ToD 'Grilled' interview (56 minutes)

"I had a bit of a mental block [vs. Zacard], but this is more, in my opinion Zacard was the best player in 2004. That year Grubby won WCG but in my opinion Zacard was still overall better, he was like such a genius. Every time I would watch him play, Zacard and Moon were like the two best players at the time, and Grubby was after [them]. But in WCG it turned out that Zacard beat Moon, so Moon was out, and Grubby ended up beating Zacard in a direct match, but my opinion a direct match doesn't particularly mean a player is better than another. Zacard's matchups, all of them were so impressive to me. Grubby was still very good obviously, but Zacard for me, Zacard and Moon were the two best players at the time.

So losing to him [that] many times after, he was the first player to really play blademaster, I wasn't very good against it, I had no experience against it, so I lost to him many times. I don't think... did I ever beat him? I don't think I ever beat him, he retired like untouched against me [laughs], thinking of it like [that] it's a bit bothering for me, but I like him so much as a person and a player that it doesn't actually bother me that much. Like I said, [I had] a bit of a mental block against him, but he was just such a phenomenal player that I had to lose to him the few times we met, it's unfortunate for me."

"Yeah, I mean there was a metagame period where there was still a lot of strategies unexplored. Moon was a little bit the pioneer of Night Elf, he kept on bringing on [the] new trends. For example, on Gnoll Wood he kept expanding everywhere and running around, nobody else was doing [that], everybody was trying to fight straight up. He changed the game a lot in his own way, Orcs started playing a very similar style to what he was doing, so as the game evolved everybody kind of learned how he was playing, but it took us some time, that's why he was dominant in the start. That's why, I mean after Zacard retired, it was just Grubby and Moon being the best players for some time.

Yeah, I mean Moon was just brilliant, later on it finally kind of caught up to him, just because you can be as creative as you want, the game is limited in creativity, so once you've explored all the strategies there [are], sort of, and you've been the first doing them, everyone starts copying you and then they catch up to you, they figure out the styles that you're using, their weaknesses. So he started playing more standard from there, since there [were] no really new strategies, I mean you would need new units to make new strategies, and he started playing standard and he was not as dominant as before, when he was using his innovative strategies to surprise opponents, but he was still pretty damn good, obviously, like he still found some good stuff to do, like new creep routes, timings, he would refine his timings very well.

A lot of people remember me as Moon's nemesis and it's true for the most part, he did beat me a lot of times but maybe I had a postive score against him, I'm not sure, I didn't keep track, but it's a very satisfying feeling, obviously, because he was one of the best players, maybe the most respected Night Elf in the history of the game. It's a touchy subject, because when you ask 'who is your favourite player of all time?', a lot of the time people will say Grubby, the other half will say Moon, then some people will say Sky, maybe some people will name someone else, but a lot of people will name Moon, and that's a very satisfying feeling, to be the guy who beat him so many times."

"I think we have the answer [for] this with StarCraft2, like the BW players are doing a lot better. They seem to practice harder in general. Like I know that a lot of people in WC3 were lazy, even though we had a pretty competitive pro scene at first. Later on a lot of people retired and the top players didn't have to practice a lot to be honest. In [terms of] the mechanics, maybe you don't need as much for WC3 as for SC2 obviously, basically once you were at a top level in WC3 you didn't need to play that much, you just needed to play a couple of games, watch replays here and here, see what the trends are, see what the player usually does, then you can counter a little bit, but overall everyone just played standard.

You could play the same strategy for years, and still be one of the best players in the world in WC3. In SC2 you can do the same strategy for two games and you're going to be crushed by one of the top players, just because he's going to completely counter you. So this is very different in that way, and I just think SC2 is much more competitive overall, like there [are] more players playing it, a lot of people are actually trying to go pro. In WC3, in Europe, there was like a very small amount of players actually trying to go pro or be professionals, but in SC2, are you kidding me?, Like everybody in GM is playing 24/7, like really trying to make it. So yeah, just more competitive."

"I used to think [that] for a long time too, I mean I was one of the world's best in WC3 and I remember like when some people mentioned coaches I was like 'If a coach tells me something I'm just going to tell him to bog off, like he has no idea. I'm one of the good players, he wouldn't know'. Right now I feel like since the Koreans are doing the best, and most of them have coaches in their houses. If we want to catch up our only chance is basically to copy what they're doing. Not their build orders, but the way they have houses, the way they have coaches, and a great structure to practice, and going to tournaments and having a lot of practice and preparing diligently.

You know I was just in the USA for a couple of months, and MrBitter asked me to come over to try and coach a little bit in the house, so I tried to coach a couple of the players there, sometimes I would tell them do this, do that, play this daily tournament. But then if they don't listen, what am I supposed to do? I don't want to have to beat someone with a stick because he didn't do what I said. So I think the only way to really have a coach is if he has power over you, like if he's your employer or your boss or you really treat him as a coach, you have to do everything he says. So I think coaching like I did before is a bit useless, because people only listen when they want to, and ultimately they don't get the results you would want them to because they don't practice as much, so it was very hard for me to deal with that, because some players listened more than others, but if they didn't there was basically nothing I could do about it.

But if there was some kind of arrangement where basically I am the boss, and I would have to coach them and they would have to listen to otherwise have to move from the house, or they lose their team, then if they listen to me then then I feel like they could really exploit their complete potential. But that's not what's happening outside of Korea, cos we don't a single coach anywhere like that. So I'm really hoping later we get something like this gets setup, and then we get to see the full potential of some foreigners. Imagine a house that's going to be made like this in Europe, so you send Kas in and a couple of top players, and you have a Korean coach there. Imagine how good that would be for the scene, to really see what some players can do under perfect practice conditions."