Since WCIP Season IV is finished and the finals lie ahead readmore.de catched up with Daniel ‚D4NnY‘ Brooks, headadmin of WCIP, to talk about all what happend during the fourth season. Read on if you’re interested in why all French hate D4NnY, the tragic and very disturbing death of Billy Mays and of course, the Future of WCIP
readmore.de: All those postponed games where very disturbing during the season, 3/5 games didnt end the day they started. Any plans to change the system for season V?
Daniel ‚D4NnY‚ Brooks: Yea this is a big problem that was definitely apart of breaking/ruining coverage. Probably the best way to fix this is to remove the mutal postponing feature all together, and keep the max amount of wildcards at 3. If teams run out of wildcards, they can still postpone, but it costs them penalty points.
The problem I saw this season was just too much mutal postponing going on, so not enough teams were burning their wildcards, which is what they are made for. So in Seaason V, you could very well see the deletion of Mutual Postponing in an effort to force these teams to finish their clan wars on the day they scheduled them.
readmore.de: During the season you banned some players for a certain amount of time, wanna tell us why, and how it played out?
D4NnY: Well the only player to get banned was PsYkO. That was a very interesting day. It was the clan war of Millenium vs eXpertise, and eXpertises players were not there on time (very common actually), and Millenium decided to wait for them to show up. Well apparently the eX manger Dooki said something that made team Millenium mad and about five minutes after eX’s players show up, Team Millenium decided they didnt want to play and wanted to take a defwin. I told them this is not possible, eX’s players are here, and just get in the game and play. PsYkO decided he wasn’t going take this and started flaming me. I warned him that you are talking to the head admin of WCIP, he thought it was a joke and called me a dumbass.
He found out soon after that that it wasn’t a joke. He got banned the entire next playday for his flames. Everyone from team Millenium thought this was my fault and my bad decision not granting a defwin. The one key factor that no one from team Millenium wanted to listen to that day was the fact that the Millenium manager agreed to wait and play.
You can’t just change your mind because of anger when the players are there ready to play. This spread through the French scene really fast and now a lot of the French wc3 players think I have vendetta against France or something like that. It was quite funny.
readmore.de: Did those fusions between aRi/A1 and GaB/BIN angerd you, cause they totaly messed up the rankings twice?
D4NnY: Well the first merge of aRi and A1 threw me off definitely cause I did not plan for it. The first course of action was to delete the slot, but after brainstorming it a bit and a talk with my boss, the best idea turned out to be a mini tournament and it all worked out great.
Then I got hit again with another merge of Gab and Bin gaming, and that’s when I definitely got annoyed, not full on angry though. At that point in the season, it was impossible to replace that team, so it was a deleted slot. It definitely screwed up in rankings in the aspect of sometimes had fewer clanwars played than others, until the very end of the season. At the end of course everyone ends with 10 games played.
readmore.de: How would you evaluate the first season with WCIP-Live?
D4NnY: It started off super strong with me and Endars doing some nice casting, but then towards the middle and end of the season starting running into some major problems. The first issue to strike was lag. So many people were complaining of this, but there was really no way to stop it. The software used to record the games hooks right into the DirectX to minimize the lag the best it can but, sometimes our internet just isn’t cooperating. The next big issue was the issue of clanwars not even recording.
All of the on-demand videos got wiped and was having trouble recording new clan wars. Since Endars was on vacation, I litereally tired myself out from casting, and sometimes missed some matches. It is rough casting by yourself, and to be honest, I really don’t like casting, I like doing the behind the scenes work, but if I didn’t cast, then WCIP Live would not exist at all since I could not find any good casters to take over. Its a stream of bad luck that I am confident will change during Playoffs.
readmore.de: What did the death of Billy Mays mean for WCIP, was it a hard blow?
D4NnY: The death of Billy Mays definitely struck us hard. Billy Mays was a dear friend a huge lover and sponsor of WCIP Live. We will never forget his „Fantastic Products“ such as The Never Scrubber, Kaboom, Billy Mays‘ Blue Balls, Mighty Putty, The Orange Glow, and the Hercules Hooks! His commercials were a fan favorite on WCIP Live and many people tuned in just to see what all the Billy Mays hype was about. His unexpected death right after Michael Jackson prompted us to have a Billy Mays tribute on WCIP Live which was comical to say the least, but now he can rest in peace.
Forever live the awesome catch phrase „Billy Mays here with another FANTASTIC product!“
P.S. Apparently Billy Mays smoked crack. That is what the autopsy is saying.
Tune into WCIP Live if you people have no idea what I am talking about
readmore.de: Please tell us what great stuff you planned for the WCIP-Live playoffcasts.
D4NnY: Well I will be trying to get some great skilled casters that include some actual professional casters, all the way to professional players. As usual I will be building some more interesting short-clips to play during WCIP Live so, you will have to tune into the website and the live stream to find out whose going to be on board for the Special Guests Casters!
P.S. Endars is finally back from vacation, so all you Endars fans will be able to check him out during Playdowns as well as in Playoffs!
readmore.de: Which team was the most surprising one for you?
D4NnY: A nice surprise was definitely Infernal Gamers, even though they did not make it to Playoffs there is no doubt they delivered an outstanding performance in all their matches and proved they definitely deserved their spot in WCIP. You have to remember this is a team that made their entire run in the losers bracket of qualifiers.
readmore.de: Which one did disappoint the most?
D4NnY: A shocking surprise team was definitely ieS Virtual Gaming. When you look at their roster you get the feeling of a dominant unstoppable team, but this was not the case at all. A record of 3-0-7 is definitely nothing to be proud of, and they got some kinks to work out. I am not sure what happened to them this season, but maybe their players just were not training enough. I saw recently they just further increased their roster with players from the now disbanded aRi squad. We will see how they do in playdowns.
Team aRirang was also a big disappoint as well. They flew through the winner bracket of the qualifiers, only to get in the season and lose nearly every single match. When you think Korean Esports team, you think top of the line performance at least when it comes to Warcraft 3. To be honest, I really do not expect a full Korean squad to perform so badly, I guess the European semi-pro scene has stepped their game up!
readmore.de: Who will win the playoffs ? A short final analysis please.
D4NnY: nGize is looking strong to win this, but keep a close eye on Millenium as well as Faculty. We very well could be seeing some upsets this season. It’s never over till I write the news „Hey guys the season is over.“
readmore.de: Who will make it through the playdowns?
D4NnY: To be honest, it could go either way for both matches. Infernal Gamers lost to eXpertise in regular season, so maybe that’s something to factor in for that match. As for ieS Virtual Gaming vs. nGt, nGts roster has gotten weaker in my opinion while ieS Virtual Gamings roster has gotten stronger, so I would say they are favored to win that clan war.
readmore.de: Who would you have voted season IV MVP, and why?
D4NnY: All the nominees were really good and they all were nominated for that very reason. PsYkO had top stats and people wonder why not just pick him and why bother with a vote, but its something fun to do to get the community involved in WCIP.
If I just picked the top statistics person then no one is really going to care that much. There is also some controversy of S.o.K.o.L winning, people blaming none other than Readmore sending support towards S.o.K.oL. Seems like the rest of the countries need to step up if they want to compete with the germanscene. Oh, to answer your question, Either PsYkO, Sokol, or Sting pretty much had me in a 3 way tie if I had to vote
readmore.de: If you had to rate your overall contentedness with season IV from 1-5, what number would you pick, and why?
D4NnY: I would pick a 3. It went ok, had the bumps in the road with the merges, and sometimes lacked on Waaagh TV coverage, but I think we definitely stepped it up this season and provided way more WTV than last season. Overall it was fun doing some of the live casting, had some great moments with Endars which really made the WCIP Live intro come to life. For the most part everything went very smoothly, even the merge transitions didnt cause too much disturbance. There is definitely a lot room of improvement though.
I have to say the external coverage definitely picked up. It was not huge, but it was good to see WCIP mentioned every now and then on some coverage websites. Internal coverage still needs a lot of work.
readmore.de: Are there already informations about season V qualification?
D4NnY: Yea this is a super common question I have been getting from a lot of people. The answer is there is no information about season V qualification at this time. I’m pulling a WC3L stance and just sitting back and waiting for now xD.
But anyways the truth is I graduate from college this November so, if there is no one to really pick up my work that I do in the league, there will be no choice but to shut it down. Until I have all this information fully sorted, thats when I’ll make an announcement on whether WCIP will continue or be closed. The last thing I want to do is open a new season that I cant be therefore, so then the reputation of the league just fails hard. Id rather end it on a high note.
readmore.de: Any last words?
D4NnY: Shoutout to Billy Mays, Michael Jackson, all the followers and staff of WCIP (my staff this season is one of the best Ive had since Cold League). Special thanks to readmore.de for my 2nd interview, Woot! And all other coverage company partners who help keep WCIP relevant. And the „Best Admin to ever hit the scene“ is a joke people.. jeeze..
readmore.de: Thank you very much for your time and good luck with WCIP in the future.