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Eight Paths to the Top
The motivating force behind all the Quarterfinalists
Only eight teams remain. Here’s a look at the driving force behind these players’ championship aspirations.
Afreeca Freecs’ Mowgli and Kuro sit hunched over their phones as they await their turn for broadcast interviews. Mowgli’s blonde hair curves around his head to make him look like a little lion — it is, I think, kind of fitting for a jungler. Then, without a word, he raises his left arm high into the air as if to stretch before pouncing down around Kuro’s shoulder. He mumbles a few words and like that they embrace for a long moment. And then, even more quickly, the moment passes. As have thousands of moments like that through the year.
This is what I thought of when I sat down to think about what motivates these players. Yes, there is the hyper-competitive drive to win — the little drumbeat that woke Crown up in the morning before he practiced for 18 hours a day in the scorching heat of Sao Paulo, thousands of miles away from his home country.
There’s the sense of finding oneself that Zig spoke to me about when he explained how over the last offseason, he was shopping at a grocery store and realized that the cashier could have been him. How he realized he had nothing else.
There is Scout’s mom waving flags in the crowd for her son — perhaps the sole Korean face in her vicinity cheering for the Chinese opposition as her son’s team delivers KT’s sole loss to them. There is Wunder’s tall parents towering over the crowd, and there is Caps’ father, silver hair and all, donning a yellow Fnatic jersey with his son’s namesake sprawled across the top of his back.
There is Xmithie’s dad waiting to high five his son and his team at the NA LCS studio every weekend. There are girlfriends backstage. There are owners in the front row and coaches listening in on comms.
And everywhere you turn in Busan’s Bexco stadium, you will find a fan — some who’ve set up fan booths around the arena with little chocolates and instructions on how to correctly cheer a chant. These are the same people who turn into one giant blur of lights and sounds that roar for the players as they are introduced — some for the very first time on a stage so large — in a country that, for the most them, was never even in their imaginations when they first hit the play button on League of Legends.
For now, though, we are still in the moment for eight teams. Eight of them are still fighting for something or someone. This is better highlighted by G2’s Wunder, who says, “It’s a really exciting to share a hotel with all the other teams, and then you see half of them suddenly leave. And you’re left among the Top 8 in the World.”
Here’s a look into what’s still on the line.
Royal Never Give Up: China’s greatest hope for overcoming Korea has long been Uzi, and this year he’s joined by someone who was once the LMS’s greatest hope — Karsa.
RNG’s jungler Karsa says, about the Flash Wolves being eliminated, “We’re really good friends out of the game, so they didn’t want me to be sad because of their failures. So they didn’t pass their sadness onto me. They just wanted to help me, so they gave me all their snacks and cup noodles. I’ll keep them in mind for a better result this tournament.”
The decision to leave the LMS surely was not a light one for Karsa, who spent years as a spear bearer for the Flash Wolves. They’d even built a reputation as the “Korean Killers” thanks in large part to Karsa’s dominance as an aggressive jungler. But in terms of chasing a championship, Uzi’s team has been closer than any other non-Korean team in the world through the years. It’s hard to blame him for chasing it in a window where he’s still good.
This year is his best chance yet to win it all. There’s a ton on the line for RNG, who’ve maybe begun to understand the type of pressure that plagued SKT during their peak — the more you win, the higher the expectations. It’s never enough for fans. They are always asking what’s next. And RNG has been on the winning side for MSI, Rift Rivals, and the Asian Games.
What’s next is supposed to be Worlds. You could see the pressure even in the Group Stage. Despite winning the tiebreaker to secure first place on Day 5, there was hardly a smile on their faces as the camera panned to them after the match. I think they’d expected to go undefeated in the group, but shocking losses to C9 and Vitality cracked the shroud of fate that had maybe pulsed through their blood before the day had begun. What had started to feel more and more like “their year” was now much less certain.
Karsa’s role on the team has evolved through the year, as has his playstyle and personality. At the beginning of his time with RNG, he says he tried to emulate what mlxg was doing — he tried to learn his picks and his style to best accommodate the team. “But after a while,” he says, “I learned he’s good at [his style], but when I play that style, it’s weird. [I learned] there’s absolutely two directions for us to go.”
And beyond that in-game nuance, he feels like he’s matured a lot as a person. “I think the biggest difference for me is my mentality. On the Flash Wolves, I was fierce and a little aggressive, but after joining RNG… I’m smooth — like a ‘good man character’ on the team thanks to our coaches. They taught me a lot — in and out of the game — how to be an adult and communicate with teammates in the game or with others in my daily life.”
The evolution of this year’s RNG squad has revolved greatly around how Karsa and mlxg complement each other. Karsa now plays a more stable role for the RNG roster — his tempo is much more even-keeled and less volatile than his counterpart, mlxg. But what we saw was mlxg’s gravitation towards chaos was the exact dose RNG needed to combat some of the blind aggression thrown at them by the likes of Cloud9 and Vitality. Without one or the other, this team might not even be alive right now.
Karsa adds this about his relationship with mlxg: “If there’s a ranking of junglers, then I want me and mlxg to simultaneously be #1. If there’s no mlxg, there’s no me.”
Fnatic: Hylissang flies a little under the radar for this team because it’s full of superstars, but that just means Fnatic has one more weapon that opponents may not see coming.
“Some of my teammates were cocky and thought we could get first place,” says Fnatic support Hylissang. “I just thought we wouldn’t be able to win five games straight [after losing the first game to IG]. I didn’t expect it, but I guess we did it.”
Fnatic’s run through the Group Stage means they’re now the favorite to make it to the Finals from their side of the bracket. I asked Hyli if he felt like they were the favorites or what he thought their odds of making it would be, but he quickly denied me and said he didn’t want to jinx it — this a stark contrast from some of the bold proclamations made by his teammates. It actually made me even more confident in Fnatic’s chances — to have a contrasting voice on the team is a good thing for keeping things tempered.
It’s been a long personal run for Hylissang, who spent years toiling on a middle-of-the-pack Unicorns of Love squad that never managed to make Worlds. “Winning my first EU LCS after [struggling] on the Unicorns of Love was a huge relief for me as a player,” he says. “Whenever I was in UOL and we failed, it was really hard for me because I didn’t know if it was me who made the mistake. When you lose, everyone is involved, but after losing so much and not making it, I felt like it was my bad.”
I think, sometimes, lost in the grandeur of the Worlds stage where all the biggest names gather are the stories of some of the under-the-radar guys. Especially now that we’re in the Quarterfinals — there are still players who’ve spent much more time struggling in the shadows rather than shining on a stage like this. Hylissang is just relieved that his team has made it this far — a lot of it has been validating for him as a player.
It’s difficult for me to imagine the mental burden of being a pro but having to watch Worlds from the sidelines each year. I wonder how often they dream about standing on that stage. I wonder how many of them immediately queue into a game after the stream ends. And then, now that a player like Hylissang has made it to such an elite stage, I wonder how long it will take for him to be able to look back on this and appreciate what he’s accomplished.
He lights up when I ask him about seeing such a large crowd cheering for him and says, “It’s really fucking awesome — I don’t know how to describe lifting the trophy and playing on stage. It’s an incredible feeling. That’s what we — the players — live for.”
Afreeca Freecs: Despite finishing their group in 1st place, they may now be the most underestimated team alive, partially because many fans just don’t know much about them.
The Afreeca Freecs wear a little sponsor patch on their jacket that says “Plain Vanilla Investment.” I thought this was funny because they had some of the most controlled games in the Group Stage — especially on second half of the round robin as they dominated their opponents. They played in a lot of low-kill games, and the gold count in their games was pretty even for a large majority of the Group Stage. It was, if you will, a plain and vanilla style that led them to the Knockout Stage. A fine investment.
The first thing I tell AFS top laner Kiin is that my name is Kien (pronounced the same way) — when I hear the casters call his name on the rift, I can close my eyes and pretend, if only momentarily, that it’s me who’s on that stage. And so in that light, I tell him I am rooting for him. A fact that becomes only more true as he spends a bit of the interview talking about how he’d like to earn the support of more fans.
In responding to criticism levied at AFS so far, he says, “It is true that we underperformed in groups — I just hope to show a better performance in Quarterfinals to get better compliments from analysts and fans.”
Combined with GEN.G, the two teams’ starts caused a bit of panic among Korean fans who’ve become accustomed to being at the top of the pecking order. AFS did their best to remain positive through the opening days, though. He says they focused more on communication in the opening days — not on game related things necessarily — but just on cheering each other up to be become more encouraged. Only after they overcame morale issues did they begin to focus more on macro and strategy again.
The matchup against C9 will be a clash of styles for sure — both in and out of the game. Kiin says, “If we get caught playing other games, our coaches will punish us a lot — so I can’t even imagine playing other games.” It’s a little exaggerated at this point, sure, but Cloud9 is definitely a much more free-spirited team than AFS when it comes to how they approach their work. And if AFS is a lesser known entity thanks to never making it to Worlds before, then Cloud9 is decidedly a behemoth when it comes to popularity.
Even Kiin was captivated by the wild antics of C9 on the Rift. He says, “I really enjoyed watching [Licorice’s] Hecarim game — the most amazing thing was that Licorice made a mistake in the early game but he was able to make a comeback and perform really well in the mid and late game.”
A deep run at Worlds can generate a lot more fanfare for the Afreeca Freecs. And for Kiin especially — what we do know about him is that he was the #4 ranked player in the world coming into Busan. The top laner earned a reputation as a dominant carry-oriented player for AFS, and here’s a golden opportunity for him to demonstrate his mettle.
When I ask him if he’s had many memorable interactions with the fans at the event so far, he says, “To be honest, I think our team is not that popular — we don’t have many fans so those kinds of moments haven’t happened to me yet. To be one of the best teams in the world, we need to push through to Finals.”
Defending the Summoners’ Cup for Korea on home turf would be one surefire way to earn some new fans.
Invictus Gaming: Despite dominant regular seasons across both LPL splits this year, they kept falling short when it mattered. And now they may face their biggest hurdle yet.
“I watch a lot of anime…” says IG’s ADC JackeyLove. He thinks for a minute about what his favorite anime is before saying, “Detective Conan.” The show is, as you might gather from the title, about solving mysteries. And for Jackey, perhaps Detective Conan can inspire him to solve the great puzzle that looms in front of him.
IG’s clash with KT Rolster features two of the pre-tournament favorites. It’s not at all an unexpected clash, but that it’s happening in the Quarterfinals is sooner than most people expected. Jackey is keeping an even-keeled head about this matchup, though. He says, “It feels like compared to us, KT might be a team with even more pressure on them. KT knows for sure that they can’t 100% beat us, and they’re on their home court which means more pressure from the public, and we play against KT in scrims a lot, so we feel like we have what it takes to beat KT.”
There’s a ton of talent spread out between the two teams — seven of them are good enough to stake a claim at being the best individual player in their role in the world, and both teams have been dominant in their respective regions over the course of the year. There’s also history — in 2014, mid laner Rookie led the KT Rolster Arrows to the LCK Summer Split Championship — the last LCK Championship for KT until the drought was ended this summer. There’s Mata, on a quest now to return to Championship glory in Korea, where he last won Worlds in 2014. And, of course, there’s also the future.
IG’s JackeyLove, a rookie, has been heralded as the next ADC superstar in China — following in the path carved out by Uzi before him. Last year, there were even rumors that he was so dominant in scrims that it hurt Uzi and RNG’s morale to the point of them refusing to scrim IG. Jackey says those rumors were overblown — he does admit they did scrim and have good results, though.
But now the pressure is on — Jackey is starting to developing a reputation for disappearing in big games, even though it’s only his first season. This speaks to the insane level of expectation surrounding him. He says it doesn’t really affect him, though: “It doesn’t add any pressure. It feels kind of good, though, because being compared to him means you are at a level good enough to be compared, which is a compliment to my skill.”
He continues, “Uzi is definitely someone I look up to [though] — throughout the year, we played RNG so many times and my record against him isn’t good. So I’ve been trying really hard to get to his level.”
This might be the first time this iteration of IG will be considered a major underdog. They’ve only won one Best-of-5 set all year, but the lack of pressure here might come as a boon to them. Even if they’ve had such a good run, I don’t think many of us would shame them for being eliminated by KT, and I think they know that, too. Win, though, and comparisons to Uzi may resume next round whether it’s fair to JackeyLove or not.
G2 Esports: There’s a sense in the air that they’ve already accomplished more than expected, and now with three titans on their side of the bracket, they’ll have to prove doubters wrong again.
One of the photographers is told to go find Wunder’s family in the audience to grab a few shots of them. She’s told you can’t miss them — they’re tall and blonde and soar over everyone in the crowd. Like his family, Wunder’s performance has been as grand as his height. He’s been a key component to G2’s split push strategy that ran their opponents in circles in Group Play.
“Of course we could have a luckier draw — I’m not going to lie,” says Wunder. G2’s bad draw is a result of their inconsistency in the Group Stage — a few close losses ultimately forced them into a tiebreaker for a chance to even be here. Even still, here they are — once again alive.
“I feel like our bracket is really tough, but if we want to go far, we have to beat these teams anyway. Can’t really ask for better as a second seed,” he continues. Wunder is a very level-headed person and talks a bit about his journey here. His debut split with Splyce in 2016 was so bad that he says people thought he was the worst player, but ever since then he’s been regarded very highly among EU top laners.
Splyce ultimately made Worlds that year before landing in the “Group of Death” and being eliminated, but it was a good learning experience for him. He says, “I look back and I’ve learned so much from it. Playing against so many star players — of course it was such a big help and a big boot to kickstart my career. I know myself way more now.”
Based on the way the Group Stage panned out, G2 is probably the weakest team remaining — they’re the only ones who needed to win a tiebreaker to advance. I think they’ve already done a lot to justify their place at Worlds — no matter what happens in the Quarterfinals, EU fans will be satisfied with their performance. But that’s still no solace to the players themselves — the closer you get to the finish the line, the more you’ll want to cross it.
Wunder is grateful for making it at least this far, though. He says, “If I lost, I would have had to go home before my family went home. I would have been back in Denmark, and I would have lived home alone for two or three days until they came home. I kind of had to win actually, otherwise it would have been pretty awkward leaving them in Korea.”
Maybe his family should book their stay through Incheon.
Edward Gaming: The third seed from the LPL is no stranger to the Quarterfinals — until last year, they were notorious for always being eliminated at this stage. They now have a great opportunity to outgrow those roots.
In an interview with ESPN Esports’ Ashley Kang, EDG mid laner Scout’s mom says, “I call him by his nickname, actually. I call him ‘Ye-Kong’ [Yechan is Scout’s first name, and Kong means ‘bean’ in Korean]. A bean is full of potential. It’s tiny but grows into such a huge plant. So I’ve been calling him ‘Ye-Kong’ ever since he was a little boy.”
The little bean is maybe the most volatile player left in the tournament — on any given day he’s capable of being the best player in the world or being the one who throws the game entirely. Sometimes you see flashes of both within the same game or even the same team fight. And now EDG is about to clash with a Fnatic team that features a very similar mid laner in Caps. It’ll be like looking into the mirror for the both of them.
Scout is excited about the prospects and says, “I think he is a really stylish player and prefers and likes to fight, which is similar to me, so I’m really looking forward to going against him.”
I think when you run into an opponent that is very similar to you, then you must evolve or you risk being stuck against them forever. This will be a very informative series for both of these players, and it may help Scout on what he says is his pursuit for a more stable playstyle. Growth is critical if you hope to win the championship — you don’t need to be the best team to start Worlds, but you do need to be the best team to end it.
His attention to detail may help him this time around — it’s something he’s applied to all of his interests and not just League of Legends. For example, he says, “I like learning foreign languages — that’s why I caught up with Chinese really quickly. I guess there are a lot of people who try to learn simple phrases of other languages, but when it comes to me, I like to go in-depth, so I didn’t try too many languages. So right now, English is first and foremost, and if I master that, then I will move onto the next.”
He laughs and shakes his head when I ask him if his English is okay — but he seemed to understand me just fine. I think given this, it’s probably frustrating for him to feel unaccomplished on the Rift — complete mastery over League of Legends means a deep run at Worlds if not securing the Summoner’s Cup altogether.
They say plants will grow to accommodate the space they are given, and there’s no stage larger than the Knockout Stage at Worlds. If the little bean is meant to grow, then now is as good a time as ever to do it.
Cloud9: From 10th to Quarterfinals at Worlds is already one of the great narratives of this League of Legends season, but why stop here?
“I guess you can say the gap is closing… but that’s just a full-blown meme at this point,” laughs C9 top laner Licorice. “Since this is my first international experience, I never got to play against [international teams] before. I don’t know what it was like before. It just feels like all the teams that are left are strong.”
When analysts and pundits make predictions, it’s with the lens of the past in mind — eye tests are only so reliable on any given year. Being dominant in your region might not mean anything on the Worlds stage — and more often than not this is true for the vast majority of regions in the world. So for rookies like Licorice, the only “gap” they can reliably trust is what they actually experience. And this year, at least, it doesn’t seem to be that large.
To him, being a world class team just means “having 5 players who aren’t outclassed and having a lot of confidence. I’m pretty sure that’s 90% of being a champion.”
It feels like such a simple answer, but I think it’s really great that rookies can come into this Worlds and perform without having their nerves get the best of them. Unlike veterans, they don’t have the sting of failure lingering in the back of their heads. When they mess up, they don’t have flashbacks to last year or the year before that. And when they lose a game, they don’t think, “Oh no, not again…”
Licorice attributes a lot of this to confidence. He says, “I’m more confident as a player now, and game knowledge wise — I know if I make a mistake and die, it’s not the end of the world. Whereas before, as a new player, if I died once I wouldn’t be able to recover. I think it’s just knowing that I can die. Obviously, I try not to, but if I do mess something up — and it’ll happen eventually — then I’ll be able to recover. Knowing that lets me play more aggressive.”
Being okay with death felt like an apt metaphor for their run so far and more generally the experience of being a rookie at Worlds. Being okay with being knocked out isn’t a mentality many players carry with them because they know exactly what it’s like to be eliminated at Worlds. We saw, for example, Doublelift give an emotional interview after Liquid finished. You could feel the weight of eight years behind his statement.
For Licorice, though, everything now is new. There is only the rush of seeing just how far you can push your limits and how many mistakes you can make before you die.
KT Rolster: The tournament favorite is full of superstars who, outside of Mata, have never won the World Championship. But as the #1 Korean representative, their task is just as much to preserve history as it is to begin their own.
Backstage at the Bexco as the players await a photoshoot and interviews, Deft and Ucal are playing ping pong. Deft is as precise as you might expect — he stands tall and plays with generally good form. Ucal… well, it’s tough to tell if he’s joking around, but he looks like he’s trying to mimic movements from the anime Ping Pong: The Animation. As he goes to pick up a ball, Mata, having just finished interviews, comes over and pretends to roughhouse Ucal and try to kick the ball away.
It is a goofy moment for a team that has otherwise been the closest to perfection at Worlds so far. But it hasn’t always been this dominant for KT — the super team came together last year but failed to make Worlds altogether, let alone the Knockout Stage. That the team decided to stick together was even a little surprising to some.
“Last year when we didn’t make it to Worlds, we had a really hard time,” says Mata. “But it wasn’t like I doubted I could make it back to Worlds and perform well. It was more like, I’m just going to try my best with my teammates and put it all into next year.”
Of all the people I talked to, Mata gave me perhaps the most interesting answer to his motivations. He says, “After last year’s disappointment, the biggest motivation for me was to make it back to Worlds. And since I made it, I kind of got the [motivation] back to win the World Championship and to win the MVP. But it’s actually not my major motivation. Personally I don’t really feel like motivation matters. Every time, what really matters is performing well and winning every match. Every single match is really important. Just one victory at a time. If you just perform and participate fully every time, winning the Championship just follows naturally.”
The answer reminded me of a Magnus Carlsen quote that I’ve mentioned before, where he essentially says he’s more interested in making the right move at any given turn rather than focusing on whether he’s going to win or not. And at the end of the day — that’s really what it comes down to — you either made the right play or you didn’t. Having the best or most interesting motivation in the world doesn’t make you more likely to win. Life isn’t a neat narrative.
And Mata also isn’t too concerned with his legacy. He says, “I’m not sure if I can win very many championships. It has been eight years of LoL history — I’ve been a pro for five or six years, and I only have one championship for now. But in 10 years… I think no one will remember me, because if you ask who the Season 1 or Season 2 Champion is, I don’t think many people can answer now. I will maybe be naturally forgotten by the fans.”
I asked him what if he just won every single championship for the next 10 years — would that help them remember him? He laughed and said he didn’t want to put that into the air. I don’t agree with him that fans won’t remember him — I imagine years from now, he’ll be walking around, say, a fish market near the ocean, and some random fan will come up to him and say, “Mata!”
For all but five or six players who’ve stepped onto the competitive stage this year — their motivations and dreams will fall short. They will fall and then look up as another team continues to push forward, and that will be it for their year. Sound will be the first thing that comes back to them — the big cheers from the fans. The words of consolation from family. The grief of their teammates. Those are the ticks that keep them going. Those are the ticks that give them a glimpse into the future — into next year, when, again, they will rise.
Tune in at 9:00 pm PT on October 19th as Worlds action resumes with KT Rolster taking on Invictus Gaming.
Kien Lam is a writer for Lolesports. You can find more awful great jokes and commentary on his Twitter.