Until 2022, Rich will be an unfamiliar name to many LPL players.
After watching the LCK, the audience who followed LCK would not only call him "Rich Emperor" after seeing that NS did not qualify for the World Championship, but also compare him with Morgan to see who was worse.
After learning that he was coming to V5, some viewers posted that he would not refresh the record of the LPL single kill list. After all, last season, he was at the top of the list with 21 singles, seven more than khan in second place.
But after a few games in the new season, people found that the little fat man was not as bad as everyone thought. Returning Akshan, he became the Shadow Assassin who assassinated AD, hitting the line champion with two extreme single kills.
When Rich gradually got better, the titles of "Storm Jordan", "Storm Faker" and "Triple Crown" surfaced. At this time, people were surprised to find that the abandoned son who was questioned and terminated by the team was also a legendary player who dominated one side and the absolute leader of a generation of dynasties.
First, to gain is to lose
Every mature competitive event will have a "god"-like character. If Jordan is the god of basketball and Faker is the legend of League of Legends, then when it comes to heroes of the storm, the first thing that comes to people's minds should be a name called "Rich".
In 2015, Rich's name came to prominence at the Hub of Time. At the age of 17, he not only firmly occupies the first place in the Rank list, but also is known as an "operator monster" in a game with a low operating ceiling.
His games are always very watchable, so many spectators regard him as a leader in the future of the storm.
The first two years of defeat did not extinguish his light, but ignited his fighting spirit and determination to compete for honor. He refused to take on the "short-lived" label, and between the end of 2017 and 2018, he led Gen.G to three world championships, becoming the first person of honor in the space-time hub.
He got everything, but soon lost everything again.
A month after the dust settled on the World Championship Finals, a storm originating from the American continent crossed the Pacific Ocean and swept across the Korean Peninsula. The official announcement of the suspension of the event without warning, along with the suspension of the event, along with Rich's heart that wants to sleep.
"It was as if everything had become dark and my mind was blank. I was alone in the middle of the night, until my teammates woke up 3 hours later..."
A man who had walked up to the tip of the pyramid tiptoed to the cheers of the crowd, trying to pick up more stars. Suddenly a sense of weightlessness struck from below, and he looked beneath his feet and suddenly realized that the storm had destroyed the pyramid.
At first, he tried to win over the authorities, but it was still unsuccessful.
Standing in the ruins of the broken wall, fragments of past glory flash before your eyes. Thoughts go back to the autumn when Anaheim first lifted the Silver Champions Cup, and the blue rain enveloped the entire stadium, and the blue and white jerseys were the condensation of everything...
The sight of his teammates disconnecting quickly pulled him back to the icy reality. Rich realized that it was time for him to make a choice. The humane old club Gen.G promised to arrange a coaching job for him and provide resources to help him transform into a Twitch anchor.
Everyone agreed that Rich's career had ended prematurely. But the stronger Rich didn't think so. The desire for victory and honor gave him the idea of fighting again. So he resolutely threw himself into another e-sports project, League of Legends.
Second, the storm will come again
How long does it take to go from losing your job at a space-time hub to standing on another stage to shine? Rich gives the time to be 9 months.
In 2014, when the Samsung blue and white team ruled South Korea, the space-time hub had not yet been born, and 16-year-old Rich played the position of the strongest king of Hanbok. In the 4 years since then, his career has also remained in the diamond. This long-term hobby also laid the groundwork for future transformations.
Four years, vicissitudes. Canyon Pioneer, rune system and many other changes not only made the version change the sky, but even the bitter LPL said goodbye to the crown and opened a new chapter in history. Although there is a certain game foundation, Rich still has to start from the most basic knife repair.
So where to choose? At first, he chose to play without the need to play against the line, but the winning rate was too low; then he tried to play a single, and the result was that the dan position stayed at the master; finally he found a long-lost initiative in the position of the middle single.
Three months later, he landed in the canyon as a king, and he met more and more professional players in the rankings. Once he played Against Faker in the middle and won the match, which gave him great encouragement and confidence.
The old owner was also impressed by this self-improvement. The former Storm Legend became a trainee at the "senior age" of gen.G.'s League of Legends division at the age of 21. On May 29, 2019, Rich was promoted to the first team as a substitute single.
On August 9, 2019, with Gen.G losing an innings first, Bench Rich made his LCK debut.
The feeling of returning to the stage is so familiar that the pouring spotlights, the cheering audience, and the Gen.G jersey on them all have a throbbing feeling of dreaming back to the past. But the scene and the opponent are extremely strange, the GRF who is the first in the regular season, chovy who is known for his talented teenagers, and the nervous expression that cannot be seen in the finals of the World Championships that year.
Tarzan's catch briefly deprived his sword demon of the initiative against the line, but he used his unparalleled team combat ability to salvage the situation and drag the game into a tiebreaker. "One win, one loss" is the debut report card handed over by Rich, imperfect, but full of possibilities. So when he competed with the AFs for the last summer playoff ticket, he was once again the hope of the whole team.
The hunter's sense of smell cultivated at the hub of time and space turned into a regimental battle sharp knife in the canyon. At that time, the basic skill of repairing the knife (the storm without the repair knife mechanism) that was lost at that time became a stubborn disease of the weakness of the line later. In three sets, Rich was pressed a total of 224 knives.
The debut season ended with Gen.G handing over the last playoff ticket, and Rich left the LCK stage hastily after leaving the label of "weak line and low output".
At the age of 22, he became a player in the secondary league. In the case of no shortage of people in Zhongdan, he was stationed on the road of DYN. A fortuitous transposition made the "master" Rich gradually grow into an ace player in the team.
DYN advanced to the playoff finals with the second place in the regular season, and then conquered his opponents with his performance in the dream of returning to the glory years, and while winning the secondary league championship, he also hitched a ride to the last train to the LCK.
In the LCK Summer Games, he continued the hot state of spring, taking over half of the team's winning MVPs. The opening three wins and one loss record once saw the hope of the playoffs.
However, after the "rookie welfare period", they suffered an eight-game losing streak. The two losses to Nuguri allowed Rich to see the gap between himself and the world number one single, and the second matchup also scored a 2-12 record.
In October 2020, after three years, LCK lifted the Summoner Trophy again. Rich, 22, watched the entire game in front of the screen, his affectionate gaze full of his 19-year-old appearance.
"I wondered, what would it be like if the person standing on that stage was me? I want to go to the World Finals, I want to win, I want to be the first player to win both the Blizzard and the Fist. ”
The road to the ideal of honor is destined to be full of thorns. By the time the 2021 new season starts, DYN has become NS. After the tepid spring race, the summer race of Nongshim began to show its dark horse nature, and the regular season competed with DK and Gen.G.
Rich had a sweet time when Gwen's Blind Monk Nightmare and the Broken King were on the road. After the change of versions, he became an unstable X factor. Kenan, who did not dare to open the bubble game, and the shocking 0-8 Jax snuffed out the last illusion of entering the world.
The public opinion storm of "invincible Morgan" outside the field has not yet subsided, and there is also a storm brewing inside the field. The three-year contract signed in 2021 means that he will end up in the NS, but the team will sweep the founding hero out of the house in advance without saying martial arts.
Losing his job at the end of his 24-year-old esports seems like a death sentence for Rich's career: give it up! You have reached the point of becoming history.
3. Storm Storm Storm!
Rich's encounter resonated with Rookie and Karsa. Their careers are very different, and the distant similarities that come with their offseason experiences bring them together.
The storm destroyed his career twice, and both times he found another slice of the sky. There is both the patronage of the goddess of luck and the opportunity brought about by the spiritual will to never give up.
Falling from the clouds into the mortal world, he is no longer a legend who looks at the world, but an ordinary player after the fall of the kingdom. What is more difficult than cultivation techniques is to adapt to the transformation of identity, to adapt to the fact that you are no longer an omnipotent king.
The sword and light of the flood years, the narrow road of the time and space hub meets, and finally reflects on the land of the canyon without a trace, turning into every victory in the ranking and competition.
Life is everywhere like, it should be like Flying Flying On Slush. Reynolds dusted the Old World laser gun and practiced the shotgun of the canyon tide; the prince of Lordaeron let go of the frost sorrow and pulled up Attox from the Dark Race. Every moment of careful recollection is inspiring and courageous.
Rich's story is fascinating because his experiences are enough ups and downs. A legend of a competitive project, after being abandoned by the times, he did not stay in place and spend the rest of his life recalling the brilliant moments, but put down his body, started from scratch, and re-fought for a "possible" opportunity as a 21-year-old trainee.
In the end, he managed to stand in the top league of another competitive event, which is an achievement that Jordan's grandfather could not do.
At any time, he did not lose the determination to change himself and start over. If there are two roads in a wood, he chooses the less off-the-beaten-track one. He redoubled his efforts to follow, to catch up, and to use this as the direction of the rest of his life.
Fate had whispered to the warriors that you couldn't withstand the storm. And the warrior whispered, "I am the storm."
【Afterword】
Rich's "Treble" doesn't mean "three consecutive S-like events and a successful victory."
In 2015, he missed his first World Championships due to age.
In 2016, he won the Spring Championship, but he returned from the Summer Tournament and the HGC Finals (equivalent to the S-Game of League of Legends).
In 2017, he lifted the HGC Finals trophy for the first time.
In 2018, he almost successfully defended his title in the form of an annual Grand Slam.
In fact, Rich has only won the HGC Finals twice. The "Triple Crown" actually refers to the fact that between 2017 and 2018, he won two Finals titles plus a mid-season brawl title, similar to League of Legends' two S titles and an MSI champion.
Faker's SKT has accomplished a similar feat. After winning the S5, they won the MSI and S6 titles in 2016.
So the statement that "he won three world championships three times" and "why Rich won three consecutive championships because he only participated three times" is actually a beautiful misunderstanding. Rich competed in five world tournaments (two mid-season and three Grand Finals), with only the last three winning titles. However, regarding the titles of "Storm Jordan" and "Storm First Man", the author believes that this statement is no problem.