Johan 'NaNiwa' Lucchesi im Interview - Teil 2

„Ich liebe StarCraft II immer noch“

„I still love StarCraft II“

After having talked about Heroes of the Storm in the first part of our interview, Johan 'NaNiwa' Lucchesi shared his opinion on StarCraft II in the second piece.

StarCraft II

Now with the Region Lock around the corner, do you see the playoffs lineup for WCS EU shifting? It is the perfect time for a comeback, isn’t it?

Honestly, there is still around eight koreans who practice with eachother and regularly go back and forth from Korea. They have access to Korean replays and they play with eachother a lot, while I only would have the ladder to practice with. So this makes me feel like I would have to put in a way greater effort in order to catch up or stay ahead to make myself content with my own results. If I would come back I would only do it if I had the chance to live in Korea. But WCS made this kind of impossible.

You are probably quite familiar with the WCS player handbook and how to violate it. Blizzard does not seem very eager to enforce it being followed. Do you think this is better than Riots approach of handing out punishments?

Personally I think it’s ridiculous that Riot lifetime bans people from competetive gaming because of what people do on the ladder. If they do something at an actual tournament then I could understand.

Would you say that controversial characters are productive for growing the eSports industry?

I think anything that makes it more interesting and at the same time doesn’t damage the scene is good. I think characters like IdrA, Stephano or me are very good to increase the popularity and create hype drama and rivalries. Personally I feel so extremly bored watching people like Bunny or Snute because all they say is how they want their other teammates to do well and show good games. But when people do like what I did at MLG, calling the tournament shit, I think it is very bad, and I think that was extremly inappropriate by me and that was entirely just negative. So I guess my point is that it is a fine line, but „yes“ is the answer to the question.

Your Twitter makes it clear that you do still follow the StarCraft II scene. Are you still enjoying to observe tournament matches?

Yes, I still love StarCraft II a lot and I enjoy watching the big tournaments when Protoss are playing because I still think its a beautiful game.

What would have to be done to Legacy of the Void to bring you back to StarCraft II?

Except for the obvious tweaking of the Swarm Host I think that it is probably time to take drastic measures for one last hail mary such as making the game free to play. But right now personally the reason I’m losing interest is because there’s no fun players for me to follow. I always enjoyed IdrAs ragequits and Stephanos random stories about underage girls. The current progamers in the west don’t interest me playwise nor personalitywise, so I think they should try to create more stories and things like that. Just like ESL just started with Apollo, I really liked those videos.

Reflections

Which was the happiest moment of your career? Does success imply happiness to you?

Basically the happiest times were when I was the most satisfied with my play, so usually that translates to winning moments. But even when I lost and I played great I felt very happy knowing that I did my best at LANs since I had huge problems with nerves early on.

Is there somebody in the eSports industry you look up to – be it player or not?

Among players I always looked up to MadFrog for many years in the beginning. In terms of people who were really interesting and helpful in eSports, Thorin is my favorite. In terms of just StarCraft II players I admire sOs.

Don’t take things to heart and don’t care so much about other peoples opinions. Just have fun.

What happened to this?

Haha, it was very flattering of course. But I can’t really go across the entire world to meet a stranger, no matter how interesting it would be. so unfortunately that’s where the story ended. (laughs)

We thank you for your time. The last words of this interview are yours.

Blubb blubb. Me and SaSe will try to play more HotS after BlizzCon if we can find people who are interested. (smiles)