It seems like the word is out on the death of lplen, to many this is good news as criticisms of the quality was piling up, but to some this is heartbreaking. You can chalk up the differences of opinions to conflicting point of views, which is why I feel it’s important to share my own since I too started off as a casual viewer.

Getting into LoL Esports

As any other spectator, I followed NA, EU and OGN. I got into watching the lpl from watching iG and WE flex their strength at S2 World Championships. Both teams were extremely fun to watch, especially iG with their nonsense picks and potential that really defined them. At this point I was still merely a casual viewer that wouldn’t stay up if there was a tournament taking place past a certain time, but I would watch it whenever OGN was on that night.

As I watched more lpl and OGN, I started gaining more interest in exploring the two scenes a bit. I started out by tuning into NLB streams where production quality was pretty stellar but the casting was pretty bad after Keats took over. Well, bad in a hilarious way. At that point I started wondering more about China and their amateur scene, and hilariously enough their LSPL aired earlier than their LPL games so I tuned in more often for the LSPL games. The LSPL had no English casting and streamed on an unstable Chinese streaming platform, it also didn’t have an English audience so the experience was pretty painful, especially if I was tuning in to a Kx.happy game.

Introduction to LPLen

It was only after keeping track of the LSPL did I really closely follow the LPL through the lplen twitch stream. The production quality was pretty bad but compared to the Chinese streams the difference was miniscule. The casting was fun and solid. When Frosk was paired with Pira it was gold, when Rapid worked with Nero it was decent and the real fun was when I tuned in for Hughbo and Nick Yaco. Every pair brought their own twist and turns, with Frosk+Pira being the best casting I’ve listened to since Monte+Doa.

What I loved the most about lplen was the small twitch chat community. It was tightly knit and fun; From Mozzie and Kelsey constantly having to inform people of what patch the games were being played on, Jimlord’s rise to mod’ship, to Souldra’s real talk moments but that was usually batted away by Kelsey who tended to the twitch chat as admin. The most memorable moments of the stream was surrounded by Moobot’s auto-bans and whenever the dancing juice girl appeared in an advertisement.

The small viewership was a blessing and a curse. With the small community I enjoyed the experience a hell of a lot more and got to meet a lot of new friends. But of course it also meant that those who worked hard behind the scenes to get the business going weren’t getting their just deserts.

As fun as it was, people knew why there wasn’t much viewership. With China being the 2nd best region while at the same time airing earlier than OGN, it had the clear potential but the stream quality was just poor, the casting quality was inconsistent, the breaks were long and the games were late at night. I knew the interest would spike after world events when the general audience had the chance at viewing Chinese teams in HD, but always wondered if lplen would be able to facilitate the demands of the new viewers in time. As we can tell, the answer to that was no.

Joining LPLen and frequenting China Talk

Before realizing my interest for Chinese league of legends, I knew and admired both Kelsey Moser and Frosk. I knew of Kelsey through her work for Gosu Gamers and eventually through OnGamers, which made it all the more exciting when she followed me on twitter when I barely started using it. I started tuning into whatever Chinese talk shows that were taking place. When I started watching it was some lplen show called “Finger Trap” and I would watch VODs of China Talk. By this time I was already good friends with Souldra and so it felt a bit surreal being close to the people I held on a pedestal in terms of personality, knowledge and work ethic. This was around the time I got introduced to Drexxin and his work with Esports Heaven. A site I started frequenting but didn’t dish out articles as often as I would’ve liked, so I just went from site to site just reading esports articles whenever I had the time.

This was when I read the announcement that lplen was looking to hire more people to their staff on Frosk’s twitter. I was wondering what I should do with myself and so it felt like a sign. I also knew of good friends like Hermit who was just as interested as I was and sent in his resume. While having that internal debate with whether or not I should go down this route, Souldra told me that he wanted to work with me in casting future LSPL games alongside someone else who turned out to be Nick Yaco and the goal was to mirror the same laidback feel the Chinese casters have while maybe landing short of wearing paperbags. It was the push I needed and so I jumped at the opportunity and soon after I was asked to replace him on China Talk until the end of the year. Everything was happening so quickly and people started branding me as an “LSPL expert”. A title I feel was undeserved.

As I started doing episodes and talking more with Drex, Kelsey and Frosk I got a better look into who they were and what they had to deal with on a daily basis. The obligations, time constraints, zero sleep, flooding online harassments all the while the content they gave birth to die a young age in /r new of the league subreddit. After every conversation I asked myself one question; What’s the point? Why would anyone commit to such a toxic lifestyle? It only got worse when the two went on Summoning Insight, where more fans just dug into them. Before seeing any of this, I came in thinking that even the most unfair criticism will have a shred a truth. That there is always something to learn from hearing someone’s opinions, but since reading through these reddit, askfm and twitter comments that isn’t the case. You can definitely make the case that Frosk has too much personality for her own good, while Kelsey at times should show more. That being said, a hefty portion of the comments I read is just outright sexual harrassment, but I digress.

With plans of Hughbo, Nick and I shoutcasting LSPL games getting set up, the TGA and LPL qualification tournaments were coming and I was set to help cast. I was definitely nervous, I’ve never casted before other than random joke casts while spectating friends’ games. As nerve wracking as it was, I had Nick and Hughbo talk most of the time until I was comfortable enough to really take control of the games. This was all during exam period, so when Hughbo dropped out I lost the crutch of a tri-cast but went on to do my best for the rest of the games with Nick, River, Alex, Pastrytime and Frosk alongside me. As much as I loved those who aided me during that week with the cast, the one person I credit for most of that success was Kelsey who had to deal with a scheduling nightmare, and a sleepless week/month. She even found herself solo-casting at one point, which was the greatest moment that week had to offer for everyone but her.

The Solution

Throughout that week I started to understand the difficulties of casting through the chinese streams. To anyone who thought watching a TGA stream was frustrating, try syncing it with someone else. At best, there was a 5 second difference, but that difference will regularly increase to 10 or more. On top of that Chinese streams weren’t even in 720p, so re-streaming an already poor quality stream just snowballed that frustration. But if there was one shred of good news in any of this, it was that Kelsey was working out a plan that would get us streaming in HD through the Tournament Realm Client. That fact was even starting to get promoted to ensure people that the issue of stream quality would be resolved. Not only would it be easier to cast, but it would be the only HD stream of the LPL. As time went on, I was under the understanding that the deal with Riot was close and lplen was clear to make a massive shift in how the games were streamed.

This is all came to a close after an episode of China Talk when I was informed that Riot had other plans, and the dreams of LPLen was dead in the water. The friends of mine who worked tirelessly to build Chinese content for english viewers had their dreams taken away from them without even being given a chance. When I heard about it I didn’t know what to say to them, how to go about it, there was no way I could understand how they felt. Both Kelsey and Frosk are without a doubt two of the most under-appreciated people in the community, they’re people who’ve done so much only to receive a boot in the face.

This is in no way an attack on Riot or the reddit community, in fact I love both for what they bring to esports. Riot has done wonders with lol esports, while the reddit community is home to countless great discussions and people, the good just aren’t recognized nearly enough. With that being said I hope this piece wasn’t a disaster, nor boring. I wanted to share my perspective as I too was once a casual fan who shared the same complaint as many.