What makes a team that team and no other team? If you take away or replace a single player, is that the same team? What if you keep all the players but change the organization they play for, or the coaching staff? Does that keep their identity as a team?

This thought struggle hit me first when jungler Condi left WE for family issues at the beginning of 2018: sure the team is going to stay the same if most of their players are still there, right?

But it was not like that and both my rational and emotional part couldn’t cope with it.

In 2016 and 2017, WE was the team I grew with, the one who brought me to LPL and, together with Unicorns of Love, gave me the widest range of emotions I have ever felt for esports. To this day in 2020, I haven’t found any other team that could bring me so much, despite never stopping yearning for a successor.

A long ride to the top

It all started in 2015, when a successful roster of veterans like Misaya, Caomei and Clearlove left the team in shambles and they had to urgently rebuild to restore their competitive results: WE had to bring together a bunch of rookies and young players like Xiye and Mystic under the guidance of ace jungler Spirit, but the situation was unsalvageable. They were bad, terribly bad.

I had no idea who WE was and even their founding members sounded foreign to me; you can only imagine my thoughts about their new ones.

Yet this terribly bad team sat on giants’ shoulders: thanks to the veterans before them, they got to take part in IEM 2015, a tournament meant for teams way above their level. That’s where the magic happened: the legendary upset to GE Tigers cast a spell on me, and I, a young League fan, was too charmed to resist it. I couldn’t stop following them.

But as I said, they were terribly bad. I put up with it, I knew they were fundamentally not good, yet after that showing I kept watching their losses just in wait of the diamond in the rough. I could see that there was good in all of them, it was just a matter of time and I am a patient fan.

Patience paid off. 2016 and 2017 were a constant climb, week after week I watched their matches with pride, as the eldest brother who smiles looking at his little brother’s growth from inexperience to mastery. And the climb looked like it was not over after 2017: they could achieve more, improve more if they stuck together.

But they didn’t.

Denial

At first I was still hopeful: hopeful that the coaches would come back, that Condi would start playing again. After all, Xiye and Mystic are still there, the backbone and soul of the team, it still felt like WE even if they weren’t anymore. It was the end of 2018 when I finally realized that things were never going to be the same, and that the WE I so much hoped to see the whole year was never going to be as in 2017.

2019 was when the internal struggle was insufferable. I watched their matches, yes, but with disgust and contempt, as if my little brother stopped putting in the effort to improve and was just there. I started to question my own motives: am I really a fan at this point? After all, a true fan would support its team no matter what, and I wasn’t doing that. Was I just a fan of the team who won, or of those specific players? No, it was impossible, because I endured years of losses before they got to the top.

Only at the end of the year it got to me in full force: I was a fan of the emotions that WE gave me, and this revolving door of players did not allow me to form a bond with the team. There was no team if the players kept changing, just as your distant cousin will never feel as close as your brother. Then Xiye and Mystic, the longest-standing duo in LPL history, left. It was only obvious that I couldn’t be a fan of WE anymore.

I gave up.

I really gave up, I stopped watching their matches and, by extension, LPL as a whole. There was nothing keeping me tied to it, it had lost the value I started watching for. I felt without a family. It might sound irrelevant, but I even relinquished the “WE Fans” tag on our Discord fandom in frustration and confusion.

Revelation

It wasn’t until half of the Spring Split 2020, when I thought I was already apathetic and distant enough towards the whole thing, that I took the chance to watch a match. I knew nothing about these new players: why bother if they’re going to change every few matches? In addition to that, they were also terrible: confused rookies trying to scramble on the map without a decent idea of what to do to get to the Nexus.

Yet they won some, and I was confused and puzzled. They aren’t supposed to win these games, I said to myself brimming with contempt. I hated the players, shrouded in mystery and distant in addition to being terrible.

Clockwise from the top: Captain Missing (support), Teacherma (mid), Beishang (jungle), Yimeng (now in Academy), Jiumeng (bot), Plex (sub mid), Poss (sub top), Morgan (top)

Without realizing it, I was watching all their matches again. Little by little I started to understand the thought process behind the players; I went from “Teacherma is terrible, they should keep Plex” to “Teacherma is trying to win the game in a way I didn’t understand” and from “Who is Jiumeng?” to “Little Mystic” in the span of two weeks.

It was only during their second-to-last match of the split against EDG that I admitted to myself that I was cheering for them again, “One more win for playoffs”, I kept telling everyone. I was that kind of WE fan again, sorry.

And that’s when it hit me.

Maybe I don’t know the players well enough, maybe I don’t know their playstyle well enough, but I felt emotions. And not generic emotions, but the same ones I had in 2015, the same terrible team that rose to the top after years, I felt them.

I might be wrong, I probably will be, but I feel like I’m back at that time, sticking with a middling team in the hope of something great that will eventually come. True, they are a different team, none of the players that made them great are there anymore. Yet they are the same team I fell in love with, young rookies sticking together and aiming for the top. The legacy of Xiye and Mystic will always be present in their faithful trainee duo, Beishang and Missing, who are now entrusted with the new generation of WE.

Back then, it was the longest and most heartfelt ride that any team gave me, and if there’s one team that can give me the same feelings, I perfectly know it can be no other than WE again.

My question was finally answered: a team can still be itself even if everyone involved is different. What matters is emotions, and nothing else.

Keep your dreams, they say.

I kept them, and now I’m ready again.