HasuObs 'Grilled' interview (50 mins)

"I think the answer's no, I don't think that SaSe or NaNiwa would be as successful as they are in SC2, same for me though. I think in the end of WC3 there were a certain amount of players, like 15-20, and they were always invited to tournaments, and they were by far the best, like it was very hard to reach that level. I think it was also very hard to find really good practice at the end of WC3, so it was hard to become better. It seemed like those 15 players, they just had a different level, like they were one level above all the other players, and somehow it was very hard to get into that level.

I think the only player who managed to do that was LucifroN in the end. LucifroN was an underdog for a really long time, then he started to win tournaments and compete with the very best. But I think he was really the only guy who managed to do that in last two years of WC3, all the other players had been there for several years and been successful.

In SC2 it was a very fresh game, you had to learn new skills because it plays differently from WC3 but also from BW, like the unit micro and the movement is very different, so everyone had to learn it new. So everyone started basically with zero and then you have to adapt to the game, learn new strategies, new timings. It seems like because of many new players there were a lot of fresh players, fresh strategies, that seemed to be really important for the RTS scene overall. Now we see some old players doing really well, but some of the others never managed to do that well, they just fell apart, so they couldn't really transition to the game well."

"[Rain's] understanding of SC2 is just a little bit better than anyone else, as a Protoss player. He uses builds which noone else does, which means that he invented them, and they are very clean as well. At least for me, it's very hard to copy his builds, [they] requires a lot of multi-tasking, you're gonna have the warp prism on the map, you're gonna harass, and at the same time you don't do any kind of mistakes in your macro game, which actually requires a lot of skill.

MC most of the time, especially when he won a lot of tournaments, was very timing based. There were so many famous two base all-ins of MC, that was just the way that Protoss was gonna win the game, so you can't blame him for that. That's just a totally different approach [to] the game, when you see those two playing. Recently MC is not winning too much anymore, he lost to Grubby at the IEM in Singapore, and I think there was another foreign tournament where he dropped out early, which didn't happen before."