Sad News from Korea

While the Korean Road to Blizzcon Qualifier, Heroes Super League by OGN is wrapping up this weekend, the major Korean games forum, Inven has finally re-opened foreign IP access after couple months of blockage against DDOS attacks. With it, couple unfortunate news and behind-the-scene drama of the Korean eSports scene has become apparent. Here are the latest announcements, rumors, and speculations that has roused up the community.

Team MRR Disbands

The 4th place finisher of Super League, Team MRR, has unfortunately announced that they will be disbanding. Only a day after their final match against Team DK, MRR's EverGreen announced in his forum post on September 23rd:

Buck is rumored to be going to military service, while the rest of the members are said to be joining different teams. (one of which will be discussed in more details later in the article)


Despite its young history, MRR quickly rose to become one of the top teams in Korea, with its highly aggressive play style and mastery of 3-warrior compositions. They showed splendid performance fighting against MVP Black, both in HCOT tournament and Super League, where they came very close to beating the No.1 hottest team in the world at the moment.

Team MRR were the only team in Super League that didn't have a sponsor, yet they were without doubt a strong contender for winning the tournament. Known for the high mechanical skills of its individual members, every member of the team, duckdeok, EverGreen, Jeongha, Dami, and Buck all showed spectacular plays that mesmerized the audience.

The team have expressed in the past that they were hoping for a major organization offer them a sponsorship during their performance in Super League, but it looks they have been uneventful. It is unfortunate that such a talented team with immense potential is disbanding, and they will be greatly missed by the community.

Another Oreoman Scandal hits Korea



Ever since the early alpha days, the star player of Team Snake, Oreoman, was a player that was notorious for his "toxic" behavior in the past. His bad behavior has even caused his team to be disqualified for the first big professional Heroes tournament in Korea, HTL, specifically for abusing the Hero League disconnect bug. But with several official apologies from his teammates and tight guidance of team captain kinnu, it seemed like the Oreoman has changed, even saying he now plays with his Enter key removed when he SoloQs.

Unfortunately, another Oreoman scandal has angered the community, and this time, it might be enough to end his eSports career. A few days before the Snake vs MVP Black match was about to take place, the Korean community discovered that Oreoman is an active member of a highly controversial "free speech" board, Ilbe Storage. A rough Korean analogue of 4chan, the site has a very negative connotation in the Korean community, as it has often been involved in defamation, harassment, and extreme political views. Several public Korean figures in the past have been ostracized for their involvement with the site in the past.

While there is still controversy as to whether Oreoman stopped participating in Ilbe site since his "reformation", the Korean community has been quite unforgiving. Combined with Oreoman's already bad reputation, the community has practically branded Oreoman, and by extension Team Snake, as the "symbol of evil". Team Snake already had trouble appealing to the Korean fanbase, and with the latest incident it seems like the only ones that still support Snake are members of the Ilbe community.

(kinnu leads the members of MVP Black into the bush where Oreoman was retreating in)

There is a high chance that the scandal and community backlash from the incident had great effects in the team's performance in the matches against MVP Black and later Team DK. Some even say kinnu's blunder in the last match against MVP Black, where kinnu's Rehgar led the players of MVP Black to the retreating Oreoman, was done on purpose as a revenge for betraying his trust. When Team DK came out victorious against Team Snake last week, the community responded with: "Justice has Prevailed".

(Audience of DK vs Snake match holding up "Justice has Prevailed" sign after DK's victory)


Rumors of MRR's Jeongha joining Snake

With the team's reputation at rock bottom, many wondered whether Team Snake would expel Oreoman from the team. Shortly after Snake's defeat, rumors that MRR's Jeongha has accepted an offer from Team Snake to join the team spread. The rumor spanned from the now deleted post by Kirashin. A well-known high-level player of the community, Kirashin had previously announced the formation of Team eMythology (in another deleted post), and the roster was composed of several members of Danawa Joker, along with MRR's Jeongha filling their secondary warrior role.
Mere two days later, Kirashin announced:

With Oreoman and MRR's Jeongha fulfilling the same role, the Korean community speculates that Oreoman is most likely getting kicked from the team and Jeongha coming in as a replacement, unless Jeongha is brought in simply as a substitute member. Regardless, we will probably soon find out when the Snake's roster for the China's Training for 2015 Blizzcon is revealed.

Uncertain Future of the Korean Scene

With the disbanding of its No.4 team, it seems like Korean scene will go into another state of turmoil that it faced during the beginning of Kael'thas patch, when its then two top teams, TNL (Team DK) and AsD (Team Snake) moved out to China. While its next big tournament, HCOT Season 2 is being held shortly after Super League, Snake and DK are most likely to go back to playing in China once Super League is over, so it is unclear how many of the existing talents will remain active in the scene.

MVP is still the only big professional eSports organization in Korea that has decided to invest in Heroes, while other big name sponsors such as SKT, KT, etc are yet to show any interest in Heroes. Those who wanted to find better sponsors to continue on their career had to resort to finding success in China, like DK and Snake. We were fortunate enough to have MRR emerge from obscurity to go toe-to-toe against the current top teams, but it's unclear whether we will get to see such a dark horse appear again. Maybe OGN will continue to support Heroes tournaments and generate greater interest among the big-name sponsors.

Update: Official Statement from Snake KR (source)

It is official. Oreoman is leaving the team, and both duckdeok and Jeongha of MRR are going to be joining the team. Looks like both of them will be retaining their position, and Snake will now have a 6th member in their roster.