On Saturday, KT Rolster's Go "Score" Dong-bin played his final League of Legends professional match.
He loaded into the game as Gragas, a champion that Score played so frequently and so well that it earned him the nickname "The Barrel Himself," after the champion's particular toolkit.
Score has had many nicknames, including one that seemed particularly apt through the years: "The Immortal." It stemmed from his uncanny ability to remain alive as an AD carry but also exemplified his presence in South Korean League of Legends. Score would always be there, on KT Rolster. He was a constant, a fixed point in time and space.
Now, KT and League Champions Korea will move forward without him.
I've thought a lot about how I would write about the retirement of my favorite League of Legends player. The first time these thoughts popped up was in 2015, after Score's transition to the jungle position and KT's rocky start to the year. Score's time in the LCK was always limited, and his mandatory South Korean military service loomed larger over his career. I watched as similar veteran players such as SK Telecom T1's Bae "Bengi" Seong-woong left and entered the military. Score remained, although rumblings of retirement increased with each passing LCK split.
Score is a player representative of divergent paths -- the infinite possibilities if one choice becomes another. What if Score had decided to serve his mandatory military service sooner? What if I hadn't decided to watch a specific KT Rolster match? What if Score hadn't swapped to the jungle position? What if the KT Rolster Bullets had managed to beat SKT at the 2013 OGN Champions Summer Finals?
In 2013, a friend with whom I played League of Legends told me to look out for a team called KT Rolster B at MLG Dallas. They were playing in an international exhibition tournament against Curse and Gambit Gaming (formerly known as Moscow Five).
I had been playing League for over a year, had been told I was terrible by friends and had been instructed to watch professional play to improve. One friend gently pushed me in the direction of Team SoloMid. Another talked about Counter Logic Gaming Europe. I had watched the Season 2 World Championship and the North American regional qualifiers. That particular year, I had followed both the European and North American League of Legends Championship Series, both in their inaugural year.
None of them struck me like watching KT Rolster B and their AD carry, Score, at MLG Dallas.
I remember little about the details of the match itself -- Elise was heavily prioritized, as were Kha'Zix and Kayle -- but I watched with awe. This was what I had been waiting for League of Legends to be.
From that point, I was hooked on South Korean League of Legends, KT Rolster and, later, Score. His time as an AD carry was characterized by his "immortal" nickname. Apropos of KT's existence in League, I experienced my first heartbreak early: the 2013 Champions Summer Finals. The players' introduction in the rain, the cloudburst over the Han River from the Jamsil side, pop group Yellow singing Queen's "We Are the Champions" -- I could see all of this in my mind's eye as Score bowed to the LCK audience at LoL Park on Saturday for what is probably the final time.
Score was the player I looked to for several reasons, the first being his in-game position. As an AD carry main, I watched Score to help improve my own gameplay. I bristled as his critics called him too safe or a KDA (kills/deaths/assists) player, accusations that immediately vanished during his preseason foray into the jungle after a volatile 2014-15 offseason left KT without a jungler.
His role swap was unexpected and initially hilarious. He was reckless and aggressive, unlike the passive AD carry play that brought him criticism. In his first onstage game as a jungler, Score forgot to buy Rengar's Bonetooth Necklace. In his second, he went for proactive Lee Sin kicks that weren't always successful.
It wasn't pretty and certainly wasn't perfect, but it was the start of a series of events that would lead to Score being called the best jungler in the world.
Players shifted around him, but Score always remained. When it came time for KT to try their hand at a super team, recruiting an all-star lineup of Song "Smeb" Kyung-ho, Heo "PawN" Won-seok, Kim "Deft" Hyuk-kyu and Cho "Mata" Se-hyeong, these other veteran players said they joined the team thanks in large part to Score. When Son "Ucal" Woo-hyeon took over the mid lane position as an up-and-coming rookie, he said repeatedly that he wanted to deliver Score his first domestic championship.
Come 2018, Score was still without a major South Korean title. Months later, he stood onstage at Samsan World Gymnasium in Incheon, confetti at his feet, looking bewildered as the crowd thinned. It was over an hour after he won the LCK summer title, and it still hadn't hit him yet that he was a champion.
That title seemed just out of reach through the years for whatever reason, but it had finally arrived, a reward for the "immortal" LCK legend.
After an exhausting victory over Kingzone DragonX on Saturday, Score told South Korean online publication Inven that he wasn't actually certain that it was his final match. Had KT lost, or Hanwha Life Esports won the next day, his final games would have been played in the LCK spring promotion tournament, his team in danger of being relegated from the league. This would have been a melancholy end to a career that spanned several lifetimes in the accelerated world of esports.
As it was, Score finished the LCK in an average game that ultimately kept his team out of relegations. It wasn't a championship final or an international tournament as many expected, but a regular season 2-1 win in the final week of play to save his team. He retires without a world championship and an LCK title that is going to fly under the radar for years to come, given the context of South Korea's world championship performance in 2018 and KT's subsequent demise.
Score's legacy is an odd one. He began playing League of Legends before regional biases or leagues had been formed. The majority of his career was defined by what he did not have despite his longevity and in-game prowess. He remains my favorite player because of this, not in spite of it. Every week when I tuned in to the LCK stream, regardless of who was casting, whether I listened to it in Korean or English, no matter where I was in the world at the time, there was Score, stubbornly plugging away.
When our favorite players retire, there's a natural tendency to talk about how they inspired us. How their highest highs and feats of greatness led us to some epiphany in our lives or affected us in ways that we didn't think were possible.
But that's not what I think about when I think of Score.
I think of what the value and weight of a career is; how it can be assigned not by an armory of trophies but by continuing, against all odds, to exist. That being present is worth something. Next year, KT Rolster will remain, but without the fixed point that was Score. And I'll continue writing about and watching LCK.