Just a few more hours before the first game of this GEST edition kicks off. No one other than David 'LD' Gorman is set out to do the english live cast.
He casted the grand final of The International 2 together with Luminous and is certainly a name to look out for in the world of Dota. He have also casted matches for The Premier League, Beyond the Summit and Dreamhack. And now he adds some good old fashion WarCraft 3 DotA to his resume.
Hi guys, I'm LD, an English commentator from Philadelphia in the United States! I've been casting Dota for about 6 months now and been playing since about 2004. I was last seen casting the Grand Finals at The International 2. Before that, I cast the TI2 East Qualifiers and Beyond the Summit's World Tour with GoDz.
How does it feel to do this event now, going back to casting DotA 1?
This will be the first live DotA 1 event I've ever cast, but I'm really excited to go back to my roots as a player and get the opportunity to do it. If any online event can possibly compare to the level of hype that The International 2 had, it would have to be GEST. When I'm up late at night and unable to sleep, I often find myself tuning in to GEST and just laughing at how outrageous the fans in the chat are. SEA Dota fans (especially the Pinoys) are the most passionate Dota fans in the world. For pure excitement, nothing compares to the explosive games we've seen in GEST over the past few months. Where else but GEST could you ever hope to see a Techies specialist standing in for a tournament with significant money on the line and MAKING IT WORK?
Have you made any special preparations for it?
I just woke up from a full day's sleep (it's 8 PM here in Philadelphia). The past few days, I've been forcing myself to stay up much later than I normally would so I'm well rested for the matches, which kick off around 1 AM my time and go for about 6-7 hours after that. In the real world, most people would call this strange behavior 'ruining' your sleep schedule. In the Dota world, we call it 'for the love of the game'. I'm happy to sleep at crazy hours (or not sleep at all) if it means I get the honor of casting such exciting games for such an incredible fanbase. Man, I gotta go take a shower and cool off, I'm getting the pre-match fever and it's still 5 hours to go.
Catch LD's live stream at 07 CEST (12 UTC +7). You can find the live stream and stream schedule together with all the GEST coverage here.
