YaphetS to help World.Elite fight Captain Planet



Credit to wololo for the flyer.

ECAL HOSTS $800 WINNER TAKES ALL SHOW MATCH BETWEEN CAPTAIN PLANET AND WORLD ELITE Feat. YAPHETS on March 24, 2012



Fullerton, CA – March 19, 2012 – ECAL, a newly established gaming league, will be hosting a show match between World Elite from China and the newly formed team, Captain Planet from the United States.



World Elite will also feature highly regarded player PIS, better known as YaphetS who previously played on Nirvana.Cn. Many regard PIS to be the #1 player in the world. Since retiring from competitive gaming last year, PIS has spent his time providing commentary for competitive gaming in the chinese scene as well as providing first person views and tutorials to the public. World Elite recently qualified for the G-1 finals against DK with their DOTA1 Team. Currently WE is ranked 3rd in China but closing in fast on that #1 position if they are able to beat DK.



Team Captain Planet is comprised of Koreya-, Power.Net, 1437, Demise and Celdur. They are an experienced team with 1437 and Power.Net both previously playing on ezstyle as well as OK.Nv.int at some point in their competitive careers. 1437 was also apart of OK's team at last years International which came 6th overall.



This showmatch will be streamed in both English through own3d.tv as well as Chinese through PLU on March 24th at 12PM GMT



For further information, please contact Geno by email, geno@ecal.tv

Hi Nitestryker! Can you briefly introduce yourself and explain what this showmatch is?

Hi, I'm CFO of Elite Cyber Athlete League Inc. or ECAL for short. On 24th of March we'll be holding a showmatch between one of the most highly regarded players, YaphetS, against America's best of the best. This showmatch will be a BO3, winner takes all, and will also be one of the first if not THE first Dota2 match to be livestreamed in China.

How long have you been involved in Dota? What makes you want to hold this match?

I started playing dota in 2003 when it was 1 of a myriad custom maps. To be honest I only really got into competitive last year when I contacted Geno to sponsor SECS on NADOTA.com. We really wanted to make SECS bigger but we realized realistically speaking we had to think and commit bigger.

So we then brought on Solace and Nova on to the team and the four of us founded ECAL in February. This showmatch is really our first foray into proper competitive gaming organization as well as a testbed for us to approach bigger sponsors as well based on the success of the event.

How did this idea all come together? Did you just decide you wanted to see Chinese teams play?

Everyone would agree China is the largest market. Since we're newcomers to the organization scene, we needed to build rapport for sponsors and viewers to trust and watch us. Going in with a bang was what we were thinking and we believe that Yaphets will bring that sort of attention since his retirement from competitive gaming. Chinese don't care about Dota2 at the moment because China is still heavily invested into Dota1 and by hosting this showmatch, we are hoping to draw the attention away from Dota1 and League of Legends which is incredibly popular there, towards Dota2, as well as ECAL.

How did you end up deciding on and getting the teams you did?

Funny story, Nova our co-founder used to play on CCM under the name strawberry, which some people may recognize. Before playing for CCM he actually played on the same team as YaphetS. Many of the WE players and management were also long time friends of Nova too, so it was simple for us to get them to play.



In terms of the western teams, we initially approached Na`Vi however we couldn't come to an agreement on the servers, so we respectfully walked away. Eventually we got in contact with 1437's team and they said they were happy to play against WE and YaphetS on SG servers.

Yaphets playing Dota2 is big news. Has he been playing long? Do you think he will step back into a role as a player?





In terms of playing, maybe maybe not, depends really how Dota2 pans out. Which is what we're trying to do, shift the focus of the community. I'm sure if YaphetS got invited to the Internationals he'd be training everyday. Currently as far as I'm aware, he's doing reasonably well as a commentator, first person view caster as well selling some gear on his online store. I believe YaphetS is still heavily invested in Dota1 as I said before. From what I've been told only a few teams have been playing Dota2, WE being one and obviously from the recent thread on TeamLiquid DK, LGD and Panda are also in the midst of training.In terms of playing, maybe maybe not, depends really how Dota2 pans out. Which is what we're trying to do, shift the focus of the community. I'm sure if YaphetS got invited to the Internationals he'd be training everyday.

There has been some talk recently of China getting their feet wet in Dota2, consensus is they will dominate sooner or later. Do you think this will take a long time? How likely do you think it is that Chinese teams are a big force before, say, the end of 2012?

Again this is hard to say. Other than The Internationals, there isn't any incentive to play. Because of the congestion on the US-China international link, Chinese teams will effectively be confined to SEA competitions unless it's a LAN setting. Personally I'd like to come out and storm the scene, however I 100% believe that they will only make a slight impact around if not later than The Internationals.

Are there any particular difficulties you have run into when trying to arrange this showmatch? Time zones, server decision, things of that nature? Is it hard to organize a link between China and the west?

Time Zone is reasonably difficult in any online setting. It comes down to deciding who is your target market, in our case the Chinese, and anything else on top is gravy. As I said before servers is a big problem since there's a lot of packet loss between US-China. That link is 100% congested and during our testing this week, Valve informed us that there's no way around it, which is why we picked SG as the host. Organizing between teams was reasonably straight forward as I am bilingual.

In Korea right now the BW scene co-exists next to the SC2 competitive circuit, but slowly players have been moving more towards SC2 (or in a few cases, LoL). Do you think Valve will push hard for a rapid transition, or do you think they will stick mostly with their current scene?

I think as long as we can show that the money/incentive is in Dota2 it's inevitable for them to transition over. The biggest reason why it hasn't caught on, and this makes complete sense, is that there just isnt enough keys/accounts. Everyone in the world wants it. But after a while not getting it, a lot of people just give up and go do something else, in the Chinese case, go play League of Legends



Dota1 will be like BW in Korea. It will coexist but won't be at the same scale. Ultimately LoL is making a massive marketing push in china and if Valve plays its cards right Dota2 will reign supreme as deep down, everyone loves Icefrog and Dota.

The playstyle in China is very different than what is seen in American/Europe. Do you think Captain Planet will be thrown off by that? Do you expect to see any unusual heroes, ie Batrider?

I think although in Dota1 the playstyle is distinctly different, that does not directly translate to Dota2. The limited pool as well as the change in the engine, a lot of factors change trending heroes.



If anything, from what i've seen is a lot of teams may be copying what EU/US teams are doing! Although the other day we did see a batrider pick akin to the old 6.67/6.69 days...

What is at stake here? Pride? Do WE or Captain Planet need to prove themselves?

Well other than the obvious $800 for WE it's the pride. After losing embarrassingly in the Premier League they got massively raged at by the online Chinese community and they want to comeback with a vengeance, and show Chinese Dota is still #1.



Captain Planet on the other hand are trying to prove that they're a top quality team, and worthy to be invited to the top of the top tournaments like the defense, TPL and ultimately The Invitationals.

Anything else you would like to add? Shoutouts?

I'd like to send a shout out to my fellow workers Geno, Solace and Nova along with everyone at NADota. Also liked to thank Valve, Icefrog for their assistance as well as making this amazing game.



DrMaul and Blitz for their assistance along the way and Finally own3d.tv and PLU as the official supporters and broadcasters.

Saturday, Mar 24 12:00pm GMT (GMT+00:00)

Today ECAL announced they will be holding a kind of East-vs-West showmatch on Satuday. The kicker is that YaphetS is playing. Their press release:I talked with Nitestryker of ECAL to get some information about what went into this and asked what it was like working with Chinese organizations.