Worlds 2018: A beginning, middle, and end
By: Emily Rand
Tags: Esports

courtesy of Riot Games/lolesports

Beginning: City Hall — filming on the Cheonggyecheon

On a cool night in Seoul, South Korea, over the banks of the Cheonggyecheon, hundreds of green umbrellas were lit up against the night sky. This is where the creek starts before it grows larger, winding through the city center before meeting up with the Jungnangcheon at the Hanyang University bend and emptying into the Han River. The umbrellas formed a patterned green canopy for all visitors — families, couples, or a group of friends, stumbling home after a night out, to wander. Look up, and it seemed as if they were frozen in midair, a surreal landscape reminiscent of a Magritte painting, where corporate skyscrapers framed the scene, stretching out into the black ink of the sky.

One such visitor was the Gen.G League of Legends team’s mid laner Lee “Crown” Min-ho. He stared broodily into the creek, surrounded by men and women with large cameras walking around him. He was filming a feature for Riot Games’ upcoming League of Legends World Championship. One of the cameramen leaned in close, his foot skimming the water, to get his perfect shot. The rest of Crown’s team, presumably done with their own features spotlights, headed into a nearby café for coffee, chattering and laughing to each other.

We walked on the cobblestone path above. It was early, painfully early, in our own Worlds run, which was to stretch from the final week of September through early November. Bright and optimistic, we laughed, taking pictures of the filming through the green while yelling, “Gen.G fighting!”

Of the three South Korean teams, Gen.G was certainly the one thought least likely to win. They would make it past Quarterfinals perhaps and then gracefully bow out of the tournament. It was a few days before LoL Park opened its doors to the Play-In Stage and Worlds officially began.

We knew nothing.

courtesy of Riot Games/lolesports

Middle: BEXCO — the church of KT Rolster

There is a surprising amount of people who think emotions are unequivocally bad. That if you’re a journalist, you should always leave your emotions out of everything. This is false for many reasons. The first is that, even in pieces where objectivity should be prized above all else, like investigative reporting, biases are inherent and impossible to abandon. Like perfection, objectivity is an unattainable goal, and an admirable one at that, but still a goal. We can’t step outside of our frame of reference just as we can’t crawl outside of our own skin and view ourselves from a different vantage point. You are built, experience by experience, every day until suddenly you take stock of your viewpoint and acknowledge it, pushing ever forward to recognize it for what it is. You can arm yourself with it as a disclaimer or embrace it as a known framework, push it away as much as possible, but to argue that it doesn’t exist at all within yourself is laughable.

I am a KT Rolster fan. If it weren’t for falling in love with KT Rolster B — before they were even the Bullets to KT Rolster A’s Arrows — I would not be writing about esports at all, and would have continued to follow the game casually. Perhaps, after working long, mind-numbing hours at my retail job, I would have finished my masters degree and become a teacher, League of Legends esports a fun hobby to come home to, waking up at odd hours to watch the occasional finals match. This isn’t what happened. I saw KTB at MLG Dallas in 2013 and was hooked.

To say that KT Rolster’s demise at the hands of Invictus Gaming hurt is obvious. Yet, like most painful things, being in that moment was still an experience I would never trade away. Even with the loss, I would always want to be a part of that crowd, standing in disbelief for a few, crucial seconds in Game 3 before an explosion of relief as the white “Victory” screen flashed behind the members of KT. For the final game, I stood behind a group of KT fans carrying large flags with the team name and logo. They never stopped waving them, even as iG and RNG fans swarmed the aisles, surrounding the KT contingent while cheering at the iG members as they took a relieved bow at center stage.

I didn’t cry when KT lost. But I did tear up at the end of Game 2. KT had lost again. As the team stood up and quickly shuffled off stage, one fan began to should “KT fighting!” This was copied and echoed from various seats around the auditorium, traveling like a benediction through the red-cloth seats, a momentary church of KT.

The beginning of the end for the South Korean teams.

courtesy of Riot Games/lolesports

End: Jonggak — despite everything, it’s still you

I arrived an hour early to LoL Park for Finals Media Day. One last chance to talk to Invictus Gaming and Fnatic before they faced each other that Saturday.

Walking up the steps at Jonggak Station towards Exit 1, I glanced at the row of LED ads mounted to the right. Just over a month ago, they had cycled through a series of four different assortments of photographs for EDward Gaming. Now, I saw a pair of beautiful young women displaying the benefits of Kiss Me Heroine Make mascara — which I had purchased towards the beginning of my South Korea trip at the recommendation of a friend, and had used ever since.

At the SC Tower, ads for Ming “Clearlove” Kai and EDG were long gone. The summer rains that had drenched Seoul for a few times during Play-Ins had given way to autumn and a crisp chill.

Across from the elevator to go up to the third floor, the budae-jjigae restaurant that I had stumbled upon while looking for a nearby place to eat, and later dragged a few friends to, was closed. It was only 8:00 a.m.

It was only a month since I had been to LoL Park, a little over a month since I had arrived in South Korea. It felt like a year had somehow passed me by. Gone were the fans, teams, even the security bag check had disappeared. I wandered around like a ghost rattling around a not-so-empty room that was once full of life, a family, with the family gone and all of their knick-knacks abandoned to collect dust. What had been the smallest venue at the World Championship now seemed impossibly large. Only the PC bang was occupied. There was the hall of 3D-printed figures of the 2018 LoL Champions Korea teams. Two teams needed to be changed — MVP and bbq Olivers — as did the banners hanging from pillars scattered about the receiving area for fans.

Already, rumors were flying of which players had been contacted by which teams across all major regions. Some of those 3D-printed LCK figures would be changing uniforms or even entire countries, continents. I chatted with one of the South Korean Inven reporters about the demise of our host country. What went wrong was still the topic du jour.

We wondered what changes were in store for LCK in the coming year.