I noticed that all the top teams this Worlds have players we’ve seen a lot. I looked over the eastern teams and Peyz, Delight, Xun, Elk, On, Zika, Weiwei, Light, and Hang are the players that are not really established. I don’t watch the LPL so not sure if I’m wrong about any of those. But either way, that’s 9/40 players.

Most of those are from the LPL which still sees a high turnover rate, but even the LPL is slowing down compared to previous years.

And while I can’t really be bothered to go through all the western teams, I don’t think it’s crazy to say that there haven’t been players even close to Caps in a while. Even though Yike looks promising and NRG’s run was cool, every roster has known quantities or middling prospects.

Is it franchising? Waning playerbase/interest? Age restrictions? The meta having been quite stable for a while? 2018 saw a lot of the old guard getting replaced. Or maybe it’s just because over time the number of really stable players increases?

Whatever the reason is, it has its pros and cons. I like seeing rematches, but I miss teams like Damwon and Griffin showing up out of nowhere, and the west being competitive.