(Translator's note: I found this gem on the Chinese website 15w.com. Some of you might recognize the name @RyanRyanluwei as one of the Chinese esports journalists working for that site. In any case, I hope that my translation lets you guys enjoy this article/mini-interview as much as I had in its original form!  

Source: http://lol.15w.com/zt/qg01/)

Meticulous positioning, almost rhythmic damage output, and lucid team fight logic, he was considered to be the best team fighting ADC in the world. But you would be shocked to realize that all these traits appeared at the same time on a skinny Chinese boy. In Riot Game’s eyes, his influence surpassed that of Piglet (S3 Worlds Champion) and Uzi (S3 Worlds Runner-Up). After receiving the official “S3 Best ADC in the World” title, the destinies of “Zhu Jia-Wen” (his real name) and “Namei” would separate into two different paths –Zhu Jia-Wen received accolades, but Namei received increased pressure. One year later, when the best ADC in the world stepped onto the Worlds stage, destiny played a huge prank on him. A sequence of underperformance and sudden medical conditions caused him and his team to finally lose in a 2:3 score to Star Horn Royal Club, disappointingly exiting the tournament. After replacing Uzi on SHRC, Namei, who was past his prime, did not live up to his expectations to lead his team to victory after a beyond recoverable first-half of the split. At the beginning of this split, Namei and the others donning Team King’s uniforms returned to battle from the carcasses of a relegated SHRC! Despite a suboptimal start, the team is climbing to its peak after the return of Insec and Zero.

Today, after climbing to peaks and walking through the valleys, Namei is currently welcoming the third turning point in his professional career.

The beginning of a dream, a clueless teenager’s professional gaming dream

Just like everyone who wants to stand at the top of the world and shout, Namei has his own story–an ordinary but unique story.

Growing up as a child in a single-parent family, Namei understood more about the cruel and cold reality of the world than most of the other kids at his age. Similar to how we pictured most of the high-level professional gamers, Namei started playing online games at a very young age due to a lack of attention and care from his family. “The earliest time I started playing online games was around the year 2000. Until now, I have lost count how many different types and amount of games that I have played.” Namei told me. But when asked about his skill level in other games, Namei was straightforward. Ever since he started playing games, he has shown great talent: he can easily master any type of video games. Maybe it was because of his talent that Namei would then have the opportunity to meet many of his friends who were also highly-skilled, and that started his path to become a professional gamer.

July 2012, a year after League of Legends entered China, Namei relied on his superb Solo Queue performance to attract offers from many LoL teams. Upon realizing that he had the opportunity to fulfill his dream, Namei became emotional. “At that time, my Solo Queue ranking was very high, and it was at that point that LoL teams started to contact me one by one. There were about four teams that wanted me.” Namei replied on the subject of his initial breakthrough opportunities.

Similar to every man when confronted with choices, Namei started to ponder his options with great indecisiviness. "Which club should he start his professional career with" was a question that Namei could not answer at that time. But after two months, I am willing to bet that Namei’s friends wouldn’t run into him on the streets of his home town any more. This was because Namei had officially joined World Elite’s club and started trying out for his new team.

An indecent ID under constant dispute

Before Namei became famous, his ID “?X??” (That XXX is beautiful) had a heavily controversial story that still exists through Baidu searches. If you asked anyone from the period between 2012 to 2013 about the four words “?X??”, that person will reply with one word –“vulgar”.  In reality, despite this name interpreted as indecent in the mainstream language, it carried a completely different meaning in the culture of the Wuhan province. “That person is beautiful” represented many of the local youths’ first throbbing emotions for the opposite sex, and maybe with this kind of thinking, Namei created his Summoner ID that ultimately led to future disputes. But from his perspective, doing what he felt like was a very normal thing. “This was indeed a product of my local dialect (in Wuhan). I non-chalantly picked and wrote my ID. I thought that I might never play this game again after two days.” Namei said when discussing his ID before he became famous. Completely different from what the rest of the world was guessing, Namei’s ID wasn’t as indecent as people thought, but instead it represented a lot of the reality. Of course, this easily misinterpreted and misrepresented ID brought Namei’s career many large inconveniences. For a long time, people only paid attention to Namei’s slightly embarrassing ID. Without diving into discussion of the ethical nature of his ID, the world’s first impression of Namei was but a collision between his local culture and the mainstream language.

From the start of PE to when Devil became Namei

Soon after entering WE’s try-out, Namei made the team with his excellent performance and entered WE’s secondary team. (It wasn’t a youth team. At that time WE created two teams, WE.GIGABYTE and WE.i-Rocks due to different sponsorship districts.) Soon after, the secondary team would become the name we were familiar with, PE.i-Rocks, along with the initial five players.

In reality, Namei used a different ID in his early days. After becoming a professional player, he carried around the name PE.Devil. At that time, League of Legends was still not a mainstream game. Neither did it had a large circle of players and organizations; the amount of people outside the circle could be counted on two hands. Therefore, aside from the people inside the circle, regular players could not understand why the skinny boy who appeared on the screen would be associated with the famous name–“????”—that spread far and wide throughout the Chinese servers. But this did not affect Namei making a name for himself in LPL at all. True talent will always rise above. After the first few weeks of the 2013 LPL Spring Split, everybody realized that aside from the already established names such as Weixiao and Kid, there was a team called PE who had its own god. That team had a very powerful Varus user, and he was a Devil from head to tail.

But that Devil ultimately had a short lifespan. In the 2013 Spring Split week 5 game against the team Wayi Spiders, the ID that was full of killing instinct, “Devil”, disappeared after Zhu Jia-Wen’s initial breakthrough into pro gaming half a year ago. Replacing this ID was the name, “Namei”, that was heavily recommended by his boss, and that was when PE.i-Rocks.Namei entered the game.

Not enough team synergy, the new challenger settled for second place

For a brand new team, PE had already brought us many shocking moments in the Spring Split. After upsetting the veteran team IG, PE and OMG stood at the finals of the first LPL season. “To be honest we had a good chance of winning the championship, unfortunately there were huge problems in our team synergy. Due to a lack of the central shotcalling, everyone always fall into the state of confusion that “we are all commanders”. Namei explained to me about why he did not win.

On the day of the competition, the dark horse OMG defeated PE with the score of 3:1. In the instant when Cool’s 14-2-4 Kha’zix was knocked backed into the fountain by JoJo’s Jayce, the PE boys lost all their will to fight. After OMG backed to base, PE chose to surrender, giving the Men in Black the beginning of their new dynasty. It was as if the Spring for OMG had just arrived, but it had nothing to do with PE. When asked about his feelings at that moment, Namei admitted “It was really unfortunate that time. That was our first playoffs run. When we beat IG and entered the finals, we were extremely emotional. We really really really wanted to become the champions, but unfortunately it didn’t happen.” Indeed, when someone first had a chance to reach their pinnacle of success, it would be difficult to not have some kind of uncontrollable emotions raging inside of them.

The Summer dream, Namei’s first championship

After painfully losing the Spring Split title, Namei and his teammates did not give up their thoughts of becoming the champions. On the contrary, after losing the opportunity to qualify for S3 Worlds, the thought of becoming champions grew even more intense. “When we failed the S3 Worlds qualification, the mentality of our team members went through drastic changes and started to become turbulent. But when I realized that the Summer LPL finals might be this year’s last large tournament, I was dead set on making up for the regrets from the Spring Split.” Namei told me about his feelings before the finals. After making up his mind, PE’s hidden potential was finally revealed after a long period of hard work. In the game 5 against OMG, Namei and his teammates gifted their rivals the Summer Split nightmare. When faced against Cool, the player who ended his dreams in the Spring Split, Namei was decisive this time! Faced against Nidalee’s sharp claws and especially that Kha’Zix from the Spring Split, Namei’s Vayne did not show any signs of mercy. With his superb positioning and damage output, OMG had no choice but to accept the reality of their crumbling base. Namei, with a score 6-0-2, brought himself and his team their first accolade! “At that moment, my team and I were as high as a kite!” Namei used this simple phrase to reminisce his feelings at that time.

The outcasts of the era, PE’s awkward situation

In most cases, the championship title and the accolades are built upon each other: accolades are gifted after winning the championship, but winning the championship is the best way to defend such accolades. The early League of Legends scene was especially chaotic, and this kind of chaos made sure that PE’s glory lasted only one summer.

It’s just like every era without rules and order. “Fanaticism” was how the fans mainly approached their team and players–crazy adoration and crazy attacks. The main “conflict” at that time was between the fans of WE and the fans of the other teams. Through the two “FlameWE” and “Resistance” Tieba communities (Translator's note: similar to sub-reddits), the anti-WE group and the “60E” fought against each other non-stop. This kind of fanaticism caused the normal adoration and criticisms to become abnormally extreme and impetuous. Different from the infamous “60E” (nickname for WE’s fan base) and “The Sons of Dogs” (nickname for IG’s fan base), and similar to the rise of “59E” (OMG’s fan base), PE still didn’t have enough supporters after becoming the champions. When it came to an individual player who had more fans than the entire team, the team couldn’t even decide on a name for their fan base. And when some fans wanted to support or flame the team, the team could only address them with the simple name “PE fans”. The champions, PE, were different from the mainstream teams on the stage. They were the outcasts of the era.

The unexpected number one ADC in the world

Against the backdrop of a chaotic and complicated era, a media entity called “Cloth5” announced Riot Game’s intentions–PE.Namei was to be named S3’s best ADC in the world. After Piglet’s sweeping victory to the championship title and Uzi’s runner-up achievement, Namei was Riot’s top candidate when it came to finding the best ADC in S3. Despite having doubts in many areas, Riot gave this accolade to Namei without a second thought after reviewing the performance of different teams throughout the year and tallying up their strengths and weaknesses.

On the subject of the best ADC in the world, Namei said “The ADC that wins his team the game should be the best. Uzi and Weixiao were super strong at that time. If they gave me this accolade, maybe it was because of my peak performance in the second half of the Summer Split!”

In reality, long before Namei was named the best ADC in the world, PE’s top laner Aluka had already expressed in an interview that “Namei is China’s #1 ADC”. In the Summer Split, Namei relied on almost only himself to carry PE to the championship throne. Not long after PE became the champions--when Namei admitted that he was at the peak of his career--he was caught in the eyes of another team that would soon cause a storm in the League of Legends scene.

The rise of a new dynasty, the unstoppable EDG

With the championship joy still lingering, Namei was already dragged into another incident. At that time, a “big bang” exploded in the LoL scene. Under Coach Aaron’s guidance, WE’s Jungler, Clearlove, and Support, Fzzf, left the team! In this period of time, the common saying was the strongest Chinese team in the history was about to be born. And the birth of this new team would not be inferior to the mythical rise of WE, IG, OMG, or any famous team in the past.

September 13th, 2013, the Guangzhou EDG Electronics Club was established. In the announcement of their roster, we found a familiar name in their ADC position: EDG.Namei. Just like that, with the addition of two rookies Koro1 and U, a “3+2” format super-battleship set sail. Namei would start a new chapter of his professional career.

S4 dreams crushed, team met their Waterloo

“2014 LPL Spring Split Champions”; “2014 LPL Summer Split Champions”; “2014 IET Champions”; “2014 XCS Champions”; when one accolade after another was added to the EDG name, more and more players anticipated that EDG would finally end the “Korean Terror Era” started from the 2013 All-Stars Invitational.

September 18th, 2014 in Taiwan, the S4 World Championships-Taiwan Stage started. In the first game, EDG already had to face the tournament favourites, SSW. Despite EDG demonstrating a very high level of team play, they were powerless in the face of a flourishing SSW. Finally, EDG lost their first game. After the match, EDG received all sorts of attacks from the internet, and everything happened within only one hour of the match on the first day. This wasn’t the worse situation. On the 21st, EDG lost in a huge upset against Taiwan’s local team, AHQ.

“In the match against AHQ, they purposely gave up the high ground and everything else just to scale. Since there weren’t many opportunities for kills, the difference in gold wasn’t very large. When we were sieging their inhibitor tower, I made a fatal mistake and threw the game.” Namei recalled in his loss against AHQ. If the inability to widen the gold lead and individual mechanical mistakes were the reasons behind their loss on stage, then Namei’s horrible health was without the doubt the reason off the stage. “I missed a lot of practice before S4 Worlds due to health issues. I felt like every day I had fever and coughs. I felt as if I was almost going to heaven.” Namei told me that this was as important as his on stage mistakes.

After that, EDG scraped through the group as the second seed. Afterwards, they had to face another Chinese team that had created miracles on the international stage, the team that was the runner-up in the previous Worlds tournament–SH Royal Club. This was definitely a tough battle. After both teams pulled out all the stops, they arrived at the 5th game. In fact, SHRC had issues with BO5s before this match. Corn and Cola were two new players that rarely faced such high levels of competition. The worst was Insec, who was said to be cursed by the BO5 demon after suffering through the tragic BO5 with Faker and Ryu. Would EDG have the edge when facing the unstable rookies and the cursed Insec? Nobody knew the answer to this question. One thing is for sure, both teams would fight to the bitter end.

As expected, Namei brought out his most confident champion, Twitch, and Uzi picked up SSW’s favourite champion in the subsequent finals, Tristana. Two champions that scale very well into the late game would decide the fate of the two teams. In this match, EDG was unable to hammer the final nail in the coffin and complete their reverse sweep against SHRC. After Twitch powerlessly outputted damage but could not change the game, Namei knew, he and EDG had lost.

"After losing the first two games of the BO5, we went through a long period of emotional adjustment. After taking two games back, I thought, we only have to win one more game! Due to communication and cooperation problems, everyone was a bit agitated. We lost team fights when both teams had an equal amount of power, thus ending our S4 Worlds journey. After we lost, I sat still on the stage for about 10 seconds. After I started packing my stuff. I found U still sitting there motionless, probably thinking why we lost." When recalling the situation at that time, Namei remembered it as if it was yesterday. 

Two ADCs? When Namei meets Deft

Stopping their journey short at the quarterfinals, as the team that had the highest expectations but returned home the earliest, EDG faced unprecedented pressure from their fans. After returning to China and finishing up the LPL games, Fzzf retired! Just as we were expecting the two veterans, Namei and Clearlove, to retire, Clearlove declared on Weixin (Translator's note: Chinese Twitter) that he will continue to fight for S5 Worlds. Only Namei was left. Despite EDG’s disappointment at S4 Worlds, their fans didn’t want a team that dominated for an entire year to disappear just like that. Everyone was anxiously waiting for Namei’s news. Shortly after, EDG chose to recruit Korean players. After taking the S4 world champion mid-laner, Pawn, from SSW, and a player with a style similar to Namei, Deft, from SSB, the world had a ton of questions for EDG! When a bunch of extreme nationalists attacked EDG for recruiting Korean players, EDG’s true fans became increasingly worried about Namei’s fate. If their styles were complementary, Namei still had a good chance to continue to compete. But with a similarly powerful team fighting ADC like Deft, there existed a perfect reason to bench Namei.

Unlike what most people speculated, Namei was not kicked out of the team. On the contrary, Namei voiced his thoughts about retirement after his underperformance at S4 Worlds. “After finishing S4, my manager asked me, are you going to play next year? My answer was not sure, maybe a 70% chance of retirement! Therefore, they should recruit new players to the team for training!” Namei told me the truth at that time in our interview.

An emergency order, save Royal Club

“When I was at a loss, lots of people talked to me about many topics and philosophies in life. Slowly, I finally came around. Therefore, I chose to switch clubs after coming out of confusion.” Namei told me the reason behind his switch.

At that time, Uzi’s sudden departure from SHRC could be considered as a scorched earth policy that targetted his own team. Soon after reaching the 2nd place at Worlds, the team that created countless miracles fell apart in such an awkward announcement. Just when everyone predicted SHRC’s downfall, the situation took a surprising turn. SHRC’s support Zero leaked on his stream that he will be playing with a player who had the title “Best ADC in the World”. Despite the lack of an official announcement from SHRC, everyone had already guessed the result. Before the SHRC organization released any explanations, Namei had already become the final hope that will save the team in the hearts of the long-time SHRC supporters. March 13th, 2015, SHR.Namei entered the battlefield. In his debut match against GT, Namei’s Jinx relied on his outstanding team fight positioning and on-point ultimates to completely destroy GT. “His positioning was too precise, couldn’t reach him at all!” Maybe that was how GT felt after the game. After his excellent debut, Namei seemed to have regained his ability to singlehandedly carry a team, just like the summer of 2013. However, things were different this time around than two years ago. In a patch emphasizing on team play, no one player can singlehandedly challenge the world created by Riot. Faker can’t, Uzi can’t, and Namei also can’t! When lacking team synergy and communication, no one can boast about his ability to singlehandedly carry his team on today’s stage. “Due to several problems, our practice time was severely lacking!” Namei told me the situation on the topic of SHRC’s failure.

Finally, GT defeated SHRC and successfully kept their LPL spot. SHRC was left to accept the fate of a loser.

Life is like an ocean, tides rise and tides fall

In the Summer Split one month later, Namei returned once again. This time it was different than before, SHR.Namei became King.Namei. After being forced into relegation, SHRC’s boss leveraged his friendly relationship with Team King to let his players reappear on the LPL stage through club switching.

In reality, this kind of reappearance took a lot of courage in the eyes of the viewers. If they fail again, King’s five-man will fall into a point of no return. But the returning ADC Namei already possessed the preparations and the courage to face any situation. Regardless of what happens, he would continue to walk on his path to the future.

“I will not leave any regrets behind!” Namei’s words from the Spring Split two years ago still resonates to this day.

Want to win! This is my final desire

“Hopefully I can win another major tournament championship!” Compared to the PR response of “wait for my return”, I was fortunate to see this response from Namei. Maybe that is how he truly feels deep down!

The most simple and the most sincere feeling in this man’s heart is his desire to win. Similar to a Twitch that can output true damage every second, I felt Namei’s shockingly strong presence from our interview. Similar to every mythical figure in the history of mankind, the Namei today climbed peaks and walked through valleys. What was revealed from the ups and downs of his professional career could not be simply described as “dreams” and “perseverance”. There must have been something that we could not detect that guided the fate of this mythical ADC. After organizing all the information, I found a perfect word to describe Namei from my shallow vocabulary! Yes, “passion”. If there was no passion, we could not imagine what kind of reason would cause a person to persevere and advance through the storms.

In conclusion, after feeling Namei’s passion for doing what he loves, I present him with my most sincere respect. I hope this once mythical player will fulfill his desire to win a championship from this point on.

Speed Q&A

Q: Have you ever gone pro previously? Was League of Legends your first pro game?

A: Never had any other competitive history, LoL was the first.

Q: How did you first found out about LoL? What was your first champion?

A: I started playing LoL during Closed Beta when it still needed activation codes. My first champion was Blitzcrank (free week).

Q: As an ADC, who is your favourite ADC champion? Why?

A: I like Ezreal. When I first played the game, I used Ezreal to climb Solo Queue the most. He was kind of OP at that time.

Q: When you first entered SHRC, what was your first impression of your teammates?

A: Cola: a 14 year-old, average performance similar to Koro1; Insec: Used Rengar and other types of junglers to gank, pressured many other teams immensely with his team fight initiations; Corn: a player that can scale well under any kind of focus from the enemy team; Zero: Strong offensive abilities, fast reactions, likes to use Support champions that have laning advantage.

Q: How do you think King should breakthrough?

A: Individual mechanics wise no big problem. Improving some details (strategic play) can lead to big changes.

Steven Yu is a translator of of LPL content and writer of NA LCS content. Follow him at @HyperSTz for more. Images courtesy of their respective owners.