With his departure, Zeus has broken up the ZOFGK roster that has won LoL Worlds back-to-back, tearing apart one of the greatest League of Legends rosters of all time and leaving fans of this roster at a loss.
From the attitude of T1โs players after their win to the org celebrating the re-signing of their players one at a time, it appeared that this roster would be sticking together. But, as it turns out, Zeus would be ending his time with the org on his own terms.
He came in as a rookie and is leaving as a world-class top laner with 2 international titles under his belt.
๐๐ก๐๐ง๐ค ๐ฒ๐จ๐ฎ, ‘๐๐๐ฎ๐ฌ’
LCK ํ์ โZeusโ ์ต์ฐ์ ์ ์์์ ๊ณ์ฝ์ด ์ข ๋ฃ๋์์ต๋๋ค.์ง๋ ์ฌ์ ์ ํจ๊ปํด์ค โZeusโ ์ ์์๊ฒ ๊ฐ์ฌ์ ๋ง์์ ์ ํ๋ฉฐ, ์์ผ๋ก์ ์ฌ์ ๋ ์์ํ๊ฒ ์ต๋๋ค.
Today, we part ways with ‘Zeus’. We truly thank him for all that he has accomplished at T1 and wishโฆ pic.twitter.com/RrE0JmvrMm
โ T1 LoL (@T1LoL) November 19, 2024
So, whoโs replacing him? Who could possibly be a better top lane option than Zeus?
Did T1 perhaps find a new rookie player they wanted to build up and bring in on a budget? After all, Zeus was a rookie at one point before he was rumored to be getting offers from other teams in the range of $3-4 million USD. Training up a new rookie would be a lot cheaper.
No, T1 are bringing in a veteran LCK top laner instead, one who was consistently beaten by Zeus: Doran.
๐๐๐ฅ๐๐จ๐ฆ๐, ‘๐๐จ๐ซ๐๐ง’
โDoranโ ์ตํ์ค ์ ์๊ฐ LCK ํ์ ํฉ๋ฅํฉ๋๋ค.T1๊ณผ ํจ๊ป ๋ ๋์ ๊ณณ์์ ๋น๋ โDoranโ ์ ์์๊ฒ ๋ง์ ์์๊ณผ ๊ฒฉ๋ ค ๋ถํ๋๋ฆฝ๋๋ค!
โDoranโ joined the T1 LCK team.Please support him as the new top laner for T1 and help him shine even brighter at T1! pic.twitter.com/GztXjUdbQM
โ T1 LoL (@T1LoL) November 19, 2024
Fan sentiment has been almost universally negative, with a whole variety of crying emojis, people typing โnoโ with enough oโs to fill your screen, worst trade deal of all time memes, โwhat the f**kโ, and other reactions of complete disbelief.
Itโs hard to say what happened in T1โs off-season that led them to this decision and whether or not Zeus left because he didnโt want to be with the team anymore, or if T1 wanted to make a change of their own accord.
jojopyun set to make LoL history as Europeโs first NA import player
There is the possibility that T1 couldnโt afford to retain the player, though itโs hard to imagine that Doran was that much cheaper considering heโs been a top 3 LCK top laner for years.
According to veteran LCK reporter Yoon Min-seop, the deal fell through at the very last minute, with Zeus opting to choose another team on the very last day of his contract.
Itโs also worth noting that Faker has yet to officially confirm heโs sticking with the team, though his current contract doesnโt expire until 2025. Itโs safe to assume heโll be sticking around, so Doran is likely to be the only roster change going into the new year.
Zeusโ destination is unknown, though itโs impossible to imagine that he wonโt be on a team next year. At the time of writing, it looks likely that heโll be joining Hanwha Life Esports, trading places with Doran.