White-Ra to attend his fifth WCG grand final after beating Strelok. Photo by: ESL.eu
Oleksii "White-Ra" Krupnyk will be attending his fifth World Cyber Games after going through a gruesome Ukrainian qualifier.
- "It's always not so easy, because there are many strong players in Ukraine," says White-Ra to GosuGamers.
The seasoned Protoss player went through Eugin "Strelok" Oparyshev back in August 16 at the national final, and had before that in 2-0 fashion gone through the Pepsi, Alf, Van and Strelok in the tournament bracket.
For the grand final, White-Ra is paired with Pavel "BRAT_OK" Kuznetsov , Yang Chia "SEn" Cheng and Shou "nazomen" Kusumoto which puts him in the only group without a Korean player. He sees no real threat in the Japanese player nazomen, and is sure that two players out of him, SEn and BRAT_OK will go through to the next round.
White-Ra does, similar to the amassing crowd, believe that the Koreans will come out with all three medals this year.
- "They are unstoppable," says White-Ra and adds that he sees a Korean terran player win, which would mean Lee "Flash" Young Ho taking the gold.
While having been to USA before due to WCG 2007 in Seattle, the "grandpa protoss" is still a bit nervous because of the long trip there. He does however tell us that he is 100 per cent prepared mentally, but a bit less technically.
White-Ra believes that this is the last time we will see StarCraft: Brood War in the World Cyber Games, and that StarCraft II will take over.
- "I think it will. StarCraft 2 is several times more popular than SC:BW now," says White-Ra.
It becomes even more apparent that StarCraft: Brood War is at a downfall when White-Ra's personal sponsor DuckLoad needs to sponsor the trip to World Cyber Games.
- "I'd like to thank all the fans for supporting me and especially Duckload.com for giving me an opportunity to go to the Grand Final and stay in USA for several SC2 tournaments."
Thanks to Vo-One for helping out with this interview.
