In the early days of esports, it’s hard to overstate just how good Korea was — especially at StarCraft: Brood War. You could search all eras, all titles in esports and you’d have a hard time finding a gap as wide as the one Korea put between itself and the rest of the world. That’s why it was kind of a big deal when Victor “Nazgul” Goossens defeated XellOs on January 27th, 2003.

For context, XellOs was one of the best players in Korea (read: the world) and on the path to become, albeit briefly, the single best player. This is a player that would later be nicknamed “The Perfect Terran,” would win two of the game’s biggest events at the time (OSL and WCG), would be the center of a National Geographic documentary, and was probably one of the earliest esports athletes to get a Wikipedia page. XellOs was not quite there on January 27th but he was only a few months off.

Meanwhile, Nazgul was one of a handful of foreigners who, after stomping their region, decided to up the ante and go to Korea where the stakes were higher and the games were televised. At the time, Nazgul was likely the best player in Europe, but the gap between Europe and Korea was so huge that his wins didn’t mean as much as you’d think. If anything, Nazgul might have been better known as much for running the most prominent Starcraft website in the west — TeamLiquid.net — than he was for his European medals. 

Earlier on his Korea trip, Nazgul had scored an upset on JinNam, a strong Korean Zerg. That was a big win, no doubt there, but JinNam was no XellOs.

However, Nazgul did have one thing going in his favor: the matchup. “For some reason I had more natural affinity for PvT [Protoss vs. Terran],” Nazgul told me in an interview way back in 2021. “When it came down to it, it was my best matchup.” 

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Read more about Nazgul's competitive career and journey in Korea in our deep dive article.

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In part, that was because of how Nazgul preferred to play. He favored a hit-and-run style that focused more on eking out a big economic advantage through winning smaller skirmishes. “Back then, especially in PvT, people tried to end the game too early, they were trying to be too aggressive. [...] Just expand three more times so he has to come out and beat you in the open field.”

That strategy was effective against Terrans, who could form great defenses if you gave them the space to. XellOs recognized this too and, like Nazgul, became an aggressive player as well. Especially in TvT [Terran vs. Terran] — a matchup he would help reshape into some less defensive and more dynamic. 

So it was only fitting that the two were fighting each other about seven minutes into the game. XellOs starts things off by attacking deep into Nazgul’s side of the map, trying to disrupt the Protoss’s second base. It’s too aggressive, though, and XellOs ends up having to flee. He almost makes it out too but a final Dragoon shot lands just in time for Nazgul.

The game is far from over, but the scales start to tip towards Nazgul. XellOs launches another attack just two minutes later and not only is Nazgul ready for it, but he’s preparing to fly his own units across the map and hit XellOs’s main base. Another minute later, Nazgul disembarks and attacks XellOs — and this is where the game starts to break open. Nazgul attacks basically every two minutes from here on out, each attack getting more purchase than the last. 

By the 26-minute mark in the VOD, Nazgul has four bases cleanly collecting resources while XellOs has three, two of which are constantly getting raided. In any version of StarCraft, these economic advantages really matter — the resources not only pouring into more army, but into more upgrades too. At a certain point, Victor can afford to drop expensive late-game units into XellOs main base to destroy a few buildings and workers. Even if those expensive units die, it’s a net gain for Nazgul because XellOs has much fewer resources to spare. 

XellOs stacks a large army on the high ground outside of his main base, waiting for Nazgul’s final assault but the economic advantage is becoming so much that he eventually does decide to meet Nazgul in the open field. He bleeds more units to what isn’t even the main Protoss force and finally taps out. 

I‘m not trying to tell fairy tales here. Nazgul did not go on to become the Perfect Protoss — this match was about where he peaked, staging somewhere in the realm of the top 100. On the other hand, XellOs would eventually go to stand on a higher summit as a top ten player in the world. Still, Nazgul’s win was impressive because it was so incredibly rare to see a non-Korean player take down one of the top ten in Korea. The win also might’ve been the biggest one that Team Liquid, as a StarCraft clan, would have until 2010 and the release of StarCraft II. 

Nazgul eventually became better known as “Victor,” and settled more into the role of community leader and co-founder than competitor. You ask Victor or his competitive days and he’ll tell you that he was going to get outscaled at one point or another. Even if you don’t know StarCraft, you can see in early Brood War footage how low the APM and the speed is compared to today, or even compared to 2008-2010 as legends like Flash start to rise. (XellOs could not hang for long in this era either.)

This WCG game between two Brood War legends, Flash and Bisu, shows how fast and precise the skirmishes in PvT would get. 

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But these are the roots of Team Liquid and I think they spell the future of it too. Whether it’s in the fact that Team Liquid new star, Clem, is a European phenom who plays that heavy-skirmish, dropship style but to a faster speed and higher level. Or in the fact that the dream of competing at the highest level is what started all of this and that the dream of scaling ever higher is still what keeps the lights on.