For years, the US teams of League of Legends were considered a joke when it came to the World Championship. That changed on Thursday, October 10th. The US champion FlyQuest faced off against the South Korean champion Hanwha Life and achieved a noteworthy success at the LoL Worlds 2024. Key players included the Belgian Bwipo and the Pole Inspired.
This was the sad image of the USA in recent years in LoL: For years, US teams have been embarrassed at the Worlds:
In their own league, LEC, players like Bjergsen or Doublelift were big stars, and trash talk master Doublelift behaved like one, but year after year, their top teams like TSM were eliminated hopelessly from the Worlds. In 2020, Bjergsen and Doublelift suffered a 0-6 exit from the Worlds.
While Europe had at least one exceptional team, G2, that could occasionally keep up with the teams from Asia, that was not the case in the USA.
The morale of the US fans was pretty much broken, and the expectations for the Worlds 2024 were low, especially since the best
team in the USA, Team SoloMid, has now withdrawn from LoL – things were not going well for the other top team in the region Cloud9 in 2024 either.
Combo of Olaf and Nunu surprises South Koreans
This was the noteworthy success: The US champion FlyQuest actually managed to surprise the South Korean champion Hanwha Life on October 10th with a crazy draft and an aggressive, chaotic play style. Although FlyQuest narrowly lost Match 1 and clearly lost Match 3, Match 2 was the hour of a crazy combination:
- The top laner Bwipo played the berserker Olaf hyper-aggressively with 7-6-7 – the great performance is all the more impressive, because Bwipo seemed completely out of sorts just before the Worlds
- The jungler Inspired opted for the surprise pick Nunu and apparently threw the Koreans completely off balance. Inspired secured 18 assists on Nunu and died only once.
Against absolute world-class players like Peanut, Zeka, and Viper, the underdogs FlyQuest surprisingly won Match 2.
The perhaps most exciting scene shows you how Bwipo falls into a berserker frenzy with Olaf and then seems to awaken from it himself. Caedrel comments:
This is how it is discussed: Match 2 and FlyQuest’s performance are being discussed with respect and amusement on reddit.
Particularly the “Nunu” pick by Inspired has surprised the fans, who claimed that elite top laner Doran surely hasn’t seen a Nunu in the last 5 years.
Overall, fans are glad to see a North American team daring to make an unusual pick and catching the methodical South Koreans off guard. In recent years, US teams have tried to beat the best players in the world with conservative team compositions. This was completely hopeless. 2024 was different, fans praise.
What’s next? Hanwha Life is definitely in the quarterfinals. FlyQuest has lost the series despite the noteworthy success and is playing on Sunday to either fly home or advance to the quarterfinals.
If luck is not on their side, they might face another team from South Korea: Showmaker and DK Plus will also try to advance to the quarterfinals on Sunday. Also today, Friday, October 11th, a true highlight awaits the Worlds fans with G2 vs T1: The decisive phase of the LoL World Championship starts in Berlin, European teams face tough draws
