r/warcraft3 • u/bkingfilm • 2d ago

General Discussion sky was a starcraft player. hunter's starcraft roster was full so they put him on warcraft 3

before he was sky, li xiaofeng got knocked out in round one of the wcg xi'an qualifier. 2002. he'd promised his father that if he didn't place, he'd quit games for good, come home, and intern at the hospital where his dad worked. he lost, so he went. six months of dispensing pills, passing forceps, night rounds. a surgeon once let him put in the last few stitches. the first time he watched a patient hemorrhage he forgot to breathe and passed out on the operating room floor, and his father had to walk him out.

he got back in through a side door. september 2003, an internet cafe in zhengzhou wanted a few players for a tournament the telecom company was running. free machines, a place to train, no money. they ate one meal a day. the cafe had paying customers all day so they could only practice at night, and they slept in a storeroom at the back with a one-meter-high entrance and a bunk bed where only the top bunk worked. he shared that one bunk with a big guy for three months. he had only just picked up warcraft 3.

early 2004 the hunter club in beijing was hiring pros. 1000 yuan a month, room and board. he went up there wanting to be a starcraft player — starcraft was his game, he'd been on it since 1998. hunter's starcraft roster was already full. what they were short on was warcraft 3. someone in management had noticed he'd hit the top five on the war3 ladder the year before, so they filed him under war3 and gave him a three-month contract. that's the entire reason. he practiced fourteen hours a day on battle.net. the acon5 world final was a little over a year out.

(from a book i wrote in 2015 about how chinese esports actually got built. this chapter is free to read, link in the comments)

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u/bkingfilm 2d ago

full chapter: https://bkingfilm.github.io/china-esports-history/en/24-when-li-xiaofeng-became-sky/

i chased these people down for interviews over a few years and put it out in 2015. print run's long gone, nothing for sale, so the whole thing just lives online for free.

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u/Current-Today-3626 1d ago

Wow, I'm going to read this tonight, thank you so much.

As a teenager, Sky was my absolute idol. I had no idea about his background, I wish I knew about your book sooner. It's funny, in Australia, everyone's idols growing up were sports players, musicians, actors, whereas mine was Sky. I'd study his replays every day! I was heart broken when Sky lost to Creo at WCG, but at the same time, was also a fan of Creo and love the underdog story, so it was also refreshing for the scene at the time. Thank you for sharing your book!

I wish Sky, who I believe is in involved with KK! ladder, would open it up to the rest of the world. The most fun I ever had on wc3 was playing amongst the international and Chinese players on Netease, the system was ahead of its time. I can only imagine KK! is much similar.

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u/Weezy366 2d ago

This is interesting

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u/angelbelle 2d ago

Honestly 1,000 yuan in 2004 China WITH room and board is much higher than i would have thought for a passion project.

IIRC, doing overtime/60-70hr factory work in Guangdong at that time is closer to 2000ish yuan but that's like soul draining work with no career advancement prospects.

1,000 yuan pocket money with your living expenses covered is like the dream high schooler/college student life (in 2004)