MYM|Maelk Interview

Maelk, I would first of all congratulate you guys on MYM's tough win against DTS in the round 3 of F4F. What is your opinion about the game since you're just observing from the sidelines? - Thanks. Well, the most obvious thing that went in favor of DTS was the fact that we completely forgot about Nerubian Assassin, a hero we normally deem as firstpick-material and that we feel we are good at utilizing. Turns out, so is DTS and Dendi really won their earlygame all by himself. The QoP and SA got caught some times where they shouldn't have, and that combined with some awesome arrows by MaNia resulted in enough space for MYM to farm up in. Not the prettiest game from our part for the first hour or so, but the guys really got after it and showed sublime play later on. The Grand Final of MYM Prime Defending 11 has finally been resumed after several issues regarding Mouz discarding their DotA team and MYM will be facing Ks.Int. How does MYM feel instead of being given the default win? - Obviously the match should be played out. We are even in the losersbracket, and I would rather take second place than agree to be the champions by default win, so that's somewhat great. However, despite how hard a decision like that may be, I think it came all too late and I am not sure that changing the version is good for the tournaments integrity. While I don't care what organization the mouz/KS.int players represent, I think it's important for the tournament to stick to their rules and demand that only the players signed up for the tournament are eligible to play. We will most likely let them play with a Ks.int substitute, though. Regarding the formation of new Ks.International, how strong do you think is the team going to be in the future when they're ready? How do you see MYM's chances in this final with Ks.int having the 1:0 advantage? - Considering the fact that it is BO5, it leaves more room for error unlike BO3 where we couldn't afford messing up at all. I feel our chances are as great as ever, they don't really seem like a team more like a gathering of inhouse-players. After having witnessed them on LAN though, I realize that they are definitely a stronger team online than on LAN. Their future depends on whether they are able to make the chemistry work, find a natural leader and keep their egos in place. The latter something I could very well imagine to be difficult. The community has all seen Playmate playing for MYM in numerous occasion, Dreamhack and at the moment, Farm4Fame. So when will he sign with MYM finally? - As of right now he is still on a what can best be described as a trial-basis. We are pretty confident in him joining, but chemistry and teamplay is of the utmost importance to us and we want to make sure that PlaymatE both has this and realizes this. It isn't a walk in the park to join and shouldn't come over night despite Dreamhack proving that wrong. What do you think of the new uprising team from Australia, sL, that managed to defeat the champion of F4F 4, Serious Gaming? - As far as I know they are old players under a new name. Musica especially is a household name to represent Oceania, and toneeh allegedly conquered the ladies world only to move onwards to total domination in DotA. They have some interesting strategies, much like the team of Tofuboi and icex3. We have seen you recently reasoning with the late Virtus.Pro fans in a news column. Why is it necessary to do that? - Normally I just tend to ignore any kind of nonsense written by a complete noname as I can respect people having their favorite teams and players, I myself am no different when it comes to soccer and American football, but when people slanders our name with false claims, on our own turf even, I feel I have to stand up for myself and my team and at least inform them what is right and what is wrong. With the year coming to an end, how do you think MYM performed this year in overall? - We got off to a good start by winning PriDe #9 beating both WG and VP in the final games. From there things went bad and from bad to worse. We flopped PriDe#10 and when the versionchange came we only made decent performances on LAN and never made it higher than 3rd place. From September and onwards we picked it up again, and finished 1st in everything besides ESL where we finished 2nd, all in all I'm pretty satisfied with how the year went by. Naturally LAN is where we want to win the most, but we did a good showing at ESWC Finals and won Dreamhack, so I'm pleased. Are there any other events that you wish MYM have performed better? - Dreamhack Summer didn't mean a whole lot to us, but I did feel we should have taken it further at both ESWC Masters as well as Grand Finals, where we were overwhelmed by the preparation of the Asian teams. A couple of new DotA versions popped up this year. Which was your favorite one and how do you judge the map process in general in 2008? - I think all of them were good despite what everyone else thought. I feel 6.52 was, and still is, discarded too soon as a boring version and that people might overrate the capabilities of 6.57 simply because a bigger range of heroes sees play. Having the better lategame has always been, and still is, the best strategy. Unfortunately. Any final words? - For christmas, I wish that everyone would think before they post and since that's not going to happen, my New Years resolution is to never read comments again.