Q1 Esportimes: Did Wicadia get used to the main roster? Did he live up to the expectations? Are you satisfied as a team or as a coach?

A1 Fabre: We were trying him out. He would practice with us for 10 days and then he would join the tournament with us. However, on the first day Ali Haydar joined, I was sure he was the right fit for us. Me and the players didn’t think he would be the right piece for us. He is very open to improvement, he takes what is said, listens and applies it. This is very good. A little inexperienced, but he’ll get over it in time. We would like to thank all the academy players and coach who played a role in his development.

Q2 Esportimes: Woxic is included as an AWP player again after a long time. Do you think the current roster is completed if we talk about roles.

A2 Fabre: Woxic had just left before i joined so that was a bad timing for me. I wanted to continue with him but under those circumstances it didn’t work out. So imoRR had to make sacrifice to play AWP. For me, he wasn’t bad quite the contrary he has a great talent with AWP but a rifler’s point of view is different from a AWP player. We had a problem with this but i think we got the maximum performance from a rifle and entry player. Currently, our team is well settled than it is used to. Now we have 3 powerful rifler, 1 AWP main and 1 main IGL. In my opinion, if we do our share our roles are quite spot on.

Q3 Esportimes: Including the tournaments that you participated and CCT Championship, what can you say about Eternal Fire’s performance in 2022?

A3 Fabre: It would be good if we could make it to the major but it didnt work out. When i came here my goal was TOP 10, we made it to the TOP 18 but then we had some falls. We were suppoesed to go more forward after winning the CCT Malta but then we regressed. I take those things normal. In this game either you go forward or you go backwards, everyone experiences these stuffs. But i know my aim and i will continue to work towards my aim as long as im here.

Q4 Esportimes: What are your future plans about your career?

A4 Fabre: We do not know what will happen in the future. I am not sure if i will do this job for years. I have been coaching for about 2 years. I won lots of things with this job but also lost lots of things too. Being a coach is hard and requires big responsibility. But i can say that i do not want to quit this job without winning a grand championship with a Turkish quintet. I have a dream.

Q5 Esportimes: Finally, what do you want to say your fans and Eternal Fire fans?

A5 Fabre: I love you all guys, sometimes i get very supportive and very sincere messages. Keep supporting us, the last bastion standing!

The post Interview with Eternal Fire’s coach Fabre! appeared first on Esportimes.

Runiverse will thus release its app on the ESL platform to support its esports goals, joining more established games like Counter-Strike, DOTA 2 and League of Legends. The partnership intends to close the gap between web3gaming and conventional skill-based esports competition.

Gamification of the cryptocurrency market is at the heart of Runiverse. As a result, rivalry is created around market shifts. Users choose a cryptocurrency token at the beginning of the game cycle, which is followed by a virtual race. The user with the token that is increasing the fastest wins the virtual race, with the token value being recorded in real-time.

To access new runners and tracks, players will be able to open virtual packs. After that, they can earn prizes by participating in rallies and holding Runiverse’s NFTs, each of which entitles the holder to %6 of the prize money.

Furthermore, ESL Gaming anchors the biggest esports platform of its kind. As reported by, Runiverse’s popularity in social community will rise thanks to the partnership.

In a press conference, COO of Runiverse Gip Cutrino said: “We are excited to be hosted on a globally recognised tournament platform such as ESL. We believe this project will extend beyond the reach of the gaming industry, as we look to bridge the gap between traditional gaming and Web3 gaming in a revolutionary new manner.”

Last month, by signing a three-year partnership with Activision for Call of Duty: Mobile, ESL Gaming maintained to build up its own mobile esports ecosystem.

The post ESL Partners with Crypto Market Gamification Tool Runiverse appeared first on Esportimes.

Who is Berke Tümay Andıç?

I am 29 years old, actually a long time (METU NCC and KOU) Chemical Engineering
student. I think that I am a character who organizes events and organizations for as
long as I can remember and tries to entertain people around me based on moderate
communication. As an example, we can show my involvement in the establishment and
management of many societies or organizations in the last 10 years. Just before I
ended my education life at METU, after 2 really enjoyable years I turned to Twitch
broadcasts, I decided to focus entirely on Esports. At the moment, I carry out both
working life and education together.

How did you meet esports?

My acquaintance with esports goes back a long time. With the increase in
computer and internet usage towards the end of the 90s and the beginning of the 2000s, I think that I stepped into competitive platforms even though I was not aware of
it at that time. The competitive interaction within both FPS and MOBA games led me to
the industry as time progressed. I think that my biggest breaking moment was that I
started to look at this industry a little differently because I produced VALORANT content
completely during my Twitch broadcasts. As of January 2022, my teammates and I started researching Esports and Esports Management in Turkey. As a result of our
studies which lasted for about 9 months, we thought that we could integrate the efforts
to increase the performance of esports players and that these practices would
contribute greatly to the teams in our country in Europe and the world arena. Due to
some facts, we turned our direction to the MENA region teams and had meetings and
support with some well-known Esports teams in this region. Due to my desire to
contribute to our region as a corporate, I am currently working as PUBG Turkey
Program Manager at Challengermode.

What is your perspective on Turkey as Challengermode? Do you have any
projects you can share for 2023?

Turkey is a great region and has played an important role in Challengermode as
a company as well as provided the global esports scene with pro players and
teams competing on the absolute highest level.

Challengermode is growing rapidly in the region with efforts currently targeted
towards the grassroots scene. Our work together with Krafton on PUBG
NextPro is a great example of that. The project allows players looking to become
the next generation of esports champions somewhere to consistently practice
with like-minded players and gain experience playing in a more serious setting.
It’s really exciting to be a part of that journey.

Working closely with local organizations like FUT Academy and PROTALITY has
also been pivotal to our success in the region in PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS.

Outside of PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS, we are also looking to increase our
presence in the region together with other games and their communities.
Recently, Challengermode became an official esports partner for PUBG MOBILE.
This, combined with the game being deeply integrated with the platform, truly
enables us to expand our offering for PUBG MOBILE organizers and players in
the region.

We are also putting up a PUBG MOBILE Esports fund open for tournament
organizers in Turkey on the grassroots level. This is an initiative we have done
before in other regions and games, we see help TOs increase the scope of
community tournaments by allowing them to scale up and cut costs.

As far as projects for 2023 go, we have some projects we’re really excited about
but nothing that I can share with you right now. There are definitely things
happening in early ’23, you’ll just have to wait and see.

How do you see the future of esports in Turkey?

Great success is coming. It will continue to come. I know that some
official institutions have activities to raise awareness of families.
Thanks to these studies, the number of players who want to turn to Esports will
increase and the competition among themselves will affect the
performance of the players. Of course, not only that, the support and
encouragement initiatives of the clubs for the players who grow up play
an important role. Until a few years ago, we witnessed the birth
of an industry, now it is standing on its own feet and will probably
move forward in 2-3 years with this acceleration. The trend shows it.
My only regret is the local change in the League of Legends league system. I hope this will be changed as soon as possible.

The post We spoke with PUBG Turkey Program Manager at Challengermode, Berke Tümay Andıç appeared first on Esportimes.

Esportimes: Hi thanks for being here, can you talk about yourself for a bit?

Age of Noob: Of course, I am known as Age of Noob. I started my YouTube channel 3 years ago. Ethnically I am a Turk and have been living in Canada for a decade. I have finished my university here and I am currently working in the software industry. Age of Empires have been in my life since childhood. I started with the Age of Empires 1 and then went on to play the other games in the series. I used to play the games with my friends, we had a lot of LAN parties when Age of Empires 2 came out. When I was in high school there was Forgotten Empires, which was an unofficial mod for AoE 2. At the time the game was played mainly through Voobly. The game’s scene was much smaller compared to today. When Age of Empires 2 HD Edition came out, I started watching Viper & T90. Several years later Microsoft announced the Age of Empires Definite Edition, which stocked my interest. I was in all the betas, though I wished they changed some core mechanics to make it comparable to what we have with AoE 2’s Definitive Edition.

Esportimes: So, is there an interesting backstory behind your name?

Age of Noob: Before I started the channel there weren’t any notable small scale AoE content creators. The community itself was very niche and geared towards the pros. When I got into the content creation side, I picked Age of Noob to emphasize that the majority of the community was consisted of noobs or non-pro players. I was also not that good at the game myself, around 1400 ELO.

Esportimes: You have been quite popular when it comes Age of Empires 4. Can you talk about that?

Age of Noob: Overall my channel has risen steadily, though at times there were some spikes in viewership. The first of these spikes happened when I mashed a Lord of the Rings scene with Age of Empires. I did a similar thing with Game of Thrones. Afterwards I had a huge increase in viewership during the first months of Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition.  There were so many bugs at the time… When I made videos about these bugs my viewership spiked. When Age of Empires 4 got announced I promised myself to increase the overall content quality of my channel. For example, at the time most of the Age of Empires content was not on the level of Spirit of the Law. I changed my microphone with higher quality one and also started using scripts for my content. After that a started to focus exclusively on AoE 4. However, I still make some videos on the older games. At this point, if I post a quality video, no matter the game a have a consist viewership base. Though I still think I haven’t achieved the results that are on part with my efforts.

Esportimes: So, this is not your main job at the moment?

Age of Noob: Of course not, if that was the case, I would have been posting way more videos. All the effort that I have been putting for my videos… I do that in my free time. At the moment I spend 20% of my time on the channel. If I had focused more on the channel, I probably would have been more successful.

Esportimes: Can you speak more about your experiences on YouTube?

Age of Noob: First of all, reaching a point where you have a core viewership base is really hard. I currently have 22 thousand subscribers and let me tell you most of them are people who are truly hard-core fans of age of empires. Achieving this is really hard. Other channels with large subscriber base usually don’t get an equal number of views. Most of my subscribers usually watch most of my videos. For example, I reviewed an RTS game called Fertile Crescent and I got around 10 thousand views. It was an unknown indie game, so these numbers are pretty good for me. I started on twitch and a had a little following around 50. I started to put my Twitch streams on YouTube. These videos had around 100 views. At the moment a lot of people call me Spirit of the Law of Age of Empires 4. Several people started with that premise however with low viewers most of them stopped. I continued doing this for about 1.5 years with almost no viewership before I started to get some traction. To be successful on YouTube you need patience and luck.

Esportimes: Let’s talk about the games. What are your favorite civilizations?

Age of Noob: Franks in AoE 4 because they fit my playstyle. They are easy to boom with, their technologies are cheap, and they have high mobility. I have a lot of favorites in AoE 2. I love playing as Britons when I am in flanks. If I am playing as a pocket its Franks. In arena I like playing as Turks and Portuguese. Though I have to stay I usually random queue because I like to change my style. Lastly, for AoE 1 I like Babylonians solely because their workers have giant bone weapons that I liked as a kid. I have no knowledge of the meta so that’s the only reason.

Esportimes: What do you think about the future of AoE 4?

Age of Noob: I have been playing AoE 4 since the closed beta. The marketing of the game was really bad, things such as water affects, and graphics alienated a lot of people. However, people who played the closed beta knew that it wasn’t the case, it was just that the marketing of the game was horrible. Microsoft’s hesitance on showing real in-game footage did some serious damage. When the game released, things such as the lack of hotkey customization and bad icons made it seem half baked. If they had delayed the game and fixed issues like this the game could have had a larger player base. But because of such mistakes a lot of people lost interest. The game had a community council that advised on such things, but it seems the developer did not listen to them on some important issues. I did make videos about the in-game bugs but overall, their existence was damaging to the game.

Still, in my opinion, AoE 4 is better than AoE 2. If they can push forward with updates, I believe, that a lot of issues that plague AoE 2 can be fixed in AoE 4. AoE 4 has the potential because it is more friendly to casual players. The modding support, which was recently added, is extensive and players are already making some mods that improve some core issues such as arrow mechanics. AoE 4’s engine is fantastic and offers a lot of advanced features such as lightning and physics control. Features such as these are still not promoted in the marketing of the game. If this continues, the game might lose all of its steam. Community tournaments are already dying because of a lack in audience. In my opinion, AoE 4 lost a lot of players that are never going to come back. However, if they release a good DLC with tangible content, while also improving things such as modding and UI, we might see a resurgence. It also depends on if Microsoft is willing to continue its support via tournaments.

Esportimes: Lastly, do you think Red Bull Wololo: Legacy 2022 tournament can be a turning point for Age of Empires?

 First of all, Red Bull Wololo 5 was the best tournament I had ever watched. It was great even for people who did not follow Age of Empires. It was a great esports event that was comparable to other big titles. The viewership numbers were also good. AoE 1 is also part of the Legacy 2022 so if that effects the active player base even, I can make some videos for that game. Secondly, AoE 2 and 4 will have separate tournaments at the same time so it will be interesting to see some AoE 2 players returning to 4. I think that was the intention of Microsoft, I don’t know the exact format but there is a chance for player base transfer. So, I am hopeful for Legacy 2022.

We thank Age of Noob for accepting our interview offer and wish him good luck in his future endeavors. You can reach and support him through the following channels:

• YouTube
• Instagram
• Twitter
• Discord
• Twitch
• Patreon

The post Our Interview With Age of Noob appeared first on Esportimes.

• Faik Necef: Hello, can you tell us about yourself?

Alperen: Hi, I am Alperen Tekinay. I am known as “Alperen” on the internet. I started Age of Empires 2 after the epidemic and opened a Twitch channel and started streaming as a hobby. After a while I thought that I enjoyed streaming a lot and that I could make money from that. Later, with the help of my friends and viewers who believed in me, I decided to do this as a job. In regards to Age of Empires 2, I joined an esports team and became a professional player. I participated in tournaments. I have had some successes. I was in the last 64 in the Red Bull tournament. I was in the top eight in some Turkish tournaments. I also organized my own tournaments.

• FN: Did you start the game professionally after the epidemic or did you play Age of Empires for the first time?

Alperen: I never knew about the game before the pandemic, I started as a hobby. It was a very funny moment for me. I was bored and there was nothing to do. I wrote “best strategy games” to google and looked at the results. I saw Age of Empires 2 there and that day I bought the game from Steam and started playing.

• FN: Normally, Age of Empires players are more experienced. It was very popular in Turkey in the 2000s, for example. It’s really interesting that you started late. However, you’ve come a long way.

Alperen: Thank you. I made it to the top 50 in the world rankings. But as you said, it is a little difficult to play against people with 20 years of experience. I’ve been playing this game for 1 and a half 2 years. So my opponent has been playing for 20 years.

• FN: Is professional gaming your main occupation right now?

Alperen: It is indeed my main profession right now. I play under the umbrella of Pacific eSports. I want to continue to do this as my main profession with the help of those who watch my streams. So, of course, it is very difficult to do this in Turkey since Age of Empires is not as popular as other games. Compared to other games, such as LoL, which has millions of viewers. After all, I live alone and I have to get on with my life. But unfortunately, it is very difficult to do this with only my skills in Age of Empires 2.

It’s very difficult. Because the number of supporters and followers are very small. There are always the same people, no new players. There is no new audience. However, there were months where I earned as much as a broadcaster with 1000 viewers. This is because the age group is older. In other words, since the average age is high, there are some generous people who are willing to donate. In other words, there were many people who believed in me, trusted me, and wanted me to do this as a job. I even shot special videos for them on YouTube.

• FN: So what do you think of the overall Age of Empires 2 competitive scene?

Alperen: Everything is very difficult for a beginner. But for them, I recommend Age of Empires 4. This is because Microsoft is sponsoring it more. It’s a newly released game. There are constant tournaments and there is usually a bigger prize pool. Also, It is really difficult to compete with people who have been playing for 20 years within the scope of Age of Empires 2, it is very challenging.

• FN: You’ve been known for a while, with your Gurjaras picks, a newly added civilization to the game. Why did you choose to play this civilization?

Alperen: Because their gameplay is very different compared to other civilizations. Their special units are very different. While there are normally 2 special units per civilization, Gurjaras have at least three different units. That’s why the gameplay is a little different. I don’t think they’re overly strong right now compared to the others. But it’s still my favorite civilization. My three favorite civilizations are Maya, Aztec, and Gurjaras. Because I like to play aggressively early on. This game is not a farming simulation. So, I like to play aggressively and entertain my audience.

• FN: The world’s biggest Age of Empires tournament, Red Bull Wololo: Legacy, was announced recently. Will you participate in this tournament?

Alperen: Of course I will. I hope I get a good draw. So as long as the group I’m in isn’t in doesn’t have the top 5-10 players, it would be fine. Also, as you know, the tournament will be held Germany. If you make it to the last 16, you will play inside a real castle. To be able to meet and talk there, to reach that stage, not to think about financial difficulties… These are huge things. These are the dreams of every player. Let’s hope I can reach that. But as I said, it’s really hard to compete. So you always have a financial problem in your mind. You play knowing that. In fact, you have to reach a certain point or have certain sponsors to play without that on your mind.

• FN: How do you see the future of Age of Empires? What are your thoughts on this?

Alperen: I started Age of Empires 4 with high hopes. I thought it would make a huge buzz. And it did to an extend… there were around 80-90k players playing daily at one time. But unfortunately it did not get enough support. It had a lot of flaws when it first came out. Once a player sees these, they stop playing after a certain time. Because you’re playing a half backed game, and the game’s makers call it a full release. In addition, Microsoft moved a lot of players from Age of Empires 2 to 4. This split the overall players into 2. Then those who started Age of Empires 4 quit. Because the updates were coming too late. Frankly, I was expecting Microsoft to be more professional on this matter. I think Age of Empires is an a tough situation. I hope that enough attention and support is provided, and it will reach a better spot. Because we all love this game, we don’t want to leave it behind. But no one is helping the beginners either. That’s why a lot of people leave after a while.

• FN: Finally, is there anything you would like to add?

Alperen: Thank you for doing this interview with me.

We thank Alperen Tekinay for accepting our interview request. You can reach him through the following platforms:

• Twitch
• YouTube
• Discord
• Instagram

The post Interview With Age of Empires Pro Player “Alperen” appeared first on Esportimes.

• Esportimes: Hey, firstly thanks for doing this interview with me. How’s it going, how’s it been with the LEC coming back soon?

Drakos: Ah, it’s been going well, I’ve only had a little bit of a break after Worlds to relax and refresh and now we’re well and truly into preparing for the LEC 2022 Spring Season, which is always exciting, it’s always super fun. Right now we’re still far enough away and without team rosters fully locked it’s hard to do anything super specific like planning broadcast segments so it’s a lot more strategic, big-picture stuff. 

It’s still exciting, a lot of brainstorming, this is when you let your mind run wild and think of crazy, cool new ideas or maybe the less immediately exciting workflows that makes life easier for everyone for next year, at least in terms for the broadcast team. It’s definitely an exciting time.

• ET: So it’s not a crazy offseason for just the teams, also for the broadcast teams to prepare new ideas as well.

Drakos: I would say it’s definitely less crazy than it is for teams. Like for a team, you have to scramble to get a roster, there’s so much thinking about stuff. I think for us, it’s like we have worked a lot with the same people year over year and while there are always going to be big changes, I think the big difference is it’s a lot more about refinement for us. Imagine LEC like a team that’s mostly kept the same roster and then imagine that offseason. 

G2 2019 Spring to Summer, that’s like our offseason. They know their five players, they get to focus on content strategy and other things. And obviously there will be new faces, it’s not nearly to the same scale of rebuilding a League of Legends roster from scratch. We’re fortunate enough on LEC to have a product we’re happy with so it’s a lot about refinement, new ideas and incorporating new things rather than, you know, completely rebuilding like it might be for some of the teams.

• ET: That is very interesting to hear you say that because I’ve always seen LEC as a place for new talent to shine, to enter the scene like Troubleinc, Excoundrel and other people.

Drakos: Yeah.

• ET: So it’s like hearing you say that the team is mostly kept the same makes me think about other leagues that don’t have as much newcomers entering the scene.

Drakos: I think that it’s important to specify that I’m talking about the entire broadcast team. Because we have a lot of the same people working on graphics and video but when you just look at new casters and the faces that are rotating it’s always going to look more like that League of Legends team we were discussing earlier. I think you’re completely correct that LEC has, when it comes to on air talent, done a good job of bringing in a lot of new faces. 

• ET: Oh definitely. Also while we’re talking about teams having crazy offseasons, it’s been a couple of weeks since the Free Agency Show and the air has calmed down a little bit. Do you prefer those days when everyone was hungry for big moves, exciting news and a little bit of drama? Or do you prefer the calm, testing-the-new-drakes, occasional news from other leagues times that we’re having right now?

Drakos: I think I always love big drama – I mean, who wouldn’t, right? I think it’s one of the most exciting times of the year, it always comes with such highs and lows and I think the privilege of being a caster is that you kind of have a part of it in the sense that these are teams you’re going to be casting next year and you know a lot of these players on a personal level but you don’t have the same stakes. 

Because I imagine for teams and for players it has to be one of the most stressful times of the year. Are you going to get the five players you want? If you’re a player, are you going to be picked by a team you’re excited about? Or are you going to have to settle for someone that you’re not as excited about? Casters, like the fans, we just get to sit back and watch the chaos and the madness unfold like a spectator sport, you know? So I think that’s always just a fun time of the year.

• ET: Yeah, I definitely hear that. Not from personal experience but from the people I’ve talked to, it is a crazy stressful time. This year especially was extreme with Perkz and Alphari coming back, reportedly, also other people going abroad, we had one of the craziest offseasons to date in my opinion. What was the most shocking thing to you during this time period? What were you not expecting to happen?

Drakos: I mean I was very shocked, like most people, when Rekkles ended up not going to an LEC team or even an LCS team. Or even an LPL team as he had so often discussed in the past about potentially playing in China one day, but instead going to the LFL. I think it’s super, super cool for the LFL and I’m really excited for Karmine Corp and their fans out there that got a chance to have such a prestigious player on their lineup but I think it is a pretty big loss for LEC,

• ET: Of course, of course.

Drakos: It’s hard to look at the upcoming year of talents and say “That guy is going to bring the same level Rekkles did.” and people, not everybody but some people might get there in a few years in their career, some people might hit the ground running, it’s hard to see but I do think that loss of players like Rekkles from the LEC, Hans sama and Bwipo going overseas, I think we’ve lost a lot of players that I think were incredibly talented and while we’re expecting Alphari and Perkz to come back, it’s still hard as an LEC commentator and an LEC fan to watch players that you know are really good not play in your league.

• ET: Yes, it kind of stings, at least we have an eleventh European team called Team Liquid. I’ve always wanted to ask on the scene for a long time like you about this offseason because you’ve seen a lot of offseasons during your time since 2016. How does it feel to be one of the veterans in a relatively young scene?

Drakos: It’s weird because when you’ve been a part of it for so long it doesn’t feel nearly as young as I think it might be in the grand scheme of things, especially if you look at the fact that there are still StarCraft 1 tournaments going on even if they’re not as big as they were in the day. It’s interesting, I mean I’ve seen a lot of offseasons and it never ceases to blow my mind with all the crazy stuff that’ll happen. 

But I’ll say that, over time, you grow to understand more and more about how offseasons work and you learn more perspectives because I think it’s always really easy to look at- when fans look at anything they look at the angle that is most interesting for them. So for them it might be getting the best five possible players together, no constraints. Because they’re not thinking about the business or the money side of things.

• ET: Oh yeah, especially on platforms like Twitter or Reddit, some people are like “Just get these five players! Put them all in a team together!”

Drakos: Heh, yeah, and it’s easy to think that way because teams don’t talk about financials, right? Teams don’t share that information and that’s absolutely fair, I probably wouldn’t want to if Iwas a team either, you don’t want people to think your is weaker just because you didn’t have as much money to spend, right? 

But I think that, as you go longer and longer in the scene, you learn more and more of these perspectives, these angles and while it’s still crazy and super exciting, you start to understand and say “Okay, this is how this player could’ve ended up on this roster, this is how maybe some of these things happened.” and I think it does temper the excitement a little bit, I still remember when I was getting first into League of Legends and when Doublelift went to TSM it was the craziest stuff, I had no idea how it happened, it was unfathomable to me but now I’m like “Okay, well I can see how these things happen now.”

I think it’s just as exciting as it’s ever been in a lot of ways, but it’s also definitely cool to be on the inside and see some of these things coming, occasionally someone will leak something to me and I’m like “Ooh, I’m special, I get insider information”, you know what I mean? And that’s really nice, that’s really cool to feel ingrained as a part of this scene.

• ET: I hear that, hopefully one day I will feel like that as well, but a lot of new people enter the scene nowadays, as well as the older people who stay in. I wanted to talk about someone who is reportedly, well it’s leaked, not staying in with the casting crew. I don’t want to extensively talk about Caedrel’s departure, maybe I’ll talk about it with him one day, I wanted to ask if you’d ever consider going for a coaching position, if offered.

Drakos: Well, Caedrel tweeted recently, not to burst the bubble too much, that he was going to cast for another year. So I think that the danger of keeping up with the rumours is that there’s always something else, because that was a couple weeks ago.

• ET: Wait, really?

Drakos: He tweeted he was sticking with casting, yeah, so the dreams of the rumoured Caedrel Vitality, I believe, are maybe not a hundred percent dead, but at least reasonably dead.

• ET: Ahh, sorry.

Drakos: That said, I don’t think I would ever move into something like coaching, I think that that is beyond my skill set, I think that there is a world I could lead people but mastery of League of Legends has never been one of my strong suits. I do think I’m pretty good at working with people and I think that I could be a team manager or work in that capacity and I would be happy to do so, I think it’s a super cool job, one that doesn’t always get the respect it deserves I think from working with a lot of team managers.

But it is a super cool role that’s inside my skill set. But honestly I really love casting, I think the only thing that would ever pull me away from casting is something else in the content sphere. Because I really love- the thing that makes me love casting so much is just making content people are excited about, whether that’s on the broadcast or preproduced or something else and I think that if there were cool opportunity spaces to do that somewhere else in League of Legends or esports where I could, you know, work with other people who are similar minded and super passionate about it, then- I’m always open to new ideas, but I think I love the LEC, right? So it would take a lot to pull me out.

• ET: Speaking of managing, from what I have seen, managing a team might be one of the hardest things to do in esports and that’s with all the sides of managing I have not seen yet, but keeping all those people in a team together seems hard. That’s why I respect Grabbz so much for keeping that G2 roster together somehow and all the people behind the scene working on that. Anyone who wants to do that is going to face a challenge and I wish them the very best luck.

Drakos: It’s definitely super hard. Respect to Grabbz as a coach for making that work as long as he did.

• ET: You also have another option that many people in the scene except Vedius don’t have, to follow a career in music. I know this is memed about all the time on YouTube and other platforms, but is it crazy enough to just maybe happen one day?

Drakos: I mean, I think that we have been fortunate to make so much music that makes people excited and I would love to pursue music more, I really love music and it’s something I do more in my free time too. But I think it’s the LEC and the esports fandom that keeps the music dream alive for us. I don’t think we’re suddenly all-star musical talent, I think we’re both getting better and we keep trying to one up ourselves and improve.

If we go down this road long enough and people are still excited about it, maybe it’s there, but I think for us, music and the LEC are tied together in terms of that chance. I don’t think there are many non-LEC fans that are like “Wow, these guys are insane, we should sign them.” but LEC fans are like “Damn, you guys are really good at music!” and that’s awesome, I love that. But if we left the LEC, we would leave all those people behind and that would really suck.

• ET: Maybe one day, then, maybe. Speaking of LEC music, I know they say parents can’t decide between their children and stuff like that but what would you say is your favourite piece of content that you created?

Drakos: Ah, I mean it’s- whew, yeah, you’re right, it’s definitely not as tough as deciding between children because content doesn’t care how I feel about it but I care how I feel about the content. Ahh, yea it’s really hard, I would say that it’s probably Rekkles With My Heart. I think that was one of the best pieces of writing that I’ve ever worked on, in terms of what we were able to do and the reaction it got from the fans. Maybe that one’s my favourite right now because it’s one of the ones that’s more recent, but I also loved the four person rap battle.

• ET: Sure, that one was a banger.

Drakos: Honestly it’s very hard because for any piece of content, the best thing in the world is when fans reference it back to us months after it’s been done. The fact that “Rekkles With My Heart” got spikes in listens after Rekkles went to KCorp is the coolest thing to me and that’s what I really love, making something that lives more than just a week on Reddit. That’s what most content does in the esports scene; it’s there, it’s cool for a second and we never come back to it. So it’s really cool when you can make something that can live longer than that and it gets continuously gets referenced back to you. That’s my favourite thing and I think both the four person rap battle with Mad, Rogue, G2 and Fnatic and Rekkles With My Heart have really done that the most.

• ET: I know that feeling. The content living for only one week, mostly. But I hope to know the other one as well in the future. That seems really cool to have your work referenced to you, because the LEC is like a living story and whatever you create is just going to stay there, a part of its history. Maybe we’ll have Rekkles back on Fnatic in two years and then boom, imagine that song. 

Drakos: Who knows? Given his history, it’s very much in the realm of possibility but we’ll have to see what Fnatic and Rekkles think in the years to come. But yeah, it is a dream and I mean it is cool to be something with such a pedigree and a passionate fanbase like LEC, some of the stuff does get to live longer and be more important, it gets to survive the test of time because it is part of a league that has so much history and prestige already. I think that’s really cool.

• ET: It definitely sounds cool. While we’re on this subject, I, of course, had to ask about “Fists to a Gunfight” – your newest single that is on Spotify, Youtube and other music platforms. What was the creative process behind it like? Because this is your first song that is not about LEC or EU, so it raises a lot of questions like “Will you do songs after the other characters?”, “Is the secret Armut single still in the works?”, “Will you have a cameo in Arcane’s second season?” et cetera.

Drakos: I think, wow, that’s a lot of questions. Okay, Armut song, maybe as he definitely deserves a song, don’t know when it’s happening, I haven’t gotten that approved yet but I’ll work on that. Season 2 Arcane, that’s a dream, let’s be clear. That’s a big dream, but that is definitely a dream I can get behind. 

• ET: I mean it happened for Imagine Dragons, it could happen to you, why not?

Drakos: Yeah, I appreciate that those things are close enough for you and hopefully for other people too but like, I’m trying to get in the same room as someone on the same level as JID, Denzel Curry, Imagine Dragons, you know what I mean? That’s like one of my dreams, let alone in the same product or the same song. So you should temper your expectations, one step at a time, you know,

I’m still a fan of so many of those people before I can even be a colleague or anything else. We’ll see what happens in that regard. About other pieces in Arcane, I mean this was a collaborative piece between us and the Arcane team and their marketing portion reached out and said “Hey, we would love to do a rap battle about Arcane.” and the timing worked out so that Vedi and I had to write during Worlds and it was a really high pressure schedule. We got to watch Arcane a little early so we could write this rap battle.

• ET: Oh wow.

Drakos: Making this piece of content, it was really cool and fun but it was definitely a matter of time because we wrote it pretty much right before Groups were even finished. I wish we have lived in a world where we could’ve also seen all the fan reactions because I think that would’ve given us so much more material, because I think we were very set on Jinx versus Vi and now that everyone’s seen the show, when we were watching it and being like “Whoa, oh wow, how are we going to write about this after episode 3? Oh no, what are they talking about?” And by episode 9 we were like “Oh okay, now we see how we can do a rap battle.” so it was really just this process of discovery and it definitely pushed our boundaries.

Because the thing about rap battles, like in Mad Lions versus G2, the most recent one we had, is that they’re rivals. They fight, that’s what they have to do, they literally have to go through each other to get the trophy. So there’s this very clear battle line. They are opposing sides, you got blue team, you got red team and they are going to fight each other. Whereas Vi and Jinx have a super complicated relationship.

This is the first time we had to write about a relationship that had any kind of nuance. Because even if Carzzy and Perkz are best friends and hang out all the time, when they are playing against each other, they are always going to have to fight each other. Vi and Jinx, their relationship is just not that simple. So it was really hard to find an angle to write about, to make something that felt good and we took this angle where we’re both fans of the respective champions, arguing about this “Who would win, Goku or Superman?” type of thing.

I think that worked out well and it was definitely a cool piece of content to be a part of but it was definitely one of the bigger writing challenges we’ve ever had. Before this, we’ve always been writing about things that we’ve been a part of all the time.

We’ve always been a part of LEC, we understand all the memes, we understand the latest jokes. We know when we’re insulting someone for missing smites, we remember the games where that guy missed the smite whereas in this project, we’ve got a couple episodes of Arcane to work off of, we’re trying to figure out how to write that stories and talk about the write things and it was just very different and a super super cool experience.

• ET: Yeah, the closest thing to that vague relationship I can imagine is the EU versus NA rap battle from 2019, but even they were rivals then. It is super interesting and cool to me that you got to watch Arcane early. How was that like, seeing this piece of content unravel when you’ve seen it beforehand? Especially when it’s an amazing show like Arcane that got a lot of dramatic reactions and points? 

Drakos: It was really interesting for a couple of reasons. When you watch stuff early, everyone is worried about stuff getting leaked so one of the preventative measures people take is stamping all over it, you know what I mean?

• ET: I’m sorry, stamping?

Drakos: So imagine a watermark on YouTube, right?

• ET: Oh, an actual stamp on the video, got it.

Drakos: It’ll say “This is for Daniel Drakos”, so if I leak that, everyone knows that came from me. So there was this fear that I had that I would unconsciously get hacked and leak Arcane and that was always in the back of my head, which was super super scary. Because one, obviously I don’t want to leak it and two, I assume I would lose my job if I leaked Arcane. I don’t know but that was really spooky.

But I have mixed feelings, you know, because one of the coolest part about Arcane releasing was watching how everyone got to experience everything together and I think that while it was really cool to see it ahead of time, it made it hard to talk to people and speculate about Arcane because I couldn’t participate. I couldn’t jump in and be like “Oh, wow, I wonder what’s gonna happen?”.

I wouldn’t give it up because I loved the product but it was so, so cool to watch the way that everyone came together and started having their favourite characters, for a lot of people it was Viktor etc. The best part about watching it early and getting to say “Wow, this is something that’s going to be so cool, let’s see how people are going to react.” and the worst part was not being able to react alongside them.

• ET: So it was like a blessing and a curse, wow.

Drakos: Absolutely, absolutely, yeah.

• ET: Now I think it’s more normal because before I was like “Wow!” and now I’m like “Yeah, it’s okay, I can see it’s plusses and minuses.” Still pretty cool though. Since this is an interview for a Turkish website, I legally have to ask this – do you follow TCL or players from the Turkish scene?

Drakos: I mean I follow and generally watch TCL a couple times for MSI and Worlds and then any time any TCL player comes anywhere near the LEC, I’m always checking up to see where they’ve been, who they’ve played with, you know? Because as LEC, we have such a close connection to TCL so often we have a lot of our players like Bwipo, Caps that played in TCL, non-Turkish players and Turkish players like Armut and Blue and I think that TCL and LEC are very close when it comes to players playing in both, especially with the rise of the ERL, I feel like TCL is always a league that’s worth watching and keeping an eye on if you’re an LEC fan, because the next great player in LEC could very well come from TCL. 

• ET: Oh for sure, there are a lot of players with potential – do you have any candidates from TCL in mind that may appear in LEC in future?

Drakos: Hmm, I can’t say for this season, I can say that generally I’ve liked how TCL has gotten more and more about creating domestic talent. TCL went through that weird period of time where you’ve had SnowFlower and Frozen and other Korean imports.

• ET: Definitely, I remember the Korean exodus.

Drakos: Yeah, exactly, all those Korean players did super super well domestically, right? But I always liked to watch players come up in their own region and I always feel when a talent pool feels like it’s strong enough to support itself without needing to rely on imports to find more individually skilled players or players that make up for something that the region might be missing. I think Brazil went through a lot of the same stuff a while ago with all the imports they had. I’m just frankly excited for TCL but I can’t tell you right now if there is any single player that stands out in my mind. It was definitely Armut for a long time, it was Broken Blade before that, Caps and Bwipo, I got pleasure from watching these guys when they were young.

• ET: From the Dark Passage days, wow.

Drakos: Dark Passage days, yeah, here’s the thing: When you’re starting out as a caster, Play-ins are like Worlds finals for you. Because that’s usually what you get when you’re a young caster. So like any caster who’s working on Play-ins’ I was sweating. They wanna learn everything, as I’ve tried to learn everything I possibly could about the TCL, about Dark Passage, about all the players who may or may not have had a name change over the years. 

• ET: Is that something you’d recommend to new casters, to watch a lot from the smaller regions? Or at least know about them?

Drakos: I think that, generally you know if you’re gonna cast Play-ins and the best thing you can do any time you work on any tournament or product is to put the amount of work in that is necessary to tell the right and best stories. I also think that it would be really bad if new casters came in and they went “Oh, I want to cast LEC so I’m not going to worry about TCL or LCL” or any of the regions that they maybe aren’t as close to and that’s just not good for them and it’s certainly not good for the fans either.

Because the best thing that you can do is to tell the story of a team with the weight and the authority of an expert and to do that you have to watch all the regions games. You have to be able to go back and look at this team and you certainly can’t do it by just watching, you also need to talk to the regional experts.

I’ve had a lot of years where I’ve reached out to people who’ve either watched more TCL than I had, people who’ve worked in TCL, people who’ve casted TCL and I encourage anyone and everyone, no matter what tournament or what game their casting to do that. If you do not have the expertise to the knowledge of a region because it’s not the region that you normally work in, there are experts out in the world and people in this community are generally happy to offer that support.

I have talked to so many people in Latin America about LLA teams and they have always been super super helpful, the same is true for TCL. I would be super sad if any caster working on Play-ins weren’t putting their 100% in to learn those players names and stories so they can do the best job possible.

• ET: It’s definitely better to know and not cast than to not know and cast.

Drakos: Absolutely.

• ET: Also from my experience as well, people are really helpful in the esports scene if you’re nice to them.

Drakos: Yeah, I agree. It’s cool that there are a lot of people who have just put in a lot of time to become experts or the closest thing to an expert on regions and teams and they are very happy to share their knowledge and that’s always been my experience, even when I was very little baby caster casting random collegiate games, I was reaching out to college teams and asking them “Hey, who’s your star player?” and they were always super happy to tell me.

• ET: Wow, that sounds nice. Before I forget, is there anything trivial you’d like to say about yourself? Because the only information under “Trivia” in your wiki page is “Good friends with both Froskurinn and Pulse.” and that’s it.

Drakos: Wow, let me see is there anything that’s wiki page worthy. Loves hip hop music, writes a lot of content, I don’t know what else I would add. Is also good friends with Vedius and Caedrel? If I think I work with you, we’re gonna get along. I always try to be good to people. Yeah, I guess I need to expand my wiki page. Although I don’t know if you’re supposed to expand your own wiki page?

• ET: Don’t worry, I’ll do it for you.

Drakos: Okay, cool, yeah. I mean, maybe I’m not the most public person about all the things I do in my free time but I take pride in the work portion of it and just feel very lucky to support me to do it. So I guess I don’t have nothing in particular.

• ET: Don’t worry, the work portion really shows itself so you don’t need something trivial to yourself to be known out there. I came into this interview, planning to not go all fanboy on you by the way.

Drakos: It’s all good, I think you’ve done a good job because I didn’t get that vibe at all.

• ET: Thank you. Lastly, what can we expect this year in your opinion from LEC, from EU as a whole, from the League of Legends scene, what are your expectations and hopes in 2022?

Drakos: Wow, to be honest there are a lot of things on my mind when it comes to Europe. I think from an LEC and content perspective, I’m hoping that we can keep pushing boundaries, not just in terms of music but in terms of content overall. I think it’s really easy when things are going well to not keep the pressure on and innovate. I’m really hoping we could continue to make world class content and continue to push the envelope on what good esports content looks like.

There’s a lot of people out there making good stuff right now. There were definitely not as many when we started in 2019. I think we wanna keep up so people look at us as the best content producers in the world. Sometimes it’s also tough because we’re also competing against other Riot Games people who are making Arcane and making music performances in Worlds openings but I think that’s one of the big goals.

• ET: So it’s also like working with your enemy- not like enemy, more like competition in a content sense.

Drakos: Yeah, I mean definitely not enemy, in my opinion-

• ET: That was a strong word, I agree.

Drakos: I think we are, as Riot Games, one company and it’s always going to be a collaborative effort. A little bit of healthy internal competition is always a good motivator and I think, for me and Vedius, we want to- people joke about it but one day we do want to make a Worlds song. I think that’s a big dream for us. One day we do want it to be an epic anthem featuring Drakos and Vedius. That may be a bit of a long shot but I think it’s good to have dreams and it’s good to have ambitions like that.

I think LEC has similar ambitions that we want to be the best at what we do. That does mean we want to be better than LCS, LPL and LCK but those are also our teammates, our sister broadcasts. We want to support them and help them grow too but that doesn’t mean we still don’t want to be the best. There’s always going to be that level of healthy competition that’s going to help us push for more.

• ET: That’s all the questions I had for this time, thank you once again for this interview, it was a pleasure talking to you.

Drakos: No problem, I enjoyed it as well.

• ET: I hope to see you happy and healthy when the LEC returns on January 14 – wow, that’s really close actually.

Drakos: Yeah, it’s very close. I will be hopefully both of those things.

The post Our Interview With Caster Daniel Drakos appeared first on Esportimes.

• Hi, first of all, can we get to know you a little bit? Who is Furkan Guven?

Hello, I’m Furkan, I’m 30 years old. Until about 1.5 years ago, I was working as an IT Manager in a private company in Ankara. We also established an IT Company with the people I worked with. Besides, you already know our Eternal Fire project.

• What were you doing before creating Eternal Fire? Can you tell us how you got into esports and gaming industry? Where did the idea to invest in esports come from?

I can say that I have been playing games for as long as I can remember. Although not as much as our boys, I did have an esports career as a semi-professiona player. I have always been in the esports industry with the nickname “1NCON” in CS:GO.

We started this adventure 3 years ago by founding Arena Bulls. Afterwards, I left the management and the team because I could not play and be the management at the same time. After establishing the Player Store, the idea of investing in the esports team was always on my mind, we can only say that we waited for the right time to make this investment.

• Could you tell us about the establishment process of Eternal Fire? How was the organization founded, whose idea was it, what challenges did it face?

I can say that the founding process of the team was a bit of a pain. Many of the players in the team were my brothers, friends and people I met before Eternal Fire. After they took this decision, I was only supporting them in terms of management. One day, when we came out of an organizational meeting, we took such a good decision together in the gazebo of a park and realized the project. Everything was is closed due to the pandemic. To explain the difficult process, our time was too tight for us to catch up with the tournaments and we had to organize everything. As a result, we can say that we have succeeded in this difficult process.

• Why Eternal Fire? Does your name have a story?

During a conversation with our teammates, we said, “If we all light that fire together, let it be eternal” and we chose our team name as Eternal Fire. Because everyone in the team had a part in lighting this fire.

• Eternal Fire fans have been waiting for news from both the gaming house and the jerseys for a long time. What would you like to share about this topic? Will the jerseys be on sale soon?

We have created a very nice gaming house where players can be mentally happy, where we can spend time and organize. We will introduce this environment, which we created together with the Vlog to be shot by our media team, to our fans, we will also release our jerseys soon, but we are waiting for some of our deals to be finalized.

• Your organization takes part in two different games as CS:GO and VALORANT. How do you evaluate your team’s performance in general? Will you be involved in other games? Especially in this period when mobile games are in demand.

We had a little bad luck with our CS:GO team due to ISSAA. He was a very good player, but we were having difficulties with communication and we respected his decision because he suffered the most. With Yasin’s inclusion in the team, communication seems to be better. I know very well how hard our players work and they have given almost their whole lives here, so I am very confident that we will get good results in the future. We just need to have a little patience.

We haven’t seen our VALORANT team perform yet. However, their communication and games as a team are very good. Frankly, I have high hopes for them. They work hard and this shows itself very well in practice matches. We are waiting for the tournaments to start and I am sure we will see our VALORANT team in good places. Of course, we will be involved in other games, but our current priority is in these teams. On the other hand, I can say that we are waiting for the right time. We have very big goals and projects in the esports industry in Turkey, not just in terms of teams. Hopefully, in the long run, we will do all of them one by one.

• What are your thoughts on the Twitch bit scam controversy that have been keeping everyone busy lately?

I shared my reactions on Twitter, but in fact, the reason why I said these things was the rebellion caused by my sadness. Such things unfortunately harm the industry and it is even more sad that this happened in our country. Unfortunately, people have done things they shouldn’t have done because of greed for money, I wish they hadn’t done it.

• Where do you see Eternal Fire in 5 years?

As a Turkish organization, we want to see Eternal Fire in the top 5. The fact that a Turkish organization is among the leading teams in the world in the esports industry makes both us and our fans very happy. I believe we can achieve this in all other titles.

• Lastly, do you have something that you want to add?

We read as much as we can, even if we can’t reply to most messages and comments that our fans, supporters make. On behalf of my entire team, I would like to thank everyone for their support no matter what. I would also like to thank you and I wish you good luck in your work.

As Esportimes, we would like to thank Furkan Güven for answering our questions. You can reach his social media accounts from the links provided down below:

The post We Interviewed Furkan Güven, the Founder of Eternal Fire! appeared first on Esportimes.

One key factor regarding these awards and top three finishes alongside fredy and the lineup was Marcus “Blumigan” Blom, the second coach of Rogue. We talked to him about being in the Group of Death, how new metas are born and so on.

Esportimes: First of all welcome. Thanks for your time after the defeat against FPX. But it was a much closer defeat than many people expected. In the first three matches of the group stage, you went 1-2. Now you have only three matches left. Do you think you are prepared to face all 3 of your opponents in one day?

Blumigan: We have to win two games or more now to make it out of groups. But we’re absolutely confident that we have a chance to make it there.

EST: I also believe in Rogue and I hope you make it out of group. Thanks to Jankos, you guys play in the group of death, so to say. Does being in a hard group and being underestimated by most people effect your motivation?

Blumigan: It doesn’t effect our motivation at all. Obviously, we had quite a bit to prove from playoffs. I think everyone was really hungry to prove everyone wrong. So it didn’t really change anything. We just wanted to make it out as far as possible.

EST: As a representative of EU, what do you think about the performances of your fellow EU teams?

Blumigan: With the circumstances of Fnatic, it’s not very looking very good for them. I still believe MAD has more to show. But I don’t think any EU team shown anything special so far.

EST: I wanted to ask more about the drafting side of things than the results. Worlds meta is always ever changing and filled with new picks from season to season. How do people find the new best picks? Is it just reading patch notes?

Blumigan: I mean, it’s like reading patch notes, solo queue and then you try out different champions. Then eventually you see and pick up one champion and then see if it’s coming to meta. A lot of teams came to Worlds playing with a few different metas, because they haven’t practiced with different teams. Then you face something new, and then you pick up a new champion cause you think its really broken or fits well into meta. That’s how I think metas form.

EST: So it’s more like different league cultures facing each other and making the best meta, the Worlds meta.

Blumigan: I mean, something like that, yeah. Cause there is always the best team, right? They will play with a different style or different champions than others. I think Irelia is a good example that is picked up in here at Worlds. Because all the Chinese and Korean teams are putting high priority on the champion.

EST: Yeah, we mostly see it banned against them. I think it was left open once. And that’s in the match being played right now (PSG vs Fnatic). Speaking of new picks, which new pick is performing the best right now in your opinion?

Blumigan: I actually have to think. Cause it’s like 3 patches between LEC playoffs and Worlds. What’s the new strongest pick, I guess.. Trying to think about everything. Irelia, is obviously a good pick. I think Tryndamere sees some play with different kind of success. Talon, Qiyana and obviously Yuumi. Yuumi is super broken. It is also an old pick coming back. But I think enchanter supports have seen way more play than used to before.

EST: Yeah Nami for instance, mostly next to Lucian.

Blumigan: Lucian come back as well. Lucian is super strong.

EST: Yeah we saw that in your match. Hans Sama was a beast with it yesterday. I know that you’re not going to tell me if there is a sleeper OP pick that you know. But can you tell me if we’ll see any new champions in the next four days of groups or will it be the same picks?

Blumigan: I think, general meta will be the same. But I think obviously with some practice, some new picks will show up, so I guess we will see that sooner or later.

EST: Thank you so much for this interview. I hope to see those new picks in upcoming days and Rogue performing well in the next three matches and make it out of groups to surprise everyone.

Blumigan and the rest of the Rogue team are amongst the first teams who will play three games a day in the second and final part of group stage. I very sincerely hope they disprove everyone and make it out to show that Rogue were not in the Group of Death, rather they were the Group of Death.

The post Blumigan: “We’re Absolutely Confident We Have A Chance to Make It Out Of Groups.” appeared first on Esportimes.

A big part of the reason they are so strong is their team backstage. We talked with Patrick ” Pad” Suckow-Breum, coach of MAD Lions, about the game and his thoughts on Worlds meta.

Esportimes: I have MAD Lions’ coach Pad with me here today. First off, thank you so much for your time and congratulations, that was a very good game to watch with all the Qiyana ults, Wukong ults. It was just a very fun to watch game and I’m sure it was fun game to watch from the coaches room, especially since you won.

Pad: Yeah, I mean, thank you. It was a game, it was very stressful haha.

EST: At this point I think that’s just all MAD Lions games.

Pad: We’re used to it by now.

EST: Normally I’d ask more questions about the game you just won, but since we’re in a very different meta in Worlds from the one we had in LEC finals. I’d like to talk more about the meta if you’re okay with that. 

Pad: Yeah, sure, alright.

EST: Before we do that though, something that caught my eye and many other people’s eyes is that Gen.G’s comp being very outdated with picks like Azir, Xin Zhao, Kalista and Nautilus. Only Graves was new. Do you think the reason they lost today is because their comp was outdated?

Pad: No, I don’t think so. I mean I think our comp outscaled their team comp but they had agency in three different lanes so they should’ve for sure been able to stomp all three lanes with priority. If their picks weren’t exactly Worlds meta picks, they did what they were supposed to. They really like the use of auto priority into anything, Kalista/Nautilus is a direct response into Yuumi and it has kill pressure. Graves also gets auto priority into every single matchup in League right now. So it’s just a very Korean draft, lanes with priority and a jungler that can attack.

EST: So they drafted for priority and got outscaled, you say. Okay, now that we’ve addressed that, let’s talk about the new picks. Talon, Qiyana, Miss Fortune, what do you think is the most powerful one of them all right now? 

Pad: Of them all?

EST: Of the new picks.

Pad: Of the new picks, I mean it depends on the situation but from watching Worlds, it’s clear that Yuumi might be the hidden, well not so hidden anymore, OP pick. It seems to be pairing really well with the new junglers that are in the meta right now. So Yuumi has proven to be really strong I think. That is the newcomer that’s performing the best.

EST: Oh, it’s definitely proven its power, especially in teamfights where it can heal people back up after they are poked. We saw picks like Yuumi that perform really well but we’ve also seen picks that did not work as well as those like Pyke or Jarvan IV. What do you think of those champions?

Pad: Haha, well, we don’t talk about Jarvan IV. Jokes aside, J4 is a champion that makes sense when you consider team comps. So picking J4 without any info of what enemy team is playing is not good. And we kinda did that against Team Liquid. What was the other champion?

EST: Pyke, we’ve seen it twice today.

Pad: So I think Pyke is situationally really good if you can create an early game plan around it and isolate the botlane matchup or split the map against a Yuumi. I think that is one of the ways to deal with a Yuumi but it requires a lot of precision and it requires you to execute early game really well which is obviously scary because if you misexecute one time in the first six minutes than the enemy team has a Yuumi and you have a Pyke.

EST: Yeah, you’re left with a Pyke against a Yuumi.

Pad: That’s Pyke. He could potentially see more play and be more successful but it’s hard to do it.

EST: We’ll see it throughout the tournament. While we’re on that subject, a lot of the matches have been played as of right now. When I spoke with Bolulu in Play-ins about this, he said that the best picks might not have been figured out yet. Do you think it is figured out by now and as you said, Yuumi is very powerful but do you think people will find something that’s stronger or will the cat be the most OP thing in the champion pool?

Pad: I actually think the meta is really fun right now because people are still learning how to play against Yuumi so even though it might be strong right now there are some strategies that are currently being developed towards countering it. At every Worlds we see there’s always some change in priority of the picks in the second round of groups. So when we go into these days of full games where we play against each opponent in one day, I think there’s going to be some meta changes. And who knows? There might be some sleeper OP pick like how Urgot was during Worlds 2020. I have a feeling that there might be one or two champions that are OP that we did not yet see and I can not tell them of course.

EST: Okay, I was just going to ask “If you knew them, would you tell me?”, but now I know. Speaking of Bolulu, I kinda have to ask since I write for a Turkish website, do you follow TCL and Turkish players?

Pad: Yes, yes I do. I’m close friends with Achuu, who used to be an ADC in SuperMassive. I have a lot of good friends from Turkey, Armut being one of them, naturally. There’s a lot of lovely Turkish people who have supported me and still support me on Twitter. I try to watch TCL when I can.

EST: That’s very good to hear. Do you think anyone from TCL who might play in LEC or any other foreign league next year? Does anyone stand out from the crowd, so to say?

Pad: I think the entire Wildcats lineup has been promising for a long time now. Especially Kaori when he was with them. I think it’s hard because what we see right now in TCL is that a lot of the established talents are being recycled like we saw Mr. Bao, aka Japone versus Bolulu and seeing those two still succeed and compete to go international is a really good sign especially now that they’re in veteran status. If they can keep teaching young players, like we saw a lot of Wildcats players moving over, young Turkish players moving over will have a higher likelihood of being successful. We saw it already in Armut and Closer moving over, even Luger winning the LCS Academy.

EST: In a reverse sweep, too.

Pad: So I think there’s a lot of talent in Turkey that needs to be spotted.

EST: Okay that is a very insightful answer and I love the fact that you said “Bao”, I assume that’s influenced from Armut, it must be.

Pad: I love Bao, he always sends cat pictures on Instagram. I can’t ask for anything else.

EST: Okay, thank you so much for your time, this was a very enjoyable talk, hope you guys win your matches as far as you go in the tournament.

Pad: Thank you, it was a lovely talk, thank you for having me.

Hopefully for Pad and the rest of MAD, they will win all three of their games on 18th of October. Until then, we wish them luck for as far as they can go.

The post Pad: “I Think There Is A Lot Of Talent In Turkey That Needs To Be Spotted” appeared first on Esportimes.

From the new hot Worlds picks to the sweet feeling of revenge, we had a very fun chat with Onur Can “Bolulu” Demirol, the midlaner for Galatasaray while we wait for tomorrows matches.

Esportimes: Firstly congratulations, you went 2-0 in Iceland today. How does it feel to show up on stage again after TCL finals?

Bolulu: It’s a good feeling, 2-0 is always a good feeling and there are less matches in Play-ins so we finished half of our matches, we’re happy, we’re feeling good.

ET: You won half of your matches in Play-ins groups already. Before we talk about them, let’s discuss the champions being picked at Worlds in the first day. Which picks are the strongest in your opinion?

Bolulu: I would say Qiyana, Talon and Lee Sin are the most powerful junglers; and champions like Tryndamere are very powerful in midlane. Even Graves is seeing play in top and mid. There are many champions in the Worlds meta and we don’t know everything yet so there might be other powerful picks. So far these new champions we’ve seen are quite strong.

ET: They might be powerful but they still surprise us sometimes, like when Chovy lost with Tryndamere today.

Bolulu: Yes, I agree.

ET: Getting back to your matches, you had a dominant victory over the second seed from PCS. Did you expect the match against Beyond Gaming to go like this?

Bolulu: Honestly we mostly like to play our style instead of focusing on our opponents. We always want to be the initiator and to execute our plan first. That’s how we got the first blood under tower on toplane and they couldn’t counter it, after we got that lead everyone played well and we won. I think we all played fantastically, our opponent was a strong one so a dominant win like this was a huge confidence boost.

ET: And it showed, especially during your second match of the day. Speaking of that, let’s talk about the UoL match, a very special match for you I would say.

Bolulu: Yes, it was an important match for me. I took care of my unfinished business and got my revenge, so to say.

ET: How does it feel to have won against Nomanz and UoL this time?

Bolulu: It’s an incredible feeling. It kept me up some nights and the fact that we stomped them this time is so very enjoyable for me right now. Every time I used the gold card I was like “Yeah, take that!”.

ET: We also felt that joy whilst watching, it was a very enjoyable match to spectate. After seeing today’s matches and results, did your opinion on your opponents change?

Bolulu: Not really, only that Beyond Gaming did not play as well as I thought they would. Cloud 9 still feels like the strongest opponent in the group and DFM is also playing good but we knew that. Really, everyone in this group is up to the challenge so my opinion did not really change. It’s just that we’re 2-0, UoL is 0-2, Beyond is 0-1, and DFM is 1-1, right?

ET: Yes.

Bolulu: So we are currently leading the group, that’s good. We feel like the favourites, a bit. I also don’t want to be too confident because we also went 2-0 last year and then we lost to Team Liquid and the Oceanic team, so we want to proceed as if the score was 0-0.

ET: That is a very good way to look at it. While you were answering, I noticed that you emphasized the fact that UoL went 0-2, it must have felt good saying that.

Bolulu: Yea, honestly it did feel nice.

ET: While we’re talking about the other teams in your group, before the Play-ins began, the team manager of PSG Talon ranked the teams based on scrims and you were the last on that list. Today, in the first day of play-ins, you went 2-0 and defeated the top team on that list. What are your thoughts on that list as of now?

Bolulu: I don’t think that list makes any sense because we did not scrim them. I’m not sure they knew how we played or how powerful we are. We did not scrim any Asian teams, not LPL, LCK or PCS. That’s why I think that list was anything more than random guesses. Maybe they put us at the bottom because we’re from TCL, that would be kinda disrespectful.

ET: They saw today what disrespecting TCL gets you.

Bolulu: Exactly.

ET: Lastly let’s talk about tomorrow’s matches. You said that Cloud 9 and DFM are both powerful opponents. What do you think will happen tomorrow?

Bolulu: I mean I feel good, we’ll go on that stage with our own game plan and we’ll try to win. Our opponents are strong but so are we, so the better team will win tomorrow.

ET: I hope that team will be you guys. Thank you for talking to us after a very long first day at Worlds. 

Bolulu: The pleasure is all mine.

ET: Good luck tomorrow and hopefully for the rest of the tournament.

After a very successful first day in their Worlds 2021 journey, Galatasaray will face Cloud 9 and DetonatioN FocusMe to determine their destiny. We wish the best to Bolulu and the rest of the Galatasaray team and hope that luck may ever be in their favor.

*This interview was conducted after the last match of the first day of Play-ins and the article was written subsequently, so there may be some outdated information. You can click this link for current Play-In group standings and match scores.

The post Bolulu: “Our Opponents Are Strong But So Are We.” appeared first on Esportimes.