Wc3Manager Blog

The Season 5 is over, and we already know the winners! In one exciting Wednesday, we could see the Champions Series final and the Bnet Pro Ladder tournament. In the morning, the swedish team Vitastjaerna faced the russian team  Astral (you can read an interview with him here)  in a very close match. Finally, the big prize went to Sweden with a close result of 3-2 (7-5 in maps). Congratulations both ! With this result, Vitastjaerna gets a SENNHEISER PC 161 and a QPAD CT. And Astral gets a QPAD CT.

During the afternoon, we could see exciting matches in the Bnet Pro Ladder tournament. Here 32 players played to reach the glory. But just   4E Co1ran could defeat all his enemies getting the first prize. So he got a QPAD CT aswell, winning in the grand final against   sCa Xen4r.
Remember that just the best players in the normal Ladder play in the Pro Ladder, where they can get these cool prizes.

We also could see exciting league matches this season. In the top countries, the german league was the closest one, where w and Pure Pwnage won the same games, but w got the prize with more points.
European Light Knights own during the whole russian season, where he didnt lose a single game. Like Liquid Gaming in Spain, who got a impressive 22-0

Now all the competitions are over. Next week everything starts again. Are you ready?

The last week, I could talk with one of the best teams in Russia, who is also in the Champions Series final. Im talking about Astral. This interview was made before his last Champions Series match.

Q :  Hi! First we want to know things about you. Introduce yourself: name, age and things that you want to say about yourself
R :  My name is Ivan , im 23 years old, im network administrator. And im from Russia of course

Q :  when did you sign up into the game?
R :  I started to play in the first international season. My friend told me about this game and I went to sign up immediately. Actually, I’ve never heard about wc3manager before

Q :  You are in the fourth position in your division at the moment, far away from the 2 first spots (    European Light Knights and TRue), and maybe you won’t get spot for the next Champions Series. What happened this season?
R :  It is very simple – if you want to win Champions Series, you cant get the 1st place in such a difficult league as russian first division. Especially if my opponents are so strong as TruE and European Light Knights. So my goal is try to do my best in Champions Series

Q :  Your next match in the Champions Series is against the strong team w, one of the favourites to get the final prize. What do you think about this game? Do you have chances?
R :  My next opponent is w , I know him and maybe he is the best manager in the world, so it will be hard to win him. But as I said before, I will try to do my best and I think that I still have chances to success. If he doesn’t steal my players just before game I think I have good chances

Q :  If you win against w, who do you prefer to play the final against? Vitastjaerna or T4C Team ?
R :  hmm , actually it doesn’t matter. w is the strongest team in the Champions Series. But between them, I prefer Vista, because I won him in the groupe stage , so I think that he is the best opponent for the final

Q :  w is in the semi finals like you, and he is still fighting for win the german league, where he is very close to get the championship. So do you think that russian league is harder than german league?
R :  hmm , it is difficult to judge for me. Actually I dont think so, maybe russian league is a little bit stronger than german and Im sure that w will get 1st place in germany

Q :  Talking about important matches, how do you prepare a important match?
R :  I go to a russian bath with my virtual teammates and teach them how play D
Q :  everybody naked or? haha
R :  j/k
R :  Actually I just try to save my players’ effort and thats all. Because I thing that effort is the most important thing in this game , isnt it ?

Q :  Do you usually use matchup training ?
R :  Usually not, I think its not so important as good effort and moral

Q :  Tell us some tips for new users, please
R :  If you want fast success – just buy few good players and don’t upgrade your website. But if you want to get Champion Series, you need to upgrade your website and try to win with yours bad players. And you will start a long way through all divisions to the Champions Series

Q :  Lets talk about the game. Do you think is balanced at the moment? What do you think about “hot topics” like bets or tactics?
R :  Yes, I think that the game is balanced, but I prefer the old system for the effort calculation, because now stamina isnt so important as before. And actually now managers don’t need to buy 15 players for their teams , because they can win with just 10 players. You can buy just 10 strong players and get spot for Champions Series in any league.

Q :  Ok, now just the final questions. Please, give me your teams top5 at the moment
R :  in this moment i think -
R :  1st European Light knights
R :  2nd w
R :  3rd TruE
R :  4 – my team
R :  5 Fabory
Q :  And what about your countries top 3 ?
R :  Russia, Germany, Spain
Q :  Ok, finally, do you want to say any final words?
R :  Thank to you for this game , you do really great job. And thanks to our forum tourney.ru :super:

Following with the interviews what we started last week, this is time for talk with Pure Pwnage manager. At the moment, he is leading German league, with just 1 game of difference with three teams : w, German Destroyer Clan and werzBacheR. He is also the moderator who detect and punish all the cheaters in this game. Enjoy the interview!

Q: First at all, introduce yourself

R: Hi, my name is Martin K., German and 18 years. My team is Pure Pwnage. I started wc3manager 5 months ago, in the first international season. The game had a very rough start, there were a lot of cheaters around and I was really angry. First I talked to the admin, who was taking care of them normally, he send me to ONe. We become very good friends and now I’m taking care of the cheaters and helping him with other things.

Q: What do you think about the cheaters in this game nowadays? Are there many or its just a “clean game“?

R: I think there is never a “clean game”… there are some people, who just don’t know the rules, or who think it would be smart to cheat. After all, the situation is very good. In the first days there were a lot of cheaters going around, like I said earlier, but we had to get rid of them first. Now the game is nearly clean and I don’t think there are any cheaters left, but sometimes someone got the idea to cheat again and it’s easy to find him between all the normal players. Also I want to thank all the users who helped me finding them at the forum!

Q: Let’s talk about the game Last season you didn’t get your best in league or Champions Series. What happened?

R: Normally I’m calculating all games that my team plays. I also plan every week on Sunday or Monday to see where I need to save EF and where I can get moral and so on. The calculation got destroyed because I lost players and I couldn’t get new ones in time. So I was playing the imported end of the season with 1 PI player with low EF. Another problem appeared, I made a lot of guesses, who had to win against who, so I will get the first rank for sure. In most cases I was right and everything was going fine. I thought I had the first place for sure and I got lazy…. I stopped doing proper calculations and planning my games. It was a very close match at the top of Germany, I messed it up, lost 3 games and that’s why I didn’t make it to the Champion series this season. I think it’s a shame for me, but next year I will play it again.

Q: You talked about “your calculations”. What’s that? Tell us how you prepare a important match

R: I think every match in season one is an important match. You can’t afford losing a single match. Still there are some easy calculations and hard once. I’m using Excel for working on the games. I take the average of all 4 main skills and then I take all skills + moral + EF, so I got a average of the whole player with his shape. I’m always trying to seed my “week” players, so my good players got EF for the more important games. When I’m calculating the games, I compare the shape and the skills of the player. Also I’m trying to guess what tactic my enemy will play to counter it.

Q: What are your expectations for this season?

R: This season I want to reach the first place at the German division 1 and I want at least to win the league cup. The chances to win the league are good, because this season I was lucky with my players, I bought a lot new “stars” and I hope I can beat the old team from W, he is the only player I’m afraid of in Germany. I also had hopes winning the Bnet pro season, but I had bad luck in normal ladder so I ruined the EF/Moral of the players who were suppose to win, so now I don’t think he will be able to fight on the top of the ladder again.

Q: Who do you think is going to win Champions Series this edition?

R: Vitastjaerna will face W in the final and Vitastjaerna will win 3:2 if everything stays like this, but I bet W got an evil plan

Q: So many people are getting a team, and the Wc3Manager is growing a lot in the last weeks. You got some advices for these new users?

R: Puhh… that’s a hard question, it depends on how much you want to reach. If you really want to make it to the top u should learn to calculate and predict the games. The managing part is really important, you got to take care of the EF/MO of your players. The most important rule for me is:
Always try to achieve the win with your weak players. So you have the good players ready for very important matches!

Q: Come on. Tell us, Top 5 teams

R: W, Vitastjaerna, Liquid Gaming and Pure Pwnage.
I don’t think, there is another team who could beat these teams at the moment, so they are just 4 teams.

Q: And what do you think about the countries?

R: Germany, Spain, Russia and Sweden.
You maybe want to ask, why Russia is one of the best countries, but they are not mentioned under top5, that’s easy, because they have a lot strong teams, but no TOP team, who really seems better then all the others, they have a very good competition, so no team can get far better then the others. For example, in Sweden there is the exact different situation, just 1-2 good teams and for them everything is easy.

Q: Thank you for your time Martin. Any final words?

R: I really liked the game at the start and I love the thing we developed out of just a nice idea. We made big steps in the past, to finally get the Bnet ladder and the league cup started! Another thing you should not forget is the performance ONe added to the game, with help from the forum users.

To get to an end, thing I like most at the game is the growing community, we are having all a great time with the game, and beyond the game we become friends, not just me and ONe, but a lot players are talking about everything at our IRC channel: #wc3manager @ Qnet.

Lots of wc3 managers paid some attention to the Russian league in season 4, for obvious reasons. Three Russian teams managed to promote to the Champions Series’ semifinals. They lost, but people remembered this, and the Russian league is now considered to be one of the strongest all over the world.

But in this season, Russian teams aren’t rocking the Champions Series so nicely due to some reasons. Deep, who finished 4th last season, showed absolutely nothing in group stage and was eliminated early. Mustangs Firm had some troubles at the beginning of season (short ban, u can read about this at forum) and lost their first match in the group stage, while banned. It was hard for the team to advance after this, although the manager did everything possible, it just wasn’t enough, and MF got eliminated too. Current champion, Astral, “jumped at the last carriage of a running train” and promoted to the play-offs, but their chances don’t seem too good. Our vice-champion, Artificial Intellige, won the group with a great advantage, but got one of the hardest opponent possible in the 1st play-off round – well known German team w. Both teams are in low half of brackets, which is considered to be harder than the upper one. So, it seems to be hard for Russian teams to promote in play-offs, but we still believe there’s nothing impossible for them.
This relatively weak result can also be explained by an internal situation in the Russian league. You probably will be surprised – but 4EpTu (name can be translated from Russian to “devils”), finalist of last season’s Champions Series, and Eclipse, last season’s semifinalist, both left division1 last season and currently play in division2. The reasons are difficult, but both teams are still considered to be a part of Russian wc3 management elite. Their perspectives seem very good, they will obviously promote to division1 this season and probably will rock it in season 6. Also, these 2 teams considered to be richest in Russia.

So, current set of Russian division1 is not the strongest possible, but despite this fact, there’s very close battle there – for championship, for Champions Series? and prizemoney, and, of course, for surviving. There are five teams, who are fighting for top4, which will get them Champions Series, and a shot at the prize. Those teams are: Artificial Intellige, Astral, European Light Knights, Mustangs Firm and TRuE (with 4EpTu and Eclipse, it’s the set of Russian wc3 management elite at the moment). There’s interesting tradition in the Russian league – the championship always get won by a team, which just got promoted from division2 (u can easily check it, except season1 of course). And this season doesn’t seem to be an exception so far. Two teams from div2- European Light Knights (ELKs) and TRuE, are leading div1, and most likely one of them will win the league. TRuE is considered to have the best roster in Russia, but ELKs still stays unbeatable at leagues since its start at wc3manager. So its hard to say now, who will win, but the fight is going to be very close. Astral and Mustangs Firm occupy 3rd and 4th place at the moment, and still have a chance for first or second, but most likely they will have to defend their positions – Artificial Intellige started very poorly, losing 4 of 6 games (all to current top4 though), but now the team seems to overcome their crisis and win some games, and they are getting closer and closer to the top4. The other 7 teams will most likely be fighting to survive. So, the battle is going to be hot, both at top and bottom of table.

And for conclusion: The russian league has a unique peculiarity, almost all of the top teams’ managers communicated with each other for a long time, almost 2 years, before they started WC3Manger. They were united a long time ago by a forum. So the managers in the russian division are more of a clan of friends, and it makes it even more fun for them to play.

Most of you know zod_team. Is one of the best teams in the WC3Manager and the current Champions Series winner. I met with him yesterday, to talk about different topics related with WC3Manager. Enjoy the interview!

Q: Hi drag0n. You are the manager of Zod_team, but we only know that. Tell us something about you.
R: Hi, my name is David and I’m from Granada, a beautiful city in the south of Spain.

Q: When did you start to play WC3Manager?
R: I started 2-3 years ago, when the game started. Maybe 4 already

Q: You won the last Champions Series, but this edition you already lost one game in the group stage and you need to win the last one to qualifier. What do you expect this edition?
R: Interesting question. I think that the group stage is better system for strong teams, because with the old system you could go out in first round with a single mistake. This edition there are many powerfull teams in the Champions and it will be hard but I think that I can reach the next round.

Q: You are a experienced manager in the game, so who do you think are the best 3 countries in the game right now?
R: It’s hard to choose just 3 countries, because there are many powerfull teams everywhere, but I have to choose, I would choose Russia, because they had 3 teams in the last Champions Series semi finals. Germany, because they have really strong teams like w, werzBacher and PET-Flaschen. And Spain, because it always is in the top of the rankings and reaching high rounds in Champions Series.

Q : Do you think its hard to one country to reach the top3, or its harder to these countries to keep their position?
R : Well, I think that I already replied this question in the last one hehe. Its hard to be always one of the best countries in the game, but maybe Germany will be always there because the number and strong of the german teams.

Q: What about teams? Your top5
R:
1st Liquid Gaming: Incredible team. It is not in Champions Series yet, because he just promoted to first division, but it has really great young players. The best team.
2nd Fabory: It already won Champions Series and has really good roster.
3rd zod_team: Try to figure out why
4th Artificial Intellige: Team very similar to Fabory.
5th w: A good team, but it has to show it yet.

Q : Ok David. Thank you for your time. It was a pleasure to talk with you. Good luck in your next matches!
R : Ok. Good luck to everybody See you!

This is the first interview here, but we are going to make more and more if people like it.