Streaming.
It was something players would be very familiar with in a few years, but for now, it was still considered quite trendy.
At present, most of those entering the streaming industry were former retired players or purely entertainment streamers.
In the early days, quite a number of people earned far more money through streaming than other players of the same era.
For example, PDD. Or Wuwukai.
Both of these players retired very early, and because their streams were highly entertaining, they gradually won the affection of many viewers and players. Their streaming contracts once soared to sky-high prices.
Compared with them, the professional players from even earlier had it a little more miserable.
Because internet speeds could not support it, most players from S2 and S3 could only think of ways to monetize traffic by making videos.
The most classic and most common method was selling small snacks like pork floss pastries.
Many people said that Young Master Wang’s entry brought capital to the LPL, while Tengjing’s takeover made the LPL formalized and pushed it fully toward commercialization.
Every era had its inevitabilities. In truth, even before Young Master Wang, there were already plenty of rich second-generation heirs and bosses who had chosen to throw themselves into the esports industry.
For example, Royal Club’s original boss, and OMG’s Boss Hou.
Their initial goal might not even have been to make money through esports at all. It might have been to launder money or just dabble for fun.
But it was undeniable that they had indeed played a role in promoting the industry.
Take the YY Live that Chu Bai was preparing to stream on, for instance.
At the very beginning, YY was not a streaming platform at all. It focused on voice services, specifically serving gamers, and had seized a portion of QQ Voice’s market share.
After launching video streaming services in 2011, and after three years of development, YY Live was now at its peak. It was also the hottest streaming platform at present.
Chu Bai had deliberately looked into some of the modern history and development of this world. It was not much different from his original world.
On their side, there had also been a platform like this, except later it had been crushed by the Maoya and Shark platforms.
—But at the very least, right now, YY was still very rich and very powerful.
The computer configuration provided to him by the system could not be considered especially good, but it had no problem streaming while playing LOL.
Mainly because LOL’s graphics had not even completed their first update yet, and its hardware requirements were extremely low.
Even the bulky old machines in shady internet cafés could run it.
Skillfully filling in the information, Chu Bai put a screenshot of his account reaching the top of the Ionia server on the stream homepage, then wrote the stream title:
【Climbing from Zero to Rank One on the Korean Server】
Yes, it was that simple.
If he were still the streamer he used to be, he definitely would have made it as flashy as possible. He could even show his face directly, so long as it attracted traffic.
But to the current Chu Bai, since he had already decided to take the professional path, he needed to waste as little time as possible.
Besides, Chu Bai did not think early streaming needed to be all that flashy.
To put it plainly, this era still had more entertainment streamers.
Forget playing on the Korean server—even streamers playing in the high ranks of the Chinese server were not common.
Why was it easier for retired professional players to make it big in streaming?
First, because they came with popularity. Second, because of the novelty.
The eight words “Climbing from Zero to Rank One on the Korean Server” might become commonplace in the future. Some people might at most enter, curse “clown,” and leave.
But right now...
Good heavens, how novel!
As mentioned earlier.
The top ranks of the Korean server were basically the private territory of professional players right now. Ordinary solo queue kings could not even dream of it.
And now someone was actually declaring that he wanted to climb to rank one on the Korean server?!
At first glance, it seized attention immediately.
Then, they would see Chu Bai’s stream cover:
It was a screenshot of him reaching rank one on the Ionia ranked ladder.
Naturally, they would feel a jolt of surprise, then click in.
An outstanding stream title and cover were already enough to make a streamer half successful in the streaming world of this era.
However, if he wanted them to stay, that would depend on strength.
For a LOL streamer, that strength was either good looks specifically for female streamers, or satisfying stomps.
Why were there so many streamers who crushed weaker players?
Because they could show off mechanics. The streamer enjoyed the kills, and the viewers enjoyed watching them.
To give a simple example.
There were two fairly well-known Fiora specialists on the Chinese server. One was JJKING, and the other was Shisi Jianji.
Shisi Jianji had long stayed at high rank on the Korean server, and his performance was much more stable than JJKING’s.
As for JJKING, his mentality was fragile. The moment he got ganked by the jungler, he wanted to Smite his own jungler. Inting, going AFK, surrendering—he did the whole package, transforming into Demon Bo Gang.
Then why was JJKING’s popularity about the same as Shisi’s?
Wasn’t it simply because JJKING liked showing off mechanics more?
When he was inting, his score was too awful to look at. But once he started killing, he would frequently 1v2, 1v3, even 1v5. The viewing experience was instead stronger than Shisi’s.
And now, Chu Bai was preparing to combine the technical streamer and noob-stomping streamer routes, carving out a third path:
—He was going to stomp in high-ranked Korean solo queue.
Countless people would walk this track in the future, but right now, it was a genuine blue ocean.
This time, Chu Bai did not register a new account.
After all, registering a Korean server account by oneself was very troublesome. Not only did it require the five-piece set of Korean name, birthday, gender, phone number, and verification code, but after a period of time, one also needed to send a text message for re-verification. It was extremely troublesome.
In this era, only professional players and trainees could obtain one relatively easily.
He found Sima Laozei and asked whether, if he paid, Sima could help him get a Korean server account.
In the end, Sima Laozei said there was no need. He was not short of that little bit of cash.
Not long after, he sent over one that Weishen had once used.
Chu Bai opened his stream, connected to the accelerator, logged into the Korean server, and then started the broadcast.
He was too lazy to check the state of the stream room. After all, he had just gone live and had no recommendations. It would already be good if one or two passersby clicked in.
He directly clicked ranked.
This time, he did not continue playing Talon.
At this point, his Talon had already been practiced to a certain level. Even in the system’s evaluation, it had already reached the top tier.
Now, what he needed more was to expand his champion pool.
If he wanted to play professionally, his champion pool had to be a bit larger.
However, considering that it was only S4 right now, it did not need to be too large.
Around three or four would probably be enough.
At present, competitive matches still only had three bans—that is, three ban slots per side.
So theoretically speaking, if you had four signature champions that were T1 or above in the current version, you could already go play professionally.
“Then, which one should I choose?”
In front of the computer, Chu Bai’s gaze roamed over those familiar or unfamiliar champion portraits. Whenever he saw a champion portrait he did not recognize, he clicked in to read the introduction.
He could read Korean.
Before transmigrating, he had been a foreign languages student. Naturally, his first foreign language was English, and the second one he studied was Korean.
Before transmigrating, he had also been a handsome... cough, an ambitious young man known far and wide.
Relying on state grants and scholarships, he had made it all the way into Nankai University.
Before long, Chu Bai locked in on a champion.
The Dark Sovereign, Syndra!
Syndra, nicknamed Ball Lady.
Before her splash art was updated, she could be called LOL’s number one long-legged woman. Her pale jade feet were tiny and fragrant, and her character design could even be called Ionia’s landmine-type yandere Sleeping Beauty.
Of course, Chu Bai was not a foot fetishist.
He chose Syndra mainly because this champion was performing very strongly on the Korean server right now, and it was foreseeable that her future pick rate would not be low.
In the end, he was going to step onto the professional stage. Practicing champions with a clear target was very necessary, and learning an AP champion was a must.
Moreover, compared with AP hypercarries like Orianna and Ziggs, Syndra could be played far more aggressively.
Chu Bai liked that very much.
When he played Talon on the Chinese server, he suffered every single day. Now that he was on the Korean server, was he still supposed to play assassin mid and endure pressure?
Then wouldn’t this trip to the Korean server be fucking pointless?!
Playing assassins timidly against his own people did not stop him from playing an AP lane bully on the Korean server and calling the wind and rain.
At this moment, however, Chu Bai did not know.
Because he had already been offline for almost a day, the current rank one on the Chinese server was still puzzled.
South Korea, Seoul.
Dopa, habitually lying back in his esports chair, wore a somewhat confused expression as he opened the chat box of the third-ranked player, 【Saint Gun Bro】.
Give Me Mid: Do you know ba ji da kuang feng?
Give Me Mid: Did he give up his first place?
When Dopa woke up, the sky had practically collapsed.
Under the operation of the Korean streaming platform, he had already begun contact with China’s YY Live.
This attempt to climb to rank one on the Chinese server was precisely to build momentum in advance.
But in his eyes, the level of the Chinese server was honestly a little low. There were even fewer interesting mid laners, which made him feel very bored.
It had not been easy for a player called 【Ba Ji Da Kuang Feng】 to appear a few days ago. Dopa had queued into him three times, and lost all three times.
This filled him with strong interest, and he took the initiative to send a friend request.
Yesterday, after discovering that Chu Bai had surpassed him, he had gone on a mad climb starting at noon, playing all the way until the early hours of the morning, wanting to have another showdown with Chu Bai and wash away his previous humiliation.
In the end, he never encountered that person again.
When he woke up today, he found that this guy still had not come online.
Dopa: ?
What was that supposed to mean?
With great difficulty, he used a translator to send those two sentences to a relatively friendly CN player he had added, then waited and waited.
After a long time, the other party finally replied.
Saint Gun Bro: You're lucky
Saint Gun Bro: My friend told me that he's going to the servers in Korea
Give Me Mid: ?
When Dopa saw his reply, he was dumbfounded.
What did that mean?
I came to your Chinese server to take rank one. You snatched my rank one once, and after that, you still weren’t satisfied.
You just had to come to our Korean server to take rank one and fountain-farm me, huh?
“Ha.”
Dopa could not help but laugh. Interest immediately lit up in his eyes, and he promptly closed the Chinese server and opened the Korean server.
Interesting!
Truly interesting!
During the time he had been rampaging through the Chinese server, this 【Ba Ji Da Kuang Feng】 was the Chinese server player he found most interesting.
He had decided. He would use a smurf to climb into the Korean server’s top ten again, and compete with that guy to see who was faster.
Of course, if he could snipe that guy, that would be even better.
In any case, his rank one on the Chinese server was already in the bag. The contract had already been fulfilled, and he only needed to play a bit after some time.
You Haji-ba, you really do make me happy!