Apr 4, 2017

  • Tyler ErzbergerESPN Esports

    Shut

    • Staff author for ESPN.com
    • Covered esports since 2011
    • Worked with biggest teams across titles like League of Legends and StarCraft II

This is a story well-nigh a certain band of heroes.

The lights flash on in the Seoul OGN studios. It'south beginning for OGN Noon, the premiere Overwatch league in the earth. Fans plow their attention to center phase, where the two teams facing off are making their archway. They straighten up at the sight of the first squad, Lunatic-Hai, the golden boys of South Korea esports. The squad walks onto the stage in sleek bluish and white Adidas uniforms, looking into the camera coolly before creating a huddle and performing a synchronized squad cheer to the delight of the onlookers from the packed stands.

The Lunatic-Hai fan base overwhelms every other in professional person Overwatch. The thanks before each game are indisputably in favor of the team in blueish and white, a never-ending line of fans awaiting them after every game twenty-four hours in hopes of getting a picture with their favorite players. They are more 1000-Pop stars than your everyday professional video game players. Four of the six starting members of the squad were on last year'south South Korea Overwatch World Cup team that won the tournament without dropping a unmarried map to an opposing country.

"I recall our team is the all-time in the group, and RunAway is [last]," Kim "Zunba" Joon-hyuk says of Lunatic-Hai in a pregame video interview. "I ranked them [last] considering they are the worst in [the] grouping."

In Republic of korea, professional Overwatch for many means Lunatic-Hai.

This story isn't well-nigh them, though.

On the other side of the stage, the camera pans to a team non dressed in traditional sports-looking uniforms. Instead, we run across six men wearing vivid pink sweaters with their team'south name, RunAway, printed on them. The man in the center of the squad, the oldest of the group, begins to dance, emulating the character Lucio from the game, and his teammates follow his lead, laughing at what they've gotten themselves into. The trip the light fantastic toe leader continues to movement, shooting his arm outward, and his team follows him again by layering their hands atop his. He shouts loud enough to match any fan of Lunatic-Hai's, throwing his hand up in the air in unison with his team, loftier-fiving one of his juniors before entering the berth to play the strongest squad in South Korea.

This is Delinquent. They have no squad house. They take no analysts. They're non supposed to be here on this stage with Lunatic-Hai, but here they are, dancing, to the horror of whatever Yard-Pop star who might be watching.

Merely they don't care -- they're here, and that's all that matters.

"It's been pretty incredible," English OGN Apex caster Erik "Doa" Lonnquist says. "I'm constantly surprised they win. They actually shouldn't be [winning]."

On the dark that RunAway and Lunatic-Hai faced off in the 2nd circular of the OGN Noon Season two, the unthinkable happened. The team dancing, wearing sweaters similar your grandma used to knit, defeated the team considered favorites to win the entire competition.

After tying up the series at one map apiece and silencing the Lunatic-Hai fans, the leader/shot caller/dance choreographer of RunAway, Yoon "Runner" Dae-hoon, leaped out of his seat, going over to each ane of his teammates to milkshake them with the enthusiasm of a proud parent who just saw his child graduate.

By the end of the match, the underdog had won over a part of the crowd, a loud cheer booming at the close of the serial. Runner, non knowing how to incorporate his joy, jumped out of his chair once once more, but this fourth dimension he threw his arms wildly into the air in victory. He did it. They did it. Together, RunAway had knocked down the giant.

Just one problem: In that moment of unbridled happiness, Runner didn't realize the dimensions of the berth in which he was sitting. When he jumped upwardly to commemorate the biggest win of his life, he accidentally punched the roof of the berth, dislodging one the ceiling panels and nearly hitting his head.

The flavor before Runaway faced Lunatic-Hai in the elevation eight of OGN Apex Season 2, the upstart team was counted out in the qualifiers of Flavor ane. Merely in the qualifiers, RunAway eliminated LW Ruddy, a lodge that was expected by many pundits at the time to be one of the amend teams in Noon. Yet LW Red didn't arrive, and Runaway, a team of relative unknowns and amateurs, advanced from qualification.

"When he jumped upwards to commemorate the biggest win of his life, he accidentally punched the roof of the booth, dislodging one the ceiling panels, about hitting his head."

Simply Delinquent'south momentum from defeating LW Red was quickly extinguished in Season one. Although the team won its starting time match in impressive mode, Runaway came to a halt in the final two opening group-phase matches, getting knocked out of the league and needing to requalify through a promotional tournament alongside the other lower teams of Season i and the best squads from Apex's secondary league.

The thespian who stood out from the rest on Runaway was Genji specialist Kim "Haksal" Hyo Jong, his name pregnant "massacre" in Korean. In a ocean of players trying to break into stardom during the first season, Haksal's highlight-reel kills and YouTube montage videos made him one of the few to do so. His play, though, while exciting and breathtaking, was express. His one-fob pony status with Genji left him exposed after the team's commencement series, and the length of the tournament worked against him.

Other teams in the league, the ones with funding and sponsors backside them, had analysts and other luxuries Delinquent simply did not have. Overwatch usurped League of Legends in PC Bangs for a large part of 2016 when the game was officially released, but the professional scene, even so in its infancy, was too new and uncertain for players, especially those of pupil historic period.

If OGN Apex was an artillery race, the height teams were buying tanks and bringing in Gatlin guns. RunAway was sporting a wooden sword and a whole lot of heart, but that gets you only so far when you're surrounded by steel bullets.

Going into the second flavour of OGN Apex, afterwards Delinquent's requalification into the league, squad leader Runner wanted to stride away. A old League of Legends streamer for years, Runner was seen as more than of an entertainer than a professional person player. He was a good support player, almost exclusively playing Lucio, just compared to some of the other players in the tournament, he was defective. And he knew it.

Runner was set to requite up his dreams of beingness a professional person actor -- the dream he chased despite ruining his streaming career -- but his team wouldn't let him. To his teammates, Runner was essential. As Lonnquist said, when the squad ultimately made the semifinals later a successful second-circular advancement, information technology went to a 5th and last game against LW Ruddy's sis team, LW Blueish. RunAway dropped the 4th game in the set, and Runner, not letting his team quit, motivated tank histrion extraordinaire Ryu "KAISER" Sang-hoon (the squad's other star skill player besides Haksal) and set his mind straight.

"As far as playing goes, we've got better Lucios in the tournament, no doubt," Lonnquist says. "[Just] when you run into how [Runner] was able to at-home KAISER downwards after the Game 4 loss against LW Blue [in the semifinals] on Road 66, though, you lot can see he's as crucial to their success as anyone else on the squad."

When button came to shove, all RunAway had was one another. Runner, who has a family and a immature daughter, has to juggle his duties not only as a helm of an esports team only too equally a male parent and family unit human. He apologized in an interview with South Korean website Inven subsequently Runaway's win over LW Blue in the well-nigh contempo semifinal lucifer, saying he had to rush to his girl, who had to be taken to the emergency room because of a fever.

His family trusted him, though. So did his squad.

Runner moonlights as the team strategist and analyst, substantially doing the job of 4 or five people. He does this as a begetter. He does this every bit a streamer. When he bankrupt downwards in tears after the semifinal win, his teammates embraced him equally their leader, friend, mentor and brother.

An aggressive team that is rough around the edges, RunAway is not an unstoppable force of nature. Quite the opposite. Even after its shut wins over Lunatic-Hai in the 2d grouping phase and LW Blue in the semifinals, RunAway is annihilation simply flawless. At times the team is sloppy. At others, it dives way too hard, devolving into a chaos of ultimates flying at every angle on the screen, and then needing KAISER or Haksal to relieve a game through sheer individual brilliance.

"I want to prove that amateurs tin as well win in tournaments," Runner told Inven. "I kept telling my teammates that nosotros should get to Korea University [the location of the finals] at to the lowest degree through Overwatch considering our high school GPA can't brand it there anyhow."

At its core, even now, Delinquent is still an apprentice team. Nonsponsored teams yet can't fully jump into the professional scene, and information technology probably won't happen until further details of the Overwatch League emerge in the coming months.

Overwatch is a game about heroes -- heroes of all races, genders, sexual orientations and nationalities. In this story, information technology doesn't matter where you lot've come from or what you look like - all players tin exist heroes if they strive hard enough.

On Saturday, when Runaway makes it to Korea Academy for the OGN Apex finals -- which sold out in minutes -- against the very same Lunatic-Hai team for the adventure to make history past winning a major Republic of korea esport league equally an amateur team, you'll see different types of heroes go into battle.

Hopefully the roof is loftier plenty to contain them.