WCG - An Esports Orgasm & Why WoW Needs To Be Part Of It, Daanzka Talks FeralMP, Inflame Speaks Out

I pleasantly enjoyed this weekend with the absolutely amazing WCG stream. High quality for free is pretty nice and don't get me started on the major e-sports games finals. WC3, SC & CS grand finals easily made me feel like I'm watching the Olympic 100m men final race. It's sad that they had to stop the CS stream but we have to understand that RTS is just on a completely different level for Asians (may I add, rightfully so) and nobody could anticipate that the first map would go into not less than four overtimes.

The SC tournament was just breath taking. It simply had everything. The German new comer "Koll" who is only 14 years old managed to place forth in his second offline event (first one being German WCG qualifiers) beating the US progamer idrA. What does that remind me of...

Anyway, the final was crowned with Jaedong vs. Stork with a sick comeback of JD in the first game followed by a ridiculously close second game. My heart beat was just under 200 and I was sweating and shivering. In game three, we saw Stork - the forever 2nd - choke as he got his only observer shot down and as a result his army got demolished by Jaedong's lurkers.Let's relive what I thought in this very moment:

You can see the despair in his face, the pain. He lost. To Jaedong. Again. All the training the entire last year. 8 to 12 hours a day. Everyday... He did extremely well and in two weeks he will say and believe the same. In this very moment though, you can see his eyes reflecting more light than they usually do. They're wet. He's disappointed with himself. He's thinking about game one and how he lost even though he had such a huge advantage. You can't afford mistakes in a World Cyber Games final. "Next year...Jaedong, next year"





While the officials open the player box to get him out, he hears the crowd cheering for both of them and also in anticipation for the Wc3 grand finals. Fifteen thousand people are in the hall, all very close together with nowhere near enough chairs for everyone. When they see their face on the main screen, they will smile into the camera and some will form the victory sign with their fingers - no indicators of embarrassment because of being on an E-sports stream in any way. Most of them are handsome looking 20-30 year old 50/50 male and female Chinese. They sure know how to make noise as the ground is trembling from their cheering. Tasteless and Artosis, the shout caster legends say that they've never witnessed anything like this in their career and they both agree it's bigger and better than Blizzcon.

Tosspot and RotterdaM - the shout casters for wc3 - take over. It's an all Chinese final in Chengdu, the capital of Chinese e-sports - some argue even the center of e-sports in the world. Fly100% and Infi are going to battle it out. RotterdaM who is an outstanding Orc from the Netherlands himself bets that Fly is going to take it. The first map is Echo Isles, a small player map where usually Orc has an advantage considering the Blademaster is able to harass so easily and shut down every possibility of an expansion. Then the unexplainable happens. After losing a couple of footmen and an item at the mercenary camp item, Infi calls it "GG" after only 3 minutes. In front of 30000 Chinese (slanted) eyes. Thousands of jaws just dropped to the ground and a gigantic "OOOHHHHH" floods the hall as if they just saw a terrible car accident.

Tosspot and RotterdaM are speechless. This game was no where near over. Infi just forfeit a not even closely decided game in a WCG final after only three minutes. Both of them sound disappointed in Infi, but not for long. The second map is turtle rock and again the early game of Infi goes very bad. In fact it's almost over. His building placement is lacking as his vault gets kicked three times in a row, he uses unit after unit and he's behind in hero levels. He has to act. He buys a beast master and starts taking risks. As the Human needs to portal after trying to kick buildings in the Fly's base, Infi traps himself in his own base - a noob mistake that almost costs him the game. Infi needs a plan to allow himself to have this extra margin of error that only few champions can afford. He asks himself the golden question: "What would Twixz do?". An electric shock runs through his body. He got the saving idea.

He powerlevels his Beast Master to level three and researches master training for his sorceress. "When in doubt, just beast cleave", he learned on MLG's WoW streams. He summons level two bears, casts invisibility on them and continuously sends them in Fly's peon line. One by one, the peons drop and the Orc's economy is immensely slowed down and while both players manage to expand, Infi just turtles it out in his towers winning the game by out eco'ing Fly100%. Get Twixz'd on. 

In game three Infi manages to impress from the get go and applies too much pressure with his burrow rape. Fly tries everything to recover and fights till the very last building but it is simply not enough. After a ridiculous first 3 minute game, Infi comes back and wins WCG '09 in Wc3. The entire hall realizes that they have been eye-witnesses of a legendary scenario: The birth of a baller - Gosu Infi.



WoW at WCG - Why you, I... well we need it!


I said it in my last blog, but after watching these finals I'm absolutely certain that WoW could be up there. While there were amazing finals of great e-sports games, there were also competition in cellphone racing games. Considering that fact, there is no reason for WoW as an e-sport to not work participate there despite the fact that it's a national tournament so players from the same country would need to play together, a huddle that CS easily takes every year. Certainly, the rule set had to be adjusted as you can't expect every nation to send one team as I'm pretty sure that let's say Poland doesn't have a top notch roster of three teams. Make it 8-16 nations and figure out a fair way to select those countries based on contribution to e-sports or results at international events. Players have to form the teams themselves and qualify through a tournament. I believe that you really only need 5 TRs: Two for NA, two for Asia and one for Europe.

Imagine Pookz, Woundman and Sodah against Flyn, Inflame and Wottka. Hydra, Kalimist and Redhot (ok he's retired, name me another good British Mage) versus Button Bashers.

It's a challenge to organize and some people probably want their main team to participate which probably won't work with the spirit of the WCG. It's still a shame that WoW is not at the e-sports Olympics when a game like "Crossfire" is. It seems unlikely to work, but it would be amazing. You can vote for WoW here.



Daanzka Talks FeralMP

A while back I reported that former #1 SK100 Mage Daanzka about his new lineup of Feral/Mage/Priest. Looking over to the Cyclone ladder it looks pretty good for them, even though they tanked a bit down from ~2730 to now 2664 at 80% winratio (Shael's games were only played in that comp). Sadly the armory didn't update yet so we could analyse some numbers, but instead I got an interview with Daanzka himself. Yay for an interview without douchebaggyness!



So Daanzka, you threatened me yet again to write about you or I will be G-kicked. You said you had news about FeralMP, how's it going so far?

We're doing pretty good I'd say. The lineup definitely has a lot of potential due to massive TBC CC!




So do you think that CC is the key to this comp or do you run into situation in which you win via "wotlk burst"? Also how is FeralMP different in its demand on the player compared to RMP or Wizard Cleave?

CC definitely wins games with this comp, seeing as it's basically impossible to score a kill without a healer being CC'd. The playstyle is way different from my previous wizard cleave (Mage lock Shaman). I've made quite a gear change as well due to me getting sat on always every game, all game.




Yeah, I saw you switched from 500 Res to 900. Which comp would you say is the hardest for you personally and for you as a team? Do you have a serious hardcounter?

The hardest matchup for me personally is a really good RMP that tunnels me all game and puts all their CC on our priest, hence me switching to some more survivability. We met Inflame's Shadow cleave a couple of times and on BEA it's a really tough match up for us but with the extra innervate on our priest, we can most likely out mana them on any other map if played correctly.




Nice, you seem confident in the line up. What about TR? I heard you played it in the qualification round on the ESL TR as well. Does the comp suffer from S5 gear of would you say it's still a viable tournament composition?

Fortunately for us, our comp is based on heavy CC and not damage, therefore I'd say that it's definitely one of the setups that could compete for a top3 spot.




I hope so as it will hopefully help you being less of a tyrant in guild chat when you succeed and it's certainly nice to see a completely new composition that isn't only about face roll at those events. Anything you want to share with the world?

Only ******* block defensively.




Haha, sweet! Thanks for your time!

You're welcome



I know many people in Europe are giving Daanzka a huge amount of **** and while I'm not exactly sure why that is, in my opinion he's not only a high skilled Mage but also a nice fella. Phew, that's at least a month more in eHeroes!



Today I leave you with a sound clip of Divine Inflame and I really don't know how to take it. Yes, that's really the Divine himself. Yiska (unshader'd, slack) out.