In the last 3 days, there has been a new star on Twitch: The LoL streamer Ashkan “TF Blade” Homayouni is being watched more than anyone else. He wants to achieve the seemingly impossible in League of Legends : He wants to conquer Korea and become number 1 in Solo Queue.
Who is the new star on Twitch? In the last 3 days, no streamer has been watched more on Twitch than TF Blade. Well, he was online for 42 hours (via sullygnome).
On average, almost 21,000 people watched him, for a total of 896,000 hours. This makes him even more popular than Summit1g, who is currently finding great success in Escape from Tarkov.
What makes TF Blade so special? TF Blade should actually compete in the Solo Queue of LoL in North America, which is considered weak. Professionals don’t take the Solo Queue seriously, play just for fun, and the skill level is low.
TF Blade has set it as a goal to become number one in all regions of the world where LoL is played. To do this, he travels to the respective country, creates a new account in that region, and slowly ranks up to 1 through the Ranked system:
- In the past, he has succeeded several times. He was number one in North America, EU West, EU Northeast, and Latin America North.
- But he has also terribly failed. When he tried this in the Turkey, the Turks targeted him and trolled him. TF Blade was so upset that he referred to the Turks as “dogs” and received a Twitch ban.
This is what he is doing now: TF Blade has announced that he will travel to South Korea and become number one there. He plans to achieve this in 18-20 days.
Korea is considered one of the best and toughest regions in the world for Solo Queue in League of Legends. Teams from the West travel there and play Solo Queue to train before tournaments.
Therefore, the attention for the streamer on Twitch is particularly high right now. Especially since TF Blade can already showcase some early successes. Here, he gets a pentakill as Jax.
To make his adventure more exciting, TF Blade has made a bet with former pro Lee “Rush” Yoon-jae. Whoever reaches rank 1 in Korea first, the other has to donate 1000 Twitch subs. This is about $5000. All games must be played solo.
Smurfing as a Content Idea
This makes it harder: What TF Blade is doing in the Twitch stream is called “smurfing” in LoL. Players use accounts that do not represent their skill level and face much too easy opponents.
Riot Games believes “smurfing” ruins League of Legends and has implemented countermeasures. Those who smurf and achieve winning streaks against easy opponents will quickly face much stronger opponents, even if they still have a lower rank.
Riot has already announced: Players should stay on their main accounts in LoL.
TF Blade is already complaining about why he has such good opponents in Diamond 1, but thousands apparently want to see his adventure. Let’s see if he can make it all the way to the top in South Korea or if he loses his nerve like he did in Turkey.
Update 20.2. 11:59 PM: The lead gameplay designer of League of Legends (Riot Games) has corrected the statement on smurfing. No changes have been made yet. The tweet from Riot Support was erroneous.
However, changes have been planned that are set to arrive throughout 2020.
A player who has taken smurfing too far is this one:
