{"id":45432,"date":"2017-10-29T10:50:21","date_gmt":"2017-10-29T14:50:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=45432"},"modified":"2020-08-04T10:50:36","modified_gmt":"2020-08-04T14:50:36","slug":"everything-happened-i-said-would-happen-at-worlds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=45432","title":{"rendered":"Everything happened I said would happen at Worlds"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

At this point, I really don\u2019t care who wins Worlds, because regardless who wins the final best-of-five, the winner is still Korea.\u00a0 I mean, I\u2019m aware that the scenario I was hoping for was like wishing the 90\u2019s Chicago Bulls with Michael Jordan would do good each year, but it\u2019s still never a smooth journey for the most competent of competitors year after year.\u00a0 And this was supposedly the year that the rest of the world was thought to have caught up in League of Legends<\/em> talent, and frankly that wasn\u2019t wrong, it\u2019s just that it just wasn\u2019t enough.<\/span><\/p>\n

But a week from now, will the finals of the 2017 League of Legends World Championship \u2013 pitting Souh Korea\u2019s SK Telecom T1 against, South Korea\u2019s Samsung Galaxy.\u00a0 This is also a rematch of the previous year\u2019s Worlds, and since all spectator events love to raise the importance of scenarios by stating first times for things, this is the first time that the same two teams have made it to the finals of Worlds, ever and in consecutive years much less, even in a league just seven years old.<\/span><\/p>\n

LCK Fall Split memes, right here.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, it\u2019s not just the fact that it\u2019s two Korean teams that has me all smug and arrogant, it\u2019s also the narrative in which such a matchup came to fruition.\u00a0 Worlds this year has been taking place in China, the region that has yet to hoist a championship in the seven years of competitive League, despite often being perceived as the #2 region in the world.\u00a0 But don\u2019t tell the Chinese that, because in their own opinion, they\u2019re gods amongst mortals who can\u2019t be touched in competitive League of Legends, except for the fact that, they\u2019ve never won Worlds, and have almost never beaten Korean squads with very few exceptions.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Not only did Korean squads advance to the finals of Worlds, both did such by defeating Chinese squads in the semifinals.\u00a0 The narrative of Chinese teams, in their home country, in front of gargantuan and raucous nationalistic Chinese fans, jobbing<\/em> to dastardly Korean adversaries with superior macro-play, mechanics and team fighting capabilities is pretty much the nerdiest Korea boner that I could possibly get.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whereas Samsung Galaxy pretty much demoralized Team WE in four games of a best-of-five, leading to a pretty anti-climactic advancement to the finals, it was the SK Telecom vs. Royal Never Give Up matchup that was the star of the semifinals, since it not only went the entire five games, but at one point, Royal had a 2-1 series lead over the defending champions.\u00a0 But in typical RNG fashion, Royal simply couldn\u2019t close out the series, and dropped two, heart-breaking and demoralizing losses to SKT, silencing an entire arena as their Korean overlords took the stage with their victory bows to end the day.<\/span><\/p>\n

The best part was that this was the year where SKT was supposedly vulnerable.\u00a0 They lost to Longzhu Gaming in the finals of the LCK Summer Split, dropping them to an \u201cunfavorable\u201d #2 seed out of Korea.\u00a0 Top-laner Huni was supposedly struggling and vulnerable to the tilting and inferior macro play compared to rivals.\u00a0 SKT couldn\u2019t figure out what to do with the jungle between Peanut and the perma-sub, Blank.\u00a0 And no more professional League players endured as much criticism than the bot lane of Bang and Wolf, whom despite being two-time champions in their own right have been considered \u201cweak\u201d and \u201cinferior\u201d and other pejoratives.\u00a0 All of this exacerbated by the fact that SKT was nearly upset by the unheralded Misfits Gaming the quarterfinals, needing all five games to dispatch the plucky European squad.<\/span><\/p>\n

The recipe was all gathered together for an epic takedown of SK Telecom at the hands of Royal Never Give Up, but when they all got together in the oven in Shanghai, things simply didn\u2019t go as planned, and for the umpteenth time, Royal gets bounced out of Worlds, by a Korean squad.\u00a0 In front of thousands of their own fans, on their home soil.\u00a0 It really doesn\u2019t get any better than that, for me.<\/span><\/p>\n

SK Telecom this year is like the 1998 Bulls, when people thought Jordan was too old, the team couldn\u2019t hang with all the upstarts like the Miami Heat or the Indiana Pacers, and that the Utah Jazz were too good.\u00a0 But in spite of all the overlooking and underestimating, the Bulls marched right into the Finals and won yet another championship amidst all criticisms.<\/span><\/p>\n

Regardless, next weekend\u2019s Worlds finals are basically gravy, for me.\u00a0 As amused as I would be to see SKT become four-time champions in a league just seven years old, I\u2019d be just as satisfied to see Samsung win as well, which would make them two-time champions.\u00a0 For those keeping count, aside from the fact that Europe\u2019s Fnatic and Taiwan\u2019s Taipei Assassins won the first two world championships, the titles have since gone to SK Telecom, Samsung, SK Telecom and SK Telecom.<\/span><\/p>\n

No matter who wins next weekend, the rest of the League scene can suck it and cry moar over their Korean overlords.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At this point, I really don\u2019t care who wins Worlds, because regardless who wins the final best-of-five, the winner is still Korea.\u00a0 I mean, I\u2019m aware that the scenario I was hoping for was like wishing the 90\u2019s Chicago Bulls with Michael Jordan would do good each year, but it\u2019s still never a smooth journey … Continue reading Everything happened I said would happen at Worlds<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[160,154,103,52],"class_list":["post-45432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-esports","tag-league-of-legends","tag-motherland","tag-owned"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45432"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45434,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45432\/revisions\/45434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}