In Week 5 of the 2019 League of Legends Pro League, two beleaguered but historic Chinese teams met in what was a bottom-of-the-table slugfest. Oh My God, who had once been one of China's strongest world championship entrants in 2013-14 faced off against Team WE, who had once been the world's best team in late 2012.
The second game of the series marked the return of WE jungler Jiang "beishang" Zhi-Peng, who had only started for WE in their first match of the year: a 0-2 loss to SinoDragon Gaming. Not much was thought of beishang's return to the LPL stage. Both teams were 1-3 going into the series. High-level gameplay was not expected, despite individual talent on both lineups, and one of WE's problems over the past year had been a revolving roster, which allowed no time for synergy.
Beishang's return seemed like yet another roster swap in an attempt to get something, anything, going for the 12th-place WE.
In that Game 2, beishang led a bot lane dive at six minutes that netted two kills for WE bot laner Jin "Mystic" Seong-jun's Vayne. The game snowballed from there. Come Game 3, Xiye and Mystic were having their best performances of the year. Xiye and beishang's communication appeared strong, and WE beat OMG 2-1.
Naturally, one win over a team tied for 12th place wasn't going to turn heads. Yet, since his OMG start, beishang has helped lead WE to an 9-2 record, proving that sometimes all it takes is one player to turn a team from loosely assorted individual talents to a playoff team.
Now at 10-5 including a surprising upset victory over third-place Topsports Gaming in Week 9, WE have made the playoffs.
Once called World Elite, WE was the first large Chinese organization in League of Legends. They created their LoL division in March 2011, five months before fellow legacy organization Invictus Gaming. Older WE fans still lament the series of technical pauses and bugs that accompanied WE's loss to Counter Logic Gaming Europe at the Season 2 League of Legends World Championship in 2012. This was the series where Danny McCarthy's "Silver Scrapes" went viral, years later becoming the default Game 5 music for a new generation of LoL fans.
WE is a part of not only Chinese LoL history, but general LoL history. It was home to legendary players like the father of modern attack damage carry play, Gao "WeiXiao" Xue-Cheng and Twisted Fate master Yu "Misaya" Jing-Xi. You can't discuss competitive LoL history, or esports history, without mentioning WE.
More recently, WE have struggled. After a relatively successful 2017 season that saw the team represent China at both the Mid-Season Invitational and world championship, the following year devolved into a mess of internal issues and a rotating lineup that never worked out. Despite opening a gorgeous home venue at the Guangdian Grand Theatre in Xi'an, WE finished the 2018 Summer Split second-to-last place in their division. After their 1-3 initial start, this year was expected to be much of the same.
Given WE's lengthy history in Chinese LoL, it's fitting that a rookie Chinese jungler whose only experience prior to WE was in China's LoL development league became a major reason behind the team's recent meteoric rise. Coached by none other than WeiXiao himself, with a mixture of rookie talent from both China and South Korea, and veterans from both China and South Korea, this WE team is an odd mixture of old and new, talent domestic and imported. Somehow, against the odds and struggles of last year's lineup, it works.
Beishang's early-game presence and creative pathing gives WE more breathing room early, even if they draft a scaling AD carry champion for Mystic. Gone are the days where WE would draft three losing lanes and a losing jungle matchup. Now, the team leans into the early-game prowess of beishang and xiye to get ahead.
In Game 1 of their most recent series against Rogue Warriors, beishang invaded with ease on Olaf, before wreaking havoc. Even when it seemed that Rogue Warriors had a momentary advantage, beishang's Olaf stormed in from fog-of-war, always one step ahead of Rogue Warriors' jungler Xie "XiaoYao" Tao. Even in Game 2, where beishang's aggression was punished, xiye's dominion over mid still allowed them to garner early map leads.
Thanks to beishang's jungle control, xiye's mid lane control, and the team's tendency to go for later-game 5-vs-5 teamfights, much maligned WE rookie top laner Kim "Poss" Min-cheol has settled into a role of protecting Mystic in the frontline on Poppy or setting up as a split-pusher with Jayce or Yorick.
After a tumultuous few years with admirable successes and lingering failures, there's still hesitation when discussing how well WE could do in the playoffs. The team is still in their communication infancy as a unit, and could easily be overwhelmed by the likes of iG or Royal Never Give Up.
Yet this doesn't take away from their impressive run through the mid-to-back half of the split and the future still looks much brighter for WE with the addition of beishang and this lineup.