The countdown began on the giant LED screens inside the Hongqiao World IE Hub in Shanghai. Accompanied by an opening video that was half-Bond movie, half-student film, and 100 percent China's LoL Pro League, a representative from each LPL team took the stage to watch JD Gaming support Zuo "LvMao" Ming-Hao placed the LPL trophy in the center of the stage.
While JD Gaming and Top Esports were the first two teams to return to the LPL venue for live matches during the spring finals, and LPL teams played from their home stage during the Mid-Season Cup, Friday marked the first time that regular season matches were played offline since January 19th, before the coronavirus pandemic.
Although there was no audience, when EDward Gaming and Team WE took the stage, the LPL was back. Here's a look at a few of the highlights and narratives from Week 1 of 2020 LPL Summer.
Viewership in the west is good, for now
I've previously written at length about how difficult it is to be a western LPL fan. Not only are games at awkward times for most of Europe and the United States, but the LPL has seventeen teams, which means more games than any other region in the world. The LPL has never enjoyed the western popularity that South Korea's LoL Champions Korea has had since the English-language cast of OGN's Champions tournament, partially due to the fact that the LPL didn't have an official Riot-sanctioned English broadcast until 2015 and partially due to the fact that the LPL did not have the same international pedigree.
When all three LPL teams bombed out of the 2015 World Championship after coming in with large amounts of hype, the LPL seemed relegated to a weird and quirky cult classic in the west. The teams were weird. They didn't play normally. Their drafts were bad -- to list a few of the complaints from other analysts who stuck their figurative toes into LPL waters for international events only. The LPL doesn't need western viewership, but these prevailing narratives were frustrating for LPL enthusiasts in the west, especially when they were bombarded with anything from light teasing to vitriol for backing their teams.
Then LPL teams started winning consistently. First Royal Never Give Up's 2018 Mid-Season Invitational title, then Invictus Gaming's 2018 World Championship title, FunPlus Phoenix's 2019 World Championship title, and more recently (although it's hardly a major title) Top Esports' victory at the Mid-Season Cup. More people in the west are finally paying attention to the LPL.
All of this buildup is to say that when the LPL English broadcast team tweeted that the LPL stream reached over 100K viewers for it's opening night, it felt good. It won't likely last once the LCK starts back up again, but it was a strong opening weekend for the LPL in the west, and I'll always welcome and encourage more people to start watching Chinese League of Legends.
What's the deal with WE?
The majority of questions I received on Twitter about this week's LPL drafts (of which there are usually many, since LPL teams frequently draft very specific champions and compositions to suit their own needs rather than safer meta picks) involved Team WE mid laner Jiang "Teacherma" Chen.
Mainly the questions were: "Why is this man playing Aurelion Sol?"
To which the answer is simply, "He's an Aurelion Sol player." It's actually not much more complicated than that, but I wanted to use this opportunity to talk a bit about WE and their strengths and weaknesses as a team.
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Nearly every champion that Teacherma plays well is Aurelion Sol. He plays Galio (tanky Aurelion Sol), and Pantheon (Aurelion Sol with a spear), and also Rumble which is where the Aurelion Sol comparison somewhat falls apart, but he's still shoving the wave and roaming elsewhere. Like another famous LPL mid laner, FunPlus Phoenix's Kim "Doinb" Tae-sang, Teacherma has a specific champion pool that dictates a specific playstyle and draft from WE. Unlike Doinb, he doesn't have a similarly deep champion pool, and looks a lot weaker when he's off his personal favorites.
There were a lot of highlights from WE this weekend. Bot laner Zhao "Jiumeng" Jia-Hao continues to improve and jungler Jiang "beishang" Zhi-Peng nearly single-handedly dragged WE to victory against Suning. Yet, if WE want to have a fighting chance come playoff time, they need to shore up a lot of their basics first, and ensure that they can play well even if Teacherma's champion pool is targeted in draft. It's one thing to have a specific playstyle, but most LPL teams have a specific playstyle, so WE needs to have stronger execution with the style they've settled on in order to contend with top-tier LPL teams.
Royal Never Give Up in a post-Uzi world
Navigating an LPL without Jian "Uzi" Zi-Hao was always going to be difficult. He's been a constant since the LPL began, and the biggest LPL name known to western audiences. You could easily make the case that, to the west, Uzi was the LPL.
All last spring, stream chats spammed "Where's Uzi?" This was less of a slight against starting bot laner Lu "Betty" Yu-Hung and more of a testament to Uzi's legacy with RNG. There was always the sense that, despite his injuries and health concerns, he was going to return to the RNG starting roster for playoffs. When he didn't, mid laner Li "Xiaohu" Yuan-Hao and then-top laner Xie "Langx" Zhen-Ying bore the brunt of community criticism and ire. Uzi always necessitated a specific playstyle, but he also gave the team a unifying voice -- something they seemed to lack last spring.
I wasn't expecting much from RNG in their series against Oh My God, the latter of which was a team that narrowly missed playoffs in spring and looked interesting in a lot of their matches, and I was completely wrong.
Betty, Xiaohu, and RNG came out swinging. Xiaohu in particular seemed to play with a chip on his shoulder to prove naysayers wrong, and Betty scored a Pentakill in his first series back. In order for this team to succeed I do think Xiaohu will have to continue to perform well.
Match of the week: Victory Five 2, Dominus Esports 0
Last split, Victory Five spent the majority of the split shuffling their best player, Li "Mole" Hao-Yan into every role with the hopes that he could somehow carry them to victory. It did not work. Victory Five won a total of zero series and one single game.
In their first match of 2020 LPL Summer, they tied that record with a game win over Dominus Esports and then exceeded their spring winrate by taking a 2-0 match win. They're currently 2-0 in series after last night's match against OMG. Mole was shuttled back to the mid lane, the team's new bot lane duo of former Gen.G trainee Lee "Samd" Jae-hoon and FunPlus Phoenix trainee Guo "ppgod" Peng had an excellent debut, and the former Suning organization topside of Yu "Biubiu" Lei-Xin and Wei "Weiwei" Bo-Han fit in to Victory Five's new early aggression well. It wasn't always pretty, but it was fun to watch.
"My goal is to win a few games," Mole said in his post-match broadcast interview, as if last split had scarred him so much that he was forcing himself to keep expectations as low as possible.
This match doesn't feature the best League of Legends the LPL has to offer, nor does it feature (presumably) two of the top teams in the league. However, this is an excellent example of the excitement you'll see as a viewer while watching the LPL, regardless of whether the match is between two top teams or two bottom teams. There are always talented players to discover, many of which make their way up the ladder to top-tier organizations eventually.
Also, if you're lucky enough, maybe you'll find someone in your life to talk about you the way that English-language caster Jordan "Lyric" Corby talks about Mole, or just Victory Five in general.
Player to watch: Guo "ppgod" Peng (Victory Five)
The name alone will draw interest from western fans for the childish fun of saying "ppgod" over and over again (I'm not counting myself out in this fun either) but this former FunPlus Blaze support also had a fantastic debut for Victory Five this weekend. I'm looking forward to seeing what he and SamD accomplish while on Victory Five.
"five" - Google News
June 09, 2020 at 03:03AM
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LPL Corner -- A post-Uzi RNG, Victory Five on the rise? - ESPN
"five" - Google News
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