CG Pan-Pacific Finals

Kevin "qxc" Riley represents both the USA and his team ROOT Gaming in the Pan-Pacific Championship. QxC was invited to this tournament as a North American invite and is considered one of if not the strongest favourite for the event.

What’s your expectation for this tournament, and what do you think of the general format or idea of it? Do you sense there’s a friendly rivalry between American and Australian players?
I'm not entirely sure what to expect as I'm not familiar with most of the SEA players. I think it's a cool idea as there's definitely not enough interaction between the various servers particularly SEA & NA. I don't feel like there's much rivalry between the two servers.

You mentioned that some of the Australian or New Zealand players, while well known on the local SEA server, may not be known by an American audience but are there any Oceanic players you recognise or have heard of in the tournament?
I know Kowi (Cranklodocus on NA) & mOOnGLaDe. I haven't heard of any of the others... I might have played deth once. I don't recall. I haven't played crank enough to really get a good feel. He plays different from most other protosses so I've been caught off guard by his unique builds. I haven't played mOOnGLaDe since beta so I don't really know what to expect.

Which players do you see as potential favourites for the tournament, and which may prove dark horses?
I expect DarkCell to do pretty well. I don't know about favorites since I don't know much about the SEA players.

HD Starcraft recently released a VOD where your teammate ROOTCatZ was taken out by one of the Australian qualifiers deth so you might be looking to get revenge on him, but are there any other players you hope to come up against in this event?
Not really. I don't really have any kind of grudge against anyone in this tournament.

The sponsor, CyberGamer, are a community site for competitive games like CoD, SC2 and HoN. While the Australian website is already well established the USA site is new – do you think there is room or a need for such a North American competitive gaming site?
I haven't found StarCraft 2 players to care particularly much about other games. I've found that most sites that cater to a large number of games don't give sc2 the attention it needs and the players tend to be frustrated by that. I don't know if it's the same with cybergamer.org.

Daniel "deth" Haynes qualified through the Oceania qualifiers to represent Australia. While he is known as a very strong player on the SEA server and accordingly has a bit of prizemoney to his name, deth has yet to have a large breakout tournament and this is his chance.

What’s your expectation for this tournament, and what do you think of the general format or idea of it? Do you sense there’s a friendly rivalry between American and Australian players?
I expect the tournament will be run very well, it has a great original format that will definitely be successful. The idea of a NA/AU/NZ tournament is a bit odd to me considering I feel we only really have a deeply entrenched rivalry between England and ourselves, but any chance to see great players fighting is worth it.

As a player who knows a lot about many of the players participating, both NA and SEA, who do you consider potential favourites for the tournament, and which may prove dark horses?
Looking at the brackets from both the invitees and qualifiers, I would have to say without a doubt the favourites for the tournament will be each NA invite (Slush, qxc, kiwi, nony) and probably moonglade as well. If I had to give my best prediction for the overall winner of the tournament, I would probably bet on QXC who has been showing some really solid, improved play.

Do you think the SEA server has its own ‘style’ as many say the Korean or European servers have compared to NA? If so, what general themes do you see and have they become less pronounced since SEA got NA access?
SEA certainly has it’s own 'style', which I dub tenderly crafted, premium quality and incredibly delicious cheese. Generally, high level players during the age of SEA being locked to the SEA server would more often than not all-in or do some bullshit, making the metagame relatively more unstable compared to the other servers. Although, looking at the SEA qualifiers and invites, there are very few primarily 'cheesy' players, so I think we will be seeing fairly similar play from those coming from AU and America. NZ is an exception because they are all sheep, wine and cheese loving hippies.

Are there any players you hope to or hope not to meet in this tournament? Which Oceanic players do you expect to have a good chance of winning over their American counterparts?
I would love to play versus slush, qxc and nony. Although this probably won't happen. I expect that if Glade makes it out of the first round, he will most likely appear in the finals.

CyberGamer.com.au has already hosted a lot of large tournaments for the SEA server, but this is the first that allows both Oceania and North America to compete. With other predominantly Australian run tournaments including American players do you think this is a step in the right direction or would you prefer to keep most events local?
I think there is a pretty damn good variety of tournaments going on in the scene right now. If we were too restrictive and only, all the time allowed SEA residents to play in our tournaments, there would be little interest in any events (except for a small group of competitive players around here) and the same players would dominate absolutely everything. I think its important to keep having some exclusively SEA events, but certainly opening up the doors for cross-region tournaments and special events as well.