Wc3Manager Blog

Q : We are here with the last Champions Series winner. His name is now Striped Ruffians but all of you maybe know him as European Light Knights. Last season, Russia won this championship and AbusingAces was the manager who handled it. Hi AbusingAces! Congratulations! Tell us something about you

R : My name is Sergey and im a 21 years old student (from Russia as you correctly noticed).

Q : Like I already said, you won the last Champions Series edition. Was it your bigger achievement?

R : This is the biggest achievement possible in WC3M isn’t it?

Q : Do you think is harder to win Champions Series or to win Russian Championship every year?

R : CS winning sometimes requires a lot of luck, but winning a hard league, like Russian, some seasons in a row is a pure management skill
R : So its harder to win CS, not everything depends on you ;D

Q : The last season, even more in Champions Series , people talked a lot about race training. What do you think about race training?

R : Pretty balanced feature, which allows to win by good management, not by 5 high-skilled players

Q : But many times its all about luck, just about which player of your roster do you choose in your line up. Don’t you think? It would be better with less players? What do you think?

R : Ye thats why I said that winning CS requires luck – single wrong lineup setting in playoffs can eliminate you. And 50/50 matches are unavoidable, when we have race training available.
R : Did you mean 10 players limit?
Q : Yes, for example.
R : Less players=less action freedom for manager. So, I think 15 is perfect number for manager to build his season strategy quite flexible

Q : Another hot topic about the game at the moment is about low level countries. Teams who every season win in those countries, and every year season stronger. Do you think those teams will own the game in some seasons?

R : Hard question. I think playing big hard leagues gives manager more experience than in small ones. So big leagues have better managers in my opinion. But in small leagues they gain more money – so when managers discover all secrets of game, small leagues’ leaders will have slight advantage ;D I dont think its gonna happen soon.

Q : We are reaching the end of this interview. Countries like US or Poland became very popular in the game. Do you think their level is getting better or still there is a big gap between Russia or Germany, and the others countries?

R : Yes, I think those leagues need time to get close to top ones. Im pretty sure there are some promising teams in those leagues, which can rock in future. But at the moment no top leagues are still out of competition.

Q : Many people are signing up these days. What do you have to say to these new WC3 managers? Open your secrets book!

R : With great pleasure.
R : 1. Always believe you can win
R : 2. Never tell all your secrets to anyone
R : 3. …
R : That’s it

Q : lol
Q : In a normal week, how much time wc3manager take in your life?
R : Normally, hmm, like 10-12 hours per week. Though last season it took me much more time.
Q : Why?
R : I Had some hard battles in CS and also was going to defend title in Russia. And if you have big intensions, you have to work hard for it ;D

Q : Well, lets do our top5 Tell me top5 teams in game at the moment
R : 1. w
R : 2-4. (Alphabetical list) 4EpTu, Pure Pwnage, Vitastjaerna.
R : 5. Dynamo Bryansk

Q : Oh, Pure Pwnage finally in an interview top5

Q : What about countries?
Q : Favourite users question by the way

R : 1-2. (Alphabetical list) Germany, Russia
R : I would name Russia as top1 country in season 6 but right now i even think Germany is slightly better
R : 3. Spain
R : 4. Sweden
R : 5. US

Q : Ok Sergey. Any final words for this interview?
R : Thanks ONe for the beautiful game, thanks to all my opponets for nice competitions, good luck all.

Q : Ok. Thank you for the interview, enjoy your prizes and good luck this season!

Q : Hi Thorzain, first at all, congratulations for win the last Champions Series tournament. Please, tell us something about you .
R : My name is Marcus Eklöf, I’m 16 years old and i come from Sweden. My team is Vitastjaerna and I’ve played wc3manager before it was rebuilt and bought by regroup e-sport (back then my team was called Nysande Råtta).

Q : How do you feel after winning Champions? We can say that your team is the best team in the whole wc3manager. Many eyes are looking at you atm

R : Of course it felt really great, and I also won prizes so it felt even greater. I am not really sure if my team is the best team in the game since some of the top contenders for the title didn’t play champions series last season. I guess we’ll have to see who wins this season:).

Q : Who do you think is your biggest oponent this season?

R : Liquid Gaming and TRuE are the thoughest opponents this season, I believe.

Q : What about Swedish league? Someone is able to fight with you at the moment? What do you think?

R : The last season I only came in second place in my league, but it was because I underestimated an opponent and one war i forgot to change lineups. I don’t think that the Swedish league is very hard tbh. And I am pretty sure that if everything works out as it should, I should win this season

Q : Do you think you have advantages for dont play in a top country like Germany or Russia?

R : Yes, definitely. I don’t have to put my best lineup very often so i save a lot of EF. And I don’t have to worry about not getting in to the next champions series since I definitely will get top 3. Tho I sometimes would like to be in one of the hard leagues to have a harder go for the win.
Q : Are you looking forward to get more competitions like bnet ladder or 1on1 tournament? Or you just prefer to focus on league/Champions ?

R : I’ll have one player try to win a 1v1 tour and mb bnet ladder, and the rest will focus on CS more I think. And there one strength of not being in the best leagues comes in. I’ll have more chances to win 1v1 tour since my best players wont have to play as much league games as the other teams best players
Q : so what do you think could be the best solution to “balance” that issue?

R : I don’t think that it’s really balanceable if the leagues doesn’t get international, and I don’t really know if that’s such a good idea seeing as it would take some fun away from champions series and other now international competitions
Q : Can you give us some advices for new users?

R : Upgrade the web very much in the beginning (mb level 10) is the biggest advice i can give. I think that it depends on how hard the league is. If it’s the last division and last group web is more important but if it’s very high but still there’s some chance to win i think you’d have to mix web and players in the first season.

Q : So do you think to buy very good players is needed to reach 3rd or 2nd division? Can you just make a good management of starting players?

R : 2nd or 3rd division in league? :S It totally depends on what league you’re in and what players you started with. If you get into a league, where the others started way before you then you should probably aim more on web and economy stuff and come back next season with better players.
Q : Which is the worst thing in wc3manager atm ? The thing that you dislike more.

R : I don’t know I’m too tired to think right now (which is positive because then there’s nothing really obvious).

Q : xD

Q : What about your favourite thing in the game?

R : this’ll be easier to answer:)

Q : I hope so

Q :

R : My favorite thing in the game is the community and the excitement of thrilling champions series matches. It’s also nice when you make a really good buy, then you get happy:)

Q : Ok, finals questions. Personal top5?

R : 1. Liquid Gaming. 2. My team. 3. TRuE. 4. European Light Knights. 5. Pure Pwnage.
R : I don’t know about w. His average stats aren’t rly that good but I’m pretty sure that his experience levels are sky high. So I cannot place him in the top5

Q : What about countries?

R : Rus, Ger, Spain are the best.

Q : Do you think that rus > ger ?¿

R : Yes

Q : Can Sweden reach these countries some day?

R : Maybe in 2-3 seasons. There are some promising teams in div 2 which has been making fast progress, so i don’t see this as an impossibility.
Q : And the final, and most important question : What are you gonna do with your new Sennheiser headset and Qpad mousepad?

R : Use them, of course. I’m not gonna eat them, don’t worry. It’s good because my current headset broke just this week and I’ve actually taped it to my head so that I can use it

Q : haha nice timing
Q : Thank you for the interview =)

R : Thanks for having me interviewed.

In every interview you read Germany is one of the top Countries and there is always at least one German team when the top teams should mentioned, last season champion series semifinalist W. As one of the Top teams W should dominate its league easily, but if you look at the 5^th season table of the German league you will see it was very close.

So why didn’t dominate such a top team like W the League?

If you take a closer look you see the answer easily. There are lots of good teams in the Top German league. Like the “veteran” Teams werzBacheR or German Destroyer Clan, or the new Team Playmore. However every Team in German Division 1 is a real great team with a good manager, else they shouldn`t proceed to the Top German League, and this is the Problem for the 2 Teams that should dominate the League: W and Pure Pwnage. To win the League. They can’t let their best players play every match, sometimes the must seed “EF Savers” (and this Season this is the Problem of PP), if they want to score well in League and Champions Series.

Therefore it is kind of easy too see why Germany is one of the Top 3 Countries beside Spain and Russia. Everywhere there is a lot of competition not only in Division 1, also in the lower Divisions. It is a hard way to the top and only the best will reach the top. Though this is the advantage(not a disadvantage like many people think) Germany has compared to other small countries. On the way the to the top they can build their teams slow and steady (thus they can invest more money in web) and getting much experience facing better teams every season, so the Teams will go from strength to strength.

Some of those upcoming Teams from lower Divisions are I porn you, New Generation Gamin, 75E, Who`s your Daddy? and last season league cup winner hut.wc3, but there are even many more Teams.

But even if you reach the Top Division it is very hard to remain there. In about 6 Seasons more than thirty Teams played in the first Division and we had 4 unique Champions, too :

#mockass, 2 times Pure Pwnage, werzBacheR and W.

But it isn’t only the competition that causes many great Teams, the other reason is that most of the top managers discuss about the game and sharing their experience to help each other, for example at the chat (IRC and League chat) and the wc3manger forum.

All in all you will see that even in German Leagues there won’t be boredom in the future. Even though we have such top Teams like W or Pure Pwnage, because there will be always new strong upcoming teams which will be the reason that the Top teams won’t rest on there laurels. If you want to belong to top you must continual improve.

It is like in wilderness, only the strongest will survive.

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.