Korok: Quantic is truly selfless

posted by Mantis., 1 year ago

You guys have had some roster and sponsor issues, but you've bounced back by arguably becoming the strongest team in North American DotA. How have those issues, most notably, the departure of Bulba and the addition of Mikey, affected your team as a whole?

Korok: Towards the end of our time with It's GoSu, it was very obvious that Bulba did not possess the same motivation he once had ever since EG put him on their radar. He had been secretly planning to leave our team for a while but it only surfaced when a leak was found on a Skype chat between Fear and CWM. Our roster had been stuck at four players for a while but we were severely crippled by having only three players. Despite having a roster of four and an unmotivated player, we ended up placing 4th in Starladder but were unable to attend the LAN finals.

Universe, who was also a core member of our team, left for EG as well. During this time period the team was based off of me, PAINTITGOLD, and a mix of ringers and Bulba/Universe. We had already played a few games with Sorcery and he was our first pickup. After trying out several people for the fourth/fifth slots, we decided that Mikey and Solara would be great fits to our team and we stuck with those decisions.

It's GoSu decided to release the old team from our contractual obligations and we left on good terms. PAINTITGOLD and I handled most of the sponsorship talks, and we decided that this time around we would discuss our options as well as decide if our team's longevity would be worthy of a sponsorship.

Despite the drama and the stability issues, and the common notion that North American Dota is not at or has not been at the level of other countries, it seems that the region has produced strong teams that can compete on an international level. Are we finally seeing the emergence of a strong North American DotA scene?

Mikey: People underestimate the NADotA scene I think. Aside from the four teams you see and know about, teams such as Potm Bottom, HONPROS, and even It's GoSu get over-shadowed entirely too much and should be mentioned more often. You should expect those teams to make waves if they decide to play in the open tournaments popping up! To answer your question, yes I think this is the emergence of a strong scene, people are realizing it's not all about how well they perform as an individual and are actually putting an effort into making stable teams.

Korok: I think the NA DotA scene has always had the talent, but without organization it has always failed. In the past, several issues hindered NA teams from succeeding. There were almost no North American events or tournaments and the top leagues were invite-only/favored Europeans. Aside from Fear and Demon, the current top NA teams are comprised of players who didn't have a huge spotlight in DotA 1. But from their results, they are more than deserving of international recognition.