Since readmore.de will cover the entire 4th Season of WCIP from now on, Claude ‚Wolky‘ Koenig interviewed WCIP’s Headadmin Daniel ‚D4nny‘ Brooks about past, present and future of the worlds finest amateurleague. What came out in the end is an unique eSport-story you really should have read. D4anny himself said: „This is the first time ever I’ve been interviewed, so I’ve a lot to tell.“
readmore.de: Before we concentrate on WCIP our readers would surly love to get to know you better. So would you please introduce yourself to them?
Daniel ‚D4nny‘ Brooks: For all of you who do not know by now (laughs) my name is Daniel Brooks, I am 20 years old and was originally born in Norfolk, Virginia, but now I am living in Houston, Texas for the past 6-7 years now. I have lived all over because my dad was in navy. The best place I have lived for a few months is Cuba. I have always loved gaming and Esports and working behind the scenes, so it all just started from there. I attended University of Phoenix and I am studying Information Technology.
readmore.de: How did you become „the best admin to ever hit the scene“ as you call youself? And where did you your illustrious esport-career start?
D4nny: I call myself the best admin in the scene because I am constantly evolving. I dip into many different aspects of running a league to make it better. I have gotten into article writing, also Photoshop designing, web mastering along with 3d animation and illustration for my now recent WCIP Live Channel. Therefore I call myself best admin because I literally do everything on my own. If I want something for my league, I find a way to get it myself.
I can remember like it was yesterday how I got my Esports career start. I was on the Azerotth gateway and me and some friends wanted to make a clan. We made the clan called Clan Cold. That’s when I came up with the idea of “Hey we should make a league for our clan to get it some exposure.” Well team cold fell apart, but Cold League was still born and was kind a hit. It was poorly run at first because I as new to it, but it gradually got better and better. I achieved a sponsorship in just the 2nd season of it. Cold League was my very first Esports project, I have never been on any pro teams or anything like that, although I have had some offers. (laughs) Damn im writing a lot.
readmore.de: So concluding tell us a bit more about the things Daniel Brooks does in his private life.
D4nny: Private life, no real big accomplishments there. (laughs) My hobbies are sports like football, but mainly I have been really into dance (break dancing). I am bad, but I have gotten a lot better with daily training, so you never know, you just might see me at Red Bull BC One or in a few at IBE or R16 or Battle of the Year. If you are not a bboy fan, you will have no clue what those are, but they are basically break dancing competitions. My goal is to graduate college is bachelor’s degree in IT networking, which I am sure I will achieve soon, but for now I am focused on making my WCIP project the best it can be. Many will say it has come along ways, but I know there is more I can achieve with it. Expect more and more improvements. I am never satisfied. (laughs)
readmore.de: Many of our users might not know WCIP very well, could you please tell us something about why the league was founded and how it developed within the last three seasons?
D4nny: As I mentioned before I started out with Cold League Esports. While that league was running I was also following ESL WC3L to see some awesome game and also how their league structure works. During that, I noticed there was no WC3 league in the ESL International section for teams who are not professional like the ones in WC3L. So I emailed the section leader at that time Pesticide and gave him the idea that maybe I could lead a league in the international section for amateur teams. He thought it was a great idea, so developed the league and named it WCIP (Warcraft 3 International Premiership).
The league originally started out as a 2 division league with 12 teams in each division. We hosted the biggest qualifiers ever. We had 3 total qualifiers with 128 teams in each qualifier. The league exploded onto the scene with great popularity at first, but then it just fell off the radar and no one knew who we were anymore. I got a lot of hate and such that WCIP sucks and you should stop the league, etc. It really sucked to get stuff like that but I carried on anyways. The league structure and the rules were indeed quite buggy, but we made it through Season 1 and Season 2 fine.It was at the end of Season 2 I realized a change was needed and the structure was not working so I launched a WCIP version 2.0 and changed the league structure to the WC3L system ( a much more stable and fun system) and that’s when WCIP really took off in the scene. We gained much more professional and skilled teams along with a $500 sponsorship from ESL.
readmore.de: You’re still using the familiar old WC3L-System, why is that?
D4nny: We use the old wc3l system, because in the amateur scene is not experiencing a hard financial hit like the pro scene. Many may not like the new system, but WC3L had to make that move to keep their professional league alive. WCIP on the other hand will stick with the old system which many people do enjoy still until we see a large trend that the amateur teams are getting smaller. If that trend never happens, then we will never switch to the new davis-cup style system. As a side note, amateur is such a bad word for my league now, I will call it a semi-pro league. (laughs)
readmore.de: Until last season you had the old mappool as well, with Lost Temple and Gnoll Wood for example. For season 4 there have been made some changes, which ones and why?D4nny: Well the answer to that is simple. It’s all about „out with the old“ and „in with the new“. Our map pool was outdated and maps like GnollWood and Lost Temple saw some pretty imbalanced game play, so we decided to remove those from the map pool. We added in Centaur Grove to spice things up a bit. You do not see a whole lot of leagues with that map and it’s not an entirely bad map.
It’s all about players preference. If they don’t like it they can just veto it ^^. Some other changes include our new home page design. I worked pretty hard on that and it came out nice because the navigation on our site is terrible. It still is terrible, but at least all you need to know about us is located on the home page. There has been no other big league changes other than that I believe.
readmore.de: Which teams do you consider the favourites for the title, and which ones could surprise?
D4nny: Probably the favorite to win in general consensus is nGize. Their team has some of the strongest players in the league, but this is no guarantee for them, because they may not want to bring out their strongest line up for this league. I also feel Millenium has a good chance as well to place high as they also have some nice players that have shown some good results. Teams that could surprise us are ieS virtual gaming and also Infernal Gamers. To be honest it’s really hard to pick because there are so many good teams, but I do feel these two should be showing us some unexpected great wins. In all we will see a whole lot of good games this season.
readmore.de: For Season 4 you invented something called WCIP Live. What exactly is that and what do you promise yourself from it?
D4nny: WCIP Live is video stream software from Moguls. Many of you saw this in use when Grubby was streaming some of his practice games as well as casting some replays. It will be used in WCIP to stream some games, but as well as bring in some audio commentary/ shoutcasting. The cool thing about it is, anyone can do it. So I can bring in as many guest commentators as I want.
I brought something like this in because number 1. WaaaghTV and GGTV experience several bugs all the time that really ruin coverage. And also I have a lack of streamers for the league anyways. Number 2 is ESL TV will not cover WCIP because ESL has many other competitions which take up the slots. I wanted some sort of TV coverage pretty badly, so just like I mentioned in one of the first questions. I figured out a way to do it on my own.
WCIP Live I am sure will be a hit. I have been working on some great visual arts for it. I have some nice funny commercials lined up, and also some interests from some nice shoutcasters who want to participate in it. I will be shoutcasting sometimes, but I am not good at it, so you won’t see me often, but I am the one who is controlling the channel. All the effects, and commercials and such are done by me, so blame me when you see stupid commercials and such. (laughs) All the wars will be available on demand so you can play them back if you missed them live. Also as the channel evolves I am hoping I can do more with it like some audio interviews and such. The possibilities are endless and I will take on as much as I can. Some professional players shoutcasting would be nice too!
readmore.de: One of the biggest problems these days is a lack of WTV-Streamers. Do you think you’ll be able to deliver complete Waaagh!TV-Coverage with up to four different Best-of-Threes at the same time per clanwar?
D4nny: Well it depends on scheduling goes. I only have maybe max 4-5 WTV streamers, so if there are several wars happening on the same day, some wars will lack WTV coverage. If it is just 1 clan war that is being covered, then we have a rule where no more than two games can run parallel. Sometimes it doesn’t always work out cause some players are short on time, but we do our best to try and get the games up on WTV. This season I am hoping we can see an improvement in that department, but it will be tough. I am not available at all pretty much on Sundays, so matches set to Sunday you will typically see lack some coverage greatly.
readmore.de: One of the less weaknesses that the WCIP-System has, is that clanwars can take really long due to hostsearches and the emergence of mass Mirrors on some maps. Can you calm our readers down concerning that?
D4nny: Chill out everyone! Everything is going to be alright! Our system is very dynamic so it minimizes on chances for there to be mass mirror matches. They will happen from time to time, but that’s life. Some mirror matches has some great action still. It’s the players who make the game, not the race. With some nice WCIP, you won’t care what kind of match up it is. As far as hosting problems go, in a perfect world, every team would have their perfect hosts lined up and ready to go, but I know it is not going to happen. I am already prepared for some painfully long clan wars due to host problems. When they happen, you just have to deal with it as it comes and hope the fans can be patient with us. Even the best international online leagues in the world cannot escape this problem.
readmore.de: Another problem you could recognize during the past season was a lack of professionalism in terms of behaviour and manner by some players. How do you want to prevent that in season 4?
D4nny: Many will tell you this, the last thing you want to do is disrespect me or the league. I have ZERO tolerance for bad mannering and dealt with it accordingly every time it came up in the previous seasons. There are always some players who like to spoil the fun for everyone because they are having a bad day; the best to be done is just to remove them from the situation. Whether its kick them from channel or league itself if they are behaving bad enough. Overall these cases are pretty rare. There is a minor flame here and there every once and a while, but for the most part WCIP does maintain a high level of professionalism which is why a lot of team enjoy playing here.
readmore.de: What do you belive the future holds in store for the WCIP and what will WCIP have in store for us?
D4nny: If the future was really bright, WCIP would get offline finals in front of millions of people! But realistically speaking, I do believe WCIP will continue to make minor improvements as time goes on. In the future I see our selves as being the very top semi-pro league available for the teams! I think the caliber of teams will continue to grow in the future and the league just might accidentally become a professional league xD. With the release of SC2 right around the corner, I hope it doesn’t kill wc3 to the point team leagues don’t exist anymore.
readmore.de: Well I wish you and the adminteam the best of luck and hope season 4 will become as great as it promises to be, any last shoutouts?
D4nny: Here comes the longest shoutout list ever! Big thanks to WCIP|Heaven, he really helped me get Cold League off the ground and there definitely would not be any WCIP without that. He also does some great work in WCIP also from time to time. A very big shoutout to a retired admin named WCIP|bAsE, he was an incredible admin for Season 1 and 2 who really got WCIP going in the right direction. Another shoutout to Pesticide for bringing WCIP to life and also to TheRogue for supporting my project with the prize money. Shoutout to everyone who has helped me and every single team that has ever competed in WCIP at all, because with out the teams, you have no league period. Shoutout to readmore staff, gosugamers staff, goodgame staff, all scene coverage staff that give Esports a breathe of life! If I missed anyone, shoutout to you too! And thank you haters to helping me make the league better. (laughs)

