Chinese Professional Lol Team Lmq Tian Ci Moves To Na With New Title Sponsor Ibuypower

WeirdSituation · December 17, 2013

Royal Club's sister team LMQ Tian Ci has relocated to North America with the assistance of new title sponsor iBUYPOWER. The team will look to compete in the new 2014 Challenger Series.

Chinese professional League of Legends team LMQ Tian Ci, considered a sister team to Royal Club, has relocated to Southern California and will attempt to enter Riot's new 2014 Challenger Series (previously announced to be sponsored by Coke Zero). The organization picked up a new title sponsor -- iBUYPOWER -- who assisted the team in their relocation. The previous roster, consisting of Zhou "NoName" Qi-Lin, Yu "XiaoWeiXiao" Xian, Li "SWXG Wei-Jun, and Zhang "Mor" Hong-Wei will be welcoming Xiao "GoDlike" Wang, formerly of Royal Club's World Championships roster, to the team in the position of top laner.

LMQ Tian Ci was previously known as Royal Club Tian Ci and was the substitute and training team for the Royal Club team that competed at Season 3 World Championships. The team left the organization, but is still sponsored by Tian Ci, the owner of Royal Club Huang Zu.

LMQ iBUYPOWER arrived in the United States on the 15th of this month and will be moving into a new gaming house in Hacienda Heights. While the team's initial goal is to make it into the 2014 Challenger Series, their eventual hope is to earn a position into the North American LCS later this year.

In a translated interview, Eno Li, owner of LMQ, told onGamers the team wishes to compete in North America because it has, "some of the best teams in [the] world, the best tournament, the best media, and the best fans. Lastly, the fans are very enthusiastic and give them strength when they are competing. They love it here, so we came over."

Li previously worked with the Chinese team in the Shanghai All Stars games and with both OMG and Royal Club during this year's World Championships. He says the team "knows there are a lot of strong teams here in North America, such as TSM, CLG, C9, and XDG.GG" and that their players "watch their games and learn from them. All these teams have very good strategies, and have their own distinct play style... ...different from Chinese teams." The team, "would like to compete with them, learn from them, and improve together."

He says the organization knows there will be obstacles faced -- diet, environment, cultural differences and language -- while adapting to life in America. He believes the team will adjust to the first three rapidly, and is planning on having their players learn English quickly. On the matter of language, Li says, "the most important part is to have them be able to communicate with North American players and fans, so we will really spend some time on learning English. We also will be getting a lot of help from iBUYPOWER to help us adapt to America."

To this end, iBUYPOWER's Marketing and Esports Specialist Derrick Truong will also be working as the Marketing Director for the LMQ organization. Speaking to onGamers, Truong said, "My role will be to acquire sponsorships, create content with the team, and help with personal branding of players." So far, iBUYPOWER has assisted the team by finding their gaming house and will be providing the players with computer systems.

When asked if there was any chance that Royal Club star player Uzi may be joining the team in the future, Li said, "We have a great partnership with Royal Club. Before we came over, we reached out to Uzi through Royal, and he is very interested in coming to compete in North America. He really missed the whole atmosphere and great fans at Worlds. He is focusing on LPL Spring Split for now, but when Summer Split comes, we will try our best to reach out to him and hopefully have him transferred over to compete in North America."

http://www.ongamers.com/articles/chinese-professional-lol-team-lmq-tian-ci-moves-to-na-with-new-title-sponsor-ibuypower/1100-395/

Edited December 17, 2013 by WeirdSituation