Rise

Inside his college dorm room in Seoul, Korea, Coff had gone beyond mad. He’d transcended raging. Right now, he was pure unadulterated fury at the world. Bang! There were no words to express or vent this fury that he was feeling, so he resorted to smashing his mouse down on his desk. But it wasn’t enough. He let go of the mouse and balled his fists. BANG! BANG! BANG! Coff started pounding on his keyboard with both fists. The irony of the situation that was completely lost on Coff was that the action was similar to Alistar’s Pulverize. But he didn’t notice, and continued to smash down on his keyboard. Sadly, it was not enough to vent the fury that coursed through both his mind and body.

“FUCK!” Coff screamed out loud. That… I never expected anything like that! This was the most infuriating game I’ve played in a long time. I literally cannot remember another one that made me rage this hard. How did an Alistar stomp all over my Yasuo?!

Coff took a beat to focus, and replayed the entire game in his head. All of the blood that rushed to his head and face drained, and his face turned pale as he understood. Coff clenched his jaw as the truth dawned on him. There’s no way around this. I hate to admit it… but that Alistar was really good. Way better than me…

“Dammit! I thought the Chinese server was supposed to be full of scrubs!” Coff screamed, cursing the universe and his own misfortune.

From a zoomed in perspective, it was easy to think that Coff had truly terrible luck and managed to run into Lin Feng on his first game. But that was far from what was happening in reality. If one zoomed out and looked at all the Korean players who had attempted to invade the Ionia Server to avenge their honor, Coff was not the only player who was experiencing fury and failure. It was truly unfortunate that none of the invaders were aware of a common saying in the Chinese League community. “On the Ionia Server, high Platinum and low Diamond are much more frightening than Master and Challenger.”

It was an intrinsic truth of the ELO system on Ionia Server that all Chinese players had come to understand after playing for many years. A curious quirk of the region that was created by a combination of circumstances, and only known to the players of China. That truth was that on the Ionia Server, the waters of high Platinum and low Diamond ran much deeper than Master and Challenger. This situation was created by the fact that this particular rank division was simply too chaotic to accurately state the abilities of the players within it.

High Platinum and low Diamond was full of both seasoned players, top professional players, and absolute noobs. When one walked into the solo queue on the Ionia Server and started a game created by the match-making system, there was no way to tell how the game would go if you were in this rank division. One could end up on a team with professional players who were smurfing a second account, or with a seasoned player who was attempting to raise an alternate account to Challenger, or with a complete novice who had paid to have their account boosted to Platinum or low Diamond to brag to their friends. Or a true noob to League of Legends who had paid to purchase an account in Platinum/low Diamond because they had no understanding of the game and their own abilities.

For the Chinese players who played at the Platinum/low Diamond division, it all came down to luck of the draw. If they managed to high roll, they got a smurf or two on their team and that was something worth celebrating. If they low rolled and ended up with a few boosted players who could not compete at that level of play, it meant helplessly accepting a loss at 15 minutes. They had long since become accustomed to the state of things, and it no longer affected their mental state. The rough approximation that most players understood was that about a third of the players in the high Platinum and low Diamond ELO didn’t actually belong there. They could be from a higher rank or from a lower rank, but one never knew what their teammates would be like.

But this was something that the Korean players attempting to invade the Ionia server had no idea about. And the reality of the situation hit them like a sack of bricks and brought them untold misery. Their experiences during this doomed invasion gathered together made a tale of tragedy.