Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

There is nothing but the champion.

Everyone told me to retire. Everyone told me to give up. But... look at me now! "

"everyone advised me to retire, everyone advised me to give up, but. Look at me now!"

After the final of StarCraft II IEM Catowitz Station, Li Peinan of China finished this paragraph with a simple and honest smile and amused the audience. But as the interview went on, he began to sob and finally lost control of his tears.

In the early morning of February 13, Beijing time, Li Peinan won the championship at 4:1 in Catowitz, Poland, the final stage of the world's top "StarCraft II" tournament IEM, beating South Korea's Maru, currently number one in the SC2 world.

This is the first time in 25 years since the beginning of the "StarCraft" series e-sports, a Chinese player has won the world championship in the highest competition.

It is not just the champion himself who is also crying at the moment. For Chinese StarCraft players, no one would have dreamed that in the third year that StarCraft II stopped updating and the second month of Blizzard shutting down the national service of the game, this miraculous light of victory burst out in the abyss of darkness.

A report in Sports Weekly in 2012 used "men's football" to describe the weakness of China's interstellar e-sports at that time. In that year's WCS StarCraft II Asian finals, South Korean players won the top eight with absolute dominance, while Chinese players fell into the loser group and were eliminated after a few rounds.

There are many reasons for this situation.

At the beginning of the 21st century, South Korea began to flourish the e-sports industry, showing a mature professional and market-oriented system in traditional RTS projects such as "StarCraft" and "Warcraft". At that time, e-sports of China had not yet climbed out of the quagmire of prejudice, the "sludge" had not been thoroughly washed away, and he was more likely to stumble in the footsteps of others.

Especially in the StarCraft e-sports project, the gap between China and South Korea is tantamount to a natural graben. Generally speaking, "chaos and disorder" was a cold and appropriate evaluation of the domestic e-sports industry at that time.

With the gradual decline of the RTS e-sports market after 2010, even if potential players enter the stadium, there is no doubt that they have to face the cruelty of e-sports: "outdated" projects are not only difficult to have new blood to communicate with each other, but also difficult to get public attention.

"StarCraft 2" is a highly ornamental game, but also a very difficult game, unlike people are familiar with all kinds of competitive games, the difficulty of operation, this threshold alone is enough to stop many people, there is little fresh blood, fight back and forth, the circle is very small, opponents are often acquaintances.

With the continuous decline of interstellar fever, many clubs have been disbanded one after another, the performance of Chinese players is not good, compared with the popular e-sports such as MOBA games, interstellar events also began to gradually fade out of the eyes of the Chinese people. And such a persistent decline is the background of Li Peinan's entry into StarCraft II.

When Li Peinan, who was born in June 2000, was a 14-year-old child, e-sports Club extended an olive branch to him.

The cause of the incident was that young Li Peinan took part in an Interstellar 2 audition, but because he was too young to sign up, he borrowed someone else's account, quietly signed up for the competition, and beat a professional.

Although his identity was finally revealed, Zoo, a powerful interstellar club in China at that time, saw his potential and recruited him as a youth player, from which he embarked on the road of e-sports.

Li Peinan, a domestic StarCraft 2 new star, made his debut in the China qualifier of IEM Pingchang Station in 2017: Li Peinan, whose ID was "Time", beat veteran professional Jim to win the China qualifier for the first time, proving his ability when he was not yet 18 years old.

But what really made Li Peinan known to the world was his victory over South Korea's Maru in the 18-year WESG.

Just as people praised Li Peinan at the beginning, the label of "youth and genius" is also the impression left by Korean Emperor Maru. Maru, the youngest StarCraft II professional ever, had already won the GSL league at the age of 13.

Although Li Peinan was only the third runner-up in the 2018 WESG, it was a great achievement to defeat the then rising star Maru when China's SC2 was already "poor and weak".

Interestingly, in the 2019 StarCraft II Golden team League, the host asked Maru if he had anything to say to Time, but Maru was very confused as if he didn't know Time at all.

"Who is Time?" Maru said.

Some people explained that Maru might have been confused and could not be forgiven for remembering it, but in the eyes of more people, perhaps WESG's failure could not be counted in Maru's eyes.

Since then, the stalk of "Who is Time" has become an inextricable episode between the two contestants, and no one can tell whether there is a sense of irony.

With the continuous progress of time, Li Peinan has gradually become one of the few domestic professional players who can compete in the international arena. When Blizzard even held a carnival competition, he was the only player who had ever stepped onto the highest stage, and these honors made him the last hope of China StarCraft.

However, in more well-known international competitions, Li Peinan, as the "only child" of China StarCraft, often plays the role of a "lonely adventurer": people's eyes are on him, and the pressure is even greater. The journey has not been plain sailing. In the past few years, he has repeatedly stopped in the top eight in the world, so he is also jokingly known as "Li Lao Ba".

2022 is definitely a nightmare for Chinese interstellar players, especially for Li Peinan. Li Peinan played extremely abnormal in the group stage of the top 16 of the DreamHeck competition last year, and was defeated by 0:2 in the showdown with three opponents.

Such a fiasco is undoubtedly unacceptable. Some viewers tease "Brother Li may not wake up", while those with a bad temper directly curse "what are you fighting for?"

Losing three games in a row did not make many people realize that even though they reached the top of the Korean server ladder last year, almost no one in the player community had any substantial hope that Li Peinan would win the championship.

"if you have time to worry about China StarCraft, you might as well worry about World StarCraft." Li Peinan himself was on the brink of collapse. According to his description, he thought this was his end, but fortunately, his family gave him encouragement and support.

Compared with most of the players who set foot on e-sports, Li Peinan is undoubtedly lucky. his family is relatively well-off, and his parents are also very enlightened. Although they had some worries at first when they found his parents at the first club, in the end, they firmly supported Li Peinan and even discussed Li Peinan's game.

But e-sports eventually became the king and loser, and the poor performance of the game put him under pressure from many sides. later, he simply cancelled his Weibo account and devoted himself to training.

In July last year, Li Peinan said in a live broadcast that he was going to retire, which really surprised a lot of people at that time, but it was later confirmed that it was just an angry joke.

As he enters 2023, he seems to remember it. He did decide to "retire", but instead of leaving the game, he gave up his long-standing ID "Time" and changed his name to Oliveria.

3 at the Katowitz terminal, maybe even Li Peinan himself didn't figure it out, so how did he break into the top four in a muddle?

In the first stage of the group stage, Li Peinan's record was 2-3, which was not ideal, but he finally managed to qualify for the third place in the group, and then he stumbled on.

In an interview to enter the top four, he said it simply doesn't seem real, just like a dream, a dream that only belongs to him.

Interesting new fans in the pre-match prediction before the game, AI gave a negligible figure of Li Peinan's probability of winning the championship: 0.37%.

From 0.37% to February 13, in the early hours of the morning in the country, most people were still sound asleep, while Li Peinan, who was as far away as Poland, was still playing a high-intensity game and fighting hard.

The advantage of the competition schedule on this day, that is, the players' luck in grouping, did not favor Li Peinan at all. He played against three opponents in succession, each of whom was absolutely powerful.

There are three major races in StarCraft II. According to this year's ranking of points, Li Peinan's three opponents stand at the top of the Zerg, Starling and Terran races, and he needs to face a variety of tactical style tests one after another. it also makes the gold content of this championship reach an unprecedented level.

But such a game is not destined to be plain sailing. Li Peinan got off to a bad start in the quarterfinals. Against Italy's Renault, he lost two sets in a row and almost reached the finish line.

Li Peinan said afterwards that at that moment he just told himself that it doesn't matter whether he wins or loses, just enjoy the game and enjoy the game.

At the moment in China, it is a very rare thing that some people will stay up late to watch Star Games. But as Li Peinan won one game after another, many people were attracted, because everyone felt that a miracle might be born.

On bilibili, some anchors who did not have the right to broadcast had planned to broadcast the commentary live, but there were more and more viewers, which triggered the warning of the ban, and finally had to give up. Many viewers tossed around, some went to foreign platforms to watch, and some really could not watch the live broadcast. Just listen to others broadcast in the group, just like people used the radio to listen to the Chinese women's volleyball match in 2004.

What happened next, like a hot-blooded kingly comic book, the protagonist, who was forced into a desperate situation, realized something in a moment and began to counterattack. Li Peinan adjusted the operation, seized the opportunity of Renault's many mistakes, and achieved the goal of letting two catch up with three, beating the world's fifth-ranked player.

A miraculous scene happened. Then came herO, the world's first star, who was defeated by Li Peinan with a score of 3:1.

When he played "old enemy" Maru in the final stage, Li Peinan won only 30% of the game against the world's first man who had beaten him many times. But it seems that he has changed a person, as if the gods came down to earth to judge every tactical attempt of Maru, there is no longer any "catch-up", and even beat the opponent in the late operation that Maru is best at, and directly won the championship with a big victory at 4:1 and easily won the championship freehand.

Li Peinan said after the game that it didn't feel real, and the audience also felt like a dream. Some people tried to analyze the process of the game to prove that Li Peinan's victory had an element of luck, but perhaps only he understood that since his fiasco last year, he did not sink into depression, but pushed himself with more intensive training.

Compared with luck, perhaps the most reasonable answer is to reward hard work.

Like a wonderful coincidence, the moment of Li Peinan's victory coincided with the dawn of the country. All Chinese interstellar players, together with him, ushered in the first and final, coveted dawn in the most difficult and dark moment.

When people wake up from their sleep, the news that Li Peinan won the championship is accompanied by the sunrise, and perhaps in the minds of many players, he is the embodiment of light.

From its launch in 1998 to the present, the history of StarCraft has almost accompanied the history of the entire e-sports industry. But the e-sports project, which was first known by Chinese players, has never blossomed in this land. By 2023, StarCraft II was no longer updated, and even the servers in the country had been turned off. It seems that this is the end of the story about China StarCraft.

But there are always people who do not succumb to time and darkness, so that the fragmented Chinese stars will no longer regret. At the last moment of the curtain call on the stage, the most beautiful fireworks bloomed.

"in fact, nothing is impossible. I have won the world championship. Nothing is really impossible."

Who is Time? Aria also contributed to this article.

This article is from the official account of Wechat: game Research Society (ID:yysaag), author: Leon45

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