Chapter 6

December 1st, 17:00 sharp.

Jiang Ming's QQ suddenly emitted a harsh notification sound; the LPL Preseason organizer posted an announcement in the "LPL Preseason Qualifier" work group: 【All teams prepare to enter the match server】.

"Change the team prefix uniformly before entering the game!" Jiang Ming's voice pierced through the clicking of the mechanical keyboard, "Professional IDs, if you've decided, don't change them at the last minute—"

"Received, Brother Yang!" Mid-laner Wu Zhiqiang responded first, skillfully searching for "Name Change Card" in the match server's Shangcheng, and inputting the ID already etched into his muscle memory:

NXG-yihan!

The team name designed personally by Jiang Ming, full name NexusVanguard (Core Guardians), derived from the tactical term for the Protoss Mothership Core in StarCraft.

"Tsk, so many points, I can buy a lot of skins I couldn't afford before."

Support Pang Ran's eyes lit up; after changing his name, he browsed the Shangcheng. Unlike future players who would each buy a skin for their signature Hero Gameplay, Pang Ran and his teammates, whose wages totaled only one or two thousand yuan, only cursed their lack of funds.

High-rank players were already like this, let alone ordinary players; this was also why the early League's Duoxiao Box became essential software that quickly swept through all internet cafes.

It had combat power, allowed showing off, offered guides from experts to check Hero Gameplay, and most importantly, enabled one-click skin switching!

The other three said nothing, simply purchasing rune pages and various special attribute runes; hero skins could be bought later in the game interface.

Top-laner Song Yuan was creating his twelfth rune combination: 【Dedicated to Lane Matchups Against High Burst】 — 3 fixed Armor Marks, 6 scaling Armor Marks, 3 Greater Seals...

Jiang Ming was fairly satisfied with his team's reactions. Unlike future versions where talent and runes merged into one, runes and talents in the current version still required advance configuration; this was also why, when early players watched high-rank players or professional players stream ranked matches, the rune page would display a long string of runes accompanied by various notes.

On their own ranked accounts, constrained by the team's economic conditions, Jiang Ming had only granted each of them permission for ten pages; now that they were in the match server, not going all out would be an insult to the match accounts provided by the LPL organizers, which held hundreds of thousands of points.

Unlike ordinary players who traveled the world with just two universal rune sets for AD and AP, since forming the team, Jiang Ming had been conducting professional-level training for them in areas such as runes, talents, and vision timing memory.

"One minute until the match starts!"

In the "LPL Preseason Qualifier" group chat, the referee addressed all members via QQ group @.

The offline tournament adopted a single round-robin points system; the top two teams from each of the fourteen servers in group play would cross-match, meaning the group-play first-place team from a server would face the second-place team from another server.

Subsequently, winning teams would draw opponents from teams with the same points, and similarly, losing teams would draw opponents from the 0-1 team pool; this was the Swiss-system rule later adopted by the World Championship.

Of course, the so-called "Swiss System" was actually a crude version: the top two teams from the fourteen servers matched randomly, and those with identical points drew opponents; it differed greatly from the orthodox Swiss System.

After five rounds, the top eight teams with the highest points advanced to the LPL Preseason; finally, the twelve teams in the preseason would play a single round-robin points match and a double-elimination tournament to determine the final six teams, which, together with the first and second place teams from the third City Hero League Championship, totaling eight teams, would become the inaugural LPL participating teams.

As Jiang Ming pondered, the referee had already created the room, pulled the players in one by one, assigned their positions, and directly clicked "Start Game."

When the referee started the room instantly, Jiang Ming couldn't help but mutter internally: "Not even an equipment check; if someone used Duoxiao Box to set a one-click timer, would they be directly disqualified?"

QX!

The opponent team's name.

After entering the game, Jiang Ming quickly scanned the IDs of the five players on the right-side purple team and saw no familiar IDs.

It made sense; players who could become famous on the professional stage wouldn't fail to secure the group-play first place on a non-Region 1 server.

Regarding side selection, as the number one team on the server, NXG had priority side selection rights.

Jiang Ming naturally chose the blue side first.

"Brother Ming, who should we ban?" Song Yuan, sitting in the first seat, asked.

In the current game, the first seat was default captain, and all three hero bans would be completed by the player in the first seat.

This was also a major reason why, in public matches, many players ranked in the fourth or fifth seats, while begging not to be assigned support, would kneel and call others "fathers," asking them to ban heroes they feared.

"Shen, Imperial Prince, Vayne!" Jiang Ming pondered for a moment and settled on these picks among a crowd of overpowered heroes; without knowing the opponents' specific strength, to ensure every point was secured, safely banning the most popular and high-pick-rate heroes of the current meta was never wrong.

The lack of opponent data wasn't due to Jiang Ming, the boss and coach, being irresponsible; mainly, at this point in time, no one knew exactly which gods their opponents were.

Upon receiving the clear instruction, Song Yuan quickly locked them in the hero selection bar, while the first seat of the purple team's QX team simultaneously completed their ban.

Twisted Fate, Janna, Ezreal!

"First pick, give the jungle to Shi Zhenyu."

"I'm fine with anything, listen to Brother Ming."

Regarding the top-laner's inquiry, the jungler Stone shook his head, handing the decision over to the coach.

After joining Brother Ming's team, he could clearly feel the difference from those other game teams that were just for fun; although the environment was roughly the same everywhere, the wages, daily management, and professional training for them were all highly standardized; playing professionally was different from queuing in internet cafes with five friends, leaving no room for them to act on impulse.

Just look at how WE won the championship at IPL5; Abu, possessing dozens of tactical sets, was definitely a major contributor.

Hearing the jungler's words, Song Yuan gave an awkward smile; he indeed hadn't yet gotten used to seeking opinions from the sixth man outside the match before making decisions during a competition.

"Pick Lee Sin first!"

Jiang Ming looked at the jungler with approval, as if teaching a promising student, and instructed.

In the S3 Preseason version, how to describe the jungler's status? Due to the scarcity of jungle economy, it was completely incomparable to the absolute core status in the S6 and S10 seasons of the future; the selectable heroes were either those capable of carrying the pace early on, like Spider or Lee Sin, or those that didn't rely much on economy but provided massive team crowd control, like Imperial Prince or Amumu.

Picking Lee Sin in the first seat ensured dominance in jungle confrontations while avoiding being targeted by the lanes.

Meanwhile.

Inside a private room of an internet cafe in Guangdong Province, smoke hung thick in the air; the QX team was erupting in a fierce argument. The red-haired captain slammed the table: "Rob it for me! That bastard JM can make tutorial videos; I practiced 50 games in three days, why can't I do it?"

"But we haven't even mastered the combos for swapping shadows to kill instantly..." the support weakly reminded, but was cut off by the ADC: "What's there to fear! Do you know how much the internet cafe bet on us to win? A whole twenty packs of Red Nanjing!"