Chapter 465: The National Champions' Countermeasures
As soon as this news broke, everyone felt a bit surprised.
This time, Sweet Potato was taking the initiative to challenge, unlike Starlight, who only responded after the challenge letter was already in hand.
Although many were worried about Sweet Potato, the vast majority felt incredibly inspired, flooding Weibo with cheers and encouragement for him.
"Sweet Potato, the god, is so domineering! Go for it, crush that Origin!"
"Sweet Potato, the god, is amazing! Taking the initiative to fight—this is the spirit of baring your blade!"
"Indeed, our national champions are the last line of defense against artificial intelligence!"
"We Warcraft players, why fear a battle!"
"Upstairs, you've been reading too many xianxia novels..."
Whether he won or lost, Sweet Potato's proactive challenge against the AI was a huge morale booster and earned him a massive wave of new fans.
As for why, after all those top players had studied for so long, it was Sweet Potato who stepped up first?
Because after extensive research, everyone agreed that the Human race had the best chance against Origin, and Sweet Potato was the highest-level Human player in the national server and even the world.
Although Sweet Potato and Starlight had a mixed record this year, with wins and losses on both sides, that was normal given they were both at the top level. Besides, fighting Origin was a completely different matter. Even if the odds weren't great, there was still a glimmer of hope for victory.
Moreover, among the three current domestic players, he was the most suitable.
Goph actually wanted to go too, but he knew very well that the Orc race struggles against the Elf race. As for Li Jingsi, her skill level was similar to Starlight's, and in a mirror match, Elf versus Elf made it hard to pull off any big tricks.
From the game mechanics of *Warcraft III* itself, the Elf race has no absolute natural enemy, but it has a love-hate relationship with the Human race.
For example, in Chen Mo's previous life, the champion Th000, who defeated Moon to win the last WCG championship, had a habit of using the Human race against Elves and the Elf race against Humans.
Fighting in a mirror match feels restrictive, whereas switching races allows for more flexibility.
Furthermore, after research by several top experts, everyone basically reached a consensus: to defeat Origin, going head-on was hopeless; they had to think of other methods.
Using tricky tactics or trying to deceive Origin was one approach, but the success rate was low. Because current mainstream tactics are the optimal choices summarized by professional players. If you resort to gimmicky strategies, you'd be at a disadvantage in the early, mid, and late game, and you might not even survive long enough for your trick to pay off before getting GG'd.
For instance, you might want to recruit a Dark Ranger to charm enemy peasants and create a mixed-race army to confuse Origin's judgment, but the prerequisite is that you must have a level 6 Dark Ranger or be an Undead player.
Given Origin's nature, would it let your Dark Ranger safely level up to 6?
Using the Undead race is even more absurd. Not only is the Undead race widely considered weak at expanding and relatively disadvantaged, but the key issue is that there are hardly any high-level Undead players in the domestic scene!
And the most frustrating part is that Origin is an Elf. If you try to use a Dark Ranger to charm peasants, the premise is that the map is large enough for massive expansion and dragging the game into the late stage. But if you can expand, can't Origin, as an Elf, also spam expansions?
As for deceiving Origin, the very concept of "deception" is hard to establish because Origin's judgment of the situation changes every second. It would never feel deceived.
Besides, Origin knows how to scout and gather intelligence. Trying to fool Origin from start to finish is as difficult as fooling any other professional player.
The problem now is that Origin isn't some naturally brain-dead, insane computer AI. It's an artificial intelligence smarter than human players. Any tricky tactics humans can think of, it might have already simulated with itself countless times.
So, after much deliberation, everyone concluded that the most promising tactic to beat Origin was TR—and preferably a Tier 1 TR!
TR, or Tower Rush, involves a full-scale rush. If both sides spawn at a close point, you immediately pull out a bunch of peasants and low-tier units at Tier 1, run to the enemy's base, build arrow towers, and shoot the enemy to death.
Facing a sea of auto-attacking arrow towers, what use is micro-management?
Of course, Origin is an AI and not stupid; it must have ways to counter TR. But having a countermeasure and being able to stop it are two different things. Which professional player doesn't know the opponent might TR? Yet countless pros have fallen to this tactic.
This is precisely why, after much consideration, everyone pushed Sweet Potato forward. The Human race is the easiest to execute TR with and has the highest chance of success.
Other races—Elf, Orc, Undead—aren't as effective with this strategy.
Clearly, Sweet Potato wasn't unprepared this time. He came well-armed, having studied many replays with everyone and formulated several tactics before stepping up.
The national professional players were all well aware that even if they didn't respond, Origin would eventually come knocking. The longer they delayed, the stronger Origin would become. They couldn't just hide like turtles forever, could they?
Better to fight sooner than later, and better to challenge proactively than to respond passively.
At least... this way, they could lose with a bit more dignity.
...
With Sweet Potato's acceptance, the topic of the human-versus-AI match heated up once again!
Especially domestically, everyone was paying even closer attention to this battle because it featured a national player challenging Origin, defending human dignity in the realm of video games!
"The national champions have finally made their move! Go, Sweet Potato, the god!"
"Tonight, we are all Sweet Potato fans!"
"Alright, if the Elf race fails, we still have the Human race. Representing humanity as a Human player—no problem!"
"Exactly! Taking the initiative to challenge—so domineering! And even if Sweet Potato, the god, can't do it, we still have Goph. No worries!"
Many people were still quite optimistic, after all, Goph hadn't made his move yet. But in reality, the top Warcraft experts knew that Goph's chances weren't necessarily better than Sweet Potato's...
...
After Sweet Potato announced his challenge, Origin's development team immediately rushed to the country without rest.
For Origin, there was no need for rest; the offline version didn't even require antivirus scans.
As for why they were in such a hurry, it was Sweet Potato's own request.
Because... if they didn't fight quickly, Origin might evolve further!
The current Origin was an offline version, meaning it wouldn't use the supercomputer's capabilities. All computations were done on this small cylindrical device.
Moreover, it wouldn't automatically update its version. Although it had some self-learning ability, it was very limited.
As for the complete Origin, it could directly use the supercomputer as its core for computation, but that would obviously consume too many resources. On one hand, it was wasteful; on the other, it seemed terribly unfair.
So, Sweet Potato decided to challenge this current version of Origin.
This was also a lesson learned from the previous Go human-versus-AI match. Back then, human top players might have had a chance to beat the AI, but because they feared inadequate preparation and delayed the match by over a month, the Go AI's strength had improved by several levels in that time...
Sweet Potato didn't want that to happen—to be able to win, only to have the AI evolve continuously due to delays and end up losing. That would be incredibly frustrating.
In truth, everyone knew deep down that even if they won this time, when the AI came back stronger in the future, they would most likely lose.
Because the AI's evolution speed is far faster than humans'. It's like two lines with different slopes. The AI might start low, but one day, it will catch up and even surpass humans.
But who cares about what happens later? At least being able to beat the AI now is enough.