The King's Avatar

Thunderclap’s strength in the team competition guaranteed their strong showing on the rankings. Right now, they were tied with Blue Rain with 90 points. Because the two had tied in their match against each other, their ranking was determined by alphabet, with Blue Rain (Lanyu) in second place and Thunderclap (Leiting) in third.

Samsara led the pack with 113 points, a score so high that people had already lost the desire to try and catch up.

After 13 rounds of competition, they entered the month of December. The yearly voting for All-Stars began with the new season and ended in December.

The earliest votes cast were based on the players’ performances last season; the strong players in last season’s playoffs would gain favor. Then, after entering the rhythm of the new season, one or two stunning plays could invite a lot of votes. Tang Rou was a perfect example of this.

A rookie who had just entered the Alliance, after an exciting 1v2 in the second round, was swiftly pushed into the ranks of the All-Stars. Of course, her beautiful appearance contributed to this as well.

However, after the 1v3 incident and her clear revocation of her word, Tang Rou’s popularity instantly died down. Even many of the team’s fans couldn’t look at her anymore, how much support would she have left from everyone else? Instantly, Tang Rou’s name went from daily rising in the All-Star voting to complete erasure.

And right now, the highest-ranked player was still Zhou Zekai. Last season, the team had won in the playoffs, this season they maintained a powerful lead, and Zhou Zekai’s performance was indispensable. He led the rankings with no competition.

And compared to last year, the biggest change on the leaderboard was the return of a few names, the most significant of which were the ones who had gone to Excellent Era last season. These three all had their dedicated fans and were immediately pushed onto the leaderboard. Aside from the unwavering support of their loyal fans, there was the effect of their performances this season.

Xiao Shiqin was the most eye-catching of these three. Everyone knew Xiao Shiqin’s major contributions to Thunderclap’s shocking accomplishments this season. Although Xiao Shiqin wasn’t like Zhou Zekai or Sun Xiang, who were core players based on their technical skill, Thunderclap’s outstanding performance allowed Xiao Shiqin’s tactical skill to shine and draw attention, attracting scores of fans. Right now, on the All-Star voting leaderboard, Xiao Shiqin was in third place, much better than his rankings in previous seasons.

Su Mucheng and Sun Xiang were both ranked around tenth. With their fanbase support and their performance, they hadn’t seen any big ups or downs.

But if you wanted to name someone who was only rising more and more rapidly, you’d have to say another returning name - no, strictly speaking, the name wasn’t returning. What was returning was the person.

Ye Xiu. Never mind his accumulated popularity from previous years, just looking at his ongoing twelve consecutive individual win record, this kind of player would gain enough attention to be pushed onto the rankings. As he achieved wins round after round, the ballots cast for Ye Xiu only increased. Happy’s recent strong performance gave him a boost as well. Right now, Ye Xiu was at number 6 and was still in the process of beautifully rushing upward.

One could see how influential he was just from the recent in-game interest in unspecialized. It got to the point where the Glory developers added a strong reminder in-game, notifying the players who didn’t choose a class at level 20 just how difficult their existence thereafter would be. Without naming names, they reminded everyone not to try and imitate a certain person because this certain person was an exceptional player with exceptional talent and an exceptional self-made weapon.

Despite this, the enthusiasm of the players couldn’t be stopped. Quite a few players started playing with the equipment editor to try and make a Myriad Manifestations Umbrella, which suddenly caused the prices of level 5 equipment materials to rise.

With some people returning to the leaderboard, others would of course be pushed down.

There was one such person in Happy. Fang Rui changed classes, which his former Thief supporters couldn’t accept. The players of his new class, Qi Master, even though they saw that Fang Rui held the All-Star Qi Master Boundless Sea, his Qi Master performance… to be honest, up through now there was still nothing very convincing about it. As for his recent crawling and rolling Qi Master style, a number of Qi Master players felt that it was disgusting, and it didn’t inspire any imitations.

Also kicked off the leaderboard was Hundred Blossoms’ Zou Yuan. He had been pushed onto the All-Star leaderboard through nostalgia for two years in a row. But now that he was finally gradually bringing out a new character, he was shoved downward by the fierceness of the competition. Unfortunately, he was helpless about this.

Another player squeezed off the rankings was Royal Style’s Tian Sen.

Peaceful Hermit, this former pinnacle God-level character. Ever since the All-Stars began, this character had made it to the leaderboard no matter the controller. But finally, because of the team’s slipping performance through the years, he vanished for the first time from the top 20.

Regarding this, Peaceful Hermit’s current user Tian Sen was extremely helpless. Year after year of hard work, but the team still saw no improvement and hovered at the middle. Now that there were more and more challengers, they were finally kicked off the altar.

Tian Sen and Peaceful Hermit’s fall conjured many sighs.

There was another old general pushed off the leaderboard, Tyranny’s Lin Jingyan. This old, long-time All-Star finally had his position stolen away.

Tyranny’s near-miss of the championship last season had originally garnered much sympathy, and at the start of this season, the ballots for Tyranny’s players surged upward. But, after that wave passed, their performance in this new season was factored in. Tyranny was rotating their roster for these matches, and the old veterans, no longer having regular appearances, began to slow in the rankings. The position of Tyranny’s Captain Han Wenqing was still relatively stable, while Lin Jingyan had dropped off the rankings. There was Zhang Jiale too, currently at a precarious 23rd place, at high risk of being replaced over the course of December. Just off of the votes, the rankings for many players were very close. A single explosive performance could bring enough ballots to surpass him.

But overall, the changes to the rankings couldn’t be called large.

Xiao Shiqin, Su Mucheng, Sun Xiang, and Ye Xiu’s returns weren’t any surprise. Compared to last year’s Lu Hanwen and Gao Yingjie entering the rankings as rookies, this season, there was no such entirely new blood breaking into the rankings. Tang Rou originally had this potential with her explosive performance in the second round and her steadiness thereafter. She was a very strong rookie. But unfortunately, after that 1v3 incident destroyed her reputation, she naturally didn’t have much chance in this kind of popolarity voting.

Right now, the one who was in more of a dilemma was the Alliance. The All-Star voting was just for excitement; a good performance onstage could increase votes, but in the end, that wasn’t the only determining factor. However, the Alliance’s yearly awards were entirely based on the players’ real performance onstage, based on numbers and statistics.

And from the statistics, among this season’s rookies, Tang Rou faced no competition. But when they thought about giving the ”Best Newcomer” award to this player with a ruined reputation, the Alliance felt the pressure would be extremely large. Right now, there was still over half a season to go before these awards were given, but there were already people worrying about this issue, which was a sign of just how outstanding Tang Rou was right now among the rookies.

December was the last month for voting the All-Stars, and looking at the current ballot counts, no final judgment could be made based off the rankings as they entered December. Because more and more players would save all of their tickets until December, waiting until the voting was just about to close so that they could see the entirety of the players’ performances before casting their votes.

Would December see any player powerfully slaughtering their way onto the leaderboard? This was something to watch when the league reached December. Before, there was also something else to watch in December, the winter transfer window. At that time, the Alliance didn’t have as many teams, so when they began in September, the season would be halfway over the time it was December. That was the original reason for why they set the winter transfers in December. But now, the season often wasn’t even half over by January. After discussing this for several seasons, in Season 10, the Alliance finally decided to move the winter transfer window to January.

In comparison, the Glory new server opening now had almost no effect on the pro teams. The only ones who were busy were the guild workers of the various large clubs, who before December would have to prepare their strength to enter the new server to compete for resources and advertise for the club.

Happy now already had its own official guild department. After half a year of development, the personnel organization was already finalized. And to a new guild like Happy, the opening of this new server was beyond important. In the old servers or in the Heavenly Domain, Happy was constantly playing catch-up, but in a new server, everyone was starting at zero, so they had a greater chance at achieving an advantage.

After Wu Chen organized the work for the new server, he solemnly gave Chen Guo the list of people who would be expanding in the new server. Boss Chen was generous, knowing how crucial the work in the new server was, gave the new server employees additional bonuses with a flourish of her pen.

As of now, the guild department was relatively well-developed, and Happy’s R&D department had expanded slightly. Finding technical researchers was difficult, but didn’t all of the big teams have to deal with this? The R&D would sometimes experience changes of personnel, and sometimes people would leave their jobs.

When Chen Guo failed to find enough suitable R&D candidates, she started paying particularly close attention to this area, and her efforts weren’t wasted. In November, there was a small adjustment at Thunderclap, and an R&D researcher left his job for personal reasons. Chen Guo instantly pounced on him, but this person’s personal reason was that he wanted to return to his home city to work, and his home city unfortunately was not City H. Chen Guo had no way of satisfying that requirement, and so she could only watch with her eyes wide open as this rather skilled R&D researcher returned to his home City K and entered Hundred Blossoms.

The second time, it was Royal Style whose personnel was changing, with two R&D researchers leaving one after the other. Chen Guo made some inquiries, and after confirming that it wasn’t for a reason like ”returning home” that they had no way of satisfying, she approached them in-person in City B.

This time, Chen Guo’s actions were truly swift and fierce. Heavenly Swords was in the same city as Royal Style, but by the time they began to approach them, one of them had already reached an agreement and signed with Chen Guo. With one of them already taken, Lou Guanning of course couldn’t try and pull some evil trickery, but the remaining one didn’t want to live modestly with Happy and cleanly slammed down a checkbook. After Chen Guo knew, she didn’t have any words. Being able to get one researcher was good enough, and she could only hope that the person they got wouldn’t have any regrets after learning that he’d missed the opportunity to enjoy the riches of Heavenly Swords.

Although from the looks of it, this new R&D researcher who had now been at Happy for ten days, Wang Sen, seemed quite at ease.