Original: http://dota2.sgamer.com/news/201211/147714_6.html

Dotaland note: From the link above, the interview was done in English so the original English interview is available directly on Sgamer. 🙂 In case you’re too lazy for that, the interview is reposted below as well, but note that this is not translated by me, it is the original from Sgamer.

 

Q:Hello MiSeRy and Pajkatt ,Thanks for accepting DOTA2.SGamer.CoM’s interview. First of all, say something to your fans?
Misery:Ni hao to all my chinese fans! Im very happy for your support!
Pajkatt:Hello fans, we appreciate your support very much!

Q:How many times have you been China? Are you accustomed to the life and environment here?
Misery:This is my 4th time in China and I love it every time. I am already used to the culture, food, people etc and Im always having a great time here.
Pajkatt:This is my second time in China, last time we were here for one and a half month and now we have been in Hangzhou for 2 weeks, so I feel quite accustomed to most things.

Q:LGD clan base just moved to Hangzhou,there’s an old Chinese saying,” In heaven there is paradise/ On earth, Suzhou and Hangzhou”. How do you feel here?
Misery:haha, ofcourse there is a chinese saying *smiles* I havent seen that much of hangzhou, only the area around the LGD base, but I know there is some amazing nature here, and Im looking forward to exploring hangzhou more in the future. I can say that the air here is way better than in beijing and other cities, so thats very cool!
Pajkatt:I really like Hangzhou, it’s a very nice city and our base is also very good. On top of that we have an awesome teamleader (Nicholas) and the other LGD team is very friendly.

Q:Can you tell curious players when LGD think of forming an international team? And how do you get in touch with them?
Misery:After TI2, pajkatt and I wanted to take dota 2 to the next level, and the only way to do that is to play in China because the skill level and seriousness is much higher here. So we basically wrote some of our contacts in china, and ended up talking to LGD.Rurutia and in the end  it made everything possible.
Pajkatt:I started speaking to LGD after TI2 because I was intrested in playing DotA in China, because I feel that the scene is much stronger and more professional here.

Q:Several members of LGD.int are very well-known solo, carry position players, what will the role distribution look like in the team? Will someone have to make a transition to play support?
Misery:I know we had a lot of people critisizing the team because of the roles of the players in the team, but PJ and I spent a lot of time thinking about the roster, and we are confident in our players capabilities to play their roles to its fullest potential! PJ will take the role as 1, G will play 2, Brax playing 3, I – MiSeRy will play 4 and 1437 is gonna take hard support as 5. Personally I wanted to transition to support role, as I did last year for EG, its a role im comfortable with and also a role that is very hard to play.
Pajkatt:With chinese terms, the roles of our team will be me on 1, God on 2, Brax on 3, Misery on 4 and 1437 on 5. This means Misery will switch from 2 to 4, but he is a very talented player and he is already doing a very good job at it.

Q:Team manager RURU said you would stay in Chinese for a long time for training when your team formed. Is it your desire? Or it has been considered when the team was formed?
Misery:Yea, the plan has from the beginning been to move to china and play from here, the team was formed after, it was a bit difficult to find the right players, because its a big commitment to move to china for a year or more, but it worked out in the end!
Pajkatt:It is my/our desire to stay here for a long time and make sure we dont waste this great opportunity and staying together with one team for a long time will help your teamplay a lot.

Q:Do you think staying in China would contirbute to your improvement of skills and competitive atmosphere of all? After all both of you got trained and took part in competition before when you are in EG, but didn’t get good results.
Misery:playing as a european team in china is always hard in the beginning, but with a lot of practise and talented players, you will reach the chinese level eventually. Last year we only stayed 1,5 months and didnt practise as much as we wanted, also we had some problems with the team, Playmate had to go home cause of visa issues. This time we will have a lot of time to practise and perfect the teamplay, strategies and positioning.
Pajkatt:I think staying in China will most certainly make us a stronger team, last time me and Misery were here, we may not have gotten good results, but we both developed a lot as players.

Q:Some insiders say LGD forming international team is to join hand with LGD.int and imprve strenth and chance of winning million dollar in TI3, is that ture?
Misery:I dont know anything about that, Its definitely not for TI3 alone. First of all theres almost a year to the next International, and we dont know much about the tournament at all. Second, I believe we will be good training partners with LGD.cn, and with time we should be the best DotA2 club in china! My focus is now, and always the next tournament, ofcourse TI3 is huge, but in my eyes every tournament is important!
Pajkatt:Having two teams living under the same roof and who can also practice with eachother all the time is very beneficial for both teams, you can try out strategies that no other teams will know about and practice is almost always available.

Q:Team LGD.cn successfully entered grand finals,however, they lost their champions as they defeated by Na’Vi and iG, which is their biggest regret in 2012. What do you think of LGD’s faith?
Misery:I think the top 3 of TI2 was very close, it could have been anyone of those 3 that could win the tournament. LGD.cn is a very talented team and they should just stick together and keep playing, they will win in the future.
Pajkatt:Going into TI2 I felt that LGD was the strongest team, as we had practiced against them online and never won…I was surprised that they didn’t win and I think they were unfortunate, but both iG and Na’Vi played very well during the final day of TI2.
I think LGD.int and LGD.cn will help each other and hopefully become two very strong teams!

Q:What is the difference between them and iG or Na’Vi?
Misery:Mainly their playstyles, LGD is probably the more passive team of those 3, where as IG recently has been showing a lot of agression within the new patch. NaVi is just NaVi, and they will always be a unique team with a unique playstyle.
Pajkatt:The way I see it, the difference between LGD and iG or Na’Vi is that their playstyle can be easier to read, but harder to deal with. In TI2 up until final day, everyone knew how LGD drafted but no one managed to stop them anyway.

Q:Now you are training with LGD together. Do you think it would contribute to you strategy communicating and all strenghs improvement?
Misery:Definitely. We just started practising seriously yesterday, as 1437 recently arrived in china. I can see that we are improving from every game.
Pajkatt:Yes ,I belive it will.

Q:Chinese teams are still strong in TI2, and five team all entered final eight, even 3 team entered final four. Some foreign players say  Chinese professional would “destroy” DOTA2 as they did on DotA. Do you agree with it?
Misery:Yea I kind of agree with it, I dont think theres any potential left in europe besides NaVi, a few good players, but no teams that can play up with the chinese. European DotA now, is too much about streaming random public games and boosting your own personal fanbase, instead of practising with your team and generally focusing on the team.
Pajkatt:I think it’s not about chinese, european, american or SEA, it’s about the professionalism that exists in the chinese dota scene. Hopefully we will be able to prove that a team consisting of players of differenet nationalities combined with the dicsipline of chinese teams can compete with the best.

Q:Are you still playing DotA? What is the biggest difference between DotA and DOTA2 do you think?
Misery:I have only played a few dota 1 games the last year, the main difference is that dota 2 is much much easier to play, all the new features and hotkeys etc in dota 2 as well as the engine itself, makes the game very easy to play for new players. Ofcourse this doesn’t matter too much on the highest level, since its the same for everyone, but from my point of view this is the biggest difference. Some heroes are much stronger in dota 2 than in DotA 1, and the drafting is more interesting in dota 2, it feels like you can use almost any hero in DotA 2, where as in dota 1, you will get punished much harder if you try to pick outside the box.
Pajkatt:I played a couple of DotA games since I got to china, but we will not participate in any DotA tournaments so now there is no reason for me to play DotA. I think the biggest difference is how the game looks and feels, it takes some time to get used to switching to DotA or DotA 2 if you played one of them and decided to switch.

Q:As DotA map version continual updating, Chinese still remains a large numbers of DotA players, but most competitions has change to DOTA2. So the DotA has many players but no ompetitions, and DOTA2 has many competitions and no players. If this embarrassing situation would effect the tntegral development of DOTA?
Misery:I think with time everyone will start playing DotA 2, I heard the problem is the lack of beta keys in china and the fact that dota 2 is running on steam. Now it might be a problem, but in half a year or something, it should be fine. Im sure Valve is aware of the problem and they are working 24/7 to make everything better.
Pajkatt:I think within one year close to everyone will be playing DotA 2 rather than DotA, it’s more viewer friendly and after playing it now for more than a year I feel that it’s a better game than DotA.

Q:You took part in SMM for EG last year, but encountered very bad thing. This year’s competition is still DotA, and do you plan to participate it?
Misery:yea, I dont think we will participate SMM, not because of what happened last year, but mainly because it is DotA 1, and our main purpose in china is to focus on DotA 2. Initially it was the plan to go to SMM, but I doubt we will go.
Pajkatt:We wont participate in this years SMM.

Q:Previously Team DK has clearly indicated that they would transit to DOTA2 after WCG and no more participate DotA competition. What do you think of their decision?
Misery:I think its a good decision, both for them and the dota 2 scene in china in general. DotA 2 is the future, and everyone should know.
Pajkatt:I think it’s a wise decision, there will be more and more DotA 2 tournaments and less and less DotA tournaments.

Q:The WCG grand finals will be held in China this year. Both DotA and DOTA2 are WCG Competitions. Although DOTA2 hasn’t open beta, but  it has favoured by many large-scale events, do you know the reason behind? Do you plan to participate WCG?
Misery:I would love to participate in WCG china, I dont know much about it really, but I hope we can play it.
Pajkatt:DotA 2 is easier to watch than DotA thus favoured by large-scale events. Unfortunately we won’t parcitpate in WCG.

Q:In lastest version, many unpopular heroes got enhancement and became more violent. Do you think it is good for game developing more exciting and eyes catching?
Misery:Yea , I think most of the changes are really good and it will definitely mix up the hero pool a bit, which is always interesting. I think a lot of the fans are happy about seeing some new heroes come into play from time to time, and the updates help this to come true.
Pajkatt:I think the latest versions buffs and nerfs were necessary and interesting, I expect many new heroes to be played the upcoming months.

Q:Thanks for your time. Anything to shoutout?
Misery:My pleasure! shoutout to our sponsors, LGD, Razer and Taobao, shoutout to all our fans and supportes and shoutout to LGD rurutia for making LGD.Int possible as well as our awesome manager LGD-Nicholas!!
Pajkatt:Shoutout to our sponsors, LGD, Taobao, Razer,to our fans, teamleader Nicholas and to my family and friends in Sweden.