| Lim Yo-Hwan | |
|---|---|
Lim Yo-Hwan in 2006 |
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| Korean name | |
| Hangul | 임요환 |
| Hanja | 林遙煥 |
| Revised Romanization | Im Yohwan |
| McCune–Reischauer | Im Yohwan |
| Medal record | ||
|---|---|---|
| World Cyber Games | ||
| Gold | 2002 Seoul, South Korea | |
| Gold | 2001 Daejeon, South Korea | |
Lim Yo-Hwan (born 4 September 1980), known by the pseudonym SlayerS_`BoxeR` (usually shortened to BoxeR), is one of the most successful players of the real-time strategy computer game StarCraft to date. Dubbed The Emperor by his fans, he is the most popular Starcraft player with a fan club of more than 1,000,000 members and a DVD compilation of his greatest games released in South Korea. In late 2010, he retired from Starcraft: Brood War and founded a Starcraft 2 team: "SlayerS".[1]
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Lim has a record with 547 wins and 416 losses (56.80%)[2] in his professional career. He is one of the highest-paid professional gamers, with annual earnings that exceed 400,000 US Dollars and endorsement contracts that bring in an additional $90,000 per year.[3] In 2004 he was voted the greatest gamer of all time by readers of ESReality, a popular Western electronic sports website, and in June 2006 he was included in an MTV list of "The 10 Most Influential Video Gamers Of All Time."[4]
Lim first came to fame by dominating professional Starcraft while choosing to use the Terran race. The following reign of dominance earned him the nickname the "Terran Emperor", a reference to StarCraft lore. During this early time in his career he innovated heavily, creating many new strategies which are still used today, most notably making much more effective use of the Terran Dropship unit than had been achieved in the past. He also gained a reputation for being able to turn around matches against the odds and having excellent micromanagement (unit control) skills. He would often continue the game despite heavy disadvantages yet still pull out a victory. In contrast, his weakness is thought by some commentators to be poor macromanagement (economy/unit production) skills in comparison to other top-level professional Starcraft players, although his macromanagement has improved over the last few years.
BoxeR is most renowned for his creativity; oftentimes building proxy barracks. In many games, he has gone for quick attacks ("rushes") or special ops units ("ghosts") which make the games extremely entertaining. He is very well respected in Starcraft both in Korea and abroad.
Though he is no longer as dominant as he once was, he was ranked 11th in the April 2006 Korean e-Sports Players Association (KeSPA) rankings, and made it to the finals of the EVER Ongamenet Starleague (OSL) of late 2004 (losing to iloveoov by three games to two) and the finals of the 2005 So1 OnGameNet Starleague (losing to Anytime by three games to two).
Lim has played professionally since version 1.07 of Starcraft, and has managed to stay competitive by constantly changing his style, and has had a great influence of the development of modern playing styles, especially for Terran players. He is the all-time leader in games played and wins. He is a two time OSL champion, one time MSL champion, two time WCG champion, and leader of the SK Telecom "T1" team. He is considered to have a strong eye for talent in that position, as he drew Choi Yeon-Sung (iloveoov), among others, from the amateur ranks. His team has consistently been the strongest in the Proleague.
On August 2006 Lim announced at the MSL group draws that he had received his draft letter from the government, and would be entering the Republic of Korea Air Force (ROKAF) by the end of the year. He later said he would try his best to return after his 2 and a half years of service.
After Lim joined the Air Force, he started putting his fame to work. After a month and a half an Air Force pro-gaming team was created. Lim found some retired pro-gamers who joined the Air Force before him, including H.O.T-Forever, CLon, ChRh, fOru, Rage, Qoo) Sunny and MuMyung. Together they formed the first military pro-gaming team. Two months after the team was announced, ACE (Airforce Challenge E-sports) was official. ACE first played in the 2008 ShinHan Proleague, and has participated ever since.
On December 22 2008, Boxer returned to SKT1 and played on that team as military service was ending, and has remained on its A-Team; however, he has concentrated on playing individual league matches since then.
In September 2010, Boxer began playing high level Starcraft 2 games against other pro gamers[5] as Terran under the username "ManofOneway,"[6] but has switched to SlayerSBoxeR since he announced his return. He is now playing Starcraft 2 at a professional level and has made it to the Round of 4 in GSL (GOMTV Global Starcraft II League) Open Season 2, where he lost 0–4 to NesTea.[7] However, he would not fare as well in following seasons, even dropping to Code A (the lower GSL League) in March 2011.
He formed the Starcraft 2 clan, SlayerS (sls) in November 2010.[8] As well, he is featured in a documentary T.V. show, named Boxer's Wings, about his Starcraft career and his transition from StarCraft: Brood War to Starcraft 2.[9]
In March 2011, SlayerSBoxer's newly formed "SlayerS Clan" Starcraft 2 team won the GOMTV Global Starcraft II Team League, just months after their formation, defeating teams Startale, and oGs (Old Generations). They would go on to defeat IM(Incredible Miracle) by 5 games to 4 in a best-of-9 series. The same month SlayerSBoxer was also one of the few Koreans drafted for the North American Star League, a new tournament outside of the Korean Starcraft scene, with a prize pool of $100,000. "SlayerS Clan" repeated the feat by winning the next GOMTV Global Starcraft II Team League in May 2011, beating the team "MVP" in the final and proving to be a very consistent team.
SlayerSBoxeR returned to the most prestigious Code S tournament on December 22, 2011, for the GSL January 2012 tournament.
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