Now that I've submitted my thesis, I have a bit more time now to finish this series. You can find part #1 here and part #2 here.
71) Hwasin's Kissing Girl In 2007 during the Ro32 of the WCG Korea qualifiers, while Hwasin was losing to Devil 0-1, the camera caught a sign that said “Hwasin, I will kiss you if you lose”. Although Hwasin was very good in TvZ, he was having a hard time against the amateur Zerg and lost the first game. However, when the Kissing Girl was caught on camera, Hwasin started to show his monstrous skills once again and advanced to the Ro16. Ever since the incident, the female who was caught on camera was called Kissing Girl and people started saying with her, Hwasin could with both leagues.
About a week later, Hwasin met the Kissing Girl again and beat Nal_rA 2-0 in the Ro16 and then Much 2-0 in Ro8. Finally, when he faced Savior, he gave a set away. People thought that the Kissing Girl’s ability has decreased. But after the 1st set, the camera caught her again and Hwasin ended up winning sets 2 and 3. On the same day, during the GyeongNam STX Masters Cup, losing 1 more set would have resulted in defeat. However, Hwasin defeated his natural enemy Bisu and achieved 3 wins.
Hwasin went 11-1 after the Kissing Girl made her appearance and people were interested to see if he could defeat Stork’s force as well. Although he lost in 1 game, he nevertheless defeated Stork 2-1 and was selected #1 for Korea's representatives for WCG that year.
72) The Pretender During the 2008 Arena MSL, Lecaf OZ's fOrGG was able to defeat Sea, Kal and Flash in the bracket to make his way to the finals against his teammate and undisputed best Zerg in the world Jaedong. Everyone had expected Jaedong to win but with some crisp timing attacks, fOrGG shocked everyone and swept Jaedong 3-0.
The nickname 'Pretender' was given to fOrGG for two reasons. Firstly, the theme song of the Arena MSL was the Foo Fighters' Pretender. Secondly, fOrGG was never able to achieve the degree of success after this tournament victory and after transferring to KT Rolster, faded into obscurity behind Flash and eventually transitioned to Starcraft 2.
73) BackHo types zizi yO Affectionately known in the foreign community as 'FailHo' for his ridiculous amounts of... fail plays during his career, this particular incident highlights the overall hilarity of BackHo's career.
In the Batoo OSL Ro36, he was playing a game against FireFist where he typed in "zizi yO" (his weird way of saying gg), thinking FireFist had tapped out. FireFist was well dead, but BackHo got a bit too excited with the premature GG.
Under KeSPA rules, BackHo would've been given the loss, but FireFist showed sportsmanship by giving BackHo the victory.
KeSPA later changed the rules to only allow "gg" and "GG" as forms of surrender, with any form of typing outside of "pp" (to indicate a pause) resulting in a DQ. This topic will be explored later on.
74) GOMTV's Renegade League As mentioned in one of the Progaming Incidents, the staff responsible for the CJ Superfights which ended in March 2007 would move to GOMTV, and in early 2008 would begin the production of the GOMTV Star Invitational where 16 top players would play against each other every Sunday night in a temporary studio out of Sindorim's Techno Mart.
The success of the GSI would lead to the creation of the GOMTV Classic. Conflict of interest reasons meant that eSTRO, OGN Sparkyz and MBCgame HERO players would not participate, while SK Telecom T1 players only participated in season 2. GOMTV would have a more permanent studio, located within a high school in the west side of Seoul.
With KeSPA's withdrawal of support after Season 3 (assumed due to GOMTV's relationship with Blizzard in relation to SC2 broadcast rights), the tournament ceased in late 2009. However, the success of this series of tournaments gave GOMTV the foundation for the creation of the Global Starcraft 2 League (GSL) with SC2's release in July 2010.
The GOMTV Classic also was the first ever tournament to have live in-studio English broadcasting from Korea, with Tasteless being hired by GOMTV to do the English commentary.
75) The Nintendo Saga During the Arena MSL group selection ceremony, one of the prizes for the players was a Nintendo DS. The Nintendo DS was recently at the time released in Korea, so the prize was considered quite lucrative. Jaedong won a copy over FBH and FBH was quite envious of Jaedong.
FBH had defeated Jaedong twice in Proleague and the upcoming Lost Saga MSL group selection ceremony gave Jaedong an opportunity for revenge.
Jaedong got his wish and got FBH in his group. Jaedong humiliated FBH in the loser's match but both were knocked out.
76) Sex Sex Pussy Hair MBCgame had a live show called "Battle.net Attack" where progaming guests would play against random fans on Battle.net. During the last match of the B.net Attack episode featuring Hwasin, he used a nuke rush strategy to own his opponent. The angered Battle.net user typed "섹스섹스보지털" which translates to "SexSexPussyHair", before disconnecting from the game.
MBC received massive complaints, because the show was a live broadcast. The B.net Attack producer explained that because of the time-constraint, they had not taken the usual precautions of contacting the user before starting the game, and thus was not aware of the user's identity. MBC announced that they will add necessary precautions to prevent this from happening again.
Hwasin would become the center of attention during this time for the wrong reasons. Through miscommunication and faulty information, misled information had said Hwasin himself cursed on Television and STX has had to work hard to rectify the situation. As a result, Hwasin had to cancel most of his other guest appearances, such as the I Love Star program for OGN (which was the equivalent to Bnet-Attack by MBC).
77) firebathero's Ceremonies In a world of dull robot personalities, firebathero was one who stood out the most. Beginning with his victory dance against Savior in the Ro4 of the GOMTV S2 MSL, he is most known not for his gameplay, but for his wacky ceremonies involving pelvis thrusting and the like.
These videos are enough to explain his epicness.
78) Revenge Ceremonies against FBH To continue on from the previous incident - many players also had their own revenge ceremonies in the form of in-game humiliations. The two most notable were Jaedong's mass manner hatcheries and Much's heart pylon.
79) Stork's Dinosaur Costume To keep up with the fan servicing appeal of progaming in Korea, a lot of the progamers are asked to do weird photoshoots by the esports websites to get hits etc.
One of the more amusing photo shoots was Stork in a Dinosaur costume. I have no idea what compelled the photographers to mix Stork and Dinosaur, but it quickly became a meme among both Korean and Foreign communities.
In late 2010, an Austrian BW fan named Daniel had traveled to Korea to watch his favourite player Stork. I don't want to go too much into his adventure (you can read here).
Anyway, his antics during his stay in Korea caused quite a stir within the esports community in the country, mostly of bemusement and he has become one of the more memorable overnight sensations.
Very cool - thanks for sharing. That being said, the title had me scared for a moment. I thought it was another case of match-fixing that had been uncovered.
Thanks for these, so much nostalgia and new stuff I didn't know. Daniel is awesome, I remember pming him about korea too because I planned to go there in the near future and he took the time to write big replies to me and I really appreciated that a lot, what a nice guy. He also posted here saying he thought people on TL would laugh at him because of his nerdy look (iirc), but, to his surprise, everyone here just liked him so much! We are all a bunch of nerds too, so of course Daniel just ended up being a legend for all of us haha. Reading his thread again is a nice nostalgia trip (Listening to Austrian music too atm, what a coincidence :p)
Man Firebathero is awesome. If you go read back on threads about him, he had so much love and hate thrown at him for his celebrations. Absolutely crazy stuff.
On November 28 2017 12:12 Bagration wrote: Very cool - thanks for sharing. That being said, the title had me scared for a moment. I thought it was another case of match-fixing that had been uncovered.
thanks alot very good article. It is always good to hear some old stories of that game that you love. Can't remember the "Kissing Girl incicident" and that ForGG was called "Pretender", though.
I've been following BW since about the year where Boxer and OOV were in the finals. I was so nervous that I couldn't sleep the night before.
On November 28 2017 12:12 Bagration wrote: Very cool - thanks for sharing. That being said, the title had me scared for a moment. I thought it was another case of match-fixing that had been uncovered.
I was thinking the same thing. For the entire first story, about the kissing girl, I was waiting for it to be revealed to be an elaborate match-fixing hoax that somehow involved the girl. Like, when she showed the sign, the guy would throw the game. Didn't make any sense when he kept winning.
Ahhhh the good old "X X PUSS HAIR"! I miss HwaSin so much. Good we got FBH still going on and his videos in his channel are as better as his ceremonies.
Firebathero was hilarious. The best thing about his ceremonies was when his opponents knew in advance that they were going to get humiliated, and wanted to avoid playing him at all costs.
sAviOr after losing to Firebathero for the sixth consecutive game:
"I can't help but acknowledge Firebathero. I admit defeat. I can definitely feel a skill disparity, and I want to avoid playing him for the time being."
The best thing about the dynamic was that you could tell sAviOr wanted to win so badly, while Firebathero was on cruise mode thinking more about in-game ceremonies like nukes. You could sense that Firebathero treated his games versus sAviOr more as an opportunity to promote himself to the fans, rather than being a competitive affair between two professionals.
On November 30 2017 14:06 Letmelose wrote: The best thing about the dynamic was that you could tell sAviOr wanted to win so badly, while Firebathero was on cruise mode thinking more about in-game ceremonies like nukes. You could sense that Firebathero treated his games versus sAviOr more as an opportunity to promote himself to the fans, rather than being a competitive affair between two professionals.
On November 30 2017 20:12 CHEONSOYUN wrote: there's nothing funny about starcue; he's only the greatest zerg player to have ever lived show some respect!!
On November 28 2017 12:19 Essbee wrote: Thanks for these, so much nostalgia and new stuff I didn't know. Daniel is awesome, I remember pming him about korea too because I planned to go there in the near future and he took the time to write big replies to me and I really appreciated that a lot, what a nice guy. He also posted here saying he thought people on TL would laugh at him because of his nerdy look (iirc), but, to his surprise, everyone here just liked him so much! We are all a bunch of nerds too, so of course Daniel just ended up being a legend for all of us haha. Reading his thread again is a nice nostalgia trip (Listening to Austrian music too atm, what a coincidence :p)
On November 28 2017 12:19 Essbee wrote: Thanks for these, so much nostalgia and new stuff I didn't know. Daniel is awesome, I remember pming him about korea too because I planned to go there in the near future and he took the time to write big replies to me and I really appreciated that a lot, what a nice guy. He also posted here saying he thought people on TL would laugh at him because of his nerdy look (iirc), but, to his surprise, everyone here just liked him so much! We are all a bunch of nerds too, so of course Daniel just ended up being a legend for all of us haha. Reading his thread again is a nice nostalgia trip (Listening to Austrian music too atm, what a coincidence :p)
On November 28 2017 12:19 Essbee wrote: Thanks for these, so much nostalgia and new stuff I didn't know. Daniel is awesome, I remember pming him about korea too because I planned to go there in the near future and he took the time to write big replies to me and I really appreciated that a lot, what a nice guy. He also posted here saying he thought people on TL would laugh at him because of his nerdy look (iirc), but, to his surprise, everyone here just liked him so much! We are all a bunch of nerds too, so of course Daniel just ended up being a legend for all of us haha. Reading his thread again is a nice nostalgia trip (Listening to Austrian music too atm, what a coincidence :p)
EPT
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