Inside a seemingly ordinary hotel room in Guangzhou, China, a team was practicing for the challenge of its life. Europe's Misfits Gaming defied all odds in the opening rounds of the 2017 League of Legends World Championship in Wuhan, dispatching North American superpower and three-peat champion Team SoloMid to make its way to the knockout stage of the event.
What's waiting for the Misfits in the quarterfinals is an even larger obstacle. Misfits drew into a best-of-five elimination match with the back-to-back world champion SK Telecom T1. The hotel room was transformed into a makeshift practice room, the players squeezed in front of their computers, playing solo queue and awaiting their next block of scrimmages.
Making it to the final eight was a gigantic accomplishment for the rookie organization, with all the players attending their first world championship. For the players and management, though, it felt like could have done better.
"I was a bit sad we didn't come first," Nubar "Maxlore" Safarian, the team's star jungler, told me. "We play to win, not lose, and see how far [we] can go."
While the rest of the team came in and out of the hotel, grabbing water or other things from the outside world before falling back into a long haul of practice games to be fully prepared for SKT, Maxlore and the team's starting mid laner, Tristan "PowerOfEvil" Schrage, sat down to talk about their experiences in China so far.
Although you'd think Misfits would be worried or have wanted to avoid the best team to ever play League of Legends, the team is reveling in the opportunity to make history. A year ago, Misfits was a team making its way up through the minor league system of the European leagues. Now, already having eliminated one of the biggest teams in the world in TSM, it could do one even better -- creating the biggest upset in the game's history on the grandest stage imaginable. The team was lax, laughing, joking about, and showing no fear in the face of a team that has lifted more trophies than months Misfits have even been in the top flight of European League of Legends.
At the same time the players, as with most esports teams, are young. During an interview with the team's head coach Hussain Moosvi and AD carry Steven "Hans Sama" Liv, Power of Evil attempted to order Chinese room service, rushing back to the phone twice in the matter of minutes in attempt to clarify his order to the hotel representative on the other line. A team with players from Germany, South Korea, the United Kingdom and other parts of the world, playing at the World Championships is not only a once-and-a-lifetime playing opportunity, but a chance to experience an entirely different culture. The bustling streets filled with bicycles and erratic automobile driving coupled with the various types of different foods took the European squad out of its element and exposed it to a new world.
For myself, it's the same. As someone born and raised in Los Angeles, the streets, sounds, and surroundings are things I've never experienced. Walking to the Guangzhou Gymnasium for the opening match of the knockout rounds between South Korean sides Longzhu Gaming and Samsung Galaxy, a parade of scalpers surrounded the arena, pushing tickets towards you in hopes of gaining a sale. Inside, the atmosphere is similar to an LCS final or another big esports event in America, but everything is more enclosed, an army of fans shuffling around the halls in between games to grab food, smoke, or meet other fans.
During the intermission between the first and second sets, I spotted an American fan decked out in his TSM gear, even though his team was eliminated days before. Within a minute of us talking, both of us standing out from the rest of the crowd. I'm six-foot-six and him in his TSM jersey, a Chinese fan asked if he could take a picture with the two of us. As we took a group shot with the fan and his friend, the scene of one person taking a picture with us caused a chain reaction. Throughout the day, people would ask for pictures having no clue what I did except I was a tall foreigner at an esports event, some fans even yelling "TSM!" at me for no other apparent reason than I look like I'm from America, and TSM is the most well-known team there.
After eating dinner and heading back to our hotel to cap off the night before returning the next day for Misfits' quest at history, our taxi dropped us off in the middle of a highway. He explained that there were no other options if we wanted to get to our hotel across the street without backtracking for miles. What became a real-life game of Frogger, my co-workers and I waited to cross the busy streets of China, cars whizzing by until the right opportunity allowed us to move safely, ending a day that began early in the morning with an eventful end.
Being in China is like being in a whole new world.
If Misfits can somehow beat SKT T1, we really will be in a whole new reality.