22-year-old Chinese jungler Warrior has apologised after quitting his team and making a series of bizarre posts on social media criticising his former teammates.
The League of Legends player was with UK esports organisation Fourth Wall in the second division of the Northern League of Legends Championship (NLC), the EMEA Regional League for the UK, Ireland and Nordics, where he helped them rise up the table with seven wins.
A week ago, on February 20th 2024, Fourth Wall announced that Warrior had been made head coach for the remainder of the season, while retaining his role of jungler in the team.
However, a few days later on February 23rd, Warrior said he had resigned from Fourth Wall.
“I’m sorry. When I joined the NLC 2 team, I thought that all the national leagues in EU are professional games, everyone fights to win. No player in China or Korea will go pro for fun, it’s a cultural difference.”
Warrior
In a series of now-deleted tweets, Warrior said he initially took on the role of coach because the ex-coach had lost four out of five scrims.
He said that teammates didn’t follow his advice to practice with different champions, and “some people were very lax and lazy and had negative behaviour in the tournaments”, and that some ‘became more arrogant and negative, hardly doing any training and not practicing’.
There are a lot more quotes in this initial post, which you can see here and here.
He then also leaked some of the team’s scrims, with the coach Gary Snail asking him to remove this. The post has since been removed by Warrior.
The drama drummed up a lot of attention from the community on social media, with many reacting to Warrior and some calling out his behaviour as unprofessional.
Warrior has since posted an apology, citing cultural differences.
He said: “Because of the translations [from Chinese to English] I used, some misunderstandings have arisen.
“I’m sorry, I’ve been tweeting [in English] since I joined in August, before that I knew nothing about European leagues. When I joined the NLC 2 team, I thought that all the national leagues in EU are professional games, everyone fights to win.
“No player in China or Korea will go pro for fun, it’s a cultural difference. I didn’t know that before that, after I became the head coach of Fourth Wall, I was hopeful some people would improve and go to win the championships for our team, but I found out that some people simply won’t.”
He’s also publishing an LFT (looking for team) post, and says he’s open to playing in other leagues.
Esports News UK reached out to Fourth Wall for comment.
Fourth Wall’s Head of Operations, Newts, told Esports News UK: “It saddens me to see the way Warrior feels he needs to react to leaving 4w. Gary and I were both understanding when he suddenly decided to leave, and I personally have spoken to him a few times since trying to educate him on things he can improve on moving forward, and it’s all been very amicable.
“I’m surprised he felt the need to speak badly about his teammates as they were very patient during Warrior’s time with us. They didn’t always see eye to eye but that happens in 90% of teams. I’m proud of them and how they have acted professionally and kept their dignity by not been drawn into this whole fiasco.”
Newts, Fourth Wall
“We have a replacement jungler and someone to help coach the team. I wish Warrior all the best and we are now concentrating on moving forward as a team and excited for the rest of the split.”
Related article: UKEL and NLC roster roundup for Spring 2024 seasons
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
