In the just-concluded 2022 "League of Legends" Global Finals, the DRX team from the LCK area defeated the T1 team led by Faker with a score of 3:2, becoming the first No. 4 seed to win the championship in the history of the S series.

Deft's Last Dance finished the curtain call with the most beautiful posture.

In the just-concluded 2022 " League of Legends " Global Finals (hereinafter referred to as "S12"), the DRX team from the LCK division defeated the T1 team led by Faker with a score of 3:2, becoming the first No. 4 seed to win the championship in the history of the S series. Before the

game, many media have called this game "the most romantic final". The last "Three Stars and Ten Sons" Deft who is still on the field, and Faker, who is attacking the fourth championship, two legendary players from the same high school and who have been fighting for many years meet in the finals. Everyone has a reason to win.

Deft VS Faker (Photo source League of Legends Finals promotional video)

Every year, there is a team that won the "Selected Script" of the World Championship. It may be a flash of betting on a career, or a victory formula of "crossing and hooking". This year, the team that won the Tianpiao script is DRX - this team that almost fell at the entrance of the qualifying round and was almost unpopular by anyone along the way. In the knockout stage, they defeated defending champion EDG, LCK No. 1 seed Gen.G and "Big Devil" T1, and finally won the championship trophy.

Although for LPL audiences, this game has nothing to do with the glory of the competition area, and the balance in your heart does not need to be tilted to any side. However, when we look at the two veterans who have been fighting on the field for many years, still maintaining their desire for victory and extremely high competitive state, and still have the ability to enter this arena that symbolizes the highest honor, we may feel the purest charm of e-sports , which is why we first love it.

Division gap

Time goes back to the semi-finals on October 30, and the last team from LPL JDG faces LCK No. 3 seed T1. The first game was a victory that looked smooth, and the next was three consecutive defeats, and the fourth game lasted less than 25 minutes. JDG failed to reproduce the S11 miracle of "one string three" and fell regretfully at the gate of the finals.

Another semi-final was a civil war between the No. 1 seed and No. 4 seed. After JDG was eliminated, there was a joke circulating on the Internet: For the "First Year Fans" (the audience who came into contact with the LOL event after 2018), their youth was over, but for the "old fans" of LPL, this youth was really back - "Welcome back to the dark age of LPL."

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After all, the last LCK civil war staged in the World Championship final dates back to 2017. The World Championship that year made many LPL audiences unforgettable. The two LPL teams WE and RNG that reached the semi-finals lost to the two LCK teams respectively, and finally staged an LCK civil war that broke countless people's hearts at the Bird's Nest in Beijing.

For a long time, the main theme of LPL was "anti-Korea", from EDG defeated SKTh in 2015 to won the first MSI championship, to IG won the first World Championship in 2018, and then to RNG defeated T1 this year, winning the third MSI championship in team history. Even though LPL has won three championships in four years in the S Championship, it is still a big mountain when it comes to LCK.

In fact, this year's division gap has been revealed since the group stage. Although this year is another "strongest year" that fans expect, the LPL's convention is that the group stage will definitely be "upset". Last year, FPX, which lost four consecutive losses and LNG, which lost to the extra game, this year, this year, it was the second seed TES, who failed to qualify from Group C.

In the subsequent knockout stage, everyone regarded it as a "good sign" matchup list before the game, and it could not make up for the team's hard strength: T1 completed a clean sheet against RNG, while GRX completed a second and third win against EDG.

"Why is it a good sign"

All team members are more or less affected by the new crown epidemic, and RNG and EDG are almost all positive. The contestants also mentioned in a post-match interview that the training time was reduced due to illness, which affected their condition to a certain extent.

And after several years of "pain period", the LCK area once again showed strong dominance in the competition area.Like last year, all four teams of LCK entered the quarterfinals this year. The only team that failed to enter the quarterfinals was DK, which was eliminated by teams in the same competition area.

In this World Championship, LCK became the well-deserved protagonist: veteran Faker who strives for the fourth championship, Beryl who has reached the finals for three consecutive years, Ruler who has produced the championship skin in the life and death... Young players have emerged, and veterans who have been fighting in the arena for many years are setting new records.

However, in the game LOL, the mainland China and the South Korean regions are already the closest to the "Temini". In this year's World Championship, what is more obvious than the decline in LPL's strength is the fatigue of other regions.

is both the four major competition areas, and the North American competition area (LCS) and European competition area (LEC) have performed poorly this year. As the host, the North American Division did not win a single victory in the first round of the group stage, with a total score of 0-9. The European competition area is no longer in its glory, and the veteran teams FNC and G2 were unfortunately eliminated with group stage results of 2-4 and 1-5 respectively. In this year's quarterfinals, only RGE is the European and American team, which was beaten 3-0 by JDG in the knockout stage.

FNC team (Photo source @League of Legends Events)

For these two divisions, the construction of the player echelon is the most deadly problem. In the S12 team rankings with the highest average age in the media released by the media before the game, LCS's second-seeded 100T ranked first with 24.4 years old, LEC has three teams all over 22 years old, while LPL and LCK have no teams on the list. The LCS region is called the "retirement zone" because of its high salary and low pressure. C9's jungler Blaber tactfully mentioned in a post-match interview: "I hope the competition in North America is more intense." The significant gap between the

divisions directly affects the ratings of the game. According to the semi-final ratings data released by Esports Charts on the foreign network, the overall data this year has a maximum drop of 40% compared with last year's semi-finals (excluding data from the live broadcast platform in the LPL region).

LCK's dominant performance makes the event lose its suspense prematurely. Fortunately, DRX defeated Gen.G in the semi-finals, adding a little bit of turmoil to this story, otherwise T1 and Gen.G will meet again in the World Championship after the LCK's spring and summer finals.

Perhaps by September this year, viewers without LPL will imagine the ending today. As the LPL team left the World Championship one after another, many people began to think about how much water is added to the title of LPL's "first division"?

The fact is that since 2020, LCK has sounded the horn of counterattack. That year, the SN team made two civil wars in a row and reached the finals, losing to the DK team led by young player Showmaker. Last year, the defending champion team DK entered the finals again, while the semi-finals were "Three LCKs encircled LPL" - the same configuration as this year. If EDG had not had the inspirational story of winning two consecutive games, the title of "first division" might have had to be returned long ago.

Of course, LPL has indeed shown an upbeat appearance in the past few years and has achieved good results in major world events. The value of the three S championships is unquestionable. However, there is also breakthrough in addition to breakthroughs. When the opponent is always moving forward, it is not enough to just maintain the state. Of course, there are many goals, such as the "all-Chinese champion" that many people are looking forward to, the final civil war that can reflect the dominance of the competition area, and a legendary team that completes the "triple-champion" achievements like SKT.

Of course we hope to see the LPL team appear at the annual world event with a winning attitude. But if a failure can solve some problems that are hidden under glory and bring the right direction to the development of the entire competition area, it will be worth it even if you wait for another year.

What is professional?

Soraka , Hemerdinger... Before the start of the World Championship, perhaps no one could have expected that these unpopular heroes would become regular visitors this year, and they were all taken out by the LCK team and performed well. The other competition areas were selected to be "learning toddlers".Looking back at the World Championships in previous years, there are also many shadows of "copying homework" on the road to winning the championship of the LPL team. In the words of commentary Miller , "LCK has become the person who sets the questions, and we have become the person who understands the questions."

This is behind the gap in the professional ability of the competition training team. The freezing of three feet is not a day long. South Korea's systematic e-sports development history has created its professional talent training system. Although domestic e-sports development is fast, they are all quickly built up in the short term by relying on large capital, with a gap in background.

In 1998, the Asian financial crisis broke out, which caused a huge blow to South Korea's economy as " Asian Four Little Dragons ". South Korea began to rethink its development direction, proposing that "cultural industry is the basic industry in the 21st century" and vigorously develops cultural and Internet industries.

In the same year, the epoch-making online game "StarCraft" was released, and a large number of unemployed Korean youth flocked to "StarCraft" to find a safe haven, and the number of Internet cafes across the country grew rapidly. In January 1998, the number of Internet cafes nationwide was only 100, while in October and December after StarCraft was launched, the number of Internet cafes increased to 3,000 and 15,150 respectively. From 1998 to 2005, South Korea invested 20.17 billion US dollars to build the world's leading IT infrastructure, with the highest level of broadband network in the world at that time (average bandwidth of 20M).

The first "StarCraft" professional league

The most confrontational and strategic "StarCraft" has a natural e-sports gene, so its e-sports events quickly attracted attention. In 1999, the Korean Professional E-sports Association KeSPA, led by the government, was established. The TV station OGN, which specializes in game content and game event broadcasts, was also established in the same year.

KeSPA benchmarks the competitive sports model and introduces a series of roles such as coaches, team leaders, psychological counselors, managers, etc. in e-sports clubs, forming a highly divided system. At the same time, the official recognized the formal professional identity of e-sports practitioners. Like other social professions, it is an equal employment choice for Korean youth without being criticized for being "lost in ambition". According to a 2019 survey, among Korean e-sports industry practitioners, the university degree reached 66.1%, and 57.5% aged 30-39.

As a result, South Korea has gained a dominant position in the StarCraft project. As an RTS game, compared with the later MOBA games that "fixed maps, fixed splits, and only control heroes", it is far beyond the strategy and operation volume. Therefore, the e-sports talents developed from StarCraft can still remain competitive after changing careers to other games.

In the early stages of the development of LOL in South Korea, a large number of professional players and competition and training staff were transferred to interstellar events, such as T1’s triple-champion coach Kkoma, JDG’s current coach Homme, etc.

In contrast, before the LOL project began to become popular in China, although talented players like SKY were released, there was no existence that could be called "system" and "soil". The young genius who came out of the Internet cafe may be different from ordinary people in terms of reaction speed and operation speed, but due to the lack of support from a standardized team, it is difficult to have more continuous and in-depth research on game strategies.

Until the LOL event began to become popular, domestic LOL teams began to realize the extreme shortage of local talents after receiving capital injection, so they entered the era of large-scale signings. Among them, the "Samsung Ten Sons Come to China" during the S5 period is the most prominent - Samsung White and Samsung Blue, who won the championship and the semi-finals respectively in the S4 period, all ten players transferred to the LPL region in the second year.

Korean aid input brings not only strong players, but also all-round improvements in the game understanding level. E-sports player Uzi once mentioned in the live broadcast that at S6, few people in the league understood the military line. The former Samsung assisted the arrival of Mata taught RNG team members about the operation of the military line. MLXG also said, "When he was a player, he did the coach's work. After the game, he sat there and watched the coach."

The domestic coaches and competition training teams are basically mainly retired players and early team staff. They often play a role in regulating the atmosphere in the team, and their voices are even worse than those of the players in key links such as BP. GodV mentioned in a live broadcast some time ago, "In S5, LGD's coach Chris was a 'chicken soup brother'. The management basically only listens to the Koreans' ideas. Koreans think he is useless and let him get out. We basically do the BP in the summer game. "The situation like

has not changed significantly until S12. Bin said in his commentary on the game this year that he still had the final say in most of the time when BP in the game, and the coach only gave suggestions and references.

Therefore, although LPL has caused LCK to suffer the pain of talent loss for a period of time through capital injection, the domestic talent system has not been fully built during this period. High-level local coaches and analysts are still lacking, and more often they rely on genius players to rely on themselves.

LCK's league system has been implemented since the previous year, narrowing the salary gap between players and LPL. The new transfer rules proposed this year require outstanding local players who have expired to transfer to overseas clubs. Pay high transfer fees first. After taking multiple measures, it is becoming increasingly difficult for LPL to overtake through "buy, buy, buy" to achieve a curve.

Where to find young people

Esports has always been based on games. Before the S8 championship, LOL's domestic player data was already on the decline. The excellent results on the field in the next four years have extended the vitality of this game. Now, what it needs to face is no longer just competition at the product level, but competition at the carrier level.

keyboard and mouse are no longer the mainstream choice of the younger generation in China. According to the "2019 National Research Report on Internet Usage of Minors", 61.0% of minor netizens often play games online. Among them, those who play mobile games are 56.3%, while only 24.6% of those who play computer games, less than half.

Picture from: "2019 National Research Report on Internet Usage for Minors"

This is unimaginable in the era where Internet cafes are everywhere. Smartphone devices are becoming more and more substitutable for computers. Whether it is learning or entertainment, it seems that children today no longer have to be familiar with the operation of mouse and keyboard.

The development of domestic mobile game industry has always been the world's leading. According to Newzoo statistics, 2 In 21, the global mobile game market reached US$93.2 billion, while the mainland reached US$30 billion, accounting for 30%, twice the second-ranked US market.

The embarrassment brought by the mobile game market that is too advanced is that in most mobile e-sports projects, the Chinese team is in an absolute leading position, while the enthusiasm of foreign players and audiences is very limited, as if another table tennis project. However, the e-sports projects of the PC game may gradually lose competitiveness due to the decline in the population of PC games, forming a dislocation with overseas.

is close to the moment, and there is a more severe situation. Last August, "On Further Strict Management" Notice on effectively preventing minors from becoming addicted to online games is issued, which stipulates that "all online game companies can only provide 1 hour service to minors on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and statutory holidays to 21:00 a.m. every day. "

As soon as this regulation was released, all domestic e-sports clubs immediately began compliance review. Youth training players under the age of 18 were dismissed and they could not recruit minors for training in the future (Previous articles: "How is the e-sports industry two weeks after the new anti-addiction regulations were issued? ").

does not mean that there is no hope if you are too late to get involved in the profession. After all, there are many players in South Korea who only join the professional team after high school. Deft, the 26-year-old, also proves with his performance that e-sports is not necessarily a sport that teenagers dominate.

Deft (Photo source for League of Legends Finals promotional video)

But if a person really only touches the mouse and keyboard for three hours a week before he was 18 years old, then his proficiency in keyboard and mouse operations and his understanding of the game may be really difficult to reach the professional level of confrontation.

At this year's World Championship, the 18-year-old Korean young player Zeus almost dominated the road. Legends like Faker and Deft may end, but we don't know how many Zeus are still dominating the future. The initial appearance of LPL may be due to the emergence of talented newcomers in the next two years, but in the future, the probability of such a thing will become lower and lower.

What will the future e-sports look like now? It’s hard to say, but the mentality of the “nova” is time to stop.