It looks like amidst the noise of Team MVP emptying and refilling its roster this summer, the 2012 Season 5 GSL Code S Champion "Sniper" has retired and will be doing his compulsory military service in South Korea.
Source: DongRaeGu
Although his run in the spotlight was brief and he quickly became one of 'The Forgotten Champions' of Code S, he is still one of very few players to have ever won the hardest Starcraft 2 tournament in the world. There was hype around this once new zerg who emerged from out of the tall shadow of his teammate and practice partner DongRaeGu to make a name for himself as an up and comer who was taking down the very best.
In a season that saw him triumphing over Seed, sOs, PartinG, Polt, Leenock, Ryung and finally HyuN in a close grand finals, nobody can deny that Sniper existed and had the skills necessary to earn his moment to shine brighter than almost any other players in the history of the game ever have or will get the chance to.
Take care in the military Sniper! Long live The Forgotten Champions of Code S!
Sniper vs HyuN - Game 7 - 2012 Season 5 GSL Code S Championship
It's quite sad for me, actually. His run was brief but I was there when his hype began to bubble and watched as he soon found and delivered on an opportunity to make a Code S run. His play always looked so much like DongRaeGu that you were sure they practiced together a ton. Even stylistic aspects of their play, like the way they controlled and micromanaged their armies looked eerily similar. He was damn strong and someone that earned a lot of respect in a short amount of time. He helped me to become a fan of more than DRG but also team MVP as a whole.
This is some really sad news. During proleague he showed quite some interesting games. He wasn't far from coming back on top. He would have deserved to go far another time, just to shut all the haters up.
Will never forget his GSTL dominance and his following rise to glory.
This is such an insult to the fans.. What a way to find out you favorite player was retired. No wonder the Koreans are seen as faceless moneygrabbers in the sc2 scene!
Btw im not a Sniper fan, but if i was i would be pissed off.
We talked about him being forgotten so often that now we remember. Alongside Seed and jjakji. Maybe it proves if you're a GSL champion you really become a legend, even if you weren't a great.
On October 19 2014 18:11 Taco87 wrote: This is such an insult to the fans.. What a way to find out you favorite player was retired. No wonder the Koreans are seen as faceless moneygrabbers in the sc2 scene!
Btw im not a Sniper fan, but if i was i would be pissed off.
On October 19 2014 18:11 Taco87 wrote: This is such an insult to the fans.. What a way to find out you favorite player was retired. No wonder the Koreans are seen as faceless moneygrabbers in the sc2 scene!
Btw im not a Sniper fan, but if i was i would be pissed off.
Moneygrabbers? What?
On October 19 2014 18:52 Seeker wrote: Man... I really liked Sniper. Best of luck to him in the military. Hopefully, he'll become like, the #1 sniper in the Korean military or something.
Maybe he'll beat the most popular sniper in the finals of some in-house competition to determine who gets to go undercover in North Korea and thus disappoint everyone?
On October 19 2014 18:11 Taco87 wrote: This is such an insult to the fans.. What a way to find out you favorite player was retired. No wonder the Koreans are seen as faceless moneygrabbers in the sc2 scene!
Btw im not a Sniper fan, but if i was i would be pissed off.
Moneygrabbers? What?
Come on, everyone knows that each time a Korean won a foreign tournament it was in fact Sniper playing with a mask
Before I even knew what SC2 was, how you won, or that the term RTS existed, I randomly tuned in to that final. I had no idea what the hell was going on, but the crowd was electric, the casting was emotional, and the production was sweet. So, I watched in confusion, getting excited about the trickery of that hidden base without knowing what he did or why it was tricky. Sniper was the first person I saw win a trophy in SC2. And now, I'm here. So even though I never was crazy about him, I always remembered him, and respected him.
On October 19 2014 18:06 stuchiu wrote: With the retirement of Sniper, the age of evil finally ends. In it's place is the rise of Choya and his new age of corporate evil.
On October 19 2014 18:11 Taco87 wrote: This is such an insult to the fans.. What a way to find out you favorite player was retired. No wonder the Koreans are seen as faceless moneygrabbers in the sc2 scene!
Btw im not a Sniper fan, but if i was i would be pissed off.
On October 19 2014 18:52 Seeker wrote: Man... I really liked Sniper. Best of luck to him in the military. Hopefully, he'll become like, the #1 sniper in the Korean military or something.
Maybe he'll beat the most popular sniper in the finals of some in-house competition to determine who gets to go undercover in North Korea and thus disappoint everyone?
Either that, or he finds some female sniper on the other team, defeats her, she cries, and the legend continues even outside of SC2.
On October 19 2014 18:08 atrox_ wrote: though he was easily the most forgettable GSL champion ever it's sad to see players retire. Best of luck in the military
I don't think he's the most forgettable GSL champion ever. I watched that GSL live because it was in my time zone, and Hyun had so much goddamn hype around him (I believe he was still undefeated in Fight Club).
Wanna know the most forgettable GSL champion ever? RorO. It was the second ZvZ finals in a row, so hype was pretty low, and most people were off watching HotS beta streams anyway, or watching the GSTL preseason because that was played in HotS rather than WoL. I remember that Symbol was in the finals, but I literally had to look up who he lost to. It didn't help that at the time most Kespa players didn't have the same SC2 history around them that ESF players did. The only other thing I remembered RorO for prior to his GSL win is getting knocked out by Idra in the WCS global finals 2012. And then the next season was HotS, and everyone was talking about Innovation.
ah this was one of the GSL finals I actually managed to watch live. Still remember how I wanted Hyun to win only to see him split his roaches on Cloud Kingdom. That was rough lol. Best of luck to Sniper! If he wasn't able to make it to a reasonable level that he wanted, best to call it quits and move on imo.
I thought he had retired a while ago. This only adds to his legacy of... not having a legacy. Of being that guy people forget existed. A forgettable zerg who won when Wings was tremendously zerg-favored.
In memory of both forgotten champions of Code S, here's a very good game they played against each other: Sniper vs Seed at the MLG Winter 2013 qualifiers. And of course it's on Daybreak, as was every PvZ played from 2012 to mid-2013. But don't worry, it's not a BL/infestor game.
and I will never, ever forgive you for this you asshole Sniper :I
Let me preface this by saying I am a huge Slayers fan, and very disappointed that the last GSTL had to end like that.
That being said, Eve is just being irrational. Did she expect to win? Girl should have been happy to have been given a chance to play in the GSTL to begin with.
On October 20 2014 04:38 Bagration wrote: That being said, Eve is just being irrational. Did she expect to win? Girl should have been happy to have been given a chance to play in the GSTL to begin with.
I dislike the superficial Eve following, but I think it's a little overreaching to say that Eve was acting irrationally.
It was her team's last match, her only showing (at that point), and an embarrassing loss (especially since she had already switched from Terran to Protoss but was already registered in the league as Terran).
I think it's a little unfair to speak negatively of someone crying like that. Yeah maybe Eve could have held herself up with a little more dignity, but other players have done worse.
Ironically I think this means Sniper's last televised game was his win in MVP's SPL R4 regular season match over RorO --the player who succeeded him as Code S champion.
On October 20 2014 07:58 bduddy wrote: No mention that Sniper was the player that Ryung declared to be "IMBA IMBA IMBA IMBA IMBA IMBA....."? I'm disappointed in all of you...
Ryung was complaining about the crazy imbalanced zerg. I don't think Sniper was the best zerg even when he won the GSL.
On October 20 2014 05:37 vult wrote: Sniper: The most overlooked and scrutinized GSL champion in history.
GG WP
i raise you roro and seed.
jjakji qualified for the longest time, but he came back from obscurity.
Don't think you can really compare Sniper to RorO. RorO finished rank 5-6 in GSL (through the Placement Matches) the season after he won Code S. Meanwhile the season after he won, Sniper didn't make it out of the RO32 and didn't even make it into Code S next season. And RorO continued to play very well in HotS in SPL whereas Sniper kind of just fell off the map after HotS came out. Something must have happened to his mindset or practice regimen because even in GSTL in 2013, when MVP finished #1 in the regular season, they only sent him out a single time.
On October 20 2014 05:37 vult wrote: Sniper: The most overlooked and scrutinized GSL champion in history.
GG WP
i raise you roro and seed.
jjakji qualified for the longest time, but he came back from obscurity.
Don't think you can really compare Sniper to RorO. RorO finished rank 5-6 in GSL (through the Placement Matches) the season after he won Code S. Meanwhile the season after he won, Sniper didn't make it out of the RO32 and didn't even make it into Code S next season. And RorO continued to play very well in HotS in SPL whereas Sniper kind of just fell off the map after HotS came out. Something must have happened to his mindset or practice regimen because even in GSTL in 2013, when MVP finished #1 in the regular season, they only sent him out a single time.
He was never that good in the first place, he just had a good season that one time.
On October 20 2014 05:37 vult wrote: Sniper: The most overlooked and scrutinized GSL champion in history.
GG WP
i raise you roro and seed.
jjakji qualified for the longest time, but he came back from obscurity.
Don't think you can really compare Sniper to RorO. RorO finished rank 5-6 in GSL (through the Placement Matches) the season after he won Code S. Meanwhile the season after he won, Sniper didn't make it out of the RO32 and didn't even make it into Code S next season. And RorO continued to play very well in HotS in SPL whereas Sniper kind of just fell off the map after HotS came out. Something must have happened to his mindset or practice regimen because even in GSTL in 2013, when MVP finished #1 in the regular season, they only sent him out a single time.
He was never that good in the first place, he just had a good season that one time.
On October 20 2014 04:38 Bagration wrote: That being said, Eve is just being irrational. Did she expect to win? Girl should have been happy to have been given a chance to play in the GSTL to begin with.
I dislike the superficial Eve following, but I think it's a little overreaching to say that Eve was acting irrationally.
It was her team's last match, her only showing (at that point), and an embarrassing loss (especially since she had already switched from Terran to Protoss but was already registered in the league as Terran).
I think it's a little unfair to speak negatively of someone crying like that. Yeah maybe Eve could have held herself up with a little more dignity, but other players have done worse.
lol, female player shows emotion about a game and people scoff that she should "be grateful she even got a chance to play"
if she should be grateful then idra should have been grateful for every game he got the chance to lose against better players too
On October 19 2014 17:15 iMrising wrote: so...is jjakji and seed the new kings of evil or something?
They're not evil, they're just unfortunately discredited GSL champions.
Not sure Jjakji deserves to be discredited. Sure, he had a sizable GSL championship hangover, but his play in that season was spectacular and he's showcased some awesome play and solid results since. He got lucky, but he deserved his title, IMO. Sniper is the epitome of "evil", he won boringly against fan-favourites when his race was overpowered. Seed is somewhere in-between those two. He won at a time when Protoss was a little strong then dropped off dramatically, basically never to be seen again. He wasn't the best player that season (Sniper was) but his play was at least good to watch (not the final).
EPT
Sniper" has retired and will be doing his compulsory military service in South Korea.![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ORz2PmU.png)
Seed, 
Polt, ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/0S6QTNU.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.councilofelrond.com/wp-content/uploads/modules/My_eGallery/gallery/characters/aragorn/I_Aear_Can_Ven_Ne_Mar_aragornsmile.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/MYawfbv.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.plu.cn/d/file/sc2/info/2012-12-02/6299954ffb2384c270b8227322b7c77b.jpg)
