LOL: I'm in the LPL, that's my fight!

Chapter 51: The LPL's Stress Responds and the Explosion of Topics.

No one could have predicted that a city championship would stir up such a huge wave in the esports world, where the global finals had already captured everyone's attention.

Players were caught off guard, as were the management of LPL clubs, and even live streaming platforms like Douyu and Zhanqi, known for their keen sense of traffic, were caught off guard.

Even Huya itself initially only bought a few bottom recommendation slots for the City Championship as a symbolic gesture, just to test the waters.

Of course, I never expected things to turn out this way.

They can swear that they really didn't use too many resources this time.

That meager promotional budget didn't even go through three levels of internal approval; it was at most an insignificant addition to the daily schedule.

But who could have imagined that such a limited investment would trigger a huge chain reaction that swept through the entire esports community!

The core driving force behind all of this was not even Huya's official planning team.

The entire promotional strategy originated from Crush.

This was their own idea—the Chinese server's top solo queue player they had just signed, whom they thought they could simply stream and climb the ranks.

What kind of publicity are you asking about?

That was Crush's debut after signing with Huya.

The debut of this type of product usually follows a few fixed templates.

The options are either to aim for the top 1000-point ranking and dominate the leaderboard with a variety of heroes in the Rift, or to organize a star-studded exhibition match, inviting a bunch of LPL star players and top streamers to create a grand spectacle and play a few friendly matches in a fun-filled atmosphere.

However, Fu Shiyan's proposed solution completely abandoned these safe and vain approaches, making it distinctly different from the initial presentations of other platforms and even the previous legendary streetball king, Dopa.

He carried on and amplified the fundamental persona that had made him famous overnight—that of a practical player who disdained seeking attention in ranked matches and instead uttered almost arrogant pronouncements like "making it into the LPL."

He changed stages and put this bold statement into practice, directly making his debut under contract with a local, highly competitive, and brutal arena—the City Championship.

The live broadcast format made viewers realize that this was not a pre-scripted personal show, but a pledge that was essentially a gamble with their professional reputation.

Then, the course of the competition completely overturned the public's stereotypical image of "high-ranking streetball players playing in low-level tournaments".

Fu Shiyan did not perform the data-driven individual heroism that everyone expected, nor did he play the kind of amazing, unstoppable play that streamers rely on to make a name for themselves in ranked games.

Instead, he and his four teammates delivered a performance that was purely professional, so meticulous it was almost unbelievable.

Just like the barrage of comments during the match complained;

If a player with a thousand points in the King of Glory rank were to suddenly appear in the City Championship and dominate the lane, clean up team fights, and generate explosive stats, the audience would at most exclaim, "This player is really strong individually," and then the novelty would quickly wear off.

But if you were to stage a "one god leading four pitiful players" scenario, and in a very short time, under the watchful eyes of everyone, you were to force-feed these "four pitiful players" into highly disciplined professional-level players through command, judgment, and even the rhythm of each step, and then crush them to victory with a team collaboration method that is completely incomprehensible to ordinary people and as solid as an iron plate, then the level of discussion and curiosity it would generate would be ten or a hundred times that of the former individual show.

It can only be said that the e-sports circle at this point in time is still too direct and simple in its marketing thinking, far inferior to Fu Shiyan, a soul who has seen countless sophisticated and story-based account creation strategies in later generations.

For him, maximizing the traffic potential of a game is not an exaggeration to say it's an instinct ingrained in his bones; he can easily copy a few model cases.

Moreover, when he retired from professional esports in his previous life and was struggling to find his best coaching path, he spent a lot of time intensively studying marketing at the club's training camp.

The miscellaneous knowledge I gathered during that period can now be used effortlessly, and they are all deadly moves.

For example, they could have Huya Live's accompanying staff film and meticulously edit a series of documentary-style footage showcasing the rapid growth of the entire BJBS team. Then, by combining this with the painful experience of the recently concluded World Championship semifinals, they could have precisely capitalized on the public discourse surrounding the LPL teams' crushing defeat by the LCK's pure operational system and the entire region's despair and confusion, profiting from the collective trauma.

Yes, it's an LCK-style operation.

In order to immediately evoke the strongest cognitive contrast and sense of immersion among LPL players, he even deliberately suppressed the more familiar, bloody, and proactive collision-style operation of the previous LPL, and instead adopted a set of fundamentalist LCK pure playstyle.

What is Korean-style management?

This style of play is characterized by extreme vision control, stable resource exchange, and precise snowballing, emphasizing winning through calculation and certainty rather than relying on aggressive team fights or risky maneuvers.

Under normal circumstances, this operating model places extremely high demands on the synchronization rate of the five team members, their macro-level understanding of the map, and the individual discipline of the players.

Let alone a city championship team that has to cram at the last minute, it is impossible for them to do it. Even many LPL teams that invest millions and spend the whole season learning often only learn the basics and quickly deform and collapse under pressure.

This is the fundamental reason why LPL viewers were speechless with shock when BJBS's match recordings and Huya's promotional videos started circulating wildly.

They've been thoroughly and subtly thrashed by the LCK using the same system for three whole years. They understand all too well that deep-seated sense of powerlessness.

EDG learned from this and, with this discipline, swept the LPL for two whole years from 2014 to 2015, even winning the Mid-Season Invitational and briefly making the entire region proud.

Even so, this year's World Championship saw a major version change, and even the slightest miscalculation in game understanding immediately led to the collapse of the system and a huge mistake.

So what are the facts that are now facing us?

A grassroots team that hadn't even qualified for a professional tournament—more precisely, a top solo queue player in the Chinese server—led four teammates whose individual skills were stuck in the Master rank and were unremarkable just a few weeks ago. Like a miniature version of the LCK champions, they played their way up on a stage like the City Championship, completely and flawlessly.

The content provides an extreme contrast and stimulation, the timing is perfectly timed to capture the shock of the collective trauma of the competition area, and then it accurately absorbs the huge amount of bitter traffic from the finals defeat. The triple impact and resonance make it hard for the topic's discussion not to explode.

The first battle ignited the competition, and BJBS's journey in the City Championship continues. The tactics used against MC are being replicated again, and the proficiency is visibly increasing.

Boss Mo's phone has been ringing off the hook!