As we know, on the opening day of the League of Legends (LoL) competition at the ASIAD Hangzhou, Faker and his teammates faced two opponents from Hong Kong and Kazakhstan. With a level that far exceeds their opponents, the Korean LoL team had no difficulty securing victories against two rivals deemed too easy. In fact, among the Hong Kong lineup, only YSKM and KaiWing are perhaps the most familiar to the LoL audience as these two players competed in the LPL.
Of course, even before the tournament began, just looking at the results of the group draw, fans were confident that Faker and his teammates would easily advance to at least the semifinals. Because no opponent at this year’s ASIAD could pose a challenge to the Korean LoL team, except for their “rival” from China. However, many fans still sought to learn about Faker and his teammates’ opponents, only to discover many surprising facts.
Perhaps everyone knows that although they are all in Asia, countries like India, Kazakhstan, and Palestine have never been strong in Esports in general and LoL in particular. In fact, these countries do not even participate in the PCS area, or Europe, or have youth teams. But when looking into the rank levels of the players based on names from information channels, it was found that only two players from the Kazakhstan team had ranked accounts on the European server. They are Fakelover and Weox, with Fakelover having a rather humorous moment when he used Sion to counter Faker’s “overboard” turret dive. The other players from Kazakhstan don’t even have active gaming accounts.
Interestingly, the ranks of these two players are at the “hell” rank of Emerald – a new rank added by Riot in the middle of the year. For those who do not know, even though this rank is above Platinum, according to the LoL community, this is the rank of Riot’s “failure.” The opinions surrounding this rank revolve around the fact that there are too many game-breaking cases and “smurfing” in ranks currently being played at Emerald.
It can be said that the skill gap between regions and countries even within Asia is too large. In fact, according to many opinions, there are only four countries that truly have the potential to compete for medals at ASIAD, and each country is associated with a specific region in the LoL scene, including VCS, PCS, LPL, and LCK. The rest are just teams that probably participate just for practice.