World Elite at last season's finals. Photo by: Julia Christophers, ESL [2009]
HoTLiPs: We will give every player the chance to play
The current title-holder of WC3L, World Elite, has not been struck by the so called eSports crisis. With a fierce 9-man-roster and an amazing 2008 in the back, things are looking good for the Chinese team.
The new WC3L system has trimmed down most of the teams to instead rely on heavy-weight players instead of a diverse and flexible lineup. The World Elite manager has no plans on trimming his squad.
- Due to the new system we will rotate our line-up from match to match to give every player the chance to play, said HoTLiPs.
Hoping to qualify directly to finals
His hopes for the oncoming season is qualifying directly to the finals. But there are speed bumps on the road to the goal.
- The new season will be a completely new thing. Of course we want to qualify directly for the finals once again and show some great WC3 action to all fans out there, said HoTLiPs.
- Our hardest opponents might be fnatic, SK and mouz but I also expect quite a lot of surprising results since the daily shape of a single player will matter more than ever, he added.
No "eSports crisis" in the Chinese team
HoTLiPs explains why the "crisis" didn't reach all the way to China.
- The market and fan base there [China] is still huge for Warcraft 3 and the majority of the tournaments are held there as well. In 2005 team WE was founded to be the first professional Chinese Warcraft 3 team and that's why we paid the main focus of attention to our WC3-players since then, explained HoTLiPs.
- Last but not least we had a terrific year 2008 and our players did not only take place in every big match there was, but also competed in many more tournaments than the players of MYM and SK together, if you count all the participations of all players being in the team. That makes every of our players quite important and not just useful for team leagues, added HoTLiPs.
Key player: TeD
The team not only holds the Human comets Xiaofeng "Sky" Li and Xuwen "InFi" Wang, but also the Make Games Colorful front-runner and ESWC bronze medalist Zhuo "TeD" Zeng.
The stellar Undead player bloomed out in the start of 2008 after an exceptional run in the team competition Road of the King. In the last season of WC3L, TeD not only played solid in the regular season, but was also a key player in the finals after winning Lyn, ReMinD and Susiria.
- At the moment when TeD killed the Blademaster of Remind I think I felt
pretty satisfied and a lot of pressure has dropped off from my shoulders, expressed HoTLiPs in a preview interview on the WC3L competition page.
Links
WC3L.com - Source
