming to an end, KeSPA officials set their sights on the horizon: Starcraft II. Seeking to challenge GOM and its players dominance over the scene, KeSPA delivered an edict to its teams: they were to introduce their players to Starcraft II in order to become accustomed to the new units, metagame, and build orders. After three months, each team was to hold an in house tournament and present their champion to KeSPA.
November 2011
The winners were a mixture of big name pros and others who simply understood the game: Flash, Jaedong, Hyun, RorO, By.Sun, M18M, Snow, ZerO, and others stood victorious. KeSPA then assembled the players at their headquarters and held a second tournament, to determine the champion of the champions, the face of KeSPA when the switch was made. After grueling competition, SKT1Sun defeated MBCHyun to take the title.
As the players returned to their team houses, By.Sun and Hyun were held back and told the true purpose of this tournament: the loser of the final match was to go over to one of the GOM teams, learn their ways, emerge from the shadows, and eventually rise and become the champion, By.Sun, having won the tournament, would be touted as the future of KeSPA Starcraft II. Hyun was to be publicly exiled to free agency, where he would display his skills and gain the trust of a GOM team. Hyun accepted his mission and hardened his resolve.
After displaying his abilities for a short period, Hyun was quickly picked up by Team SCV Life. Although his abilities did not develop as quickly as KeSPA would have liked, Hyun slowly began to win many small online tournaments and make a name for himself, qualifying for GSL Season 1. KeSPA was pleased.
Unfortunately, Hyun lost in the first round of Code A to SlayerS`TaeJa, dropping out of GSL. He attempted to qualify for Season 2, but failed. KeSPA grew irritable, and prepared to mobilize.
May 2012
Growing irritable with Hyun's lack of performance, KeSPA decided to unleash their other weapon upon the Starcraft II scene: By.Sun. Through the Hybrid Proleague, By.Sun, now known as Rain, became known as one of the most valuable players in the the KeSPA scene. After a long and drawn out staring contest between GOM and KeSPA, in which KeSPA refused to let its players participate in Season 4 of GSL while GOM boycotted OSL, both parties blinked, and Rain was one of the two KeSPA players seeded into Code S.
September 2012
Having seen little of the freshly minted KeSPA pros against the seasoned eSF vets, expectations for Rain and his compatriot Jaedong's performance in GSL were all across the board, ranging from easy Ro8 to bottom of first groups. After Jaedong was thoroughly trounced in his Ro32 group, expectations for Rain sunk, but he managed to squeeze through anyway, defeating ByunPrime by a 4-0 map score to advance.
In Ro16, Rain was chosen into the group of death with TaeJa, DongRaeGu, and Polt, where he did the impossible: he stopped the TaeJa hype train. After several months of TaeJa appearing poised to take the title of Best Terran in the World, Rain made him appear simply pedestrian in their two matches. After defeating Polt in the winners match, Rain was poised to challenge for the title, a situation that KeSPA couldn't have dreamed up better.
Even better, Rain was seeded against Liquid`Hero, a poor PvP player. Rain steamrolled his way to an easy 3-0 victory. All of the momentum that TaeJa had two weeks previous was now squarely behind Rain. The next obstacle to KeSPA's GSL victory, the ultimate slap in the face of GOM, was, however, simply the worst opponent that KeSPA and Rain could have asked for: LG-IMMvp. Although he was battered, broken, and largely counted out, the former KeSPA player managed to eek out the victory against Rain, delaying KeSPA's plan.
While Rain had up and comping through the Proleague, Hyun had been slowly and quietly fighting his way back into and maintaining his position in Code A. After defeating Sleep and LG-IMYoDa, he came within one game of defeating MVP.Vampire to secure his spot in Code S for Season 5.
October 2012
Following a decent showing in the WCS South Korea championship, Rain attended the WCS Asia Finals, where he was able to defeat several other Korean Protosses to claim the championship. also earning himself a spot in the WCS Grand Finals. With this victory, Rain and KeSPA gained a taste for foreign money, and pledged to send several of their players to the MLG Fall Championships. These players were to be determined by the MLG vs. Proleague Invitational, which had been agreed to in principle in the summer months. Despite an excellent regular season record of 42-6, Rain fell in the first round to his KeSPA brethren hyvaa.
Meanwhile, Hyun's resolve to not disappoint his true superiors had hardened after his near defeat of Vampire. In the midst of his reign as King of IPL Fight Club, Hyun demolished his Up/Down group, only dropping a map to aLive. Hyun had finally made it to Code S.
Then, the best thing that KeSPA could have dreamed of happened: Rain was placed against Hyun for his first Ro32 match. KeSPA, however, had a difficult decision to make: rely on their ace, who had impressed so many in so little time, or trust the one who had failed them so many times in the past. The choice seemed easy, but KeSPA, fearing that Rain's splash on the scene wouldn't last with the state of the current metagame, and decided to do something even more brilliant: send Rain to MLG, which he had failed to qualify for, to compete in the open bracket. By informing GOM on short notice, KeSPA would provide Hyun an easy path through to the Ro16, where he could use his new found dominance in the booth to capture what KeSPA dreamed of: a GSL Code S title.
Hyun was drafted into MarineKingPrime's group for the Ro16, where he nearly destroyed all of KeSPA's well laid plans by barely defeating StartaleHack in the final match of the night. He has since destroyed the Prodigal Son of Auir, CreatorPrime, and the bizarrely cheesy STX_INnoVation to claim his spot in the GSL Season 5 Code S finals.
The only impediment in his path is potentially one of the most cyborglike players in the game today, a man who rarely makes facial expressions, much less shows emotion: MVP.Sniper. The ZvZ master and usurper of DRG's throne atop MVP is all that stands in the way of KeSPA's true takeover of Starcraft II.
Can he stop the plot that has been in motion for over a year or will the cloak and dagger tactics of KeSPA prove enough? We'll find out tonight.
TL;DR: + Show Spoiler +
A tonge-in-cheek piece about KeSPA's secret plot to take over SC2 by having Rain drop out of GSL to attend MLG at the advantage of Hyun.
