Loken joins QG Reapers
Lee “Loken” Dongwook has joined QG Reapers, according to the QQ.com 2017 LPL roster list. The team has also confirmed the news.
QQ.com posted their official Week 1 roster list on December 19. It contained a few surprises, such as the absence of Invictus Gaming’s Yu “JackeyLove” Wenbo and Oh My God’s new top laner, Zhang Wenbo. These players likely will not be able to start for their team until Week 2 of the LPL regular season. One of the most surprising additions is “Coco” believed to be previous CJ Entus Shin “CoCo” Jinyeong, to Newbee Gaming, but there is, as yet, no official confirmation.
Perhaps the most shocking news for international LPL fans, however, was the addition of a player named “Loken” on the QG list. As the list doesn’t contain the player’s real name, Yahoo Esports reached out to the QG Reapers organization and confirmed that it is former ESC Ever AD carry Lee “Loken” Dongwoon.
Loken is a promising Korean AD carry who started playing League of Legends for ESC Ever in 2015. Though Ever failed to qualify for the League of Legends Champions Korea, they placed first in the 2015 KeSPA Cup and then first at Intel Extreme Masters Cologne in the 2015 to 2016 offseason. In 2016 Spring, they finished first in LCK’s Challenger Series and defeated SBENU Sonicboom 3-0 in the LCK Promotion to qualify for LCK. Though ESC Ever only placed ninth in Champions, Loken was praised for his individual skill and finished with a KDA of 3.41.
QG Reapers qualified for the League of Legends Pro League as Newbee Young by winning the 2016 LPL Summer split, defeating Young Miracles in a five game series. They are led by Kim “Doinb” Taesang, mid laner of the 2015 and 2016 QG Reapers team before they were purchased by Newbee Gaming.
Loken is an addition to the main roster announced previously by the team’s weibo. The team has both Korean jungler Clid, who ended the 2016 season Rank 2 on the Korean ladder, and Chinese jungler xinyi, previous sub jungler for LSPL team Legend Dragon. The roster also fields Chinese AD carry Along and Korean AD carry LokeN, giving the team two import configurations to run in the coming split.
You can follow Kelsey Moser on Twitter @karonmoser.