In the year 2000, Lim Yo Hwan figured out that while dropships were terribly slow and expensive (they were like un-upgraded shuttles before the 1.08 patch), they could be pretty damn good against Zerg players who only made scourge if they spammed the ‘S’ key too quickly. After being crushed one too many times, the hapless Zerg players started to leave lurkers and scourge at their bases. At this point, Lim Yo Hwan furthered discovered that paying close attention to your units and clicking quickly according to the situation is a pretty good idea. The supposedly prepared Zergs continued to lose to dropships anyway. At some point while this was happening, Boxer became bored and decided to master and popularize one-factory expansions in TvP as well. Further inspirations were to come, but none as lasting the first two. As far as Starcraft goes, he was and continues to be a leading pioneer in the “This seems effective in theory, I think I’ll actually pull it off because I’m just that f***ing awesome” school of thought.

One of two Starcraft players who had the decision making ability, knowledge of the game, and overall awareness to play random at the top level (the other was Grrr…). While he later switched to Terran when perfection through repetition emerged as the dominant style of play, Chrh's career as a random player was something special. Grrr… was the more aggressive and whimsical half of a successful random player, full of good ideas and unpredictability, with the flexibility and execution to make things work in prickly situations (his picked-protoss on islands in an exception, being one of the earliest examples of ruthlessly efficient play. But that’s a story for another day). ChRh, compared to this, was the passive side of a great random player; he always knew what to do in any situation. He was rarely flustered, and could be counted on to make the correct decision given any situation. While he could perform high-impact plays when required -- such as an epic psi-storm burst against Zerg -- his best games were the least notable ones, where slowly lulled his opponents into a quiet loss.

Back when Starcraft first started to be shown on TV and internet broadcasts, the broadcasters were unsure of what direction they were going in. The game was hugely popular in Korea in 1999 ~ 2000, so it was guaranteed some kind of base viewership. But after the basic idea of Starcraft on TV, they didn't seem to know what they were going to do.

When I started watching Starcraft at that time, I approached it as a tool to get better by seeing what kind of strategies and tactics good players used. HOT486 (His original ID. When your ID references a K-Pop band and an Intel CPU from the 1990’s, you know you are an old school badass) was one of the first players who started me and countless others along the path of watching Starcraft for pure entertainment, relishing the quality game.

For better or worse, he was the first of manifestation of a classic Starcraft archetype: The Villain Zerg. One of our most beloved stories typically goes something like this. The cunning Zerg players torments our Protoss hero with nasty lair tech harassment, and then contains him with lurkers while shrewdly sniping his observers, all the while expanding around the map. However the Hero perseveres and survives through this hardship, scratching together his final army as his resources begin to run out. In the final do or die push, the Hero’s forces appear to be outnumbered and outmatched…. But he prevails! -- the Zerg swarm fades away underneath the relentless cover of lightning.

HOT was our perfect villain. Although he knew when to play cynically and take the advantage without confrontation, he also relished taking his opponent head on in battle. The Terran death ball wasn’t something to be slowly worn away; you threw yourself at it full force and picked up the pieces later.

Unfortunately, his games didn’t come down to amazing final confrontation phase that often. HOT was a good player after all, and many of his games simply involved him repeatedly crushing the opponent’s feeble attempts at breaking containment until HOT had expanded to every corner of the map. When this happened though, I never blamed HOT for being a cheap, boring Zerg player. Instead, I would blame his opponent for not doing better. I knew that if you went up again HOT wanting a fight, he would be more than eager to throw down.

Any long time fan of Starcraft should know what ‘Han Bang’ means by now. Han Bang is your wind-up haymaker, your one-hit KO, your all in shove. We are used to the word now, but people didn’t always refer to the well-timed rush of pwning as the “Han Bang rush” from the start. First, there had to be a player who demonstrated the concept of a single, all-or-nothing attack with such fury that people began think “Damn, we need a name for that s***.” Although no present Starcraft maneuver is named after a player (“bisu build” jokes will be banned), I wouldn’t mind it if people started saying things like “Whoa, that guy’s Rainin’ it up.”

IntoTheRain’s Hanbang came during the two-gate opener age of Protoss vs Zerg, where Protoss would attempt to do as much damage with a zealot rush as possible, then put together a pitiful zealot/templar/observer force off one base. Zerg would be an overall jerk, containing Protoss’s front with lurkers and scourge while doing lame only-on-Lost-Temple cliff lurker tricks (hmmm, Zerg players are still jerks now). While it was the typical pattern for every Protoss player, IntoTheRain made a point of making his containment breaking attack as epic as possible. On good days, he would utterly smash Zerg’s containment force and then go onto Zerg’s main to finish the game with a single attack. If it went poorly, he might push far enough to take his third expansiom, only to lose to a swarm of ultralisks and cracklings after 10 minutes of fighting cliff lurkers.

Unfortunately for IntoTheRain, he qualified for the OnGameNet Starleague after he was past his prime. For many people, his Han Bang was something they knew about from hearsay only, not personal experience. But for those like me, who have seen and remember IntoTheRain at his best, he left us an important life lesson: Faced with an all-or-nothing decision, take your chances. At worst you lose. At best you’re a f***ing badass.

(Was IntoTheRain vs HOT486 eagerly anticipated back in 2001? You betcha. In the end, however, it was a lame game. Me, I blamed IntoTheRain for not bringing enough fight to a FIGHT.)

There’s barely a one year gap in careers between iloveoov and his peers in this tournament, but he comes from a totally different environment than the others. For the elder seven, there was no existing establishment to help their careers along. Though E-sports was hardly as organized as it was today, iloveoov is the first real success story of the modern progamer. After starting as a practice partner, he was brought in as a junior member of a team so that he might slowly develop his skills. iloveoov practiced hard and improved his game, made a huge splash in the pro league/team league, and then went on to win in individual competitions. To be honest, I think he’d be more appropriate in a tournament with players like JulyZerg, Savior, and Nal_ra, but what’s a party without at least one gate-crasher? Might as well take the cockiest, most BM bad motherf****** of them all in that case.

Did I ever tell you that Nada is the greatest player ever? Oh you already knew? Good thing, because if you disagreed, I’d have to tell you that you’re stupid. Here, go look at TLPD. Anyway, now we’re all familiar with Nada’s countless tournament wins and the way he crushed the best players in his time over the period of several years. So, how about a story about young Nada, before he was known as the second Bonjwa?

Unfortunately, I can’t think of anything quirky and amusing about his early career to share. As far as I can recall, Nada was introduced to us as a killing machine, and continued to be one ever after. In fact, the only surprise an E-sports fan may have felt upon observing Nada’s early career would be that he managed to keep consistently killing people for so damn long. If I had been told in 2002 that Nada would be the greatest player of all time, I would have shrugged and said “Sure, why not?” Although, I will say that he was cuter seven years ago.

The March 3rd Revolution was a source of great joy at first, but in the following years it would cause me sorrow as well. In the old days, there was a universal truth. Zerg was evil, Protoss was good. Zerg had the maps, the cheap units, the unbalanced everything on his side. Protoss had to fight tooth and nail for every victory, and even their best was not good enough most of the time. Simply put, Protoss vs Zerg was HARD.

Then Bisu came and taught us if we opened our minds (and clicked really fast), anything is possible. He gave Protoss a great gift, and yet took away something vital as well.

For seven years, soul of Protoss was defined by their struggle. The dream of defeating Zerg in a final may have been an impossible one. Nothing came easy for the hero, he had to earn his happy ending. He had to have a burst of inspiration so he could for once, overcome the foes who had cast him aside so easily in the past. The glory was not in the victory itself, but in how hard earned the victory had been.

Thanks for the revolution, now give us back our old heroes.

Hong Jin Ho is the most complicated man in E-Sports.

People seem to actually forget this, but he was an excellent and talented player for a very long time. In terms of consistency, he was superior to everyone else in his generation with the exception of Nada (who was the greatest player of all time, so tough beans there).

Somehow all that’s taken a back seat to the way Yellow has become a truly bizarre cult figure. Hong’s legacy as a second-place finisher has been thrown back at him in so many ways, from gentle teasing to outright mockery, and also as pity and true support. Now Yellow’s legacy has ascended into something else completely, detaching itself from the actual player and becoming a symbol of E-sports itself.

If someone says “Kong gga ji ma” (one of the mantras related to Yellow and his silver curse), he’s not actually saying anything about Yellow. He’s just saying, “I like E-sports and I know who Yellow is!” Along those lines, Fomos even started calling the points they awarded for their winner prediction games ‘Kong,’ and it implied absolutely nothing about their opinion of Yellow. So say what you will about which of these eight players was actually the best, Yellow is the true symbol of E-sports.