1- Prologue
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"T1, earning their legacy.. AGAIN, AND AGAIN, AND AGAIN!!.."
"FAKER, KERIA, ONER, GUMA, AND DORAN AS WELL.. ARE YOUR SEASON 15' WORLD CHAMPIONS!!"
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It was 5 am at midnight as me and my friends on Discord watched T1 claim their franchise's 6th League of Legends Worlds Champion against KT Rolster. KT even had them on the ropes going up 2-1 and Bdd looked like the best player on that stage, but I knew deep in my heart T1 wasn't gonna lose at all.. because they have HIM.
Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok, the GOAT of E-sports.. 6 Worlds Championships, 2 MSI titles, 10 LCK championships and holds the record for most kills, assists and games played in both Worlds and LCK.
Sure he wasn't the main catalyst of that comeback, but history told me that he's the common denominator. 2013 Najin Black Swords, 2016 Rox Tigers, 2017 Misfits and Royal Never Give up, all the way up to 2024 Bilibili Gaming.. all faced defeat in the same fashion. Especially when he locked in Galio in game 5, memories flashed back to that 2017 SKT vs RNG series where he delivered 5 flawless games of Galio.. and as an Uzi fan, that game 5 against KT Rolster might have triggered some minor ptsd.
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"Doran damn near about the throw game 5.. that's crazy"
"Yeaaa.. you up for some flex queue tho?(Ranked 5v5 Flex)?"
"yea gimme 5 mins.. hold on I feel like im forgetting something" "oh shi, I almost forgot I got work in 3 hours.. Lemme get that 2.5 hour of sleep"
"Bruhhhhh.. aight gn 😭"
*Then I lay on my bed as I grab my phone, open tiktok and rotted for an hour..
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It was 15 years ago when I had my first exposure to this god forsaken crack in the form of a video game.
Although it wasn't my first moba experience as I played Dota AllStars before, League was the one that got me hooked the most.
My late cousin(a victim of truck-kun), who's like a brother to me, introduced me to League around Season 2 and it was also around the same time where we both got exposed to League Esports.
Manila Eagles vs Saigon Fantastic 5
It was a random SEA server game that we stumbled upon, but it was a professional League game and at the time, we were watching something more advanced than our own comprehension.
What blew our minds was the support's Blitzcrank pick. They did a 5 man early invade (which is considered in today's game something basic that even iron player knew) and actually got an early kill on SF5's mid laner.
But that's not all.. hook after hook after hook, this man did not miss. MLE Astarte, the blitzcrank player, single handedly carried the game.. and he even had a hook which was buried through my core memory..
With no vision, Blitz randomly hooks Miss Fortune from their base with zero intel that a champion is even walking that way.
"YO WTF??" me and my cousin simultaneously excitedly screamed as we watched the play unfold on his lenovo laptop.
It was then that I fell in love with the game. League of Legends, and its E-sports, is something I wanna be a part of for the rest of my life.
We didn't notice that the game we're watching are teams representing the Philippines and Vietnam since we only saw the team's abbreviation "MLE vs SF5". So now we were curious if there's a professional scene locally which is the NA server, and lo and behold, we do have one!..
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North American League Championship Series, also known as NA LCS, was established in 2013 as the top-tier professional esports league for League of Legends and is operated by Riot Games themselves. It was divided into 2 seasonal splits (Spring/Summer) and having good results on both splits secures a spot for "Worlds", the biggest League of Legends tournament featuring the best of the best from each server.
The notable teams to watch were Cloud 9(C9), the most dominant team during the early stages of LCS.. the most popular team with the most fanbase, Team Solo Mid(TSM).. and the bot lane centric Counter Logic Gaming(CLG), featuring one of the most popular players even internationally.
My cousin likes C9 because of their smart drafts and calculated team plays, but personally, I am a fan of the ego-inflated plays of CLG's Doublelift, especially his signature Vayne split push, where the whole enemy team would collapse on him, and he would somehow survive and even single-handedly turn around the fight. He's also the reason why I started playing ADC during my learning phase of the game and I also realized that I was not even close to the 1% of how good he is.
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I woke up from my less than one hour sleep and I was greeted by this ear popping jeers of what seems to be hundreds or maybe a thousand of people.
"What's with this loud ass crowd noise"
I opened my eyes and I was surrounded by computers with a huge crowd in front of me. It seems like I am on stage and there are 4 guys with me; 2 on left and 2 on my right.
"Am I.. in a professional League game?"
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