The King's Avatar 《全职高手》- Episode 1: Ye Qiu? Ye Xiu?
The King's Avatar 《全职高手》- Episode 1: Ye Qiu? Ye Xiu?
Our main character starts with almost as many names as MCS did in NiF, I'm proud. This episode introduced characters like NiF did as well, i.e. giving you a ton of them.
 |
| Our main character Ye Xiu |
Episode One - Ye Xiu? Ye Qiu?
We begin the episode with a TV advertisement talking about a globally popular MMORPG called GLORY that has been dominating the world of competitive gaming. With over 130 million players world wide GLORY is celebrating it's 10th anniversary that day. For this occasion, GLORY will be opening a new server for the game that very night at midnight, Server 10.
JY: GLORY launches a new server every year on it's anniversary. This is the 10th server it has launched.
In the 10 years that GLORY has been available, a whole group of professional players for the game have emerged and the most famous of them is the one that has been named "The God of Battle" -- Ye Qiu (Pronounced like: Ye Chyuu).
We then see an in game battle between a giant golem monster (a BOSS monster) and a 100 strong raiding party. However when the BOSS goes into enraged mode the aggro holders loose control. Just as the battle looked to be lost a black lance flies through the air and lodges itself in the golems' arm blowing it up, and through the fiery blaze One Autumn Leaf appears. This One Autumn Leaf is the in game character of Ye Qiu.
aggro - a concept prevalent on MMORPG games, it's the behavior where
monsters target a particular player due to various reasons. This
causes the monsters to only attack the targeted player thus
allowing other players to deal damage to the monster without
getting hurt. Common tactic used in monster battles.
monsters target a particular player due to various reasons. This
causes the monsters to only attack the targeted player thus
allowing other players to deal damage to the monster without
getting hurt. Common tactic used in monster battles.
 |
Character ID: One Autumn Leaf 一叶之秋
Class: Battle Mage
Weapon: Evil Annihilation 却邪 (lance)
Pro Team: Excellent Era
|
Trivia: The actual name in Chinese is a typo.
The name is meant to be the chengyu "一叶知秋"
"Once falling leaf is indicative of the coming Autumn"
Meaning: "A small sign can indicate a great trend/change"
Meaning: "A small sign can indicate a great trend/change"
山僧不解数甲子，一叶落知天下秋。
The monk in the mountains tracks not the passing of time,
but knows it's Autumn at the falling of a leaf.
-- from "Zixi's Quotes", Tang Dynasty, name lost.
As the TV add fades into the background we see a girl running through the night time streets, this is Su Mucheng another professional eSports athlete in club Excellent Era. She arrives at Excellent Era's office and meets up with Ye Qiu who is sitting in the dark finishing off a game. Together they head over to a meeting room.
 |
| Su Mucheng - badass female pro player |
A voice from inside the meeting room loudly bags out Excellent Era's poor performance in the GLORY championships in the last few years after the 3 consecutive wins. Another voice snidely suggest that it's because their Captain is slipping and can no longer cut it. Ye Qiu and Mucheng enter to see the CEO of Excellent Era Tao Xuan, Sun Xiang a newly transferred player, Liu Hao, and Chen Yehui. Liu Hao is part of Excellent Era's pro team, while Chen Yehui is part of Excellent Era's in game guild Excellent Dynasty.
JY: we'll talk about in game guilds later :)
 |
Sun Xiang (left), Tao Xuan (top right), Liu Hao (bottom left), Chen Yehui (bottom right)
|
With Su Mucheng looking worriedly on, Ye Qiu hands One Autumn Leaf's account card to Sun Xiang with shaking hands. Sun Xiang mocks Ye Qiu again saying how these 'shaking hands' could never bring out the true power of "The Battle God". Ye Qiu ignores the barb and instead asks Sun Xiang whether he likes playing GLORY, and that if he does, then he should take this as his 'glory' and not something to 'show off'. Tongue tied and enraged, Sun Xiang rips the account card from Ye Qiu's hands.
Tao Xuan then tells Ye Qiu that the club currently does not have an account Ye Qiu can play (in the official championship tournaments) so that he'd need to be the team's training partner for the time being. Ye Qiu laughs humorlessly and says that they aught to just terminate their contract instead.
This was exactly what the Tao Xuan was waiting for. Throwing a pre-prepared contract termination agreement across the table, the Tao Xuan tells Ye Qiu that the condition for termination was for him to announce voluntary retirement from the professional gaming scene. As a general rule, retired players will need to wait for at least one year before they can play professionally again.
Alarmed by such unfair terms Mucheng grabs the agreement to prevent Ye Qiu from signing and calls Tao Xuan out for targeting Ye Qiu. This was a move that could potentially end Ye Qiu's professional gaming career for good. He is 25 yrs old now, a year later he'd be 26 and that's considered very old for an eSports athlete. However Ye Qiu, not in the least alarmed by such terms signs the agreement with no further words.
Outside Excellent Era office, Mucheng asks Ye Qiu why he chose to retire. Ye Qiu answers that it's because from the club's perspective, he had nothing to offer them anymore. Mucheng refuses to believe this and states that Ye Qiu's abilities have never diminished. So Ye Qiu adds that it's because the GLORY professional league has become highly commercialized and that he was never someone with much commercial value. Mucheng had no answer for that.
Seeing Ye Qiu walking off she asks to his retreating back what he plans to do for a year. After a moment of thought, Ye Qiu answers that he would rest for a year and then come back. Bidding Mucheng goodbye, Ye Qiu wanders off aimlessly into the snowy night.
 |
| Hangzhou by night |
Back in Excellent Era's office, Sun Xiang wonders why Ye Qiu would agree to such unfair terms. Tao Xuan tells Sun Xiang that it's because Ye Qiu could not afford the contract penalty fees. Surprised Sun Xiang wonders how that could be the case. Ye Qiu was one of the best professional GLORY players. How could he not have earned enough money? Could Excellent Era's terms always be so unfair?
Tao Xuan replies that it's because in the early years of the professional league there was not as much endorsements or prize money. Over the years many professional players who've retired from the professional scene faced a bleak future - they had no skill other than playing GLORY, once they left the pro scene they had no other means of income. Ye Qiu had no shortage of friends like this so he actually gave a lot of his money to them. Tao Xuan speculates that Ye Qiu probably doesn't even have enough money to support himself now.
Sun Xiang thinks it's strange that Ye Qiu would not take commercial endorsements even though he's in such dire straights. Tao Xuan doesn't know either and dismisses Ye Qiu as a weirdo.
JY: Tao Xuan is a real asshole. Even Sun Xiang looked a bit guilty upon hearing this.
 |
| Maybe you're not too bad. |
Tangent: I checked up eSports prize pools and was blown
away by how quickly it has grown over the years.
away by how quickly it has grown over the years.
Dota2: 2011 - $1.4mil, 2016 - $20mil
LoL: 2011 - $80k, 2016 - $5mil
Outside on the streets the snow falls harder and Ye Qiu shivers into his coat. Ye Qiu stops and notices that he's in front of an internet cafe named Joyful Flourish. It was better than nothing so Ye Qiu slips inside to escape the cold. Inside Ye Qiu requests to rent a computer and forgets his ID card at the front counter. When he arrives at his allocated computer he finds that a woman was still using it. In fact she was using it to play GLORY.
Checking the screen, Ye Qiu realizes that the person was playing as a Launcher class character, this immediately reminds him of Mucheng. The illusion is quickly broken when the woman shouts at the game when she looses a pk match and leaves in a huff. This lady is Chen Guo, the owner of Joyful Flourish Internet Cafe. Chen Guo walks off grousing to herself about loosing 52 pk matches in a row and how her opponent must be an expert to have beaten her - since she was a veteran player of 5 years.
 |
| Chen Guo :) the coolest boss |
We get a really quick glimpse of Chen Guo's avatar as well (on the left), Chasing Haze.
 |
| Chasing Haze's loosing streak XD
Character ID: Chasing Haze 逐烟霞
Class: Launcher
|
高人已逐烟霞去，此地犹余岩壑存。
The master has left to chase the haze,
but here still remains the cliffs and gullies.
-- from "I Chanced Upon the Place Where Hermit Xizhen Once Lived and Composed this Poem in the Small Garden", Song Dynasty, Li Zhengbo
Chen Guo doesn't go far before a customer in the cafe shouts out to her that she forgot to logout of her account and the guy who just sat down is now playing with her account. Realizing her mistake Chen Guo rushes back only to see Ye Qiu winning a pk match against the opponent she lost 52 rounds to. Seeing Chen Guo, Ye Qiu explained that the pk match already began when he sat down so he played it for her. Flabbergasted Chen Guo asks how long it took him to win. 40 seconds was Ye Qiu answer and it would have been faster if his hands weren't stiff from the cold.
pk - player kill. This term means to duel another player in game.
In English it's more often referred to as pvp - player vs player.
Excited by the prospect of being the first person to ever get Ye Qiu signature, Chen Guo snatches Ye Qiu's ID card from a cafe employee who'd come over to return the card in order to check his name. However the ID card indicated that the guys' name was -- Ye Xiu (Pronounced as: Ye Shyuu). Greatly disappointed Chen Guo hands the ID card back to Ye Qiu.
So we find out that Ye Qiu's real name is actually Ye Xiu. He's just known in the professional gaming scene as Ye Qiu.
Ye Xiu then asks her about a employment advertisement posted on the computer for a night time manager for the internet cafe and suggests that he's very suitable for this position. Chen Guo answers that he would have to beat her in a pk match in order to be successful - a rule she just made up on the fly in annoyance. Ye Xiu sadly replies that he would not be able to since he doesn't have a GLORY account anymore having given his old account away. Chen Guo calls Ye Xiu 'generous' and Ye Xiu agrees that he's 'too generous'.
Seeing that as the case, Chen Guo asks Ye Xiu whether he's planning on starting again in new server that was opening up that night. Reminded of the new server, Ye Xiu pulls out another account card. Login into the game he transfers a character he had on the account to server 10. Chen Guo notices that the account card Ye Xiu was using was a first edition account card and curiously asks Ye Xiu how long he's been playing. Ye Xiu confirms that he's been playing GLORY for 10 years.
Seeing how sad Ye Xiu looked and being a fellow GLORY fan, Chen Guo decides that she'll give Ye Xiu a chance and announces that they should do an all-nighter gaming session in celebration of the 10th server launch and use it as a test for Ye Xiu's ability to do all-nighters - since he's applying to be the night shift manager right? Happy with the outcome Ye Xiu and Chen Guo settle down to wait for midnight but not before Chen Guo bullies Ye Xiu into going out and buy her some midnight snacks.
Chen Guo excitedly joins the new sever and looks over to check on Ye Xiu's progress. To her disgust the guy is still reading the beginners manual. Ye Xiu explains that because he's been playing at a high level for a long time he's actually forgotten alot of the beginner quests that needed to be done. Chen Guo thinks it's a stupid excuse and calls him a half-baked professional whom she's never heard of despite how similar his name was to the God Ye Qiu. She then gushes that Ye Qiu is her idol and that Su Mucheng is her favorite professional GLORY player.
Amused by her antics, Ye Xiu quietly tells Chen Guo, "Actually, I'm Ye Qiu." ;)
Chen Guo completely does not believe him. (Poor girl XDDDDD)
Ye Xiu then asks her about a employment advertisement posted on the computer for a night time manager for the internet cafe and suggests that he's very suitable for this position. Chen Guo answers that he would have to beat her in a pk match in order to be successful - a rule she just made up on the fly in annoyance. Ye Xiu sadly replies that he would not be able to since he doesn't have a GLORY account anymore having given his old account away. Chen Guo calls Ye Xiu 'generous' and Ye Xiu agrees that he's 'too generous'.
Seeing that as the case, Chen Guo asks Ye Xiu whether he's planning on starting again in new server that was opening up that night. Reminded of the new server, Ye Xiu pulls out another account card. Login into the game he transfers a character he had on the account to server 10. Chen Guo notices that the account card Ye Xiu was using was a first edition account card and curiously asks Ye Xiu how long he's been playing. Ye Xiu confirms that he's been playing GLORY for 10 years.
Seeing how sad Ye Xiu looked and being a fellow GLORY fan, Chen Guo decides that she'll give Ye Xiu a chance and announces that they should do an all-nighter gaming session in celebration of the 10th server launch and use it as a test for Ye Xiu's ability to do all-nighters - since he's applying to be the night shift manager right? Happy with the outcome Ye Xiu and Chen Guo settle down to wait for midnight but not before Chen Guo bullies Ye Xiu into going out and buy her some midnight snacks.
JY: In the novel it's explained that only level 1 characters (i.e. newly created characters) could transfer between servers.
That night the internet cafe was unusually packed with many people there just for the opening of the new GLORY server. Admist everyone's excitement and anticipation, midnight strikes and the 10th server finally opens.
Chen Guo excitedly joins the new sever and looks over to check on Ye Xiu's progress. To her disgust the guy is still reading the beginners manual. Ye Xiu explains that because he's been playing at a high level for a long time he's actually forgotten alot of the beginner quests that needed to be done. Chen Guo thinks it's a stupid excuse and calls him a half-baked professional whom she's never heard of despite how similar his name was to the God Ye Qiu. She then gushes that Ye Qiu is her idol and that Su Mucheng is her favorite professional GLORY player.
Amused by her antics, Ye Xiu quietly tells Chen Guo, "Actually, I'm Ye Qiu." ;)
Chen Guo completely does not believe him. (Poor girl XDDDDD)
 |
| Ye Xiu's "Clark Kent" moment |
Failing to convince Chen Guo that he's actually Ye Qiu, Ye Xiu goes back to the game. Chen Guo butts in to have a look at his new avatar Lord Grim and thinks it has a pretty cool name. Ye Xiu thinks so too and says that it was Su Mucheng who came up with it ;). Chen Guo predictably gets annoyed with Ye Xiu again lol.
 |
| Character ID: Lord Grim 君莫笑 (Sir Do-Not-Laugh) Class: None Weapon: Myriad Manifestation Umbrella 千机伞 (yes it's an umbrella) |
醉卧沙场君莫笑，古今战场几人回。
Sir, laugh not at those who lie drunk on the battle field,
for how many have returned from war since antiquity to now?
-- from "Liangzhou Verse", Tang Dynasty, Wang Han
JY: It must have been hard to massage the Chinese name into "Lord Grim" but I kinda like it.
Logging into the game with his new avatar, Lord Grim arrives at the beginners town and finds it packed with people. But there was nothing he can do about it. So buckling down for the long road, Lord Grim heads off to do mandatory beginner quests. After a full game-day, they're done and Lord Grim having reached level 7 is finally able to pick up his weapon from storage.
In a lot of MMORPG games the levels 1-10 are introductory levels.
You level up very quickly through them while in game tutorials
guide you on how to actually use the game interface.
Pushing open an old wooden case a red and white umbrella reveals itself through the floating dust motes - the Myriad Manifestation Umbrella. Seeing this weapon triggers a short flash back in Ye Xiu: two young boys playing together in front of a computer and it seems that they were also looking at this particular weapon. Checking the weapons statistics and finding it to be only level 5, Ye Xiu reassures it that he'll upgrade it soon.
The grind continues through the night and Chen Guo falls asleep at her computer. Ye Xiu gives her his coat. Turning back to the game Ye Xiu sees a party invite sent by a player call Sleeping Moon for the Green Forest dungeon. The hidden boss of the Green Forest dungeon, the Phantom Midnight Cat has drops which would be needed to upgrade his weapon so Ye Xiu accepts the invitation for the raid.
Dungeons - An instance of a small map area the game generates
for players to complete quests or other objectives.
Hidden Boss - A hard boss monster that randomly appears in dungeons.
 |
| Sleeping Moon being silly
Character ID: Sleeping Moon 月中眠
Class: Blade Master
Guild: Full Moon |
笑舞狂歌五十年，花中行乐月中眠。
Laughing, dancing and singing for fifty years,
make merry in the flowers and sleep in the moon.
-- from "Expressing One's Emotions", Ming Dynasty, Tang Yin
After meeting up with the party inside the dungeon Lord Grim realizes that 3 of the team members are complete newbies - it's their first time playing GLORY (that's very annoying, newbies have no idea what to do basically). Immediately Sleeping Moon starts showing off and the 3 newbies think they found an expert on the game. Despite their mediocre party, their luck was pretty good. The system announces that the Phantom Midnight Cat is about to appear. The team goes on high alert as they feel the on coming attack.
Tank - a player who's main job is to attract aggro from the monster
and take high damage. They usually have very good defense
and/or health stats to help them withstand the attacks.
Healer - a player who main role is to heal other players, esp the Tank.
Damage Dealer - players who has high attack (and generally low
health) who are responsible for attacking the monster after
the Tank has establish aggro.
When the Phantom Cat finally appears the team engages in battle. Sleeping Moon charges forward to act as the Tank. Lord Grim watches on and acts as the team Healer while the other 3 players act as damage dealers. Lord Grim gauges Sleeping Moon's abilities as "not bad". The battle goes relatively smoothly until the Phantom Cat goes into red-blood mode. Suddenly it seems that Sleeping Moon is no longer able to hold the aggro. Lord Grim double checks Sleeping Moon's health and mana stats - they were both full. Lord Grim smells something fishy.
As the battle continues the Phantom Cat goes completely out of control and the 3 newbie players are killed when they OTed and are killed by the Boss.
Red-blood - at usually <10% health points monsters can go into
enraged/berserk mode which increases their attack power or
allows them do other unexpected moves.
Mana - spiritual energy, consumed when using magical/skill
based attacks.
OT - Over Threat. When a player deals more damage to the
monster than all other players it results in the monster
changing aggro target to the player.
Sleeping Moon continues to engage the Phantom Cat and shouts for Lord Grim to back him up. However Lord Grim has had enough of Sleeping Moon's deceit. He calls Sleeping Moon out on his plan - deliberately creating a situation where their team members OTed so that he could steal all of the Boss's drop. Realizing that he's been caught Sleeping Moon attempts to negotiate with Lord Grim, offering him equal split of the drops.
But who is Lord Grim? 50% in not nearly enough, he'd rather have 100% of the drops.
Drops - when monsters and sometimes players depending on the game,
are killed they would drop items/equipment. These 'drops' are
sometimes very valuable or complete trash.
 |
| Troll |
Listen to the ending song and there's a bonus scene after it :)
Shortly after getting his weapon, Lord Grim uses his skill points to learn some skills.
- Battle Mage Class skill: Sky Strike and Dragon Fang
- Sharpshooter Class skill: Floating Bullet
- Mechanic Class skill: Mechanical Pursuit/Machine Trace (depending on what trans your using)
- Blade Master Class skill: Guard
- Cleric Class skill: Heal
JY: Btw the character datasheet above lists some of his skills as well :)
Chen Guo once again butts in and laughs her ass off at the strange mix of skills he's chosen. She asks why he's learnt skills from all different classes? Wouldn't it be a waste of his skills points once he changes class at level 20? Is he planning on playing Unspecialized?
Chen Guo once again butts in and laughs her ass off at the strange mix of skills he's chosen. She asks why he's learnt skills from all different classes? Wouldn't it be a waste of his skills points once he changes class at level 20? Is he planning on playing Unspecialized?
Ye Xiu smirks and only says, "We'll see when the time comes." ;)
 |
| Lol, fail skill set says the veteran noob |
Skill Points - some MMO's have a skills system where skills require
a number of skill points to learn and it's difficult/expensive
to reset everything once you've spent your skill points.
Class skills - skills that can be done by only by a certain class of
characters.
Comments
Nice episode! So many things happened. We got introduced to our main character Ye Xiu, his alternate name and his in game character names. Added together he has about 4 different names/titles people can use to refer to him (hahaha almost as many as MCS). We got to know about his background a little and what a shitty situation he's in right now. But at least he can temporarily forget about the world a little while in game. If this all-nighter interview goes well he'll have found himself a job too :)
The episodes also leaves us with many questions as well. Who were the two boys? What do they have to do with his weapon? What the heck is Ye Xiu doing with his skills selection? And ultimately will he get this job?
I love all the MMO terms that's getting thrown about. If you have any issues understanding that feel free to comment below I'll try to answer to the best of my abilities :).
Keeping track of who's who and their affiliations will be very difficult in this show so I might make a chart again at some stage. But their relations are so complicated the charts I've started so far have failed to capture all the information XD.
Novel Tracking: This episode covered 7.5 chapters.