2014 was a turbulent year for the Korean League of Legends scene. While they were dominating the whole year, drastic changes after Worlds put the status quo at risk - China started buying all the big stars of the Korean scene. Does this mean that Korea is done for? Can they grow new talent? Find out, and let us know what you think.
Enjoy!
Pre-Exodus
The Phantom KeSTOPIA
The Western scene had a head-start compared to the Korean scene, and even professional Western players said it would be hard for Korea to close the gap. But the dream of playing professional League of Legends for most Western players turned into a nightmare. Koreans quickly adapted, revolutionized and perfected how LoL is played. Esports fans who followed the Korean scene from previous games saw their suspicions confirmed - that the strict KeSPA training regiment would produce the best LoL players.
In the last two years, there was only one force to be reckoned with in the League of Legends scene. Korea dominated the competition and raised talent after talent to become the next superstar. The Koreans fought “best team in the world” out between themselves, and even the ones who lost that battle were still miles better than their non-Korean competitions. We all remember IEM Katowice, when KT Bullets - at that time not even a top Korean team - dominated their foreign competition. Even Gambit Gaming, the only foreign team that could boast the ability to occasionally defeat Koreans, wasn’t a threat. IEM Katowice stood as a shining example that OGN Champions was the toughest and most prestigious league to win. SKT dominated Worlds 2013 and, in an even more impressive performance, Samsung won Worlds 2014. If I had to make a comparison, Koreans became “Q” from the Star Trek universe.
The dominance became so strong that teams from every region tried to charm Korean players with big cheques, in order to lure them overseas. Insec was one of the first Korean players to move to China. This year's Worlds showed that it can be successful, and probably sparked the recent player exodus from Korea to China. Like Moses lead and freed his people from the Egyptian oppressor, Insec lead his fellow gamers into the promised land of booze, fan girls and money.
I have surely visited you and seen that which is done to you in Korea; and I have said I will bring you up out of the affliction of Korea unto the land of the EDGs, the World Elites, the LGDs and Royal Clubs, unto a land flowing with yuan and hunnies.
Exodus 3:16-17
Post-Exodus
Rise of the Raises
Does this mean the Korean region is finished, and that China will overtake the competitive League of Legends scene? That Korea is done for, and even CLG could beat them in a LAN? To answer this question, we need to first examine the reasons why Korea was so dominant. In the past, many theories were discussed - superior genes, KeSPA gulag-ish training conditions, or the infamous superior infrastructure, where the big Korean conglomerates spared no expense. Except for a good salary.
CloudTemplar, former professional player for CJ Entus Frost and commentator for OGN, says, “Korea is fundamentally a country with a strong mindset, where only the first place is acknowledged. Every field is the same. Because of that...Korea (has) also a lot of pride. With this in mind, there is a need to win no matter what. (The) “no matter what”-winning atmosphere is emphasized. There is nothing besides doing well. It’s like putting your life on the line to game. Everybody has the need to perform (well) no matter what - I need to become number one no matter what.”
The players push their limits through rigorous training, where 16 hours a day is the norm. They internalized the hunger for glory and being the best, but they also have a great environment where they can compete against each other. As most people already know, and many foreign professional players have stated, the Korean ladder taken way more seriously than in NA and EU, because it’s one of the breakthrough possibilities for amateur players. That’s not everything in Korea - there are weekly competitions where the average League of Legends player can compete with his/her 5-ranked team, or just with friends in a PCBang.
In 2014, Logitech partnered with PCBangs to have weekly tournaments in 16 different locations. The winning team got The Might Jax ice hockey skin, and a Logitech keyboard and mouse combo. Second place got IP boosts. Every participant received a League of Legends mousepad. Since the introduction of PCBang tournaments, there have been 126 tournament days, and nearly 62,000 people have participated. In this year alone, the attendance was approximately 30,000. Some got destroyed, others came out of with the desire to compete more.
The next step was the clan battle tournament, which was hosted by NiceGameTV, and has a considerable $12,000 prize pool. Similar to the old OGN format, they play three seasons - Spring, Summer and Winter - in a typical tournament structure. In this tournament, many ex-professional players are participating, like Expession. Young, inexperienced but upcoming players can compete against or with former professional players, and get a first glimpse of professional League of Legends.
Besides these two tournaments, there have been two tournaments especially for female gamers. One was hosted by Afreeca, a Korean streaming company, and the other one was hosted by OnGameNet. In Korea, universities are very important and have a lot of prestige, therefore they have a lot of competition between the different educational institutes. Esports is no exception to this - there have been two tournaments designed specifically for students by OGN and Inven.
The Korean playerbase was competitive from the start, and they have an environment that reinforces and supports it. In the wake of the great exodus, KeSPA and Riot Games Korea have created an even better system to support amateurs and semi-professional players in the next year, hoping to create the next superstar.
At the start of 2015, there will be another student tournament supported by Riot, KeSPA and OGN, with a prize pool of $40,000 for the first season. The tournament will have regional qualifiers, and the RO32 / 16 will be played in the auxiliary stadium at Yongsan, right next to where the pros play. The final rounds will be broadcast by Inven from their studio. Female gamers will also get a chance to show their skills in a $10,000 tournament, and the final teams will be mentored by famous Afreeca broadcasters, in addition to a live-streamed final between the best teams. And, for the first time in Korea, there will be an office-worker league, to find the company with the best LoL players.
Another big reason why Korea has so many good players and on-average higher skill is because there are many high-quality educational shows on how to play LoL from high-ranked ladder players. When people complain that the West doesn't have a strong esports infrastructure, this is often brought up as a possible solution to raise the level of competitiveness of the average player.
Verdict
A New Hope
The Korean region will not suffer from this exodus of players. There are enough young and talented players just waiting for their chance, and the future looks bright with even more support for amateurs through the various opportunities to compete. This is in addition to the new challenger league, where semi-professional players will get a stable tournament environment and compensation.
They might look shaky in the beginning, but once Worlds 2015 comes around, Korea will put every other region in its place once again. Let’s be honest - if Faker would have been content with playing in a weaker region, or thought that China would overtake Korea, he would have switched too. But, like Ash Ketchum, he wants to be the very best, and he can only be the very best if he trains on the best server.
To every other fan who is hoping that the Korean domination is over – I am sorry but it is not. For those thinking that the other regions will now overtake Korea, I leave you with a reminder:
I wonder whether the Korean exodus players improve their region by importing in skill, or if they will deteriorate because of the laxer environment and infrastructure. You could reasonably argue either way, that either the Korean players inspire others to compete better, or become products of the NA/EU environment like everyone else.
On January 07 2015 04:42 GrandInquisitor wrote: I wonder whether the Korean exodus players improve their region by importing in skill, or if they will deteriorate because of the laxer environment and infrastructure. You could reasonably argue either way, that either the Korean players inspire others to compete better, or become products of the NA/EU environment like everyone else.
I'd say the latter to some extent. The best western players are in terms of individual skill not far (if at all) behind good koreans, if we take korean soloq as a benchmark. Only in the team setting the koreans seem to be way stronger. And that's nothing that individual players can easily bring to other regions, especially with the language barrier.
The more interesting case is that in which not only players, but also korean staff/coaches leave (as is already partially happening towards China I think).
I don't think the Korean exports will as strong without the kind of synergy they built in their former teams. I also think the loss of sister teams will hurt Korean teams as well, and perhaps the overall level of play will decline. Although I do think there will be more innovation in terms of more investigation and study into the game itself, and better understanding of what gives competitive advantages in the game. As long as there aren't more crazy idiotic patches from Riot.
I hear a lot of people saying 'individual skill' is pretty close, but I don't agree. Even in Korean pro matches there seem to be a lot of instances where players don't execute optimally in a mechanical sense, even in 1v1's. The mechanical skill ceiling still hasn't been reached, even Faker gets styled on by solo queue single-champion gods from time to time.
On January 07 2015 05:22 Faeny wrote: I also think the loss of sister teams will hurt Korean teams as well, and perhaps the overall level of play will decline.
This will definitely have an effect, I don't know how much it will make them decline though. It will most likely mean teams have to scrim opponents more rather than having an easy practice partner in their sister team. Secret strats maybe harder to come by in this sense.
Although they don't have sister teams, they still have full rosters to practice internally.
I think part of the motivation for the change is that KeSPA/RiotKorea wanted better brand management and to force growth so that you don't have two teams under the same banner (Galaxy Blue/White, almost SKT K/S) dominating the scene.
SHRC worked so well because they had a playstyle that didn't require obscene amounts of co-ordination. If Insec went in the rest followed and even then some of their key misplays seemed to stem from communication problems. Most of these mixed language teams won't have this perfect confluence of factors in their favor. Then you get the regular problems that come with moving to an overseas team, homesickness, difficulty integrating playstyles, personality clashes. Even in a best case scenario a significant portion of these moves are not going to work out.
I could see a "repatriation" of Koreans later in the year. There's going to be a significant number of Korean teams who's rookies do not work out so there'll be plenty of spots to fill and organisations like Samsung, KT, SKT are hardly financial lightweights. A homesick or unhappy Dade/Deft/Dandy/Kakao/Imp/whoever won't be hard to lure back.
I also think thats a big possibility that many koreans will return after one or two seasons.But we need to see how it will turn out. One thing is clear China got a big pr boost
Even now the best chinese teams aren't doing that great, wonder if players will want to go back to Korea simply to have the chance to win Worlds again.
I have to disagree. The players leaving Korea didn't make room for new talent, since the amount of teams in Champions and the amount of players on KeSPA teams got also cut in half. Currently, we actually see very few new faces in OGN, but instead just the second tier players of S4 being moved to the first teams. In most cases, these players have been on professional teams for quite some time now, so their conditions don't actually improve.
By taking away Imp and Deft, it didn't get easier for Bang and Ohq to improve and become World class players - it actually got a lot harder. Only competing with better teams and players really helps you to significantly improve your play, so that you eventually overcome them. SKT T1 helped the rise of Samsung, but now Samsung is gone before other Korean teams even get the chance to overcome them. The step back in terms of talent and size of the competitive scene is huge, so the next months will only be about rebuilding what's lost, and not pushing the level further. I don't think this can be achieved by the time of Worlds, Season 5 belongs to China.
I also think thats a big possibility that many koreans will return after one or two seasons.
I also could see this, but what many people forget is that the Chinese teams are surely not done recruiting forever. Come the next transfer period, they will be back buying the most talented Korean players. For every player that returns, a new one will go. Odds are Korea will never have a team as good as old SKT T1 and Samsung White again, because players will be bought out every 6 months.
I believe Korea has plenty of talent. What turns talent into skills is the Korean attitude towards professional gaming. In short, new skilled Korean players will surface, while I'm not sure that the ones leaving to China will stay at the same level.
I think midlaners in particular in Korea should rejoice that Faker decided to stay - therefore they at least have someone to aspire to beat; however jungle in particular looks like a generally weak role considering who is left in Korea and it will be interesting to see how these players adapt and improve without stagnating to a level of "adequacy."
China should've bought Korean coaching staff, and not just snapped up individual players. The players they bought have maybe one or two good years left in them, and then China'll be shit out of luck again. Since Champions began, Korea's made nobodies into stars consistently, and that's not going to change. Champions might look dire for six months or so, but by Worlds Korea'll have a team of ruthless killers like it always does.
On January 07 2015 10:19 Wildhawk wrote: I also could see this, but what many people forget is that the Chinese teams are surely not done recruiting forever. Come the next transfer period, they will be back buying the most talented Korean players. For every player that returns, a new one will go. Odds are Korea will never have a team as good as old SKT T1 and Samsung White again, because players will be bought out every 6 months.
I think a lot will depend on how well the mixed language team's end up performing. If they perform poorly and in particular if the Koreans underperform relative to their previous levels, I think we'll find owners being wary of bringing a second wave of imports to China.
On January 07 2015 10:19 Wildhawk wrote: I have to disagree. The players leaving Korea didn't make room for new talent, since the amount of teams in Champions and the amount of players on KeSPA teams got also cut in half. Currently, we actually see very few new faces in OGN, but instead just the second tier players of S4 being moved to the first teams. In most cases, these players have been on professional teams for quite some time now, so their conditions don't actually improve.
By taking away Imp and Deft, it didn't get easier for Bang and Ohq to improve and become World class players - it actually got a lot harder. Only competing with better teams and players really helps you to significantly improve your play, so that you eventually overcome them. SKT T1 helped the rise of Samsung, but now Samsung is gone before other Korean teams even get the chance to overcome them. The step back in terms of talent and size of the competitive scene is huge, so the next months will only be about rebuilding what's lost, and not pushing the level further. I don't think this can be achieved by the time of Worlds, Season 5 belongs to China.
I also think thats a big possibility that many koreans will return after one or two seasons.
I also could see this, but what many people forget is that the Chinese teams are surely not done recruiting forever. Come the next transfer period, they will be back buying the most talented Korean players. For every player that returns, a new one will go. Odds are Korea will never have a team as good as old SKT T1 and Samsung White again, because players will be bought out every 6 months.
We will see I am sure that China will struggle with different problems with all the influx of Korean players. Communication will be a big problem for them. Then with some korean coaching staff chinese players can easily get jealous and think korean players are treated better and have a way bigger paycheck.
If you buy out players every 6 months your team will struggle because of synergy. SHRC because they basically rolled the dice with their decision making. Once they were up to a korean team their tactic of just pinging and zerging into the fight didnt work out anymore. You cant rebuild your team every 6 months if you want to be successful.
The new talent will be found in the challenger scene and then will probably move on to the big teams. There is enough unscouted back up talent left. I am looking forward to the KeSPA KR-Ch tournament that will tell us where we are.
As long as Korea doesn't lose KkOma or Reach then they have nothing to worry about when it comes to China. Perhaps the ex Samsung coach might put up a fight against Korea but as long as the Korean players have to live in China and struggle with the language barriers, they won't stand a chance.
Without the same infrastructure and synergy that the Korean imports once had, I expect most of them to perform poorly. I think it's safe to say that Korea's going to just keep on pumping out talent like they always do and will stay on top throughout season five.
i'm more optimistic about these fusion chinese teams, particularly iG and EDG.
the general optimism is that, they've imported so many koreans that they've probably also imported the korean scrim environment. if they only had a few koreans, then the scene would still be the chinese meta. but the korean coaches and players could achieve some critical threshold where the chinese teams actually develop an imported korean meta.
royal club last year only had 2 korean players, but the newer chinese hybrid teams often have sister teams to stash their extra koreans, or straight up trainee/scrim partners.
the specific optimism about iG is that rookie is the best mid after faker in a year's time. very creative player. and they have kakao. EDG will be strong as well.
Also, VG could very well show us if the communication heavy game that SSW used to demolish everyone will survive the language barrier with Dandy and Mata in that team. Meanwhile, we will actually see if the Samsung org can really recreate a strong team like they said or it was actually the players and Homme as the coach that made SSB and SSW the best teams in the world and not the korean organisation infrastructure that create strong team.
I am wondering whether all the Korean guys will be comfortable in China and actually stay there. In the past, homesickness was mentioned a lot with Korean players in foreign teams and the cultural adaptation should not be underestimated.
I'm more skeptical than others when it comes to the performance of these Korean/Chinese hybrid teams. SHRC performed very well, but many commentators and professional players have commented that SHRC is a rather extraordinary exception from the norm. It's absolutely amazing that the players in SHRC were able to trust each other to the extent where they were able to play at a world-class level with limited communication, but the flaws in their communications were brutally revealed and exploited by Samsung White in the Season 4 World Championship finals
I can see these hybrid teams performing well, but in my opinion, no team will ever be able to reach the near-perfect performance seen by SKT in Champions Winter or by Samsung White in Season 4 Worlds due to the issues that will inevitably arise in communication. Individual performance is vastly overrated while communication and teamwork are relatively underrated. People always talk about stand-out performances by individuals or amazing outplays, but rarely comment on aspects of the game such as vision, map movements, team-fighting, or mind-games that are all achieved through communication.
If you're able to understand Korean, you will be absolutely blown away by the amount of information and quality shot-calling that comes from Mata. There's a wealth of information and calls on the littlest details of the game, including where and when to ward, when to show yourself in lane, when laners should move to certain parts of the map, and so much more. It's mind-blowing how Mata is able to read the game and provide detailed, relevant information to ALL of his teammates. What's even more interesting is how his teammates also contribute bits of information that they have, allowing Mata to make calls very quickly and effectively. Keep in mind that this isn't even a professional game - but the quality of communication, and the benefits of this communication is seen clearly here. (I'm working on creating subtitles for this video for those who cannot understand Korean BTW)
The point I'm trying to make with my example above is that the level of communication required to achieve excellence or the highest performance possible in League of Legends is not something that can be done when there's a language barrier involved. The level of detail and complexity seen in a lot of Mata's calls isn't something that can be communicated through pings or short, simple phrases. These calls are very detailed and specific. Furthermore, there's not only concerns regarding the clarity of calls in these hybrid teams, but also regarding the efficiency. Professional League of Legends is quick and fast-paced from the onset, and players need to be able to communicate with each other quickly and effectively for clarity and to make sure that everybody's on the same page.
This is why I think Korea will still be the strongest region regardless of the exodus; the hybrid Chinese/Korean teams may perform very well in the first half of 2015 before the Korean teams' synergy kicks in. However, Korea with its wealth of talented players and excellent coaches, will eventually perform better than the hybrid teams due to their advantage in communication. Hell, I'd venture to say that SKT will outperform all of the ChinaKorea teams right from the onset.
I think that the abolition of sister teams will hurt a bit korean teams since secrets strats will be harder to pull of/conceive but I find it hard to believe that other scenes will catch up even with the korean exodus. The practice regiment in Korea and the mentality of team is so different from foreign team (don't know about China though?). If you look at the SC2 exodus where many Koreans switched to foreign teams, you can see that most of the koreans that switched lost skill compared to the ones that stayed in Korea. The structure of Korean teams employ more people to analyse the games, players train longer and harder, each team is analysed before the game in more depth and this is what gives korean teams the edge. Their overall knowledge of the games is superior to foreign teams in my opinion.
On January 07 2015 16:32 Schnake wrote: I am wondering whether all the Korean guys will be comfortable in China and actually stay there. In the past, homesickness was mentioned a lot with Korean players in foreign teams and the cultural adaptation should not be underestimated.
It's relatively easy to go back for a weekend visit or something similar to Korea, due to the short flight from China. Wouldn't be as easy if they all went to North America.
On January 07 2015 18:10 Baadbeat wrote: I think that the abolition of sister teams will hurt a bit korean teams since secrets strats will be harder to pull of/conceive but I find it hard to believe that other scenes will catch up even with the korean exodus. The practice regiment in Korea and the mentality of team is so different from foreign team (don't know about China though?). If you look at the SC2 exodus where many Koreans switched to foreign teams, you can see that most of the koreans that switched lost skill compared to the ones that stayed in Korea. The structure of Korean teams employ more people to analyse the games, players train longer and harder, each team is analysed before the game in more depth and this is what gives korean teams the edge. Their overall knowledge of the games is superior to foreign teams in my opinion.
I think you're right but for the wrong reasons.
I think sister teams no longer being allowed DOES hurt their practice regimes as team's dedicated strategy and scrimming partners will be no longer able to be two teams with their own goals trying to make things work. Having a larger team to have "in house" scrims is way less helpful than two teams who have starting lineups of players who are motivated to win to stay relevant in the scene.
I do agree with you though that I don't think this "exodus" will result in any of the regions catching Korea in terms of skill, because right now even if regions are trying to stay as competitive as Korea is right now, they have to catch up first. It's like a reverse situation when the game first came out and competitive League wasn't nearly as figured out. The first regions to play the game (NA and EU) got a heads up on the competition, but when Korea joined into the competitive scene their growth was exponentially more than any region in terms of developing talent at a new game. Right now even if the regions besides Korea adopt their mentality when it comes to developing of talent and formation of new strategies based on the current meta, they'll need to increase their pace if they want to catch up to where Korea is right now.
I really think that the only way we're going to ever have a Chinese team on top again is if they can constantly practice against the Koreans. I wonder if the Korean presence in china might encourage that?
EPT
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