Latest / Start the game already! / [ENG] Magazine Ep. #06 November 2025

Transcript

[ENG] Magazine Ep. #06 November 2025 · Start the game already!

• 0:13
  Welcome to another episode of the monthly magazine covering
• 0:16
  all important topics about Age of Empires.
• 0:19
  Today is a very special episode because this podcast will be Co
• 0:24
  hosted by the up and coming talent of our scene.
• 0:28
  Hello, Daniela. Hey, Chris, thank you so much
• 0:31
  for the nice introduction. It's happy to be here.
• 0:35
  Yeah, I'm so happy you are here and I'm so happy that I don't
• 0:39
  have to go through the magazine all by myself because we have
• 0:42
  lots of topics to cover. But first let me ask you.
• 0:48
  Just a few moments ago you told me that you had to get a coffee
• 0:52
  because you came from outside and you were freezing cold.
• 0:56
  How cold is it in Canada? Pretty cool, especially in the
• 1:00
  morning. Like right now it's noon and
• 1:02
  it's 5° tonight goes to -2 actually already so.
• 1:09
  OK, that's almost the same as here in Germany I think.
• 1:13
  This morning when I went to work it was 5°.
• 1:16
  I was freezing to death on my bike.
• 1:19
  Oh no, I just see that it actually feels like -4 which is
• 1:26
  crazy. Yeah, I think the the wind does
• 1:29
  the trick right, because we are fortunate right now it's it's
• 1:33
  kind of cold in the morning, but there's hardly any wind.
• 1:35
  So it's OK even to ride a bike. But if there is like a harsh
• 1:39
  wind, 5° feels like -10. Absolutely.
• 1:46
  Well, as I've said, we've got lots of topics to cover,
• 1:50
  especially because we've had so many tournaments recently.
• 1:53
  So the program of this episode will be the Ling Yuan Cup, Amigo
• 1:59
  Wars 3, Masters of Hyper Random 3, the announcement of the
• 2:03
  newest edition of Red Bull Wallolo which will take place in
• 2:06
  London. Then there's TTL 5, Bronze
• 2:10
  League, the Naval Rework, the Onimaru Boot Camp, The
• 2:14
  Chronicles DLC featuring the newest addition to the big
• 2:18
  campaigns with Alexander the Great, and of course, the
• 2:22
  batting scandal of Age of Empires 2.
• 2:25
  There's also a little bit of franchise news after that, and
• 2:29
  then we'll pick out a few of the emails that have been sent in
• 2:33
  after the past episode in order to discuss them.
• 2:36
  And as always, we'll close the show with the tournament outlook
• 2:39
  for November 2025. Well, yeah, it feels.
• 2:44
  While you were saying how many events we have to discuss, it
• 2:47
  was feeling like all this past month has been more than the
• 2:53
  first half of the year. Right.
• 2:57
  Right. I think a major challenge in
• 2:59
  this podcast will be to actually know which game was in which
• 3:04
  tournament. It's just been too much.
• 3:08
  Yeah, it's, it's been a lot. All right, I think we should
• 3:13
  start with the news. So the Ling Yuan Cup is probably
• 3:18
  the most prominent of the tournaments that have been
• 3:20
  played in the past month. It was a 1V1 STLN event held in
• 3:25
  Beijing with a mixed map pool and 10 contestants.
• 3:29
  Hera, Leary, Viper and Yo had been invited.
• 3:32
  ACCM, Heart, Nikkov, Andy and Sebastian did get their tickets
• 3:36
  through 2 international qualifiers and of course Vivi
• 3:40
  got his spot through the Chinese Mainland qualifier.
• 3:44
  The tournament lasted for five days.
• 3:46
  Four days of intense group stage matches were culminated in the
• 3:50
  semi final and final on the last day, the 5th day.
• 3:54
  The four invited players have also been the four players to
• 3:57
  make it to the play offs. And in the end, Hera met Leary
• 4:00
  in the finals and took the win with a 42 victory over his
• 4:05
  former team mate. So before we start talking about
• 4:08
  the tournament, yeah, How long did it take you to get your
• 4:12
  regular sleeping schedule back? Oh.
• 4:14
  My God, a while, let's say a week.
• 4:18
  I think for sure the the week after the tournament I was a
• 4:24
  complete mess. So I'm not not sure if our
• 4:30
  listeners are, you know, familiar with where I'm living
• 4:34
  right now. I'm living near Montreal in
• 4:36
  Canada, and the tournament started at 1:00 AM every single
• 4:41
  night for me. And I was very ambitious to try
• 4:44
  to cast all of it. That was challenging for sure.
• 4:50
  I didn't get to cast all the sets, but I think I covered 90%
• 4:55
  of of the tournament. Yeah, you did.
• 4:58
  I think at one point I was watching your stream, you
• 5:02
  covering the tournament and you almost fell asleep.
• 5:05
  You have no idea how many times I almost fell asleep, like
• 5:10
  especially in the mornings where it would be 10:11 AM and I've
• 5:15
  been casting since midnight. I was just closing my eyes just
• 5:20
  just for a split second, you know, and I would open them
• 5:23
  realizing that I haven't said anything in the last five
• 5:26
  minutes. That's actually not true.
• 5:30
  You never took 5 minutes, but there were times.
• 5:35
  There were a couple of times when it was very obvious that
• 5:38
  you were taking a nap or well, at least a little break.
• 5:43
  It's very understandable since you had to work through the
• 5:46
  whole night. Yeah.
• 5:48
  So basically my plan was, you know what, I'll just go to sleep
• 5:52
  earlier. If I sleep from maybe 7:00 to
• 5:56
  11:00, that's solid 4 hours of sleep.
• 5:59
  I'll be fresh like a Daisy. You know I can just start.
• 6:02
  Myself, yeah. Yeah, yeah, Nah, I can't sleep
• 6:06
  during the day. And I remember that quite
• 6:10
  quickly because the first day I started with more than 24 hours
• 6:15
  awake. It was, it was tricky.
• 6:22
  Yeah, there was one day. So I've been invited to cast on
• 6:26
  the Onimaru to a channel as well by them.
• 6:29
  I told them that I probably won't be able to cover the
• 6:33
  entire event and they were OK with it as long as I'm of course
• 6:37
  covering and the sets since he was the Onimaru presented
• 6:43
  representative there and there was a single day where he was
• 6:50
  scheduled to play the last I think.
• 6:52
  And I actually, I actually prayed for my dad that morning.
• 6:58
  I, I was like, Oh my God, just just five more minutes, 5 more
• 7:03
  minutes. And I would say to my child, OK,
• 7:05
  guys, I need to go wash my face again with cold water.
• 7:10
  I was just putting my face under this thing.
• 7:13
  I was just destroyed. Was that the same day ACCM and
• 7:19
  Hera played their 4 hour game? Oh.
• 7:21
  My God, I don't think so. No, I, I skipped that one
• 7:25
  completely one evening. I think that set was on the
• 7:30
  third day when I almost crashed out.
• 7:34
  I, I was extremely exhausted and I said, you know what?
• 7:38
  It is what it is. I think I casted one set and I
• 7:43
  was like, you know, guys, I'm sorry.
• 7:46
  I think I'll just skip this entire day altogether.
• 7:49
  I'll just go to sleep. And I went to sleep.
• 7:52
  I was like, it's fine if I take one full day where I don't cast,
• 7:55
  maybe I'll cast tomorrow, some recorded games, etcetera.
• 8:00
  And I woke up with set 3 still ongoing.
• 8:04
  I'm like, Oh my God, I can cast the next two sets live.
• 8:09
  Actually worked in your favor. Yeah, you know what another
• 8:12
  you're thinking you're you're saying no, no, no, no, no, yeah,
• 8:17
  no. That was so funny because that
• 8:20
  that date Andy actually played the second set, so the set
• 8:25
  before that. So I I covered Andy's set, I
• 8:29
  think, and I said I'm going to sleep.
• 8:31
  So I went to sleep and I woke up with ACCM.
• 8:34
  Hair are still ongoing. Yeah, that was 1 crazy game.
• 8:42
  Did you look up that game afterwards or did you just
• 8:44
  entirely miss it then? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 8:47
  I watched it on Fast forward. On.
• 8:50
  Really. Yeah, on Lewis's stream, Not on
• 8:53
  my channel, but I just went back in Lewis's stream, he was
• 8:56
  casting on Harrah's channel the entire event.
• 9:00
  So what's your opinion on these very very overtime long games
• 9:05
  for our games? Did you enjoy recapping it or?
• 9:10
  As a viewer and as a caster, yes.
• 9:13
  I think as a player, no matter if you win or lose, it can be
• 9:19
  extremely exhausting in a set. I mean, only that game lasted 2
• 9:25
  hours and 1/2 in real time. Something like that, no?
• 9:31
  What was the entire set then? Four hours.
• 9:34
  Must have been. Can you imagine playing for four
• 9:37
  hours without, you know, open mouth gaming in a tournament
• 9:42
  with all the audience and, and such?
• 9:46
  I don't know. And Herod took it with three O
• 9:49
  as well. Yes, he did.
• 9:51
  He was fighting like a champion. Yeah, he was fighting for his
• 9:54
  life. Thank you.
• 9:56
  Quite literally I believe after that long of gaming.
• 10:00
  But so did Accmi. Don't know.
• 10:03
  When I was watching the game, I I thought the first hour was
• 10:07
  interesting and the last five minutes were interesting when it
• 10:11
  ended, but the whole game in between was kind of always the
• 10:16
  same. So I got really bored actually
• 10:19
  as a viewer and kind of annoyed that the game wasn't over
• 10:23
  because I wanted to see in fresh set a new set with something
• 10:26
  exciting happening. The downsides of that is also
• 10:30
  the trash war, right? Like it's just hosars and halves
• 10:34
  and squirms. There's no gold at that point on
• 10:37
  the map anymore. Obviously Hera was able to turn
• 10:41
  it at at a point because he had the four relics and add a couple
• 10:47
  of CAI think to to close the game, but helps after four hours
• 10:52
  because for several hours you're just hoarding on that gold to
• 10:57
  save for siege. Without traps you cannot take
• 10:59
  out buildings, without traps you cannot advance and take map
• 11:04
  control. And since at that point is just
• 11:07
  basically a Hazar flood, as soon as you move those house from
• 11:14
  next to the traps, those can those can be so easily sniped by
• 11:18
  the Calvary that it is just OK starting fresh.
• 11:23
  Another fresh wave of Hazars, another 20 minutes way to mass 3
• 11:29
  traps. Rinse and repeat for two hours.
• 11:33
  It was a crazy game. It was, and you know what?
• 11:37
  People got really excited because I think it was on
• 11:39
  Bedouins, right? I love that map.
• 11:46
  I think people got excited because on Bedouins it became a
• 11:49
  wood game, which is very rare. But when I realized that it
• 11:54
  would actually be a wood game, I was almost turning off the
• 11:59
  stream just thinking I'll set a timer for an hour and maybe come
• 12:03
  back. But that was also the time when
• 12:05
  I was really sick, so there was really nothing else I could do
• 12:09
  and just stare at that stupid TV and watch them fight out a trash
• 12:13
  wall for an hour or two. That was.
• 12:16
  Well, I suffered with them, is what I want to say.
• 12:21
  Yeah. So I think you decided not to
• 12:26
  use the clean feed, but instead cast through capture Age, right?
• 12:31
  So what was your reasoning for that?
• 12:33
  As a caster, I really like being able to, I don't know, focus on
• 12:41
  the areas that I'm talking about.
• 12:43
  So basically me controlling the camera, me controlling capture
• 12:47
  age is also allowing me to focus on certain moments for as long
• 12:54
  as I want. Of course, if I see something
• 12:55
  extremely important castle drop on the other side of the map, I
• 12:59
  will quickly switch to that. But if I'm focusing on an aspect
• 13:03
  of the game, yeah, I know sometimes it can be burst,
• 13:09
  sometimes can be insignificant things as well.
• 13:12
  But I don't know, like I often see casters frustrated with the
• 13:19
  observer or things like this because they can't control that.
• 13:25
  I also understood the reasoning why the other casters prefer to
• 13:29
  use the clean feed because they had the real, you know,
• 13:35
  reactions of the players. They had the cameras, they had
• 13:38
  all of that, which obviously at the LED event is really
• 13:42
  important. They even had the audience
• 13:45
  reactions and and such, so that was really nice.
• 13:50
  I was using it during the interviews as well.
• 13:53
  But also restreaming another Twitch stream I think really
• 13:57
  takes a big impact on the quality of the games that are
• 14:01
  streamed. So I prefer to use my own
• 14:05
  capture also there. It was in Chinese, right?
• 14:10
  Well, they translated most of the Chinese things.
• 14:14
  Oh, OK. But the capturage version was
• 14:18
  not on Chinese. Yeah, the capturage.
• 14:20
  That's what I mean. Like I know.
• 14:22
  That was on Chinese. I think at some point my stream
• 14:25
  crashed, my capturage crashed. I'm having so many issues.
• 14:28
  I've been even talking with the capturage team for for a long
• 14:34
  time and it's my understanding that other casters have that
• 14:37
  issue as well. So when I'm casting a lot, when
• 14:40
  there's a lot of games being covered, my capture just
• 14:43
  starting to to crash constantly. So at some point it crashed only
• 14:47
  once and while I was working on those issues I used the clean
• 14:51
  feed. Wait what are the styms?
• 14:54
  I was just looking for the ambulance somewhere.
• 14:59
  I think that was a little bit annoying.
• 15:01
  Also the clean feed, they had a couple of problems like just
• 15:05
  quality wise and on the last day they had some serious problems.
• 15:12
  But then again on the especially on the last day they upped the
• 15:17
  audio from the audience so that you can actually hear the crowd
• 15:21
  and the players, which was really nice.
• 15:23
  That felt a bit like what we are used to from Red Bull feeds.
• 15:29
  So I was switching back and forth between watching Nelly
• 15:33
  because he used the clean feed and but Nelly was also
• 15:37
  complaining a lot about the spectators.
• 15:41
  Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's it's nice to be able to
• 15:45
  control what you're focusing on. Yeah, so when I whenever I got a
• 15:50
  bit annoyed by that, I switched back to you and watched yours.
• 15:54
  So there was a lot of going back and forth.
• 15:56
  I couldn't really decide what to watch.
• 15:59
  I did not however watch Lewis on Harrah's channel, but you seem
• 16:04
  to have watched him a little. He used the the clean feed as
• 16:07
  well, Yeah. Yeah, but how was Lewis as a
• 16:10
  caster? Good, like a lot of people were
• 16:15
  were doubting Harrah's choice, I feel like, but I, I knew, I knew
• 16:20
  that when it comes to, I don't know, streaming on a different
• 16:23
  channel like Harrah's as well, bigger channel.
• 16:26
  He he'll, he'll be a professional about it.
• 16:28
  And he was he his casting was good.
• 16:33
  People were super happy with it. Obviously Harrah's channel is
• 16:39
  big and I think during the finals he even reached at like
• 16:44
  5K viewer, something like that, which is crazy good.
• 16:48
  No, no, it was it was really good.
• 16:51
  I was also kind of watching nearly sometimes as well when I
• 16:55
  wasn't casting it would a couple of games that I missed.
• 16:59
  I was also switching between casters as well and trying to
• 17:03
  see what are they doing and the sense are they using the clean
• 17:06
  fit. Also whenever there would be an
• 17:09
  issue in game or something and I was opening the discord, I would
• 17:16
  always see people complaining like oh there's no audio and
• 17:20
  clean feed, There's no there's a static noise.
• 17:24
  Also static noise that it was during Harrah's in final
• 17:28
  interview, the winner's interview.
• 17:30
  Oh yes, yes, that was annoying. I remember switching to that and
• 17:34
  it was really bad. Yeah, it was kind of painful,
• 17:39
  but for some reason, apparently men didn't have that problem.
• 17:43
  I don't know how he fixed it, but then everyone turns to me.
• 17:47
  Yeah, he hacked. He had his insiders.
• 17:51
  He was probably there. He set up his own studio on the
• 17:54
  Chinese land and faked it. OK, so let's talk about the
• 17:59
  tournament just a little bit at least.
• 18:02
  What's your overall opinion about the land?
• 18:05
  Really great impression given a couple of things that were
• 18:11
  explained by the admins. They haven't hosted a land
• 18:14
  tournament in a long while, they had to quickly deal with the
• 18:18
  issues on the spot. Production seemed a very high
• 18:22
  quality, maybe even coming from this perspective that like
• 18:28
  admins were really on point with the problems that were being
• 18:32
  brought from there and from online, you know, like the the
• 18:37
  things with oh clean feed or we can hear this or the mic is too
• 18:42
  loud there or they seem to really be on top of all the
• 18:47
  problems players and the people there at the audience seems to
• 18:53
  be having an amazing time. It was generally fun to to watch
• 18:58
  them. I'm very happy that the Chinese
• 19:03
  community got this event and they were able to put it
• 19:07
  together because, you know, having to stay up all night to
• 19:11
  cast those at those times also kind of made me think that you
• 19:16
  don't want that community. And I don't know, maybe others,
• 19:21
  like a Australian community for instance, have to deal with
• 19:25
  those times every time when there's a tournament at normal
• 19:30
  times for Europe or for NA or, or such.
• 19:35
  So I'm, I don't know, I, I feel really good about this
• 19:39
  tournament. I think the Chinese community
• 19:41
  deserved it and they were really happy about it.
• 19:44
  So were the viewers. It was a really high quality
• 19:47
  event. That's what I think.
• 19:50
  I think they were actually much better than I thought they would
• 19:55
  be, considering that this is probably the very first time
• 19:58
  doing an event like this in Age of Empires 2.
• 20:00
  And if you remember the first days of Red Bull Wallaloo events
• 20:06
  in Heidelberg, like in Germany, they have always been much worse
• 20:10
  than what has happened here in this land.
• 20:12
  For for some reason Red Bull is like every first day had had an
• 20:17
  issue with something. Well, I think that's not Red
• 20:20
  Bull. I think that's German Internet.
• 20:22
  Well, no, but if you think about last year, it wasn't in Spain
• 20:27
  and. That was OK, right?
• 20:29
  No, no, no. It was the day where they
• 20:33
  couldn't start the stream on time.
• 20:34
  Like they started the stream some like 2 hours later.
• 20:37
  It was a time when Orlu got a lot of viewers because the games
• 20:42
  had to be started. I got a lot of viewers.
• 20:45
  I think I was casting on the GL channel in that day and people
• 20:49
  were like, always looking for alternatives, yeah.
• 20:53
  Yeah. So compared to that, they
• 20:55
  actually did a really, really nice job for sure.
• 20:57
  Do you know anything about the Chinese viewership like numbers?
• 21:03
  Because since Dave and T90 didn't cast and since the times
• 21:07
  were a little off to what European audiences are used to,
• 21:13
  I guess from those regions the view numbers were not very high.
• 21:16
  But do you know anything about the Chinese audience?
• 21:19
  Unfortunately not. Unfortunately, I don't know too
• 21:23
  much about the viewership. Yeah, I tried to find out, but I
• 21:28
  didn't find any reliable sources.
• 21:31
  I heard Nili say that Vivi had a couple of 1000 viewers on like
• 21:37
  Chinese TikTok or whatever, and you must have had like probably
• 21:43
  a couple of 1000 viewers, but nothing super spectacular.
• 21:46
  So I was wondering at in the end whether Microsoft or Neely
• 21:52
  thinks that this was worth it or not, because they seem to be
• 21:55
  very very very observant about viewer numbers and watch time.
• 22:00
  Yeah, they do care a lot about that.
• 22:03
  I can tell you for sure. I'm coming from my attempts to
• 22:10
  getting funds for a possible old tournament yeah so if they don't
• 22:19
  know much more info for sure like I I can provide I maybe
• 22:26
  happy leaves the creator of a spec dashboard could could have
• 22:30
  access to some sort of information of this sort.
• 22:34
  Well, I'm sure Microsoft will find their ways to get this
• 22:38
  info. I guess if in the next
• 22:42
  tournament calendar we will see another land in China, then they
• 22:46
  were good enough and if not, probably not.
• 22:50
  Is there anything particularly standing out to you when it
• 22:55
  comes to the standings of the land tournament?
• 22:58
  Like as I already mentioned, the four invited players headed on
• 23:02
  to the play offs, Hera one against Leary.
• 23:05
  That's probably not a very big surprise the both of them in the
• 23:08
  finals, but looking at numbers 5 to 10, anything standing out to
• 23:13
  you? Well, I I'll get there in a
• 23:16
  second. I just wanted to say about the
• 23:19
  players one to four kind of makes you kind of makes you
• 23:22
  think, right? They deserve their their spot
• 23:26
  there for sure. If see, the four players invited
• 23:29
  invited were the top 4 as well in the end.
• 23:33
  Definitely. I think there's no doubt that
• 23:36
  they are the best four players in the world right now, right?
• 23:40
  Yeah, for sure, definitely the the lines can be blurry.
• 23:48
  I feel like Hera in Leary. I, I, I think there will be for
• 23:54
  me #1 and #2 number three and four.
• 23:58
  I I, I think really depends from tournament to tournament, from
• 24:02
  setting to settings. I think this tournament ACCM had
• 24:09
  a better performance than Viper. Oh, OK, do tell.
• 24:14
  How do you get that conclusion? Well, from first of all, let's
• 24:20
  take a look back at their set right ACCM versus Viper, Viper
• 24:24
  Open 2O ACM was able to fight for his life and reverse sweep
• 24:28
  him. How often do you see reverse
• 24:30
  sweeping in SCR tournaments like this?
• 24:33
  Rarely. Yeah, that's true.
• 24:36
  And. We we didn't have that many
• 24:38
  sweeps as well. I think the second day of group
• 24:41
  stage there was not a single sweep.
• 24:43
  True, I also didn't point out earlier, but I really like the
• 24:46
  maps. The the maps were were good
• 24:50
  players seem to be prepared super competitive.
• 24:54
  I mean, of course it's an S tier tournament, land event and all
• 24:57
  of that, but the quality of the games were was really high
• 25:02
  level. Yeah, so the only reason why
• 25:06
  Viper moved on to the playoffs and not ACCM is because he had
• 25:10
  better bug holes, right, Because that was higher rated in the
• 25:14
  deciders than head to So it's safe to say that they
• 25:31
  had a quite similar performance. So in this case, it's just
• 25:35
  against whom else they played which was the decisive.
• 25:39
  Factor exactly. Yeah.
• 25:42
  So, well, I don't know, it makes you wonder if in in the second
• 25:50
  in the round two right when Viper faces ECM, I think maybe
• 25:56
  it would have been better for ECCM to not have won that set.
• 26:01
  Oh, would that have changed? Well, yeah, because.
• 26:05
  Viper. Is facing here right and we we
• 26:08
  see how that worked out in the semi final.
• 26:12
  True, but then again I guess they are way too competitive and
• 26:19
  they probably also don't calculate that far ahead.
• 26:24
  They just want to win games. For sure, for sure, for sure.
• 26:27
  Yeah. And like, I don't support this
• 26:30
  in, in any sense. I don't know, looking back at
• 26:35
  previous tournaments and situations we've had, I, I think
• 26:39
  every player should give his best, even if in certain
• 26:43
  situation, of course, the the advantage would be if he would
• 26:50
  perform, I don't know, a tiny bit more poor or something.
• 26:54
  Yeah, no, I, I, I think players should always try to give their
• 26:58
  best. Yeah, also I think, I think
• 27:03
  there's no point in trying to lock your way or, or or or try
• 27:09
  to get a better opponent for yourself because you never know.
• 27:12
  Leary almost beat Hera on the same day as ACCM was playing
• 27:16
  against Viper, and if he had beaten him then ACCM would have
• 27:21
  probably played against Leary and not Hera.
• 27:22
  So. Yeah, of course, of course it's.
• 27:27
  But I think ACCM was a bit over performing compared to his other
• 27:32
  performances in past tournaments and I don't think this makes him
• 27:35
  a top 4 player. I think Viper is more consistent
• 27:38
  than ACCM is. Overall I agree, in this
• 27:42
  particular tournament in my heart ACCM was Tom 4.
• 27:47
  Well. I think he he, he gave his best
• 27:50
  in his. Own yeah, I'm always cheering
• 27:53
  for ACCM. So I really like ACCM.
• 27:56
  I'm a big fan of his, SO I think I agree with you.
• 28:02
  OK, then there was also the phone incident with Vivi.
• 28:06
  I I think it's safe to say that that wasn't all go.
• 28:13
  I'm not really sure how that can happen.
• 28:15
  I think I can. I understand why admins made
• 28:19
  that mistake of letting it happen, because if I was an
• 28:22
  admin and I was making sure that everything was working all
• 28:26
  right, this is the last thing I would worry about.
• 28:30
  That a player would actually take out his phone, have the
• 28:33
  game open and his stream open and his chat open so so that the
• 28:38
  whole world, much like the stream itself, can see it.
• 28:42
  I think that's the last thing you think about.
• 28:45
  Yeah, I think overall it was a really bad look, but I do want
• 28:51
  to give Vivi the benefit of the doubt.
• 28:53
  Even with the other rumors before other histories,
• 28:59
  speculations, etcetera. I do want to give him the
• 29:02
  benefit of the doubt. If the admin said that players
• 29:10
  had to have access to their phones to draft in advance and
• 29:15
  you kind of have to have your phone with you, then he was
• 29:18
  apparently checking his stream, his chat.
• 29:21
  He was always, you know, engaging with his chat and with
• 29:24
  his viewers and kind of, you know, trash talking in his chat.
• 29:29
  I can see a situation where he completely forgets about that.
• 29:34
  For him, it's just like putting his phone next to the keyboard
• 29:38
  and completely forgetting about. I don't think, Yeah, I don't
• 29:42
  think Vivi's intention was to cheat, but I agree it was a
• 29:47
  really bad view. It's well, of course someone's
• 29:51
  intentions can not be proven right.
• 29:54
  I mean, if someone can say, well, you don't know, maybe he
• 29:59
  really wanted to cheat and maybe he did really want to cheat.
• 30:04
  I I would like to give him the benefit of of the doubt.
• 30:07
  I agree with how World's Edge treated the problem to deduct
• 30:13
  50% of the price pool, because at the end of the day it really
• 30:16
  was a mistake and it fact that that something like that is not
• 30:22
  admissible in a land event or in any tournament to be fair.
• 30:27
  Yeah, so I mean, it's clear that it has to be punished in some
• 30:31
  shape or form. I was wondering if he had to be
• 30:35
  excluded from the tournament, and to be honest if they did
• 30:40
  exclude him from the tournament I would probably think that
• 30:42
  would be the right choice. But the way.
• 30:46
  But The thing is, I started watching Age of Empires 2 when
• 30:52
  Vivi was actually still a top player and he was tower rushing
• 30:57
  the shit out of everyone on Arabia.
• 31:00
  So I am quite fond of him and I really liked to see him and I
• 31:08
  was also so happy to see him in an interview just speaking
• 31:12
  freely because usually you don't see the Chinese players apart
• 31:15
  from yo have any screen time because they just don't speak
• 31:19
  the language. So there was so many nice things
• 31:22
  about this LAN for me personally as a Vivi fan and I was kind of
• 31:28
  relieved that he was not kicked out of the tournament.
• 31:30
  But that was more on a personal level.
• 31:32
  And I've I kind of felt that I was biased.
• 31:35
  I think if it wasn't Vivi, I probably would have said that he
• 31:39
  had to be excluded from the tournament because that was a
• 31:43
  clear way of cheating, even if he didn't intend to.
• 31:46
  And usually cheaters are excluded from tournaments.
• 31:49
  For sure. Yeah, I I agree with you there.
• 31:53
  How I feel about a player on a personal note, it is very
• 31:57
  different. And of course their actions.
• 32:00
  That's why Vivi's one of my favorite players to watch every
• 32:04
  time. Like all of the chaos that he's
• 32:06
  getting into and I don't know, it just making the game messy.
• 32:12
  It's really fun and entertaining to see.
• 32:17
  And I just kind of felt bad for him In a lot of chats that I
• 32:22
  would open while I was jumping between the sets that I was not
• 32:26
  casting, I would see a lot of people saying that, oh, they
• 32:30
  rigged Vivi in this tournament. Vivi doesn't have a place there
• 32:34
  and you know what Vivi can have really good days.
• 32:38
  I I, I don't think that was accurate at all.
• 32:40
  I I kind of felt bad for him. Did he even win a single game?
• 32:45
  Yeah, he took a game for off of Andy and off of heart.
• 32:48
  Let's go. So, you know, he, he still gave,
• 32:56
  gave his all and gave his best. And like you said, it was so
• 33:00
  nice to see the Chinese players being so comfortable to, to
• 33:04
  speak in an interview. And, you know, obviously I feel
• 33:09
  like it's, there are two very different languages and it's
• 33:13
  very hard for, for a player to that that's Chinese to learn
• 33:18
  English or the other way around as well.
• 33:22
  And it was so nice to see even you who speaks English, who
• 33:26
  speaks very good English, but he was so comfortable and so in his
• 33:30
  element during the interviews. And you would see how much he
• 33:34
  was smiling and enjoying, even though, you know, he he's
• 33:38
  always, you know, funny and such, even in the English
• 33:41
  interviews. But he's very, you know, short
• 33:44
  in answers. And it was sometimes even seems
• 33:48
  a bit grumpy. Yeah, I know what you mean.
• 33:52
  At least a little reserved. Yeah, for sure.
• 33:55
  That's that's the correct word. We haven't talked about the
• 33:58
  final, maybe a couple of words about the final.
• 34:01
  True. The final, for some people, the
• 34:05
  final was between Leary and you and it was actually the second
• 34:09
  semi final and that was amazing. Yeah, that was a great set.
• 34:14
  I would completely agree that that set was like 100 times
• 34:18
  better than the actual final. Yes, went to game #7 I, it had
• 34:24
  everything. It, it was a crazy good one.
• 34:27
  I think no matter of the result of the of that one, I think
• 34:34
  either Leary or you would have given his their best against
• 34:38
  Hera. I think Hera would have still be
• 34:41
  the winner. But you know what?
• 34:43
  The the final wasn't too shabby either.
• 34:45
  I think Leary, Leary's one of the players that can actually
• 34:49
  take out the Hera one day if he would put maybe half of Hera's
• 34:56
  effort to make it for a tournament.
• 34:59
  But I'm not saying that as, you know, jab at Leary because he
• 35:06
  he, he knows his limits. He knows that I don't know,
• 35:11
  maybe he wouldn't enjoy to grind as much as Hera does or to
• 35:15
  practice as much. He practices just enough before
• 35:21
  a tournament to still show an incredible level and he has been
• 35:26
  this for the last couple of years or for as long as I've
• 35:29
  been around the scene and and see him competing tournaments.
• 35:32
  Leary always surprises me with his performance.
• 35:36
  Like you you expected but somehow in the back of your head
• 35:40
  it it shouldn't make sense. Like the guy is sometimes
• 35:43
  inactive for months and he just shows up and dominates.
• 35:49
  Well, he's incredibly talented and mechanically very sound.
• 35:54
  And also maybe for him it's it's more like riding a bike and he
• 36:00
  can't really unlearn it. He just needs to reshape a
• 36:03
  couple of skills and maybe catch up to the meta.
• 36:07
  Catch up to the meta, catch up to the changes, maybe a couple
• 36:09
  of new sieves, Yeah. Also I think style wise Leary is
• 36:15
  just so good that as you mentioned like he had to put
• 36:21
  more time into practice and I wonder if that's actually worth
• 36:25
  it for him because if he doesn't aspire to be the best player of
• 36:31
  the world then maybe he's just content with leaving that to
• 36:35
  Hera and being the second best. He gets $2000 less of prize pool
• 36:39
  which is probably not really an issue for him, and he has to
• 36:44
  invest so much less time into being that good than Hera does
• 36:50
  and still has a competitive chance against him I think.
• 36:53
  I think he's probably the winner out of all of this, like
• 36:57
  lifestyle wise. I from my understanding I think
• 37:02
  he has a full time job as well so I understand where you're
• 37:05
  coming with this. Like he probably doesn't mind
• 37:10
  minus $2000 and and and such. Like I was saying before in the
• 37:17
  previous statement, I really think it matters what you enjoy
• 37:22
  because you said that he's probably the winner lifestyle
• 37:27
  wise. But I'm thinking about Hera and
• 37:31
  I watch his stream on Twitch and I see how much he actually
• 37:36
  enjoys the game, how much he enjoys to just grind 12 games in
• 37:42
  a row on a on a stream every day for 8 hours.
• 37:48
  I think yeah, he he gets a tiny bit nervous, a tiny bit pressure
• 37:53
  that he needs to practice a bit before the tournaments, but I
• 37:58
  feel like he's very comfortable with the with it as well.
• 38:04
  So do I. Well, and I think it goes
• 38:07
  without saying that Hera is absolutely deservingly the
• 38:11
  number one in winning all these tournaments, not just because of
• 38:14
  the time investment, it's simply because of how he plays and how
• 38:18
  he out plays and out strategizes.
• 38:21
  Even Mr. Yo, even Mr. Leary and even the Viper, even though I
• 38:28
  personally, just because it's the China land, would have
• 38:31
  preferred to see a Hera Yo final just because it's in China, you
• 38:35
  know? I agree.
• 38:36
  I agree. Yeah.
• 38:38
  But probably Leary has better odds against Hera.
• 38:43
  So yeah, I think when I was watching the final, I was
• 38:46
  actually kind of, well, it's it's this is going to sound very
• 38:50
  harsh, but I was kind of bored. I think there were a couple of
• 38:54
  good games, but there were also a couple of very boring games.
• 38:57
  I don't quite remember which one those were, but I very much
• 39:00
  remember that I was watching them and I was less interested
• 39:04
  in the games the more they went on.
• 39:07
  Whereas with the Liri Yo match, I was like on the edge of my
• 39:13
  couch, even though I was sick and I could hardly sit.
• 39:16
  I had to lie down, but I was getting up whenever I could and
• 39:19
  I was screaming and I was cheering for whoever was down a
• 39:23
  game, actually. So compared to that, I thought
• 39:28
  the finals were kind of bland and boring.
• 39:32
  Well, we definitely had higher sweeps in the past for the
• 39:37
  finals. A42 result didn't make me too
• 39:41
  upset. There were a couple of very good
• 39:43
  games as well. There were a couple of like
• 39:48
  quote UN quote boring games as well.
• 39:51
  Just because Harold will not let you get away with your mistakes,
• 39:56
  it's he will punish you if something goes slightly wrong in
• 40:00
  the beginning. He will tax you for it and it
• 40:04
  can snowball so hard in on some certain maps.
• 40:08
  It's just that he feels very dominant.
• 40:11
  But then again, as a result to his his hard work and
• 40:16
  preparation over the last couple of years.
• 40:19
  Also we've seen in the final Leary do his signature 5
• 40:24
  Manganel pushes and I feel like he was actually he was more
• 40:32
  successful with them in the past than he is nowadays because Hera
• 40:36
  just learned how to play against that.
• 40:39
  I mean the pressure Leary put on Hera was so high that I don't
• 40:45
  know how his keyboard survived that.
• 40:47
  He must have smashed the buttons and still Hera came out of top.
• 40:52
  And this is also why it was kind of boring because Hera played
• 40:57
  perfectly. And there is, and he should play
• 41:01
  that way. But it was also not very
• 41:03
  spectacular and not very interesting to watch.
• 41:06
  It was just like you're watching somebody do the perfect meta
• 41:12
  thing and executed perfectly without any like not even the
• 41:17
  smallest mistake. And that can be kind of boring
• 41:21
  when the enemy does those super intense 5 mangana pushes and
• 41:26
  still does not get the win. Yeah, for sure, For sure I can.
• 41:31
  I can see that maybe in the future, maybe Lewis will
• 41:35
  dethrone the. Goal Do you actually believe
• 41:39
  that? Do you think Lewis will be a top
• 41:41
  five player? Watching his performance and his
• 41:45
  climb in the last two years, absolutely.
• 41:47
  Yeah, he is good, right? He is he.
• 41:50
  He's very good. Well, I think the biggest enemy
• 41:56
  of Lewis is not so much his skill or his motivation or all
• 42:01
  the OR or his talent. I think it's a time issue.
• 42:05
  By the time he gets to be a top five player I I wonder if Age of
• 42:09
  Empires 2 will still be this big and if there will be still these
• 42:14
  big tournaments. Yeah, well, only time will tell,
• 42:18
  right? I, I, I think, Well, I don't
• 42:21
  know. There's definitely a discussion
• 42:23
  to be to be had there as well. Yeah.
• 42:26
  Also time wise, we've talked a lot about Linuac and I think we
• 42:30
  should move on to a couple of topics.
• 42:32
  We still have so many more, yeah.
• 42:34
  Yeah, we do. So Next up on our list would be
• 42:37
  Amigo Wars 3. So that was another instalment
• 42:41
  of the Rage Forest tournaments. This tournament lasted for about
• 42:45
  a month and there have been eight teams fighting for the
• 42:48
  title of Amigo Amigo Wars Champions.
• 42:52
  It was the typical Rage Forest draft.
• 42:55
  So snake draft. There were team captains, it was
• 42:58
  DALT had a team freaking Andy Gangi, Mudri Slam, Tarto, Viper
• 43:02
  and Vallas. All the big Rage Forest names I
• 43:05
  believe. And in the finals, Team Viper
• 43:08
  played against Team Gangi and they lost their first two games.
• 43:14
  I think Team Gangi lost their first two games, but then they
• 43:16
  actually got back and tied it up two to two.
• 43:19
  And then there was the final game and Viper's team took the
• 43:23
  win, crowning them to be the Amigo Wars 3 champions.
• 43:28
  Viper's team consisted of ACCM steak or steak steak I guess
• 43:32
  Chis Khan and of course Viper himself.
• 43:35
  I am no Rage Forest player or viewer myself.
• 43:41
  I do not care for it for the life of me.
• 43:45
  Do you have anything interesting to say about that or should we
• 43:47
  just move on to the next topic? I well, I haven't watched the
• 43:53
  tournament closely. I covered a couple of sets.
• 43:57
  I used to be a massive rage forest.
• 44:00
  Enjoy. Yeah, I was actually even.
• 44:05
  Did you play rage forest or do you like it as casting?
• 44:08
  A lot, yeah. I and and casting I I think
• 44:14
  well, for probably the last year until recently, I was their main
• 44:22
  caster as well as I said I was yeah, I was covering all of
• 44:27
  their tournaments. They even have two small so of
• 44:31
  course there's the big rage forest one and this would be
• 44:37
  amigo wars. It's kind of like a silver at
• 44:40
  the high level players, but most of the rest of the events are
• 44:44
  community funded so still high level tournament with a less of
• 44:49
  a price pool. There's Coma cup for the players
• 44:52
  that don't make the really high level draft, which would be
• 44:56
  still high level players maybe a bit above 2K up until maybe
• 45:02
  2K42K5. And then of course there's
• 45:07
  professional forest, which I was a capital last time even.
• 45:11
  Wait, what is professional forest?
• 45:13
  Well, it's, yeah, it's again, these are all they have a big
• 45:17
  community, right? So they're organizing all of
• 45:21
  this community tournaments for their community exclusively for
• 45:25
  people who constantly play on the server and such.
• 45:29
  It's basically follows the exact same rules like Rage Forest,
• 45:33
  like Amigo wars, the snake draft, the with the captains the
• 45:37
  the same rules and everything. But it's to include lower level
• 45:42
  players as well. Professional forests were
• 45:47
  something maybe everything under 1800 for instance.
• 45:54
  And I was actually on the 2nd place with my team.
• 45:58
  That's cool. Nice.
• 45:59
  Congrats. Yeah, that kind of made me fed
• 46:03
  up though, with three sports. That was my decline point I feel
• 46:09
  like. So when was that?
• 46:13
  A couple of months back maybe. So recently, OK.
• 46:19
  April, May, June. I don't even remember actually.
• 46:23
  I I don't remember seeing you play rage Forest on stream
• 46:27
  though. Not in the last couple of
• 46:29
  months, but before I absolutely used to.
• 46:31
  I was very reactive on that server.
• 46:33
  I, I, I have a lot of love for their community and for what
• 46:41
  they're trying to, to, you know, promote.
• 46:46
  And I don't know, a lot of people are enjoying playing on
• 46:52
  that server. Williams obviously did a great
• 46:54
  job in the last couple of years to keep that community alive.
• 46:58
  Williams left recently. I don't know if you know about.
• 47:01
  That no, I know that, yes. Yeah, so ever since I don't know
• 47:07
  I wasn't that active on the server anymore.
• 47:11
  I just basically carried on with, with my own things with
• 47:16
  focus fully on my channel and on my project, but I and water
• 47:22
  maps, of course, but I definitely enjoyed my, my time
• 47:25
  there casting the events for for them.
• 47:30
  When I was Co casting with amigos, I got so much
• 47:34
  information and so much insights about how to play the map and
• 47:39
  how you should play a certain scenario in a certain situation.
• 47:43
  There's so much more deeper knowledge to the meta of rich
• 47:49
  forest and you know, the fish poom that you see on Viper
• 47:54
  stream that I, I, I got really passionate about it really fast.
• 48:02
  I really enjoyed casting in tournaments for them, but like I
• 48:07
  said it's just so with time I I moved on to my own project and
• 48:10
  about Amigo Wars three I casted a couple of games.
• 48:15
  I only want to say that I was said to not see team Bars there.
• 48:20
  I think Bars is an amazing captain as well, but he was an
• 48:23
  admin this time. Ah, so the admins don't
• 48:26
  participate as players. Yeah.
• 48:28
  So he he was not, he was not participating, but definitely a
• 48:34
  good one. I think it was a fresh mouth of
• 48:39
  air, you know, for, for the team game scene, because team games
• 48:45
  didn't get too much love this year.
• 48:48
  There's no team game tournaments.
• 48:52
  People have been speculating that 2026 is going to be a good
• 48:55
  year for those and. Neely has publicly said.
• 48:59
  That So yeah, not, not too much else to say.
• 49:06
  It was a nice event. I think players really enjoyed
• 49:11
  it. Three GL players in the
• 49:13
  playoffs, right? Well, that's not a surprise,
• 49:16
  right? They play Rage Forest all the
• 49:18
  time. Yeah, for sure.
• 49:20
  They really need for it. See This is why you are here.
• 49:24
  Now I come off as a like really ignorant because I didn't know
• 49:27
  anything but I do have to say that like a couple of years ago
• 49:31
  my former Co host, he did a 2 like 2 episodes of podcasts with
• 49:39
  a like very very high level arena player figuring out all
• 49:44
  the details and strategic things about arena.
• 49:49
  And much like Black Forest, I don't play arena.
• 49:52
  I really hate closed maps. I'm also not somebody who plays
• 49:57
  like that often, so whenever I play, I really like to play the
• 50:01
  maps that I want to play. And unlike you, I am one of
• 50:05
  those stupid Arabia players. So I've never, I've never really
• 50:14
  liked playing closed maps. But listening to those two
• 50:17
  podcasts and I'm afraid they are only available in German
• 50:20
  language, those they went into so much great detail about the
• 50:26
  map that I respect the strategic depth of Arena players after
• 50:32
  those podcasts, after those conversations.
• 50:34
  And I'm pretty sure that the same goes for Rage Forest.
• 50:39
  I just don't like the gameplay. That's my issue with it.
• 50:45
  I can understand I before getting involved with with them
• 50:50
  and their community and before casting for them and such.
• 50:53
  I used to hate watching Rich Forest on twitch.
• 50:57
  Why? Because no one would actually
• 50:59
  cast it. I would only you know I used to
• 51:03
  live in Europe back then as well.
• 51:05
  I would open up twitch. It would be Jordan Viper doubt
• 51:08
  all streaming their point of view.
• 51:11
  And if you are watching a point of view, I feel like it's very
• 51:14
  difficult to focus on what's happening on the the rest of the
• 51:17
  map. You see one of the eight players
• 51:19
  involved. I feel like OK regardless, Black
• 51:23
  Forest and late game especially can be very messy.
• 51:26
  There's a lot of cuts, there's sneaks there a lot of action in
• 51:29
  every single corner of the map and it gets really difficult to
• 51:33
  follow to begin with. But I feel like that goes in
• 51:36
  team games in general. But especially watching one
• 51:40
  person's point of view can be boring.
• 51:43
  At least that's my view on it. Yeah, but isn't everybody saying
• 51:47
  that you cannot cast these kind of games because it's just too
• 51:50
  messy, especially in 4V fours? Well, I can definitely assure
• 51:55
  you that Masters of Rich Forest was probably as energy
• 52:03
  consuming, if not ten times more than casting Lingyong Cup at
• 52:08
  midnight the whole night. Yeah, it because there's no
• 52:13
  downtime, There's no there's so many things happening,
• 52:17
  especially if you get like a bit of a more open generation where
• 52:21
  you again you have a lot of sneaks players on the flanks
• 52:25
  going into 20 minutes of Ville war while this cow, this coming,
• 52:29
  the pocket is coming with Knights, with manganiels.
• 52:33
  There's a castle drop in the middle.
• 52:36
  I don't have time to breathe for the two hour game.
• 52:41
  Sometimes can't even go too longer than that.
• 52:45
  There's always something to focus on.
• 52:47
  They're all there's always something to talk about.
• 52:50
  It can become so tiring. And still you like it.
• 52:56
  Yeah, I am not casting a rich worse as much nowadays, so I've
• 53:02
  but yeah, I, I I love those out of those I've been having
• 53:07
  10/12/13 hour streams just with rage force non-stop and I would
• 53:12
  end the stream thinking, Oh my God, this was such a fun day.
• 53:16
  Obviously the amigos helped me a lot.
• 53:19
  The amigos helped me with casting insights.
• 53:22
  It was always so nice to have one of them on the stream Co
• 53:28
  commentating, giving their, you know, professional expertise.
• 53:32
  It was really nice. Still, I will probably never
• 53:36
  become a Rage Forest viewer. I just have my like, I have
• 53:40
  limited time that I can put into Age of Empires 2, and then
• 53:43
  usually I really pick and choose what I do.
• 53:46
  And Rage Forest is probably at the very back end of my list.
• 53:51
  But as I said, it's it's not because I don't respect the
• 53:56
  strategic depth of it. And apparently it must be a lot
• 53:59
  of fun because they are all playing it.
• 54:03
  I just choose to spend my time bit differently.
• 54:07
  Yeah, with Arabia. Well, yeah, I guess.
• 54:15
  You know what? You know what's funny?
• 54:18
  I don't really like the current Arabia because I think it's too
• 54:21
  closed off for me. And I'm also.
• 54:29
  Too close. You gave me a bit of a heart
• 54:31
  attack here. I find the current Arabia
• 54:35
  disgusting because it has too many hills.
• 54:39
  You can't even put a second TC. Yeah, I'm a boomer at.
• 54:42
  Heart. I don't mind that.
• 54:44
  Oh my God. I what I what I really mind is
• 54:47
  the wood lines like what the hell?
• 54:50
  This is supposed to be like very sparse there.
• 54:52
  There should be a scarce resources you you should be
• 54:55
  fighting for everything and now if you want you can be in like
• 54:59
  fully walled arena style with one villager by the time you
• 55:03
  reach feudal age. What the hell is that?
• 55:06
  It's it's stupid, it's really stupid.
• 55:09
  But I am a very very like niche player.
• 55:12
  I really like all in feudal ages.
• 55:15
  I hate late game, I hate trash wars.
• 55:18
  I have quit games that I could have easily won just because I
• 55:23
  knew I had to do like 10 more minutes of trash war and I'd
• 55:27
  rather quit the game and lose the ELO and start a new game in
• 55:31
  feudal age. Well that's me when I I spot
• 55:34
  someone instantly like over bikering their scout at the end
• 55:38
  of the dark age home. He's not even feudal age and
• 55:40
  he's trying to kill my bill. OK, take my points, leave me
• 55:43
  alone. Well, yes, that that might be
• 55:47
  me, but I think you're a bit higher ELO than me, so we
• 55:50
  probably won't. Also you ban Arabia so we will
• 55:52
  never meet. But yeah, I like peaked AT1K6
• 55:56
  and I think you must be a bit higher, right?
• 55:58
  You're like, you peaked AT1K9, didn't you?
• 56:01
  Yeah, but that was in March and I haven't seen migration in the
• 56:05
  map pool ever since. So it was migration ELO.
• 56:11
  Yeah, for sure. Like if people were giving me
• 56:14
  troubles on the rank ladder saying like who's playing on
• 56:17
  your account? I'm way lower on other maps.
• 56:23
  Well you're still pretty good. I think I would lose to against
• 56:25
  you on most of the maps. Maybe not Arabia because I would
• 56:29
  Mike for you to death in feudal age, but if it gets to castle
• 56:33
  edge you'd probably win. If I if I have a good boom
• 56:38
  ongoing, maybe it's hard to get to that boom with people
• 56:42
  migrating their units. That's cheating.
• 56:44
  Hard to get to that boom if you don't have any place to put your
• 56:48
  town centres on. Also, I mean, yeah.
• 56:53
  OK moving on. Masters of Hyper Random 3.
• 56:58
  I think it was a great tournament.
• 57:01
  The only thing Well a few facts. MBL won the tournament against
• 57:06
  doubt of all plays in the finals.
• 57:09
  Winchester was the defending champion and he got third place
• 57:12
  this time, which is pretty amazing in my opinion because
• 57:15
  somehow Winchester seems to be very good on maps that he has to
• 57:20
  adapt on. And I think the other noteworthy
• 57:24
  thing is that Leary had to forfeit because he was going to
• 57:30
  China while he had to play against Winchester.
• 57:33
  I think he scheduled the map, his game, so he could do the
• 57:38
  set, but he got delayed. So in the end he gave up and
• 57:43
  gave the wind to, I think it was Winchester, right?
• 57:45
  He had to play. No, it was Doubt.
• 57:47
  I'm sorry. I think that's why Doubt got
• 57:49
  into the final, right, because he got the free win against
• 57:51
  Leary. Yeah.
• 57:55
  So I think I was annoyed by only one thing, and that was Dave
• 58:00
  being annoyed about the admin, Reese.
• 58:04
  Other than that, I think it was. It was a great tournament.
• 58:08
  Oh yeah, now that you're measuring, the admin reads kind
• 58:11
  of rings a bell about some sensitive situations as well.
• 58:16
  Listen, I was a little disappointed because I thought
• 58:20
  the whole point of this tournament was we go in there
• 58:24
  and there's going to be unfair match ups and there's going to
• 58:26
  be unfair maps and we will only do admin reads if it's like
• 58:31
  unbearably unfair. But I felt like that throughout
• 58:35
  the tournament. This tournament got more
• 58:38
  professional and with that they looked more at the maps and gave
• 58:44
  admin Rees where probably in the beginning of the tournament they
• 58:47
  would have just said Nah it's it doesn't matter.
• 58:51
  I I actually agree and I was surprised to see that because I
• 58:55
  casted a couple of sets in the beginning just to to give you an
• 59:01
  overview, I only casted like maybe 30% of the tournament.
• 59:07
  Which is still a lot. Which is, which is still a lot,
• 59:10
  but I think well, I I was busy with my own projects at that
• 59:15
  time and I was missing a lot of the games.
• 59:19
  So a lot of the info that that I have on some certain situations
• 59:23
  is just either read from the discord or from chats or or so
• 59:30
  on. But I remember being under the
• 59:33
  impression when I was casting that there's no Reese.
• 59:37
  Basically players each have one REE per set that they have to
• 59:43
  call in the 1st 4 minutes of the game.
• 59:46
  And for instance, there were a couple of situations where The
• 59:51
  Sims would have been absolutely impossible for one of the
• 59:55
  players and they would call the REE.
• 59:57
  So I was like OK and they call the REE, don't need to be
• 1:00:01
  bothered with Reese for the rest of the set.
• 1:00:03
  But you are absolutely right. Throughout the tournament and
• 1:00:08
  especially towards the end they started to give more and more
• 1:00:12
  reason. I I, I was I remember casting
• 1:00:16
  one of the sets early on and and thinking like Oh my God this map
• 1:00:19
  is completely unfair. It was some sort of water map
• 1:00:22
  where a player had a complete giant safe pond in the back of
• 1:00:28
  his base in the back of his CC and the other one had a puddle
• 1:00:31
  with one shorefish and the other dude had I don't know a a big
• 1:00:36
  pond with three or 4 deep fish with shorefish and so on.
• 1:00:41
  There was the difference in terms of food was insane and
• 1:00:44
  especially if you would fish boom there.
• 1:00:47
  A dock is basically an extra TC that gives you units that you
• 1:00:52
  did bring you food. You you can double your eco from
• 1:00:57
  early on. It's a crazy advantage.
• 1:01:00
  But something like that. I, I, I remember watching that
• 1:01:03
  map and thinking like, wait, is this not a RE?
• 1:01:05
  And Chad would tell me, no, no, there's no Rees.
• 1:01:07
  There's just players calling Rees one REE per per set and
• 1:01:11
  that's it. Yeah.
• 1:01:13
  I think the reasoning they had was that, yes, one of them got a
• 1:01:17
  little pond and the other one got a big ocean, but it's not
• 1:01:20
  actually an advantage because the like the fish distribution
• 1:01:26
  was kind of similar and there was no incentive to do a big
• 1:01:30
  fish boom. I think something along these
• 1:01:32
  lines. Well whoever said that doesn't
• 1:01:37
  know how to play water ramps, I'm sorry.
• 1:01:45
  Yeah. But that kind of raises the
• 1:01:48
  question, do you think the what was it $20,000 of no, $10,000 of
• 1:01:55
  prize pool is actually OK for a tournament that is this random?
• 1:02:03
  It's right, it's right. It's something that brings a lot
• 1:02:09
  of viewers as well and a lot of audience because a lot of the
• 1:02:13
  audience loves this chaotic settings, this messy games, this
• 1:02:19
  randomness aspect. Especially where you have
• 1:02:23
  multiple tournaments in a year and a lot of the maps, for
• 1:02:27
  instance, can be quite repetitive.
• 1:02:29
  And it takes one tournament to have a lot of practice on that
• 1:02:34
  map to figure out the meta. And then all the other three
• 1:02:38
  tournaments following that year that will have that map
• 1:02:42
  incorporated, they will play all the same.
• 1:02:44
  They will become boring and viewers love these chaotic
• 1:02:49
  settings. Yeah, I certainly did.
• 1:02:52
  I enjoyed. It it was a good, it was a good
• 1:02:54
  tournament for sure. For sure an MBL winning an 8
• 1:02:58
  year tournament. Let's go.
• 1:03:00
  So where do you stand on MBL? Are you a fan or what's your
• 1:03:05
  opinion on? Him, I think he's a very good
• 1:03:09
  player. I like watching him just like
• 1:03:10
  Vivi for instance. I think he can be.
• 1:03:14
  It depends on one version of the MBL.
• 1:03:16
  If you're giving me the random things, chaotic messy
• 1:03:22
  situations, Manganel wars, I love watching him.
• 1:03:26
  If you're giving me the MBL is tired after doing his job the
• 1:03:34
  entire day and now he's just queuing up Arabia and he only
• 1:03:36
  makes squirms for the next 4 hours.
• 1:03:39
  No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but I can't with
• 1:03:45
  that. So I'm kind of the same.
• 1:03:48
  I love tournament MBL and I hate ranked MB Li.
• 1:03:52
  Never. I never watch his streams.
• 1:03:54
  I feel like whenever I'm in his chat, I I also shut up because I
• 1:03:59
  don't want to insult the guy for, you know, no apparent
• 1:04:02
  reason. And because you don't want to be
• 1:04:05
  banned. I don't want to be banned.
• 1:04:06
  I I'm very proudly not banned on any channel on Twitch so I want
• 1:04:10
  to keep it that way. OK, let me be back one second.
• 1:04:15
  Check. Check my stream now.
• 1:04:16
  Just kidding. Just kidding.
• 1:04:20
  I got scared of it. So I was never an MBL fan, like
• 1:04:27
  I was never cheering for him. And I think had he not played
• 1:04:33
  against Doubt in this final, I would have cheered for MBL.
• 1:04:37
  Just because I would like to see him win a tournament and
• 1:04:41
  especially a tournament like this because I felt like MBL
• 1:04:44
  played really well. Like he was full on focusing on
• 1:04:48
  the maps, he was trying to get scouting information, he was
• 1:04:51
  doing many different kind of things and it was also
• 1:04:53
  entertaining. He was not turtling up like he
• 1:04:57
  usually does on Arabia, but then again, it was Doubt.
• 1:05:01
  And you know, when do we see Doubt in a final, let alone have
• 1:05:05
  a chance against MBL? Yeah, for sure.
• 1:05:08
  It was a it was a tough one. And also the house was up 41 and
• 1:05:13
  got almost. We were swept by MBL.
• 1:05:16
  That's actually so funny. I haven't seen the full final
• 1:05:20
  yet. I remember we had a family
• 1:05:23
  event. I was, I was busy that day.
• 1:05:25
  So I remember just seeing, you know, fragments of it at some
• 1:05:30
  point when we left the house, I think it was 41 and and I left
• 1:05:37
  the house thinking like, you know what, good for doubt, good
• 1:05:40
  for me. He's got so many comments this
• 1:05:42
  past year that oh, doubt washed. He's not as good as he used to
• 1:05:49
  be. He he's got so much negative
• 1:05:53
  comments, you know, his way. And then I come back home when I
• 1:05:57
  see NBL. What?
• 1:05:58
  And I'm like, wait, what? That guy is cursed I think.
• 1:06:02
  Doubt cannot win a tournament. He's just cursed.
• 1:06:05
  That must have been what was his last winning.
• 1:06:08
  It was Red Bull, right? Yes.
• 1:06:10
  Red Bull Three, I think that was a great final though against
• 1:06:14
  Leary. Poor doubt.
• 1:06:16
  Yes. Then again, I mean, I've seen
• 1:06:19
  the games and that final was very snowballing, like there
• 1:06:24
  were lots of surf wins. The maps were not so good.
• 1:06:30
  Like the games that Doubt has won were kind of easy for him to
• 1:06:33
  win. And the games he has lost were
• 1:06:35
  really hard to win, if not impossible for him.
• 1:06:39
  So it was also kind of the signature of the the the
• 1:06:43
  tournament itself. But All in all, 5 four final
• 1:06:48
  between MBL and Doubt, this is something we will probably never
• 1:06:51
  see again. And I thought it was amazing.
• 1:06:54
  I think it's well deserved the $10,000 in my opinion.
• 1:06:59
  They could put the like double the size of the price pool so
• 1:07:02
  that more people will sign up and fight even harder.
• 1:07:05
  But yeah, I think it was a full success.
• 1:07:07
  But the only problem was maybe the timing, like Leary having to
• 1:07:12
  forfeit because he was going to China.
• 1:07:14
  That was very unfortunate in my opinion.
• 1:07:18
  Absolutely, absolutely. I think well definitely not his
• 1:07:24
  fault if especially for World's Edge tournaments that are
• 1:07:32
  sponsored. I I think quarterfinals, finals,
• 1:07:37
  semifinals are fixed. So if Leary had to fly that day
• 1:07:42
  and he did his best to schedule, then his flight got delayed.
• 1:07:45
  Definitely been in that situation when I scheduled a
• 1:07:49
  trip around something and then my flight got delayed and missed
• 1:07:53
  it. Yeah.
• 1:07:55
  I mean, not much that he could have done now in the same time.
• 1:08:01
  It seems like a tiny, tiny flaw on World's Edge scheduling,
• 1:08:06
  maybe. Yeah, I think that's totally not
• 1:08:10
  Leary's fault and it's a scheduling issue.
• 1:08:14
  So that leads me to the question, are we having too many
• 1:08:17
  tournaments? Like you are a content creator,
• 1:08:19
  you are a caster, so you're you want to probably cast as many
• 1:08:24
  games as you possibly can, but when are you taking breaks?
• 1:08:30
  Like is this maybe too much of A back-to-back tournaments?
• 1:08:35
  How? What's your opinion on that?
• 1:08:40
  It's tough, right? It has pluses and minuses
• 1:08:43
  because on a plus side, we have so much support from Microsoft,
• 1:08:50
  especially well from World's Edge.
• 1:08:52
  And it's nice to see the scene so alive.
• 1:08:55
  It's nice to see players actually being rewarded well for
• 1:09:04
  for their work. It gives them, you know, an
• 1:09:07
  impulse to pair more, to be better, to practice.
• 1:09:11
  You can see that reflecting in the amount of player that
• 1:09:15
  basically just jumped overnight from 2K12K2 to 2K42K5.
• 1:09:21
  So you think that's because, So is that actually a thing?
• 1:09:25
  Like did players get better in hopes of getting into
• 1:09:31
  tournaments? Well, I I think it has something
• 1:09:35
  to do with it. It doesn't make sense.
• 1:09:37
  It makes a lot of sense, I just didn't realise that people have
• 1:09:41
  gotten better ELO wise. Absolutely.
• 1:09:44
  Like whenever if that's another thing you you pointed out that
• 1:09:49
  I'm a caster and I want to cover as many games as possible.
• 1:09:52
  Absolutely. You asked me when am I taking
• 1:09:54
  breaks? You can't really take a break if
• 1:09:56
  you want to if you want to, you know, keep moving with the
• 1:10:02
  scene. If I'm taking a break from a
• 1:10:04
  tournament, then I started casting the next tournament and
• 1:10:08
  someone asked me, Oh, what ILO is Gabi nowadays, right?
• 1:10:12
  I'm saying, oh, she's around 2K3, I think she maxed 2K four.
• 1:10:17
  And now I'm looking at the ladder and I see, no, she's 2K6.
• 1:10:21
  She passed it. And I'm like, wait, when did
• 1:10:25
  that happen? What did I miss?
• 1:10:28
  And things of this sort, Yeah, I don't know if you really wanna
• 1:10:36
  make it as, I guess, or like, I don't know, keep an eye on the
• 1:10:40
  scene at all. Time is something that you
• 1:10:43
  absolutely have to do. Even if maybe you're not casting
• 1:10:47
  every single game, you still need to kind of, you know, poke
• 1:10:50
  your head on a stream in between the games or keep an eye on
• 1:10:55
  what's happening on the players individually.
• 1:10:58
  Maybe that's why, you know, T 90 is probably the the GOAT of them
• 1:11:03
  all. He has been doing this for the
• 1:11:05
  last, well, 10 years. Decades, yeah, last decade.
• 1:11:12
  And he, he probably knows the most about every player and all
• 1:11:18
  their history. That's why it, it's so nice and
• 1:11:20
  so easy to tune into his streams because he he's not just casting
• 1:11:26
  a game, he's telling a story about a player, about their
• 1:11:30
  history, about their progress. It it, it, it's nice.
• 1:11:35
  It's to see all of it blending together, but it definitely a
• 1:11:39
  lot of tournaments lately. It can be exhausting and I can't
• 1:11:43
  imagine how the viewers feel about this.
• 1:11:47
  I can only imagine that there's mixed feelings about this as
• 1:11:50
  well because you also want to catch up with all the
• 1:11:54
  tournaments and see everything, but you also do you have time to
• 1:11:57
  watch everything Like of course like it.
• 1:12:00
  It's my right now I'm a full time caster.
• 1:12:04
  It's my job to cast. But if you're just a viewer and
• 1:12:10
  you still want to keep on with all of this tournament, when do
• 1:12:14
  you have time for that? I mean, yeah, OK.
• 1:12:17
  I understand that some people work from home, put their Twitch
• 1:12:19
  on the second monitor, you know, maybe only half listening to
• 1:12:24
  what's going on and half turning in and so on.
• 1:12:28
  But we're at a point where we have a final of a tournament on
• 1:12:33
  a Sunday, and tomorrow the qualifiers for the next
• 1:12:36
  tournament are starting. Yeah.
• 1:12:38
  So what this does to me as a viewer is that I am less
• 1:12:42
  invested in the tournaments than I was before.
• 1:12:46
  So before, when there was like 3 or 4 big tournaments per year, I
• 1:12:50
  was always starting to get excited whenever, you know, the
• 1:12:55
  qualifiers got around and I could memorize the storylines
• 1:13:01
  much better. I knew the path of each player
• 1:13:04
  and knew like how they prepared for the tournament and probably
• 1:13:08
  even started watching them on Twitch just to get a feel for
• 1:13:12
  how they would play. Whenever I had the time and
• 1:13:16
  there was a big storyline and I could follow that and that would
• 1:13:19
  hype up the tournament much more.
• 1:13:22
  Now I again have to pick and choose what I watch and when I
• 1:13:26
  watch. So what I usually do is I just
• 1:13:30
  entirely skip the 1st couple of days of a tournament if
• 1:13:34
  especially in mem tournaments which usually span for like 3
• 1:13:37
  weeks. If it's something short like the
• 1:13:40
  Nan tournament then I would watch all the games.
• 1:13:44
  But even then I would kind of get tired after a while because
• 1:13:49
  Age of Empires games are just way too long.
• 1:13:51
  They just, they are just, if you want to watch a whole game, like
• 1:13:56
  a whole day of Age of Empires 2 tournaments, you are full time
• 1:14:00
  watching them. You are watching them for 8 to
• 1:14:02
  10 hours. And I personally just get very
• 1:14:05
  tired and tired out and then I am not that hyped anymore.
• 1:14:09
  So what I do is I just skip from time to time entire days and
• 1:14:15
  even if I had the time would not watch the games.
• 1:14:18
  But then TuneIn at later stages to keep the hype up and be
• 1:14:23
  excited for the games. Yeah, I can definitely see that
• 1:14:27
  perspective. It's you're, you're right.
• 1:14:31
  Before when we would have less tournaments, general audience
• 1:14:36
  would be probably more hyped up about it.
• 1:14:41
  I don't think that the fact that we have a lot of tournaments is
• 1:14:43
  a bad thing, but it can get tiring.
• 1:14:46
  Yeah, I think it's just something that we as an audience
• 1:14:49
  have to learn that. I mean, if you have the time and
• 1:14:53
  passion for it and you watch everything, good for you.
• 1:14:55
  But for for me, as someone who works full time and does other
• 1:14:59
  things as well and also maybe wants to play the game from time
• 1:15:02
  to time, I just have to pick and choose.
• 1:15:05
  And this is something I had to learn.
• 1:15:08
  But once I did that, I am actually quite happy with this.
• 1:15:11
  And I don't mind that there's tournaments back and forth like
• 1:15:16
  all the time. I just had to find a new way of
• 1:15:20
  consuming them. And yeah, I think that makes
• 1:15:23
  sense. And also you can see that with
• 1:15:25
  the casters, right? I think T 19 Dave as well.
• 1:15:29
  They are also picking and choosing what they would cover
• 1:15:33
  and what they would probably just skip in order to be fresh
• 1:15:36
  and well prepared for a different tournament then of.
• 1:15:39
  Course, yeah. And it makes sense since we have
• 1:15:43
  more casters than ever, so there's always alternatives.
• 1:15:48
  You know, back in the day we had T90 and MEMP and Nili.
• 1:15:52
  And then after like a few days a few years ago when like, how
• 1:15:56
  long has it been since Dave went full time?
• 1:15:59
  Three years. I think you kind of overlapped,
• 1:16:03
  maybe with the one. When T90 went to yes exactly.
• 1:16:08
  So that must have been like 3 or 4 years ago, right?
• 1:16:11
  Maybe I don't think I was around the scene maybe or just joined
• 1:16:17
  quickly after, soon after, but again, just well, when I started
• 1:16:23
  to stream I didn't expect for me to be a full time cast.
• 1:16:27
  Only how nice is that, right? But anyway, so we like we had
• 1:16:33
  three casters and now we have way more like there's also apart
• 1:16:40
  from the like Neely has gone, is gone, of course, but he still
• 1:16:43
  cast from time to time, as we can see.
• 1:16:45
  But then there's also two ways. There's or Lou, there's there's
• 1:16:48
  you, of course, and and some others like smaller casters.
• 1:16:52
  So there's always somebody you can go to and watch the games,
• 1:16:57
  which is I think just very good for the scene, which is why it's
• 1:17:01
  not a problem that there's so many tournaments.
• 1:17:04
  Again, you just have to pick and choose.
• 1:17:07
  And this is my Segway to get to the next tournament.
• 1:17:11
  And just a quick note, the next Red Bull Wallolo event has been
• 1:17:15
  announced. It will take place in London
• 1:17:17
  next year in April. With what is the price pool?
• 1:17:21
  I think 170,000 go into Age of Empires 2 and there's also like
• 1:17:27
  50,000 going into Age of Empires 4.
• 1:17:30
  Yeah, it's a, it's a big, it's. A massive yeah.
• 1:17:35
  How excited are you for Empire Wars?
• 1:17:40
  I'm pretty excited. I I always liked Red Bull from
• 1:17:46
  that point of view. Is that the the games and the
• 1:17:49
  sets can, you know, wrap up more quick?
• 1:17:55
  I guess in the sense that you won't see the four hour games
• 1:17:59
  from the young cup in Red Bull. Also, there's a time limit I
• 1:18:03
  think. Well, no, not anymore, right?
• 1:18:07
  Or is that still in? I don't know it, you know, it
• 1:18:09
  was in in the first installment. And I think there was one game
• 1:18:13
  where that actually mattered. And from then on it was never a
• 1:18:17
  thing anymore. But it's probably still in it,
• 1:18:19
  yeah. Yeah, it it's a nice, you know,
• 1:18:26
  nice change. You sound very reserved.
• 1:18:30
  Yeah, I mean, you know what, I'm reserved about the qualifiers.
• 1:18:34
  One thing I really dislike were the mirror matches last.
• 1:18:38
  Year. Yes, the ladder qualifier.
• 1:18:40
  Yeah, exactly. That's what I'm mostly reserved.
• 1:18:44
  I think the main event is going to be great.
• 1:18:46
  I told you earlier today that I'm actually hyped up about Red
• 1:18:53
  Bull. I don't know why.
• 1:18:55
  I don't know what's special about this future edition.
• 1:18:58
  I don't know if it was me just seeing everyone having an
• 1:19:01
  amazing time in China on all their social media and and such,
• 1:19:06
  but it honestly seemed like such a, a nice vibe.
• 1:19:12
  I don't know, it makes me wonder like, yeah, I would, I enjoy
• 1:19:17
  participating at a live event and I I think I would.
• 1:19:20
  I don't know what's up with with this Red Bull, but I definitely
• 1:19:25
  got very interested into looking into to going as well.
• 1:19:31
  Well, if you can, you probably should.
• 1:19:34
  I won't be attending sadly, because I will just be back from
• 1:19:38
  Japan when that event starts, so I can't go.
• 1:19:42
  But if I wasn't in Japan, I would 100% go.
• 1:19:47
  Of course, it's easy for me, coming from Germany.
• 1:19:50
  For me it's like a one hour flight.
• 1:19:52
  It's different from Canada, of course.
• 1:19:54
  London is an amazing city. It's very expensive, but great.
• 1:19:59
  And I think what's special about this tournament is that there's
• 1:20:01
  going to be a crowd of. If everything goes well and the
• 1:20:04
  tickets sell well, 3000 people in the live audience.
• 1:20:09
  Yeah, that's crazy. Must be nice to be one of them.
• 1:20:14
  Yeah, for sure, for sure. Yeah.
• 1:20:17
  And I mean, in former Red Bull events I've been and that was
• 1:20:22
  much smaller crowd, like 300 people in in Heidelberg.
• 1:20:26
  And even those events were amazing.
• 1:20:28
  Like the atmosphere was great. It was very well organised.
• 1:20:31
  You could talk to the players afterwards and you know, do
• 1:20:35
  photos in the courtyard and everything.
• 1:20:37
  It was such a great vibe and I can only imagine it being much
• 1:20:42
  better in in London with a bigger stage and bigger
• 1:20:45
  audience. Yeah.
• 1:20:48
  So we'll see. We'll see how it goes.
• 1:20:51
  So just a quick note on the latter qualifiers, because you
• 1:20:55
  mentioned that you are sceptical.
• 1:20:57
  I think they wanted to address that problem by having like the
• 1:21:05
  the players that do not qualify the for the main event, but they
• 1:21:09
  can still get like a part of the price pool, right?
• 1:21:12
  There's a price pool for the qualifiers as well.
• 1:21:16
  So I am wondering if that would is like the effect would be big
• 1:21:22
  enough with the motivation of the players would be big enough
• 1:21:25
  to get part of that price pool just to keep on playing the game
• 1:21:30
  and to prevent it from having too many mirror match ups.
• 1:21:33
  Because I don't think this will change anything about the mirror
• 1:21:36
  match ups, right? Yeah, I, I don't think the, I
• 1:21:40
  still think we're going to have a mirror Fiesta.
• 1:21:44
  However, implementing a bigger prize pool for the qualifiers is
• 1:21:49
  absolutely something that needed to be done.
• 1:21:52
  I remember it was so stressful before the finish line last
• 1:21:58
  year, all the players grinding, everyone was watching on every
• 1:22:03
  stream on the player stream, on the casters stream, all the
• 1:22:06
  casters were were streaming the last couple of hours of qualify
• 1:22:11
  well leather qualifiers. And I remember the players being
• 1:22:18
  absolutely exhausted for all that grind for multiple days.
• 1:22:24
  Some players were just absolutely playing non-stop day
• 1:22:27
  and night, and they didn't get anything for that, for all of
• 1:22:32
  that stress. And it's hard to see.
• 1:22:35
  Do you remember MBL? He was like one of the main
• 1:22:39
  characters of the qualifiers. And before that, I kind of
• 1:22:44
  didn't like MBL that much because he was too like I, I
• 1:22:47
  kind of felt he was always like passive aggressive and just not
• 1:22:50
  my kind of player, but. I I agree.
• 1:22:53
  I agree. I 100% agree with that.
• 1:22:55
  Like I think over excessive banter, it's not my type of
• 1:23:02
  humour. When he was playing that
• 1:23:05
  qualifier and I'm not sure where he was, but he was in some kind
• 1:23:10
  of calls with some casters when they were casting the games of
• 1:23:15
  the other player that was like the only one rivalling him on
• 1:23:20
  the ladder. I forgot who it was, but he was
• 1:23:23
  genuinely nervous and he was genuinely very much invested in
• 1:23:27
  all this. And that was the first time I
• 1:23:30
  felt sympathetic for him and I started to like him.
• 1:23:34
  And that's when I like this love hate relationship with him
• 1:23:37
  started for me. So I'm kind of hoping for the
• 1:23:41
  same but with more people this time around.
• 1:23:44
  Yeah, also those kind of moments are amazing to see during land
• 1:23:50
  events as well when, you know, especially we were talking
• 1:23:54
  earlier about the Lingyon Cup and the book whole system.
• 1:23:57
  And when other players results affect you and you know, like
• 1:24:03
  just the camera switches on you and you see your opponents or
• 1:24:08
  your previous opponents or other players being super distressed
• 1:24:12
  or on on your match and on your set just dying to to see the
• 1:24:19
  result and to see how does that affect them.
• 1:24:22
  I, I don't know, I think those moments are really fun to see as
• 1:24:27
  a viewer and as a as a caster. Yes, yes, totally 100%.
• 1:24:31
  I think they are what makes these events so much better than
• 1:24:35
  online events because you get more invested if you have like
• 1:24:40
  one or two players that you are cheering for.
• 1:24:44
  And even if not, you probably will get invested nevertheless
• 1:24:50
  because you just think that certain situations, certain
• 1:24:53
  emotions that the players show are just so genuine that you
• 1:24:57
  start to feel for them. And I think that's just great
• 1:24:59
  and that that is something that online tournaments can never
• 1:25:02
  emulate. Yeah, 100% agree.
• 1:25:06
  Which is why I think it's so great that MEM always make sure
• 1:25:10
  that even in online events there's cameras because that
• 1:25:12
  helps a lot. Yeah, it's funny to see the
• 1:25:17
  players live reactions and. Yes, OK, let's move on to a yet
• 1:25:24
  another tournament. This one I have not seen a
• 1:25:28
  single game of. This is T90 Titans League 5
• 1:25:32
  Bronze league. This is one of the tournaments
• 1:25:35
  that I decided to skip just because of time, so whatever you
• 1:25:43
  want to share, please feel free to do so.
• 1:25:45
  I will just start with a couple of info before that and then
• 1:25:49
  it's all yours. So this league is very special
• 1:25:53
  because this is the first time there's a bronze league in T90
• 1:25:56
  Titans League, and it serves as a qualifier basically for new
• 1:26:01
  people, new players to get into the silver and the gold league.
• 1:26:06
  That's because 1090 Titans League is divided into different
• 1:26:09
  league, the highest league being the Platinum league.
• 1:26:11
  And then there's the Gold and Silver leagues, each with their
• 1:26:14
  own prize pools. Of course, Platinum gets the
• 1:26:16
  most of the prize pool, but even Silver has a sizeable prize pool
• 1:26:21
  and even Bronze League. And yeah, so the goal is to find
• 1:26:27
  players and those who would win their brackets in Bronze League
• 1:26:32
  will get their ticket for the Gold League.
• 1:26:35
  And I think all the other players in like the last two
• 1:26:41
  rounds will get into Silver League, if I'm correct.
• 1:26:46
  Yeah, yeah. Losers of the final two rounds
• 1:26:48
  qualify to Silver League. So these two leaks, Silver and
• 1:26:52
  gold, will start in January, I think.
• 1:26:55
  Platinum is not scheduled on Liquid Pedia yet, but they
• 1:26:58
  usually start a couple of weeks later, so probably in February.
• 1:27:03
  And yeah, that's all I know. So please let me know is it
• 1:27:08
  worth watching? Absolutely.
• 1:27:12
  TTL and Warlords are two of my favorite tournaments in the
• 1:27:19
  scene. And I'm talking about, you know,
• 1:27:21
  repetitive tournaments because if we're thinking about
• 1:27:25
  occasional ones, I can bring up Hidden Cup and so on.
• 1:27:29
  But when it comes to T90 events, the production, the effort put
• 1:27:37
  into organizing all of this is always very high quality.
• 1:27:44
  Probably you can, you can tell from what I'm saying now and
• 1:27:48
  what I said earlier that I'm I'm a huge T90 fan.
• 1:27:50
  I think everything what he does for this community is reflected
• 1:27:57
  in the health of the community, in how this community stayed
• 1:28:01
  preserved in the last decade. And it has been growing like
• 1:28:04
  like crazy. Obviously pro players have a
• 1:28:08
  major influence on that as well, but T90 manages to offer in my
• 1:28:17
  opinion some of the best tournaments and some of the best
• 1:28:19
  events and him fighting to yet get an extra league to give a
• 1:28:26
  chance to more people to pay more players shows this as well.
• 1:28:34
  The price, well, I don't think you mentioned the price pool for
• 1:28:37
  of course all of the leagues is $100,000.
• 1:28:40
  That's. Crazy.
• 1:28:42
  A lot, but again, he's paying a couple less than 100 players as
• 1:28:48
  well, which is just, again, a lot.
• 1:28:52
  It's like record setting. It's never before done kind of
• 1:28:59
  things. It's, it's crazy what he does,
• 1:29:01
  yes. So I think that I respected from
• 1:29:06
  day one when he started to announce all of this, was the
• 1:29:10
  seating system or what he implemented, implemented with
• 1:29:15
  the seating not taking into account smurfing or playing
• 1:29:20
  again, the points that you lost against The Smurfs or the games
• 1:29:24
  that you won on a Smurf account that don't count and all of that
• 1:29:29
  absolutely against all of those shenanigans.
• 1:29:34
  He's been doing a great job with that, even more so to give
• 1:29:38
  chances to, you know, up and comers to players that you know
• 1:29:43
  didn't have. They're good.
• 1:29:45
  They're very good at the game, but they didn't have a chance to
• 1:29:48
  get past the first round of qualifiers for a big tournament
• 1:29:52
  because they're facing, I don't know, Hera Viper leery part the
• 1:29:59
  the top top players. Yeah.
• 1:30:03
  So I think it's undoubtedly amazing what he does for the
• 1:30:08
  community for all the up and coming players.
• 1:30:13
  TTL, and this is going to shock you, is actually the tournament
• 1:30:18
  that I least enjoy from all of the T90 tournaments.
• 1:30:23
  But there is like there is a very specific reason for that
• 1:30:26
  and that has nothing to do with T90 or the tournament.
• 1:30:29
  And this is something that I have discussed all previous
• 1:30:32
  seasons of TTL with my former Co host because he Felix, he is a
• 1:30:38
  great fan. He like he really loves TTL,
• 1:30:41
  much like you. He thinks that's amazing because
• 1:30:44
  what he likes is like what he likes about the tournament is
• 1:30:48
  the fact that there's always games going on and they always
• 1:30:53
  have a stake. Like there's always the
• 1:30:55
  tournament games. They are competitive and they
• 1:30:58
  are interesting. So, and I, and this is all true
• 1:31:03
  by the way, so there's nothing wrong about that, but I am a
• 1:31:07
  kind of viewer that enjoys very short and intense tournaments.
• 1:31:13
  Like for me a five day tournament is probably the best
• 1:31:18
  or three to five days with limited amount of players and
• 1:31:22
  very intense games that all matter.
• 1:31:26
  And I even not so much enjoy group stages.
• 1:31:30
  I for me playoffs are all that matters to be honest, but that's
• 1:31:34
  just because of limited time. So for and what I do is I create
• 1:31:40
  my own storylines. I have the place that I cheer
• 1:31:43
  for like for example, Vivier or Yo and these kind of players and
• 1:31:49
  I very closely watch their games.
• 1:31:51
  And also when I watch an Age of Empires 2 game, I am like only
• 1:31:57
  watching the game. I'm sitting on my couch and
• 1:32:00
  watch it on TV or at my computer.
• 1:32:02
  I don't do, I usually don't do it on a second monitor and do
• 1:32:05
  something else next to it. I'm not on my phone.
• 1:32:08
  I am focused on the game. So that takes up a lot of my
• 1:32:12
  time and my resources and I can't do that for two months.
• 1:32:18
  I cannot be invested in a league like T90, Titans league.
• 1:32:22
  So what I do, for example now is I don't watch Bronze league.
• 1:32:26
  I will probably not watch Silver League.
• 1:32:29
  I will maybe watch the finals of Gold League and then I will be
• 1:32:34
  more invested into Platinum league.
• 1:32:37
  Because if I would start watching Bronze League, then by
• 1:32:41
  the time Platinum League starts, I'd be totally burned out and
• 1:32:45
  not watch that. And I'd rather watch the pro
• 1:32:48
  players than the players that I have no connection to.
• 1:32:52
  So this is a very specific and very personal view on this, but
• 1:32:57
  I don't want like, I'm not taking anything away from all
• 1:33:00
  the things that you've said because at the same time, while
• 1:33:05
  I'm not enjoying the tournament so much, I agree that this
• 1:33:08
  tournament is probably the most valuable for the whole scene.
• 1:33:13
  Yeah, I can. I can understand 100% viewers
• 1:33:19
  and you know even casters being burnt out with the length of the
• 1:33:25
  tournament. It of course extends on several
• 1:33:30
  months, so it can be difficult to.
• 1:33:34
  Which is why I'm counting on you like giving us a few maybe hints
• 1:33:41
  on who you think might actually win the Bronze league and
• 1:33:45
  qualify to the Gold League. Do you have any ideas?
• 1:33:48
  Oh, there's 8 brackets, right? There's a lot of good players.
• 1:33:52
  Basically whoever is not in platinum or gold from previous
• 1:33:58
  season, it's now in bronze. And there is a couple of very
• 1:34:05
  interesting names, a lot of interesting results, which again
• 1:34:13
  proves even more the preparation does these players have actually
• 1:34:18
  put into into this tournament. For instance, I'm looking at a
• 1:34:24
  bracket right now. There's right there's that
• 1:34:27
  amazing results. He just kicked out the Neos Neos
• 1:34:33
  who has been an up and Comer in the this year as well.
• 1:34:37
  I remember Neos, I think he was what was the tournament, maybe
• 1:34:40
  Warlords that he even went into the qualifying round and he lost
• 1:34:44
  to to Cito. But still, the I I remember his
• 1:34:49
  results were shocking to everyone, like he was just
• 1:34:53
  upsetting every round. And he's like 17 years old,
• 1:34:56
  right? He's a young player as well and
• 1:34:59
  Tours just takes it to game five and he's in a qualifying round
• 1:35:04
  and he's probably going to either face Say My Name or Blue.
• 1:35:08
  Any of those three can can qualify.
• 1:35:11
  So securing a spot in silver is pretty good result for for
• 1:35:15
  Tours. Yeah.
• 1:35:18
  Definitely then looking at another round I see the semi
• 1:35:23
  finals of the bracket right target Gabby fire and bubble
• 1:35:26
  room. Any of them can qualify.
• 1:35:30
  I could see any of those four people in in a gold league.
• 1:35:37
  Yeah. So I think we're going to have
• 1:35:40
  eight players going straight to to gold.
• 1:35:43
  My point is that the silver League is going to be extremely
• 1:35:48
  competitive. I, I, I, like I said, any of
• 1:35:51
  those four players can go to gold.
• 1:35:54
  Only one will go. The rest of three, which are
• 1:35:58
  very close in skill, go to silver League, which is the
• 1:36:03
  reason why even last year, last year, I think I was one of the
• 1:36:07
  casters that covered 99% of silver League and gold league.
• 1:36:11
  Those are my favorite to watch. I couldn't care less about TTL
• 1:36:15
  platinum. TTL platinum is like any other
• 1:36:18
  Sr. tournament, but TTL silver and gold are so competitive
• 1:36:25
  because they share a closer skill, closer ego, closer, you
• 1:36:33
  know, skill range. Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:36:37
  I I I love TTL silver and and gold.
• 1:36:41
  You know what? That actually makes a lot of
• 1:36:43
  sense. And you're right.
• 1:36:44
  I mean, Platinum League is probably just another tournament
• 1:36:48
  with probably the same names, you know?
• 1:36:51
  Well, not exactly. I think there's some surprise
• 1:36:54
  names in there as well. Isn't Vivi even in Platinum I?
• 1:36:58
  Think he was last year. I'm not sure if he managed to
• 1:37:01
  keep his spot or if he dropped. I don't know, I just I I just
• 1:37:05
  remember some emotions thinking that, oh, next season will be
• 1:37:09
  amazing because there's Vivi, but maybe that was the season
• 1:37:11
  before that, I don't know. So it all gets like mushed
• 1:37:15
  together because I can't keep the tournaments apart from each
• 1:37:17
  other. But I mean, you're right, that's
• 1:37:22
  very interesting place and also quite well known players in
• 1:37:26
  silver and gold league because there's just so many of them.
• 1:37:29
  Maybe I should skip Platinum league and focus on silver and
• 1:37:34
  gold instead. That's a that's actually a good
• 1:37:37
  point. And I'm also seeing that Stark
• 1:37:41
  is in the qualifying route in one of the brackets.
• 1:37:46
  Stark I hold very dear to my heart because in 2000 and 1718
• 1:37:53
  when I started to learn build orders, I was watching his build
• 1:37:58
  orders on YouTube and he taught me the first build orders.
• 1:38:02
  So I have a very strange relationship with Stark.
• 1:38:04
  He was very good back then, not so much of course anymore.
• 1:38:08
  So I'm hoping he qualifies. The rest.
• 1:38:11
  Well, Jordan, of course, I would really love for Gabby to
• 1:38:15
  continue and I think actually she should have quite good
• 1:38:18
  chances. She should be beating Fire Baba
• 1:38:22
  Orum. I have not seen a game of him
• 1:38:24
  for the past months. And Target.
• 1:38:27
  Target is really good, so that might be a tough match up.
• 1:38:31
  But yeah. So yeah, maybe I'll watch the
• 1:38:35
  like the qualifying round of bronze league and then skip the
• 1:38:40
  first few rounds of of silver and gold, even though they only
• 1:38:47
  start in January, right? So there's lots of time.
• 1:38:50
  Oh my God, there's so much going on.
• 1:38:53
  A player that I I really want to to to see is Jordan or I'm
• 1:39:00
  really interested in is Jordan. I wonder how far will he will he
• 1:39:04
  make it? Well, do you think he makes it
• 1:39:06
  to gold? I think he makes it to gold.
• 1:39:09
  He might even make it to silver if his, you know, practicing
• 1:39:15
  more and if he has a great result there practicing now in a
• 1:39:21
  book and we're the only model. But we're not there yet.
• 1:39:24
  We're we're going to talk, talk a bit later about that.
• 1:39:27
  Yeah. Yeah, OK.
• 1:39:29
  He's putting work into it. Well, I I guess he's the
• 1:39:34
  favorite to make it to gold, but I don't know.
• 1:39:36
  I mean, I haven't watched Jordan play that much recently because
• 1:39:42
  there was a time when he was only playing Rage Forest, and I
• 1:39:44
  stopped watching him. And at some point I realized he
• 1:39:48
  stopped playing Rage Forest. But I didn't get back to his
• 1:39:51
  dreams anymore. So I might have to catch up to
• 1:39:54
  it, But I don't know. I don't know about his shape,
• 1:39:58
  but he's, well, we know that he's very talented, so he should
• 1:40:04
  be a favorite to make it to gold.
• 1:40:05
  And probably he will be a favorite in the Gold League
• 1:40:08
  then. Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:40:10
  OK, so last talking point concerning the TTL 5 is a very
• 1:40:15
  recent news about the Beery incident.
• 1:40:18
  Beery, an Argentinian player who had to be disqualified because
• 1:40:23
  he signed up with multiple accounts and was caught, leading
• 1:40:30
  him not only to be disqualified from this tournament, but to be
• 1:40:34
  actually banned from all World's Edge sponsored tournaments for
• 1:40:38
  the next three years, I believe. Disappointing news,
• 1:40:43
  disappointing to to see the step of behaviour.
• 1:40:48
  Obviously he's a well known established player for a while
• 1:40:53
  now in the scene in the Latin American community.
• 1:41:00
  I, I, I think the overall everyone's upset.
• 1:41:05
  I think the three years ban is is legit.
• 1:41:10
  I I again, I have no words. I can't help but to sorry for
• 1:41:15
  the admins for 1490. It's a bit of a, you know,
• 1:41:21
  insulting move again, especially in a league that was meant for
• 1:41:30
  people like BD. Like BD has a very unique play
• 1:41:35
  style that not to mention that he made it to to the semi final
• 1:41:42
  of the bracket well after forfeiting his other account
• 1:41:47
  against himself, but so. Well, he probably would have
• 1:41:51
  made it against most other players in the bracket because
• 1:41:53
  he's actually a really good player.
• 1:41:55
  Yeah, yeah. But it still kind of feels like
• 1:41:59
  he was undermining what T90 was doing with the Bronze league,
• 1:42:03
  and that's kind of painful. For sure, for sure and can.
• 1:42:07
  Can you imagine? Again, props to T90 and the
• 1:42:10
  admins for the. Detective work.
• 1:42:14
  The detective work. What the hell?
• 1:42:17
  What I this is exactly what I was talking about earlier
• 1:42:21
  because you know, recently I found yesterday after this whole
• 1:42:26
  thing was announced and more people were looking into it and
• 1:42:29
  they even watched there's AT-90 video about this.
• 1:42:33
  It's unlisted but people can watch it through the
• 1:42:37
  announcement post afterwards. People were watching that video
• 1:42:42
  and I was tagged in that discord by Mata saying oh Daniela, I
• 1:42:47
  don't know if how far along Biddy made it in your tournament
• 1:42:51
  in mimic madness, but he played with two accounts in in your
• 1:42:55
  tournament as well. And I felt like an asshole
• 1:42:58
  dumbass. Like wait, what?
• 1:43:00
  Really? The thing is if you are 1090,
• 1:43:05
  you are so interested in the history of every player.
• 1:43:09
  He saw that player, he was casting Don Cabron's game, he
• 1:43:15
  said. And he was like, oh wow.
• 1:43:17
  I from my understanding that was a player since Voobley times
• 1:43:22
  that basically be named his account.
• 1:43:26
  Like that's a legit player that stopped playing.
• 1:43:29
  So T 90 was so hyped up like Oh my God look at this guy he just
• 1:43:33
  makes a comeback and he would at a 2K42K5 level.
• 1:43:38
  I would have just been impressed like Oh yeah, don't cover on his
• 1:43:42
  back and I would have moved on with my life.
• 1:43:45
  First of all, I wasn't around Vubli time so that name would
• 1:43:50
  not have rang a bell. No way, no.
• 1:43:53
  I think T90 is probably, apart from me, the only person who
• 1:43:57
  could even uncover such a thing. Exactly.
• 1:44:00
  And then he started to to think like, wait, this doesn't sit
• 1:44:06
  well with me. Like there's that player's from
• 1:44:08
  Mexico, there's a Mexican league going on right now.
• 1:44:13
  And he's not playing into that. Like, again, because he's so
• 1:44:17
  invested with the players, with the community, He's, he's, you
• 1:44:20
  know, knows all of these things, he was able to actually make a
• 1:44:25
  connection between all of those, which eventually LED with, of
• 1:44:28
  course, more red flags and more detective work being done.
• 1:44:34
  You guys can hear about it in tonight's video.
• 1:44:37
  But again, I I I would have never thought about it honestly.
• 1:44:41
  Yeah, well, how could you? I think we're all still under
• 1:44:44
  the impression that the integrity amongst the players is
• 1:44:48
  like 100% and it's probably at 95% and even that is shockingly
• 1:44:57
  high for an E sports scene. But it's just grown to be that
• 1:45:03
  because most players are have been playing for 20 years when
• 1:45:07
  there was almost no prize pool and they were playing for fame
• 1:45:10
  and honour and fun. So and also they all know each
• 1:45:16
  other and are friends with each other.
• 1:45:17
  And that's worth more than a couple of 100 or maybe $1000 to
• 1:45:21
  them. So they will never do something
• 1:45:23
  like that. But the scene is bigger than
• 1:45:26
  your top 30 players. So there's like hundreds of
• 1:45:30
  players competing for this. And the more money there is in
• 1:45:34
  these kind of things, the more lucrative it is to start doing
• 1:45:38
  things like match fixing or, you know, signing up with multiple
• 1:45:43
  tournaments. This seemed almost criminal
• 1:45:47
  because like Berry seemed to have put so much effort into
• 1:45:51
  hiding his identities, so this was not a pleb like me who would
• 1:45:57
  try to get into a tournament with multiple accounts.
• 1:46:00
  I wouldn't even know how to hide my things like that.
• 1:46:04
  So this must be very insulting for T90I.
• 1:46:08
  Can feel for him. I'm happy that the punishment is
• 1:46:11
  this harsh, but this only shows that there is shady stuff going
• 1:46:17
  on and it's hard to uncover it if you're not that knowledgeable
• 1:46:22
  like T90. For sure, for sure.
• 1:46:25
  So props to him and and his admins for all the work it it.
• 1:46:32
  It must feel a bit disappointing, especially from
• 1:46:35
  their perspective. Honestly, from the entire
• 1:46:39
  community's perspective, I I've seen a couple of comments like
• 1:46:44
  in the middle that some people were saying we're trying to
• 1:46:49
  defend Barry's stance. I don't think his stance can be
• 1:46:54
  defended. I I disagree with people overly
• 1:47:00
  insulting and going and harassing a person and and
• 1:47:03
  exaggerating, like taking it to a whole different extreme by
• 1:47:08
  this point. I also think even though
• 1:47:10
  yesterday when the information was initially released, D90 said
• 1:47:14
  that Barry was continuously denying this.
• 1:47:18
  But in the meantime I think he has made a statement and he has
• 1:47:24
  come clean with the entire situation.
• 1:47:26
  He recognized and regrets his his mistake.
• 1:47:31
  So that's a one step forward towards forgiveness.
• 1:47:36
  But I don't think his actions were were justified or not
• 1:47:42
  defendable in any way. Yeah, inexcusable.
• 1:47:46
  For sure. OK, moving on.
• 1:47:49
  Yet another topic and this one's for you because you've covered
• 1:47:54
  it a bit as far as I know. Well, I've seen you cover the
• 1:47:57
  mini Arabia cup and there was also the Onimaru boot camp.
• 1:48:01
  So what's up with that? Yeah, so basically Onimaru boot
• 1:48:05
  camp, it's meant to kind of bring the Onimaru players
• 1:48:11
  together to practice, to socialize a bit.
• 1:48:15
  There's we're talking right now about what happened in the past
• 1:48:18
  month, but there's a lot of things coming up next as well.
• 1:48:22
  You you mentioned Red Bull, there's going to be QT this.
• 1:48:26
  6-6, yeah. Next month, yeah, there's TTL,
• 1:48:30
  there's soccer see Cup, there's a lot of stuff coming up.
• 1:48:35
  So it's a good, it's a good opportunity for them to practice
• 1:48:40
  Mini Arabia Cup was meant to kind of simulate some practice
• 1:48:45
  for QTD. And I think this one that I
• 1:48:50
  casted the past week was the 3rd edition.
• 1:48:54
  They even had more editions, but they're still, you know, firing
• 1:49:00
  up their, their twitch channel. They're trying to expand their
• 1:49:04
  their socials and to grow their community.
• 1:49:08
  And and yeah, they invited me to cover that event on their
• 1:49:11
  channel as well, just so they have a tiny bit more exposure.
• 1:49:18
  So. So when you say third event,
• 1:49:21
  does that mean they already did 2 mini Arabia cups during the?
• 1:49:24
  Boot camp, not during the boot camp before the boot camp.
• 1:49:27
  OK, OK. Yeah, this one during the boot
• 1:49:30
  camp was the was the 3rd edition.
• 1:49:32
  And you know, as much as I hate to play Arabian, I got to say as
• 1:49:40
  as much I am thinking that I'm going to hate casting KOTD 6
• 1:49:46
  because it's only going to be Arabia.
• 1:49:49
  It was quite, quite a fun event. It was quite fun to see.
• 1:49:55
  I think I heard you say during your stream that you are getting
• 1:49:59
  kind of hyped for KOTD. I was getting kind of, you know
• 1:50:03
  why? Because so I've made a statement
• 1:50:09
  that might be a hot statement or not, I don't know.
• 1:50:13
  We'll see. Obviously also depends on what
• 1:50:17
  type of bracket, what what what side of the bracket he will be
• 1:50:20
  in. But I stated that Manchester
• 1:50:24
  will make it into the QTD 6 finals.
• 1:50:29
  The level he was playing at was absolutely insane.
• 1:50:34
  It was. It was fun to see.
• 1:50:38
  Well, I saw the set you were casting like at least one and
• 1:50:43
  that was the Vince set and he played like he microed Florida
• 1:50:48
  State. I don't know if there is a
• 1:50:50
  better way to control your units than what he did in that game.
• 1:50:53
  I don't know how he did it and I don't think this is something he
• 1:50:57
  does consistently, at least not to my knowledge, but in that
• 1:51:00
  game he must have played on like 0 ping or whatever.
• 1:51:04
  Yeah, exactly. And I don't remember or I don't
• 1:51:09
  have this information here, but one week or two weeks ago he was
• 1:51:15
  at 40 win streak on ladder. OK.
• 1:51:20
  At some point then which assuming they they were 95% of
• 1:51:26
  them were Arabias, probably, yeah.
• 1:51:29
  But yeah, that was that was crazy.
• 1:51:32
  Well, it just goes to show that he is preparing a lot for the
• 1:51:36
  upcoming tournaments, which is great to see.
• 1:51:38
  I mean, we've mentioned that he got third place in Masters of
• 1:51:43
  Hyper Random, so he was already in good shape.
• 1:51:46
  And yeah, it'll be fun to see what he puts on the table in the
• 1:51:51
  upcoming tournaments. I don't know about you.
• 1:51:55
  I usually have like a kind of idea on the play styles of most
• 1:52:02
  of the pro players. And there's been a couple of
• 1:52:05
  times in the past when in the podcast we've talked about the
• 1:52:10
  play styles of each players, trying to characterize them.
• 1:52:13
  And every time when it comes to Winchester, I have no idea what
• 1:52:20
  is his play style, what is like, what are the things that you
• 1:52:24
  would attribute to Winchester that he does differently than
• 1:52:29
  other players? Is there anything that comes to
• 1:52:31
  mind? Well I think right now I can
• 1:52:36
  tell you generally no right now after watching him play in the
• 1:52:40
  last in in this mini Arabia cup I saw him make every single game
• 1:52:47
  some sort of drush to militias early.
• 1:52:51
  Then after clicking up, if he keeps those simulations alive he
• 1:52:56
  adds 2 more. So he has four many times into
• 1:53:00
  range into some fast ish imp later on.
• 1:53:05
  Oh God, is he going to kick offs again?
• 1:53:09
  I I don't know but he has been playing that and just basically
• 1:53:13
  dominating it. I was wondering if that's his
• 1:53:18
  new signature build order, but and Andy was saying he said he
• 1:53:23
  still made that. He definitely looks very strong
• 1:53:26
  at the moment. But yeah, I'm not sure if other
• 1:53:31
  people maybe will will copy or try to incorporate that build
• 1:53:34
  order. We'll, we'll see.
• 1:53:37
  Yeah, well, if he's successful with it, I'm sure other players
• 1:53:40
  will try it and try to implement it as always.
• 1:53:43
  But yeah, so maybe that's it. Maybe he's really good at
• 1:53:49
  surprising people with his openings.
• 1:53:51
  And of course he's famously known for picking Goths, even
• 1:53:56
  though he didn't do that in the last couple of tournaments.
• 1:53:58
  Thank God. OK, anything else noteworthy
• 1:54:03
  from the Onimaru boot camp? Yeah, not really.
• 1:54:09
  They kind of started like I said, they were just looking to
• 1:54:12
  expand their their channel. I think they will probably
• 1:54:17
  because the next LAN event that they're preparing for next year
• 1:54:21
  on on that Channel as well. So it's absolutely worth it to
• 1:54:25
  to leave a follow or check it out.
• 1:54:28
  They started some sort of, you know, mini talks with the
• 1:54:32
  players or in between the players with stuff around the
• 1:54:35
  scene as well. So they're they're preparing a
• 1:54:37
  bunch of nice stuff. Like I, I like Omar as a as a
• 1:54:42
  team. I'm not directly connected to
• 1:54:45
  them, but during our collaborations like they're,
• 1:54:49
  they're always, I don't know, looking for everyone's
• 1:54:53
  well-being for, for their players.
• 1:54:56
  They're looking a lot after them and they're supporting their
• 1:54:59
  players a lot. I I like on Imano as a as a team
• 1:55:02
  I think. Yeah, I mean, it's great that
• 1:55:05
  they have such a big roster with lots of players.
• 1:55:08
  And my only issue is that in the past we've seen a couple of E
• 1:55:15
  sport teams get into the scene but survive for like half a year
• 1:55:19
  or a year and then split up because it was just like
• 1:55:26
  financially not really worth it. So my fear is that on Imaru
• 1:55:31
  being this big of a team that they might break up sooner
• 1:55:37
  rather than later just because it's like, how do you afford a
• 1:55:41
  roster like that? I'm I'm not sure that's I think
• 1:55:47
  time will tell in that regard. Yeah, I mean if the owner or the
• 1:55:52
  like the sponsors and everything, they are very
• 1:55:54
  dedicated to the game, there's always a chance that they will
• 1:55:59
  keep up playing as Onimaru and that's surely what I'm hoping.
• 1:56:04
  OK, so after all the E sport topics, how what's my segue to
• 1:56:12
  this? Well, I know something You're
• 1:56:16
  not only casting games when you are dead tired in the middle of
• 1:56:20
  the night, but I've seen you also cast with, I think it was a
• 1:56:25
  massive headache and you were starting the campaign Alexander
• 1:56:30
  the Great. How far along did you get?
• 1:56:32
  Because I know that you had to stop casting because your
• 1:56:35
  headache got too strong. Yeah, I that that was a couple
• 1:56:38
  of weeks ago. I get this random migraine
• 1:56:42
  sometimes that I'm struggling with.
• 1:56:45
  So I didn't want to cast anything.
• 1:56:46
  I didn't want to play 1V1. So I was like, you know what,
• 1:56:49
  let me let me see what the Alexander the Great is about.
• 1:56:53
  I loved it. I didn't, I only played it that
• 1:56:58
  time on stream, the first two missions or whatever, but I
• 1:57:03
  haven't went further than that. This reminds me that I need to
• 1:57:07
  go back, but I got just really busy afterwards.
• 1:57:10
  I, I think it's a nice little touch that you know the devs are
• 1:57:17
  sending some love to the single player community as well.
• 1:57:20
  I I think it's quite a large community as well.
• 1:57:25
  It's massive, yeah. Yeah, even though we're just
• 1:57:28
  used to the competitive multiplayer action, I, I don't
• 1:57:35
  know, I loved it. Did you try it?
• 1:57:37
  Oh, I tried it. Daniela, I'm I need to do the
• 1:57:42
  two last missions. I'm I just, I just today I
• 1:57:47
  finished because we postponed our recording.
• 1:57:50
  So I had a little bit of extra time and I thought maybe I'll do
• 1:57:54
  another mission. And the 16th mission is actually
• 1:57:57
  not that long, so I could finish it.
• 1:58:00
  Two more missions to go. 1818, There's 18 in total.
• 1:58:05
  It's a very long campaign. Yeah.
• 1:58:09
  So I'm quite excited. I think the campaign is great.
• 1:58:16
  It's all about Alexander the Great.
• 1:58:18
  So this time around in the Chronicles, you'll see it's like
• 1:58:21
  last time it was the three different Greek civilizations
• 1:58:26
  and the campaign was evenly distributed between these three
• 1:58:29
  civilizations. This time you basically only
• 1:58:32
  place the Macedonians with Alexander the Great.
• 1:58:35
  And there's like there was a 1 mission with the, what's its
• 1:58:41
  name, the Thracians. And there was also a mission
• 1:58:44
  with the Puru, which is kind of an Indian civilization.
• 1:58:47
  But all the other civilized missions were with Alexander the
• 1:58:50
  Great and the Macedonians. And this is something that I, on
• 1:58:55
  the one hand, I really liked because you get that immersive
• 1:58:58
  storytelling with Alexander the Great and you really get to
• 1:59:02
  follow him along on his great conquering the whole world
• 1:59:06
  mission. On the other hand, the
• 1:59:09
  Macedonians as the civilizations are kind of a poor choice
• 1:59:13
  because they are just not fun to play with.
• 1:59:16
  Granted, I'm playing on the legendary difficulty and that is
• 1:59:20
  kicking my ass. I mean, holy shit is that
• 1:59:23
  difficult I. Remember, I think I switched it
• 1:59:28
  from for my second mission on the legendary or no, I think the
• 1:59:33
  first one, the first one and the second I was like, you know
• 1:59:36
  what? That's probably just the, you
• 1:59:38
  know, in your standard game, easy, moderate, difficult.
• 1:59:43
  I'm just going to go with legendary.
• 1:59:44
  The second one. The second mission I was already
• 1:59:47
  struggling. I was like, wait, what?
• 1:59:48
  Yeah, you can't beat them on the first try.
• 1:59:50
  Like you have to start over and over.
• 1:59:53
  There have been a couple of missions that I had to start
• 1:59:57
  like 5 to 10 times before I could actually finish it.
• 2:00:01
  They are borderline unfair, mostly because the Macedonians,
• 2:00:07
  your own civilization, is actually really like badly
• 2:00:11
  equipped to fight against infantry, and most of your
• 2:00:14
  enemies are fighting with infantry against you.
• 2:00:19
  So it's more I wouldn't even call this difficulty legendary.
• 2:00:24
  I would say it's a challenge mode.
• 2:00:27
  So for people who want to have an unfair challenge against
• 2:00:31
  themselves, I would argue that it is a great way to get better
• 2:00:35
  at the game because you have to multitask a lot.
• 2:00:39
  Later missions require you to play on like 5 different fronts
• 2:00:44
  at the same time when it when you're always in lower numbers
• 2:00:48
  with weaker units than your enemy.
• 2:00:50
  So you all have to make use of better positioning, like
• 2:00:55
  shooting from up a hill. You need to expand a lot to get
• 2:00:59
  new resources. You need to place very, very
• 2:01:04
  smart castles in order to get some extra firepower.
• 2:01:09
  So there's a lot going on with great settings, it's just super
• 2:01:15
  unfair and. It's interesting that you say
• 2:01:20
  that. I would you would argue that
• 2:01:23
  this is making you better at the game.
• 2:01:26
  Well me because I hate late game.
• 2:01:28
  Yeah, that's the one thing that I forgot to mention earlier when
• 2:01:33
  we were talking about Rich Forest.
• 2:01:35
  That's something that made me better in MY1V ones.
• 2:01:38
  That's when I broke up 1700 for the first time playing Rage
• 2:01:42
  Forest. Yeah, that makes so much sense.
• 2:01:44
  Playing rage forest with the higher level people right?
• 2:01:48
  I was getting destroyed in those lobbies.
• 2:01:51
  It was just fighting for my life on flank, rebooming every game.
• 2:01:55
  But that kind of forced me to to reboom faster, to multitask
• 2:02:04
  better, just defending and expanding my home.
• 2:02:07
  Or like I said, rebooming which reflected in MY1V1 skills later
• 2:02:13
  on. I don't know.
• 2:02:15
  I would probably not become a better player because I would
• 2:02:17
  rage Dean stall the game, but. Well, that's a rage.
• 2:02:24
  But if I would keep at it, I can only imagine that everyone would
• 2:02:29
  get better at the game because it requires such a different
• 2:02:32
  skill set than your average Arabia game.
• 2:02:36
  So I'm with you there and it's kind of the same for this
• 2:02:40
  campaign. I sometimes felt like I was
• 2:02:43
  playing Rage Forest and I was not really enjoying it, but I
• 2:02:47
  felt challenged by the game and I kind of put my honour on the
• 2:02:51
  line because I thought I, I, I must be able to beat this
• 2:02:55
  challenge. So I grinded it out and there
• 2:02:58
  were times when I had to use save files actually and go back
• 2:03:03
  because I didn't want to start the whole mission.
• 2:03:05
  You know, it's not cheating. It's not really cheating because
• 2:03:09
  I was going back in time, you know, I had to redo some stuff.
• 2:03:13
  But I was actually there was a mission where I had like
• 2:03:17
  Alexander the Great mission 14, a mission 14B all the way up to
• 2:03:24
  F because at different times of the games, when I felt I was
• 2:03:28
  good enough, I did a save file, then went on to play further
• 2:03:33
  into the mission, realized that I could not beat it anymore and
• 2:03:37
  had to go back to earlier times of the game.
• 2:03:40
  It was it was, I'm telling you, I'm not really sure if I was
• 2:03:44
  having fun all the way, but I sure as hell felt challenged.
• 2:03:47
  And once I finished the mission, I felt, I don't know, I felt
• 2:03:52
  like I was breaking a new ELO high.
• 2:03:54
  That's how I felt. So All in all I think the DLC is
• 2:03:58
  actually pretty good if you like the like campaigns.
• 2:04:02
  Overall, I've seen a crazy good response overall about the DLC
• 2:04:08
  from Reddit, from everywhere actually.
• 2:04:11
  I think people were really happy with it.
• 2:04:13
  Reddit, which is usually very negative about changes and about
• 2:04:17
  stuff. They really love the Alexander
• 2:04:20
  the Great campaign. So.
• 2:04:22
  I also think that it gets a little better at the end because
• 2:04:26
  during the campaign you get to decide on certain things.
• 2:04:30
  Mostly it's what kind of units you want to get to your standard
• 2:04:34
  units like additionally, and those make it easier because
• 2:04:38
  these are much stronger than what you are equipped with with
• 2:04:41
  the Macedonian civilization. So if I have one criticism, it's
• 2:04:44
  that the Macedonians are just too weak as a civilization.
• 2:04:50
  But yeah, I'm sure they will actually make them stronger in
• 2:04:54
  in future patches and I will be proudly saying that I beat the
• 2:04:58
  campaign before all it got before it got easier.
• 2:05:03
  Let's go. OK.
• 2:05:06
  But yeah, I think that's it for the campaign.
• 2:05:10
  There's one more big change coming to the game, which is
• 2:05:16
  will be showcased in the Telesocracy Cup 2 and that's the
• 2:05:21
  naval rework. And now I'm really curious
• 2:05:24
  because I haven't heard you talk about the naval rework.
• 2:05:27
  Are you excited about it or do you not like it?
• 2:05:30
  You as a water playing player. I had a stream where I went
• 2:05:39
  through all the all the changes, all the notes, all the tests as
• 2:05:44
  well. I'm excited to well, I, I don't
• 2:05:50
  know now I feel like I have a tiny bit of a mixed feeling.
• 2:05:53
  So overall I, I feel positive about it.
• 2:05:56
  I'm excited because I know that this change, this rework will
• 2:06:02
  bring more water maps to the map.
• 2:06:07
  Well, I hope so. I I think it will kind of shake
• 2:06:13
  things up a bit when it comes to the water play in general.
• 2:06:17
  I I hope the water play will finally get more deserved love.
• 2:06:22
  I heavily disagree with a lot of changes.
• 2:06:25
  Not a lot of them. A couple of them.
• 2:06:27
  Which ones in particular? The demo nerf for instance.
• 2:06:33
  The demo nerf is too big of a change.
• 2:06:37
  They basically change the the cost of it now that you need a
• 2:06:45
  different upgrade for a considerably less damage.
• 2:06:50
  Not not not the greatest. I think that will have to be
• 2:06:53
  changed in in the future because it kind of basically makes the
• 2:06:58
  demos unusable. I can only assume this was
• 2:07:04
  because they felt like they're doing too much damage with land
• 2:07:08
  units. And now basically.
• 2:07:12
  Well demos were supposed to counter fire ships before.
• 2:07:16
  Now they introduce the Hawk which was meant to counter the
• 2:07:21
  fire ships and to be countered by the galleys.
• 2:07:25
  I think right now in the state, the Hawk basically counters
• 2:07:30
  everything, the fire ships and the galleys from, from what I've
• 2:07:34
  seen, from what I've seen other people test it just there's too
• 2:07:40
  much damage when you have a lot of numbers as well to the
• 2:07:43
  galleys, including I think they're too fast, they're
• 2:07:48
  ketchup too fast. To the galleys.
• 2:07:50
  You can just like micro and kite away.
• 2:07:54
  So yeah, there's a couple of things there are going to be
• 2:07:57
  retouched. I'm 100% sure about it.
• 2:08:00
  Yeah, it appears that the Hulk is stronger than intended
• 2:08:05
  because it kind of renders the fireship obsolete.
• 2:08:10
  I think I saw Viper. Was it yesterday or even today?
• 2:08:14
  He was testing out a few things and he said that there's really
• 2:08:18
  no reason to do like to build fireships anymore.
• 2:08:21
  And that can't be right. That's that can't be intended.
• 2:08:25
  What do you think about moving all the technologies to the
• 2:08:28
  university? I think that will having only
• 2:08:33
  one page at the dock will make things way easier for the new
• 2:08:39
  players like how many people didn't discover the second dog
• 2:08:43
  paid trip forever. I think a lot of them and well,
• 2:08:49
  on the other hand, it makes things a tiny bit more difficult
• 2:08:55
  because now if you want to get some of those techs, you have to
• 2:08:59
  spend an extra 200 wood to build a university that's.
• 2:09:03
  True. So that 200 wood could have went
• 2:09:07
  into a dock and 1/3 of a ship It's yeah.
• 2:09:14
  Yeah. But on the other hand, you could
• 2:09:16
  argue that those technologies are even a bigger power spike
• 2:09:19
  now because they require a bigger investment.
• 2:09:22
  So it's not as streamlined and everybody gets the technologies
• 2:09:26
  as soon as they hit the next age, but rather maybe there will
• 2:09:30
  be a delay in one or the other player so they might be faster
• 2:09:36
  snowballs and making the games last long, which I would find
• 2:09:42
  very good. Yeah, I I agree with that.
• 2:09:47
  Like I also like a couple of the the changes.
• 2:09:50
  I like that they're introducing new tags for the fire ships, for
• 2:09:54
  instance. I like that they're basically
• 2:09:59
  changing a couple of things in terms of careening and dry dock.
• 2:10:03
  Now Dry dock gives extra Pierce armour as well, which I think it
• 2:10:07
  was very confusing that it was like you need one to unlock the
• 2:10:12
  other, but they're giving different effects.
• 2:10:15
  Like now there's a completely different tack for ships moving
• 2:10:20
  faster. It's not related to dry dock
• 2:10:23
  anymore, and dry dock basically gives the same effect as one age
• 2:10:27
  earlier. There's also the change that I
• 2:10:32
  think there's a new technology, like a precursor to gill Nets.
• 2:10:37
  Yeah, exactly. So this.
• 2:10:39
  Fishing lines or line something. Like that.
• 2:10:42
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fishing lines.
• 2:10:43
  Exactly. So you would carry more food and
• 2:10:48
  gather it faster in the feudal age already.
• 2:10:52
  And this is before gill Nets. So Gill Nets is on top of that.
• 2:10:56
  My question to you as a water map lover, do you think people
• 2:11:04
  will go for that? Is it worth it?
• 2:11:05
  Because I really have no opinion on it.
• 2:11:08
  I think it's I think it's very strong.
• 2:11:12
  I think remember when I told you earlier that no people that the
• 2:11:17
  things that taking advantage of a back pond to fish boom is is
• 2:11:21
  worth it knows to play water maps?
• 2:11:23
  I think this is the depths trying to push the people to
• 2:11:28
  take more advantage of fishing. You're probably not going to
• 2:11:35
  start putting fish traps in futilage, but that will the
• 2:11:40
  carry capacity will influence, you know the fish and chips
• 2:11:45
  carrying from deep fish because by futilage you're already
• 2:11:49
  running out of one or two deep fish as close to your dock.
• 2:11:52
  So you have to bring it from from further away.
• 2:11:57
  I also think that the devs trying to push the players to
• 2:12:02
  invest more into fish. Now you're able to get extra
• 2:12:07
  carry capacity for them. Now you're able to protect them
• 2:12:10
  by garrisoning them in the docks.
• 2:12:15
  Yeah, I, I think this is just, you know, a point where people
• 2:12:20
  are I, I trying to push the players into investing more into
• 2:12:26
  water economy. So here's a question.
• 2:12:30
  Is it actually incentivizing investing more into water if
• 2:12:36
  your opponent can hide their fish in the docks?
• 2:12:41
  Military I feel like well it depends.
• 2:12:45
  Like this was also tested. On one hand it could make some
• 2:12:51
  players fully ignore fuselage water and then just jump to
• 2:12:58
  castle age, right? You you got to use of your fish
• 2:13:04
  of your fishing chips early on. Now enemies attacking you can
• 2:13:08
  Garrison them and just not bother, try to do your thing, go
• 2:13:12
  faster to castle age and and so on.
• 2:13:15
  But from my understanding, the damage that the dock is doing,
• 2:13:21
  you know, and now if you Garrison fishing ships, the dock
• 2:13:24
  is shooting arrows, the damage of the arrows is not very high.
• 2:13:29
  So if you have, I think someone tested if you, I think if you
• 2:13:33
  have 4 fishing ships attacking a dock like you would usually have
• 2:13:37
  until now as well probably. And the dock is shooting or I I
• 2:13:43
  think it was if you have 5 fire ships by the time dock goes down
• 2:13:49
  you only lose 1 fireship. It's like very little damage.
• 2:13:52
  Yeah, so if the other player goes heavy on water, you might
• 2:13:58
  actually lose all all, you know, the dock and all your fish.
• 2:14:03
  So that's again, like I, I think we'll have to see a couple of
• 2:14:06
  the early rounds from Telesocracy.
• 2:14:08
  Yeah, Yeah, that's true. So I I believe that the changes
• 2:14:12
  are interesting. I mean, it's kind of clear that
• 2:14:15
  the Hulk is not the way it's intended and the fire ships are
• 2:14:20
  too weak now. But this is changeable, I think,
• 2:14:23
  like fixable. This shouldn't be a big deal.
• 2:14:25
  It's probably going to be fixed during the tournament even
• 2:14:30
  maybe, I don't know. But definitely after the
• 2:14:35
  tournament, once we have enough data about how the interaction
• 2:14:39
  between the new types of ships are.
• 2:14:41
  I think some things are just really great.
• 2:14:44
  I remember the time I was like once in AT-90 community game,
• 2:14:49
  that was way before I played on the ranked ladder that was in
• 2:14:53
  Vubli times and I never played online.
• 2:14:56
  I only watched like T90 and BBQ Turkmen back in the day.
• 2:15:02
  And for some reason, one day I decided I would like to join and
• 2:15:07
  I actually got in there and it was a like wandered no monument
• 2:15:12
  defence on a water map. So that was probably the first
• 2:15:17
  time I had to do like build ships.
• 2:15:20
  And I I was bad, of course. And what I did miss was I didn't
• 2:15:27
  know what upgrades to make for my ships.
• 2:15:29
  For example, I did not know back then that something like
• 2:15:33
  Fletching and bot Canaro would affect my galleys.
• 2:15:36
  So like chemistry, Ballistics, all these upgrades I had missed.
• 2:15:40
  There was something that I learned through that game when I
• 2:15:43
  was watching the game and realizing that T90 was going on
• 2:15:47
  about me not having any upgrades on my ships.
• 2:15:49
  And I was wondering because like I did upgrades, I had war
• 2:15:52
  galleys. What, what does he want from me?
• 2:15:56
  So I think there's a couple of things that people like real
• 2:16:01
  noobs, people who don't play the game competitively like me back
• 2:16:05
  then will not realise. And that's how to upgrade your
• 2:16:09
  ships. For example, why fire ships
• 2:16:13
  would be getting better with the what is that or what was that of
• 2:16:18
  war galley upgrade? I think no, the galley upgrade.
• 2:16:22
  But then later on you have separate upgrades for war
• 2:16:24
  galleys and fast fires. That never made any sense to me.
• 2:16:28
  And these kind of things are easier now.
• 2:16:30
  They are beginner friendly, they are easier to read.
• 2:16:34
  So this is all I think, a great change to make ships easier to
• 2:16:39
  understand. I'm not sure about moving the
• 2:16:45
  technologies to the university though.
• 2:16:49
  On that note, I also think it will be unfair for some sips
• 2:16:55
  because now you basically have medium worship and heavy
• 2:17:00
  worship, right? And that affects the fire
• 2:17:03
  galley, the galley line and the hawk.
• 2:17:07
  And we know that there are some sieves that get access to to
• 2:17:13
  fireship, to fast fireship, sorry, but not galleon.
• 2:17:19
  There are some sieves that do not get fast fires, but do get
• 2:17:23
  they do get galleon. And now for the you have the
• 2:17:26
  Heavy Warship upgrade that affects all of these lines, but
• 2:17:32
  some sieves for the same cost will get the upgrade for both
• 2:17:36
  Galleon and Fasfire ship, while some sieves will only get one or
• 2:17:41
  the other. But I think that's great, to be
• 2:17:44
  honest. Yeah, I think that's amazing
• 2:17:47
  because that kind of makes the difference of civilizations
• 2:17:55
  bigger at a stage where usually it takes forever to kill off a
• 2:18:00
  different civilization. Like early Imp, you hardly ever
• 2:18:04
  see water maps end in early imperial age.
• 2:18:08
  It even if it's almost decided, it usually drags on for 30
• 2:18:11
  minutes before one person runs out of resources or gets
• 2:18:15
  destroyed on an island. But this way I think early Imp
• 2:18:21
  these games can snowball a lot faster, which probably ends to
• 2:18:26
  the same result because of the civilization bonuses.
• 2:18:29
  But it's it's just faster and I like that.
• 2:18:32
  I don't like long games, but I maybe I'm totally wrong about
• 2:18:36
  this and this will create very unfair metas leading to just
• 2:18:42
  fast imperial into better upgrades.
• 2:18:45
  Yeah, I think again, this is another instance where time time
• 2:18:50
  will tell. Yeah, totally.
• 2:18:52
  But it's an interesting point you.
• 2:18:53
  Have to see a couple of roads. Yeah, yeah.
• 2:18:56
  OK, if anyone's interested, Spirit of the Law did a very
• 2:19:01
  rare interview with the developers of the Oh, oh, I kind
• 2:19:10
  of mixed this up, I think because Spirit of the Law did an
• 2:19:13
  interview with the Alexander the Great.
• 2:19:16
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 2:19:16
  OK, I somehow had this like in the wrong part of my notes.
• 2:19:20
  Never mind this information, but there is a Spirit of the Law
• 2:19:23
  interview with the developers of the Alexander the Great DLC if
• 2:19:27
  you're interested in that. Other than that, there's like in
• 2:19:32
  the show notes, some there. There will be a link with all
• 2:19:36
  the details to the naval rework if you want to read up on that.
• 2:19:40
  All right. Last topic for this new section
• 2:19:44
  concerns the betting scandal. Now there's been lots of talking
• 2:19:50
  about this. I think probably everything has
• 2:19:53
  been said to this topic that needed to be said.
• 2:19:57
  And in the past episode that I did with Mayhem, my Co host, we
• 2:20:02
  also talked a bit about the subject.
• 2:20:05
  So we don't need to go too much into detail, but it's still
• 2:20:08
  news. So we should definitely talk
• 2:20:10
  about it and I'm sure our listeners are very curious to
• 2:20:13
  hear your opinion on this subject.
• 2:20:16
  Just to give a little bit of context.
• 2:20:18
  So a couple of days or almost a week ago, there appeared a new
• 2:20:24
  betting site almost out of nowhere and they contracted A
• 2:20:29
  sizeable amount of pro players to play matches people can bet
• 2:20:33
  on with a cryptocurrency. So we're not going to mention
• 2:20:37
  the name of the site because we do not want to.
• 2:20:40
  Like, I don't want this podcast to give any publicity to that
• 2:20:44
  site. There was a lot of outrage,
• 2:20:47
  which led to almost all of the pros withdrawing from their
• 2:20:51
  engagement with the site. Last I checked, there was the
• 2:20:55
  Gao Bars Vincent Classic Pro playing, but nobody else.
• 2:21:01
  It led to a controversial conversation about whether there
• 2:21:04
  is a place for gambling sites in Age of Empires 2, and the
• 2:21:10
  overwhelmingly, well negative feedback coming from the
• 2:21:15
  audience was there should not be any place for betting
• 2:21:20
  whatsoever, leading to most pros well going back from their
• 2:21:26
  engagement. I've already mentioned that I
• 2:21:30
  was kind of shocked by the pro players engaging with the sides
• 2:21:36
  and appear apparently not doing the research, but where do you
• 2:21:44
  stand on this topic? I, I, I will try to keep it as
• 2:21:49
  short as possible because I know we're a bit, we've talked.
• 2:21:53
  A lot. A little, yeah.
• 2:21:55
  There's there is so many things that come into my mind.
• 2:21:59
  I agree with you when you say that you don't think they did
• 2:22:04
  any research on this. I think they just saw an
• 2:22:07
  opportunity of, you know, making money easy and fast.
• 2:22:16
  I if I'm not mistaken, the rumours were something like
• 2:22:21
  $75.00 for a one match and $25 for for for the losers or $100
• 2:22:29
  per match. Which players or some players
• 2:22:34
  maybe only solve it? As you know, I have games every
• 2:22:39
  day. I can schedule them whatever I
• 2:22:41
  want. Some days if I can't play, I
• 2:22:43
  won't play. But $100 for one single match is
• 2:22:49
  a pretty good deal. So we all know that, you know,
• 2:22:53
  other than the top content creators, the AUE players are
• 2:22:57
  not making a lot of money from AUE.
• 2:23:00
  So I could see them only seeing that side and just jumping, you
• 2:23:06
  know, had first straight ahead. I still think it was a very
• 2:23:12
  wrong move from them regardless of my opinion on on gambling
• 2:23:17
  overall. Regardless, everyone is feel is
• 2:23:20
  free to promote whatever they want.
• 2:23:24
  But this is the aspect that I don't think they really did a
• 2:23:27
  lot of research on. Well, first of all, the website,
• 2:23:31
  which seemed in the beginning quite sketchy, quite license
• 2:23:36
  somewhere in the middle of Pacific Ocean, I don't know,
• 2:23:43
  there were a lot of things wrong with the website to start with.
• 2:23:49
  You basically have no, no idea of what you're promoted to your
• 2:23:55
  viewers to what you're promoting as a Twitch streamer.
• 2:24:02
  You're basically an influencer, especially ever since I I think
• 2:24:06
  the community had its peak regarding viewership and
• 2:24:11
  everything during COVID, right? Because our only social
• 2:24:16
  interaction was online during that period.
• 2:24:20
  And I feel like that feeling kinda was kept even after COVID
• 2:24:25
  ended. Like you see a lot of people are
• 2:24:27
  just working from home nowadays. You're more and more interaction
• 2:24:31
  nowadays is online a streamer that you watch 8 hours per per
• 2:24:37
  day, I don't know and you're fond of you might see them and
• 2:24:43
  their action you you might feel like you're their friend to some
• 2:24:47
  extent or like you know all of this parasocial relationship
• 2:24:51
  that are forming between a viewer and their streamer and a
• 2:24:55
  streamer has to be aware of their impact on their viewers.
• 2:25:01
  If you, if we are bringing gambling into the scene, you
• 2:25:05
  have to be aware that out of all of your audience, a certain
• 2:25:10
  percentage will start gambling on that website because that's
• 2:25:13
  what you're promoting to them. Now of course, everyone has to
• 2:25:20
  be responsible and is, you know, responsible for their own life
• 2:25:24
  and for their own decisions. But as a streamer, why would I
• 2:25:28
  want to B? You know that the .0 of
• 2:25:33
  someone's mental and financial downgrade you, you, you don't
• 2:25:37
  know what door you're opening to some of your viewers that might
• 2:25:43
  lead to an addiction, then might lead to severe, severe issues,
• 2:25:50
  basically financial or mental ones.
• 2:25:55
  So I, I, I think as a streamer you are responsible for that.
• 2:26:02
  I think $75.00 for a match up were not worth it.
• 2:26:08
  Nothing is worth it. No price is worth it.
• 2:26:10
  But especially when you look at from that perspective, I, I, I
• 2:26:16
  don't know, it's about what you're promoting to your
• 2:26:19
  audience and to the scene. And a lot of viewers saw it from
• 2:26:23
  that perspective. And that's why a lot of viewers
• 2:26:26
  were very upset with certain players.
• 2:26:29
  Well, I've almost nothing to add to what you've said.
• 2:26:33
  I think I agree with everything you have said.
• 2:26:38
  You made a very important point in saying that these content
• 2:26:42
  creators are also influencers. I think I wouldn't go as far as
• 2:26:46
  to say that people think that they are friends with these
• 2:26:49
  people, but they probably look up to them in some way and they
• 2:26:53
  relate with them and. Yeah, yeah, sorry.
• 2:26:59
  Go on. I I just I'm.
• 2:27:02
  You're agreeing. Yeah, I'm, I'm really agreeing.
• 2:27:05
  Yeah, you're putting some very important points.
• 2:27:08
  There. So the way we relate with these
• 2:27:11
  kind of people is that we especially us grown-ups, you
• 2:27:15
  know, in our, I don't know, 20s, thirties, 40s, we can
• 2:27:20
  differentiate. We don't think they like we will
• 2:27:23
  become the next Cristiano Ronaldo or Neely or Leary, but
• 2:27:28
  we do think that what they do is admirable and we like to support
• 2:27:33
  them in what they do. So usually we believe that if
• 2:27:37
  they are, for example promoting A betting side, if we are on the
• 2:27:42
  verge of not having an opinion on this matter, this might make
• 2:27:46
  us more receptible to betting. If we are not vulnerable to it,
• 2:27:51
  then we might have a very strong reaction, like many people had
• 2:27:56
  in criticizing it. But if we are vulnerable to
• 2:27:59
  these topics, we might start something that we should
• 2:28:03
  probably not have started. And that is what influencing
• 2:28:08
  does. It is a very subtle way of
• 2:28:12
  changing people's behaviours or opinions on certain topics and
• 2:28:17
  this is something that our pros, in my opinion, should have
• 2:28:22
  considered long before the betting scandal.
• 2:28:25
  This is something they should have considered in a very
• 2:28:28
  generalistic way, independent of what topic it actually then
• 2:28:34
  concerns. And this is what shocked me
• 2:28:37
  personally, that I felt like, oh, they are way less
• 2:28:43
  professional than I thought they were.
• 2:28:46
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I, I can see that.
• 2:28:51
  I can see that point of view for sure.
• 2:28:56
  I, I also think that of course a lot of the reaction from the
• 2:29:00
  audience was pulled into an extreme.
• 2:29:05
  I saw a couple of Reddit posts where people were like of course
• 2:29:11
  again to to bring more to what we were discussing earlier about
• 2:29:15
  players not looking into into it.
• 2:29:17
  Apparently I think there were some clause about streaming
• 2:29:24
  anything related to gambling on Twitch.
• 2:29:27
  It might have not been allowed to by Twitch, you know TOS and
• 2:29:36
  in a couple of countries in Europe, it's basically illegal
• 2:29:40
  to gamble or to promote gambling if that company doesn't have
• 2:29:47
  their license in that respective country or in Europe or
• 2:29:51
  something like that. A lot of people took that
• 2:29:54
  information or players not being informed in that regard taking
• 2:29:59
  it to Reddit kind of like instigating other people report
• 2:30:04
  this player and this player to their local authorities.
• 2:30:07
  OK, like that's too much that I, I, I personally thought that
• 2:30:12
  that was too big of a stretch. I'm not defending the players.
• 2:30:16
  I still think that what they did was was wrong.
• 2:30:21
  OK, let's, you know, express our express our opinion without
• 2:30:28
  sending the local authorities to their.
• 2:30:31
  Homes, yeah. I think it's worth mentioning
• 2:30:34
  that there have been a couple of personalities who stood out by
• 2:30:40
  speaking against it, and I think they are worth mentioning like
• 2:30:44
  Herod did, like Margoogoo did, like T90 did, like Mem did.
• 2:30:49
  I think so. There's been a couple of figures
• 2:30:52
  doing that and I think they served as role models, which is
• 2:30:57
  also very nice. And I think because we are
• 2:31:00
  always concentrating on criticizing what has been done
• 2:31:03
  very wrongly, I think it's worth mentioning that there have been
• 2:31:07
  some people actually honouring their influencing and
• 2:31:13
  influencing the right way, in my opinion.
• 2:31:16
  MBL. 20 Yes, Yes, you're right. But he was he had a really nice
• 2:31:21
  couple of takes as well. Also about the role modelling,
• 2:31:25
  maybe in this this situation, sure I wouldn't.
• 2:31:30
  Oh, no, no, no way. I'm not saying that.
• 2:31:34
  I'm not saying they are role models.
• 2:31:35
  I'm saying they served as good role models in this instance.
• 2:31:39
  Oh no. Yeah, yeah, it was just a tiny
• 2:31:41
  bit of a jab at Margaret because he always has the wildest taste
• 2:31:45
  on on Twitter. He does, which makes him so
• 2:31:49
  like. Yeah, for sure, for sure.
• 2:31:52
  Like he's a fun personality to have in the scene.
• 2:31:57
  OK, I think that's enough. Again, there's been lots of talk
• 2:32:01
  about this. The sad news is that the damage
• 2:32:05
  is done because the site got the attraction that it wanted to
• 2:32:09
  get. And it doesn't help that the
• 2:32:11
  most of the pros have reclined from it because the attention
• 2:32:15
  was already there. I mean, we're also talking about
• 2:32:17
  that. This is why we're not mentioning
• 2:32:19
  the name of the site and there's still players playing on the
• 2:32:24
  site. So gambling is not gone, it's
• 2:32:26
  actually here and. And I think this will just open
• 2:32:32
  the, the window further, further on.
• 2:32:35
  I, I think from now on there will be more gambling sites that
• 2:32:40
  will try to get their tail into the community.
• 2:32:44
  I'll just add really quick that I found it really weird as well
• 2:32:49
  that I saw so many players getting involved with it because
• 2:32:54
  I think I saw one or two players streaming this and I don't know
• 2:32:58
  day one, let's see. And in day two, I was actually
• 2:33:02
  contacted and asked to cast these games and I refused it
• 2:33:08
  thinking of course, like that's everyone will do the same.
• 2:33:11
  And then the next day I just see all the pros streaming it and
• 2:33:15
  I'm like, what the hell. I was well, I, I was shocked.
• 2:33:21
  But again, just to conclude this, I I think it was just seen
• 2:33:27
  as an opportunity to make easy money basically.
• 2:33:31
  Well, yeah, but I think it's actually important that that you
• 2:33:33
  mentioned that because and also something that you have
• 2:33:37
  previously mentioned, the fact that most of the players and
• 2:33:42
  content creators are not making money on their content creation
• 2:33:48
  or playing or at least not enough to sustain a livelihood.
• 2:33:51
  They are doing this as a hobby and maybe get a couple of bucks
• 2:33:55
  on the side. So if Someone Like You, for
• 2:33:59
  example, refuses to do that and sees that every other probe
• 2:34:03
  player is taking advantage of that, you might think twice.
• 2:34:07
  Maybe not you, Daniela, but some other players are.
• 2:34:10
  Content creators might think twice about it and then start
• 2:34:14
  promoting it. And that is the power of money.
• 2:34:18
  If I'm not mistaken, if I'm not mistaken, I think well Viber he,
• 2:34:25
  he talked a bit about this on his stream and he said something
• 2:34:27
  similar that initially when he was contacted, he said no.
• 2:34:31
  But afterwards he, he was talking with other players and I
• 2:34:35
  don't know to quote him seem legit.
• 2:34:39
  And that's when he he got involved later on as well.
• 2:34:42
  And this is the real danger because there is so much money
• 2:34:45
  in gambling that they have like an endless fund.
• 2:34:49
  They can initially invest into it because they will get it
• 2:34:53
  back. That's always the case with
• 2:34:55
  gambling sites because people do not gamble responsibly.
• 2:34:58
  There is no such thing. So what they do is they make
• 2:35:03
  offers that are hard to refuse, therefore normalizing gambling
• 2:35:09
  in the eyes of the pros and the viewers.
• 2:35:11
  And that way they make their money.
• 2:35:13
  And that is so dangerous. And despite so many pros going
• 2:35:17
  back on their deals, that's too late because that's damage has
• 2:35:23
  already been done. But yeah, I guess enough of that
• 2:35:28
  topic. Let's go on.
• 2:35:30
  Let's finish the news sections. After almost 3 hours.
• 2:35:32
  This is I am so sorry, Daniela. We'll try to wrap up the episode
• 2:35:39
  a bit faster and continue with franchise news.
• 2:35:44
  So this will be very short news. Just before I tell the news,
• 2:35:49
  Daniela, are you in any capacity interested or like involved with
• 2:35:55
  Age of Vampires 4 or Age of Mythology?
• 2:35:58
  Not interested. A bit like I'm sometimes
• 2:36:03
  watching some content creators so when there's nothing else
• 2:36:07
  regarding AV 2, but I'm super out of the loop with whatever is
• 2:36:12
  happening in there. OK, so then feel free to add
• 2:36:14
  something if you want, otherwise I'll just go through the news.
• 2:36:19
  So we'll start with Age of Empires 4.
• 2:36:22
  The Anniversary Edition has been launched on the PS-5 following
• 2:36:26
  Age of Empires 2 and Age of Mythology to get a port to the
• 2:36:29
  most popular gaming console. But that's not all.
• 2:36:33
  Simultaneously, Age of Empires 4 has received their next
• 2:36:36
  expansion, Dynasties of the East.
• 2:36:40
  Now, I've talked about the content of this DLC in a
• 2:36:43
  previous episode, actually the last two episodes, so I'm not
• 2:36:48
  going to mention all these details again, but like a very
• 2:36:52
  brief summary. The DLC includes 4 new
• 2:36:55
  dynasties, The Golden Horde which is a Mongol variant, the
• 2:36:59
  Macedonian Dynasty which is a Byzantine variant, the Sengoku
• 2:37:02
  Daimyo which is a Japanese variant, and finally the Tuk Lak
• 2:37:07
  dynasty adding a variant civilization to the Delhi
• 2:37:11
  Sultanate. I have probably butchered all of
• 2:37:13
  these names, I'm sorry for that. There's also some new maps being
• 2:37:18
  published. And of course the RTS roguelike
• 2:37:21
  mode, which I have mentioned in the previous magazine will be
• 2:37:25
  published and looks to be a lot of fun.
• 2:37:30
  Yeah, this is really weird. Age of Empires 4 is getting an
• 2:37:34
  RTS rogue like mode, Daniela, with kind of an arena where you
• 2:37:38
  get wave that you waves of enemies that you have to fight
• 2:37:42
  against. And I've wondered if this could
• 2:37:45
  be something fun for a single player Age of Empires 2.
• 2:37:49
  I don't know. I don't know what they gave.
• 2:37:52
  Just so you know something about me as a player, if I cannot, if
• 2:37:57
  I can avoid microwring something I will like just let me boom in
• 2:38:03
  peace and I'm going to patrol my units like I I cannot like that
• 2:38:08
  seems sounds extremely stressful to do.
• 2:38:13
  I think it is, but I can feel what you're saying past the
• 2:38:19
  middle of castle age. I will stop microing my units up
• 2:38:24
  until then I will micro my heart out and after that I will just
• 2:38:28
  try my luck. And if I lose, I lose.
• 2:38:31
  Yeah, I don't think Age of Empires 2 needs that because
• 2:38:33
  there's just so much content in the game that there's no need
• 2:38:36
  for a mode like that. But I think it's a fun idea in
• 2:38:38
  Age of Empires 4, to be honest, especially because there's less
• 2:38:42
  micro in Age of Empires Four with, you know, Archers having
• 2:38:45
  instabilistics and stuff. OK moving on to Age of
• 2:38:48
  Mythology. This is not really news because
• 2:38:52
  the expansion has been launched in October, but I have played
• 2:38:57
  the campaign, I have played the main game and both DLCS for Age
• 2:39:03
  of Mythology. I am a complete noob so don't
• 2:39:06
  think of me as a good player, but I just enjoyed the campaigns
• 2:39:10
  and the second one all the more because because it was a
• 2:39:14
  campaign about the Japanese mythology and I love Japan.
• 2:39:19
  I'm quite often there as much as I can.
• 2:39:22
  So I was very excited about playing this one and it's a good
• 2:39:28
  campaign. I think I would recommend it to
• 2:39:30
  everyone who liked the Age of Mythology retold game.
• 2:39:35
  It follows the story of Yasko, a farmer's girl who by chance
• 2:39:39
  becomes the owner of the Heavenly Spear and therefore
• 2:39:43
  gets thrown into a battle between gods and mythical
• 2:39:46
  creatures. And there's a lot going on.
• 2:39:49
  She then tries to uncover the secrets of the spear and prevent
• 2:39:52
  Kage Masa and Evil Warlord to get hold of the spear.
• 2:39:56
  This is a 12 mission long campaign.
• 2:39:59
  Took me about 10 hours to complete it and it showcases all
• 2:40:03
  the different new Japanese pantheons.
• 2:40:06
  It's a clear recommendation from my part if you enjoy Age of
• 2:40:09
  Mythology. I also think this is going to be
• 2:40:12
  the last that I have played Age of Mythology because I'm not
• 2:40:15
  interested in multiplayer whatsoever and I don't think
• 2:40:17
  there will be much more content in the future.
• 2:40:23
  All right, moving on to podcast news and emails.
• 2:40:27
  Luckily there's no podcast news this month because nothing has
• 2:40:32
  changed. Maybe one thing though, I will
• 2:40:36
  be in Scotland in two weeks. I will try to prepare a podcast
• 2:40:40
  episode while I'm away, but I can't guarantee it.
• 2:40:43
  Other than that, there will be normal distribution of podcasts,
• 2:40:49
  but we have gotten a few mails. The community has been very
• 2:40:53
  generous with sending emails and if you want to do so as well,
• 2:40:58
  just send me a message at age of cast@gmail.com, that's
• 2:41:02
  ageofcast@gmail.com or write me up on Discord if you want it
• 2:41:08
  discussed on the show. I can't be reading all of the
• 2:41:12
  messages though. We've been way over time
• 2:41:15
  already, but there's been a couple that I would like to talk
• 2:41:19
  about and invite you, Daniela, to give your take on it.
• 2:41:23
  First one would be from Lars because he was following up on
• 2:41:28
  the latest podcast. This is what he wrote following
• 2:41:31
  up on the latest podcast where you've discussed that there have
• 2:41:34
  been calls for boycotting pros and content creators.
• 2:41:38
  I think that would be counterproductive because they
• 2:41:40
  would earn less money and probably be more prone to take a
• 2:41:43
  deal from the betting side. I'm not sure about that, but I
• 2:41:47
  don't know where you stand on this, Daniela.
• 2:41:50
  So is it? Should we boycott pros for doing
• 2:41:53
  what they did? Well, I think it showed how much
• 2:41:57
  of an impact the community voice has had.
• 2:42:03
  Yeah, I I don't think the pros can just abandoned what they're
• 2:42:08
  doing and go full with with betting because This is why the
• 2:42:13
  betting agency invests into them because they're because the pros
• 2:42:20
  are promoting the gambling to their audience to engage their
• 2:42:27
  viewers. If pros are losing viewers and,
• 2:42:32
  and followers and so on, which happened like there were a lot
• 2:42:35
  of messages on Reddit. If you even look at Twitch
• 2:42:40
  tracker, all of these pros lost followers that day.
• 2:42:46
  Oh. That's interesting.
• 2:42:48
  I I don't think. But so they significantly lost
• 2:42:51
  viewers or followers. Yeah, well, I'm not sure if
• 2:42:54
  significantly if you look at of course, like the total viewer
• 2:42:59
  number, but I don't know, losing a chunk of 50 followers in a
• 2:43:02
  day, it's yeah, not, not the greatest for a content creator.
• 2:43:08
  There were a lot of posts like oh I'm subscribing from all of
• 2:43:11
  the players that are promoting this.
• 2:43:14
  It's like bad press. The community, yeah, exactly.
• 2:43:17
  The community has been very vocal about this and it showed
• 2:43:21
  that the the players cared about their voice.
• 2:43:26
  And yeah, I I don't think it's counterproductive at all.
• 2:43:30
  Yeah, I agree. I don't think that like they
• 2:43:33
  would spiral into being more invested into the betting side.
• 2:43:38
  I think they would like, panic and cut their deal like they
• 2:43:41
  did. I think boycotting makes sense
• 2:43:45
  if you think that's the best for you to do.
• 2:43:47
  And if you can, like if you decide not to consume their
• 2:43:53
  content, there's lots of other content creators who have
• 2:43:57
  reacted differently, so there should be alternatives.
• 2:44:00
  So yeah, if you think boycotting is the right thing to do, then I
• 2:44:03
  think there should be no nothing stopping you from doing that.
• 2:44:09
  Again, respectfully, respectfully boycotting.
• 2:44:12
  Like no exaggerating insults, no harassing to report people to
• 2:44:19
  local. Well, that's not boycotted,
• 2:44:21
  that's threatening or or, you know, hurting people.
• 2:44:24
  Boycotting just means that you would stop following them or
• 2:44:27
  consuming them, stop supporting them.
• 2:44:30
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 2:44:31
  OK, another question. I think you'll like this one.
• 2:44:35
  This comes from Snowboard Kid. When will they finally add
• 2:44:38
  tournament maps to the ranked map pool?
• 2:44:40
  I would really like to play the Thalasocracy maps on the ladder.
• 2:44:46
  Yeah, exactly. Chris, when tell us.
• 2:44:48
  I would be really interested as well.
• 2:44:50
  I have no insider information but I think just recently nearly
• 2:44:55
  stated that that will never happen because it's simply not
• 2:44:58
  possible from a back end perspective.
• 2:45:01
  I did not understand why, but he said that very decisively, So
• 2:45:06
  don't get your hopes up. Ruth.
• 2:45:08
  I'm sorry. No, I meant Neil.
• 2:45:13
  I mean I don't get why they are able to implement the Empire
• 2:45:17
  Wars maps and I mean they are well hardly balanced when it
• 2:45:24
  comes to team games in some instances.
• 2:45:27
  But it sounded like there was are some scripting problems and
• 2:45:30
  I don't know what it's probably more to do with licensing and
• 2:45:34
  probably having to compensate the map creators, but I am not
• 2:45:38
  sure at all. I just know that nearly very,
• 2:45:41
  very firmly stated that that's not going to happen, which is
• 2:45:46
  sad in my opinion. I mean maybe a couple of them
• 2:45:50
  will make the rotation. A lot of them are standard maps
• 2:45:52
  as well, but definitely not all of them.
• 2:45:55
  Like God forbid if all of those will make the the whatever
• 2:46:00
  ranked map. The crying from everyone with
• 2:46:04
  the amount of water maps would be just unbearable.
• 2:46:08
  Well I thought you were the only person to be that into water
• 2:46:12
  maps, but here, here is Snowboard kit apparently also
• 2:46:15
  liking water maps. OK, he's a he's, he's a good
• 2:46:21
  guy. You should like water maps.
• 2:46:25
  Do we have time for one more? Think so, right?
• 2:46:29
  OK then let's go with Bjorn or Bjorn.
• 2:46:32
  I'm not sure, sorry. He says.
• 2:46:35
  I'm not sure I'm excited for Red Bull Wallolo anymore just
• 2:46:38
  because I never play Empire Wars and it feels too different from
• 2:46:41
  normal Age of Empires 2. Also, Red Bull events are the
• 2:46:45
  only events featuring Empire Wars, and even Age of Empires 4
• 2:46:49
  gets to play on standard mode instead of Empire Wars, so
• 2:46:52
  shouldn't it be the same in Age of Empires 2?
• 2:46:55
  That's an interesting question. Why?
• 2:46:58
  Why are they only playing in Empire Wars?
• 2:47:00
  I guess it's because of the time, right?
• 2:47:03
  I think so. It has to be because of the
• 2:47:04
  time, yeah. So they want to make the event
• 2:47:06
  more predictable and nature vampire like Empire Wars is the
• 2:47:10
  only way to make sure there will be No 4 hour long game between
• 2:47:15
  Hera and ACCM completely ruining their schedule.
• 2:47:19
  Yeah, has to be, has to be. Also, these events take place in
• 2:47:23
  like, very, very crazy locations like castles and like in London.
• 2:47:29
  So they probably have to finish by midnight or so because of
• 2:47:33
  various reasons. And they can't afford to have
• 2:47:36
  games that long. Yeah, but I do get the sentiment
• 2:47:41
  of it's kind of the only time they are playing Empire Wars and
• 2:47:47
  never like in no other tournament.
• 2:47:50
  And this is something I've said before, I wouldn't mind a mixed
• 2:47:55
  a game more tournament where in the map draft there are a couple
• 2:48:01
  of Empire Wars maps in between and you can choose to draft
• 2:48:04
  them. What do you think about that?
• 2:48:07
  No, I think it's a good idea. Sure.
• 2:48:09
  A variety of of maps is always something that I've really
• 2:48:15
  fought for. And I was very vocal, even if it
• 2:48:20
  was only on my Twitter or on Reddit.
• 2:48:23
  I kind of kind of dislike how even on the, you know, random
• 2:48:28
  map map pool there's always the same couple of dev pigs.
• 2:48:34
  Yeah, definitely. The the maps can get really
• 2:48:38
  really repetitive. Like I I would really like a
• 2:48:40
  system where would incorporate all the categories.
• 2:48:44
  You know how Warlords had 7 categories?
• 2:48:47
  You know, incorporate that in the map pool in the rank ladder,
• 2:48:51
  An open one, a close 1A Water 1A Nomad 1.
• 2:48:57
  Sure, do that and give me enough bands to bend everything except
• 2:49:00
  Arabia. Yeah, yeah, give me enough bands
• 2:49:04
  like I, I don't have. And maybe, maybe we should have
• 2:49:07
  talked a bit about the Insta Q as well.
• 2:49:09
  Now I remembered I hated it when I I I saw it Give me enough
• 2:49:14
  bands, give me like if I want to stay 20 minutes in in the queue
• 2:49:18
  to play one map, let me stay 20 minutes in the queue.
• 2:49:21
  I don't want insta queues. I want to play yeah, I want to
• 2:49:23
  play the map that I want with someone around my level.
• 2:49:27
  This. Is Oh my God, I am 100% on your
• 2:49:30
  side. So look when I play Age of this,
• 2:49:34
  I don't play Age of Empires 2 as much as I want to.
• 2:49:37
  Usually I get home from work, I have my 8 hours of work.
• 2:49:41
  I'm tired, I want to have dinner with my wife, I want to watch
• 2:49:45
  maybe a show and then play a game.
• 2:49:48
  And I want that game to be the game that I really want to play,
• 2:49:52
  not a different map. And my personal wish is to have
• 2:49:58
  a separate queue with random civilizations with like where I
• 2:50:04
  can decide what to play, what map to play, like set map and
• 2:50:08
  random civilization. Guaranteed that would be perfect
• 2:50:11
  for me. And I want to play one game per
• 2:50:14
  evening, and that's enough. Yeah, I agree with you.
• 2:50:19
  But then I would probably not find a game for not 20 but even
• 2:50:22
  40 minutes because there's not enough people.
• 2:50:24
  Queuing probably, but you know what, if that's if that's the
• 2:50:29
  case after 10 minutes, I'll I'll take the hint.
• 2:50:34
  I'll go do my things. I would rather do that and not
• 2:50:36
  play that game then play a game on a map that I hate with
• 2:50:42
  against the soup picker and I'm just going to tilt and my
• 2:50:45
  evening is ruined. 100% agreed, man.
• 2:50:48
  Finally, somebody who agrees with me.
• 2:50:52
  OK, I think that's going to be it for the emails.
• 2:50:55
  There's more, but I'll just save them for the next episode.
• 2:51:00
  Let's do the finally the tournament outlook for November
• 2:51:04
  2025. So the main event of November
• 2:51:09
  will be Thalasocracy 2. The tournament has already
• 2:51:13
  started and the first few matches are currently being
• 2:51:15
  played in the round of 128. Final stages of the tournament
• 2:51:20
  will be the last week of November, with the quarter
• 2:51:23
  finals on the 27th and 28th, semis on the 29th and final, and
• 2:51:28
  the final will take place on the 30th.
• 2:51:30
  The defending champion is Sebastian, who by the way, I
• 2:51:34
  have interviewed after his win against the Thelisocracy Cup.
• 2:51:38
  That's an English interview and is still of course in the feed
• 2:51:42
  if you want to have a go at that.
• 2:51:44
  And then there's the price pool of this second iteration, which
• 2:51:48
  has increased significantly and is $25,000.
• 2:51:52
  Think initially it was 20,000 and has now it received an
• 2:51:56
  additional 5000 because they are implementing the naval rework
• 2:52:01
  and the winner of the tournament is taking home $6000.
• 2:52:05
  As we've discussed in the news, it features only hybrid and
• 2:52:09
  mostly water maps with a heavy emphasis on water maps
• 2:52:12
  especially to showcase the new naval rework of the game.
• 2:52:17
  I'm guessing you'll be covering the whole tournament because I
• 2:52:19
  mean, how often do you get the chance to cast water maps?
• 2:52:23
  True, most of it for sure. I'm missing the early rounds
• 2:52:27
  this week, but I've been incredibly busy.
• 2:52:29
  I just want to mention this really quick because I remember
• 2:52:33
  I forgot to mention it during the naval rework.
• 2:52:36
  I am sceptical about all of this massive change being implemented
• 2:52:42
  into a $25,000 tournament. How come?
• 2:52:47
  Well, it's a lot of money, a big price pool, and there's a lot of
• 2:52:54
  things that you're not sure that are 100% working right, You're
• 2:52:58
  not sure they're balanced. You might have to include
• 2:53:06
  several patches and patches always are annoying during a
• 2:53:09
  tournament. They break recorded games.
• 2:53:11
  They it's, it's a lot of troubles, I feel like.
• 2:53:15
  So it, it, it feels like a ballsy move from World's Edge.
• 2:53:19
  We'll see how it will work out. Yeah, I'm not so much sceptical,
• 2:53:23
  but I do agree it's ballsy because what if it's a complete
• 2:53:27
  disaster and the naval rework is just not fun to watch?
• 2:53:31
  That is like the worst promotion you can do for your own product.
• 2:53:34
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, which is why I'm kind of
• 2:53:38
  interested in seeing either a disaster happen or having fun
• 2:53:42
  maps. OK, OK.
• 2:53:46
  Then there's of course the Bronze League of TTL 5, which is
• 2:53:49
  already happening as well and will conclude on November 16th.
• 2:53:54
  Again, we've talked about this in the news section, so if
• 2:53:57
  you've missed that, make sure to go back and have a listen.
• 2:54:01
  We've also got three national leaks going on, one in Hungary,
• 2:54:04
  one in Sweden, and one in Spain, so if you are from one of these
• 2:54:08
  communities or countries, make sure to check them out.
• 2:54:11
  You can find the information on Wikipedia.
• 2:54:14
  There's really not much else happening in November, but this
• 2:54:17
  is already plenty of games to cover.
• 2:54:20
  So moving on to other games from the franchise, we've got a
• 2:54:25
  really rare occurrence. There's an Age of Empires 3S
• 2:54:29
  tier tournament happening right now and closing out mid
• 2:54:33
  November. That's the PK tournament five.
• 2:54:37
  I am not an Age of Empires Three players but but I know that
• 2:54:41
  there is a small but very dedicated community so I thought
• 2:54:44
  I'd shout it out. Age of Empires, three men.
• 2:54:48
  Did you ever play Age of Empires 3 or you like the game?
• 2:54:52
  No. Zero contact with.
• 2:54:56
  It. Yeah me too.
• 2:54:56
  I have never played the game, not well.
• 2:54:59
  I've played it once when they decided to make it free so I
• 2:55:03
  tried it for an OWL and it was OK but I realized I'd rather
• 2:55:07
  play Age of Empires 2. Age of Empires 4 There's the EGC
• 2:55:12
  Masters Finals of 2025 finally starting in November 22nd with a
• 2:55:17
  $20,000 in prize pool. Beastie, Marine, Lord Louis,
• 2:55:21
  Lucifron, Puppy, Paul, Anna, Tant, Vortex, and Wham are
• 2:55:25
  already in the tournament. There's two qualifiers for four
• 2:55:29
  more spots in total to be played, which will take place
• 2:55:32
  the weekend before the main event starts.
• 2:55:34
  I'm sure it'll be a great tournament for all Age of
• 2:55:37
  Empires 4 fans, and I will also make sure to watch the later
• 2:55:41
  stages of the tournament because I'm very curious to see how the
• 2:55:44
  new civilizations will perform. And finally, Age of Mythology's
• 2:55:49
  fourth season of Champions League has started.
• 2:55:52
  It's got a $10,000 prize pool and features all the top players
• 2:55:57
  right now. They've started with the group
• 2:55:59
  stage and I've seen a couple of games over at Boyd's channel,
• 2:56:02
  but only one game featured the Japanese gods, which made me
• 2:56:06
  kind of sad. The playoffs will start on
• 2:56:09
  November 21st and wrap up on the 7th of December and I will make
• 2:56:14
  probably try to watch the final. And that's it.
• 2:56:20
  Finally, after three hours, this must probably be one of the
• 2:56:24
  longest magazines I've done. Probably the last time.
• 2:56:31
  First time, Last time you. Invited.
• 2:56:32
  No, No, no, no, no. Well, if it's up to me, you'll
• 2:56:35
  be here every, every time. It's been a real pleasure to,
• 2:56:40
  to, to do this magazine with you.
• 2:56:42
  My voice is crumbling. I'm desperately trying to hold
• 2:56:46
  back not to cough. So I'm kind of glad that the
• 2:56:50
  show is over. But I enjoyed this so much.
• 2:56:52
  Thank you for being on the show, Daniela.
• 2:56:56
  Me too, thank you so much for inviting me was really.
• 2:56:59
  Fun. Yeah, I will invite you to the
• 2:57:01
  next month. So if you don't want to come
• 2:57:03
  back, I'm not blaming you for it, but if you do, I would be I,
• 2:57:09
  I would be really delighted to have you on on.
• 2:57:12
  Once again, if you want to hear more and see more of Daniela,
• 2:57:17
  make sure to check her out on Twitch if you're not already
• 2:57:21
  following her. That's Twitch TV slash Daniela
• 2:57:24
  under score AOE Twitch TV slash Daniela slash under score slash
• 2:57:31
  under score Daniela under score AOE.
• 2:57:33
  Man, I'm getting tired. Her Twitch channel will also be
• 2:57:37
  LinkedIn the show notes so that you don't mess up like me and
• 2:57:41
  just have to click on the show notes and you will be sent right
• 2:57:44
  to Daniela where you will be St. like watching the Thalasocracy
• 2:57:50
  come from somebody who, Yeah, probably the most qualified
• 2:57:55
  content creator maybe apart from Dave to cover this event.
• 2:58:02
  Thanks. Thanks.
• 2:58:03
  Yes, you're most welcome. I I'm thanking you and if you,
• 2:58:08
  dear listener, have enjoyed the show, you can support it on
• 2:58:11
  Patreon. There are several supporters,
• 2:58:13
  each with small rewards. There is a token of appreciation
• 2:58:17
  and German speaking business can also support Unsteady, which is
• 2:58:20
  basically the same thing as Patreon, only for, you know,
• 2:58:24
  German speaking listeners. And there's an extra reward
• 2:58:28
  because most of the episodes, unlike this one, for example,
• 2:58:32
  will be translated to German as well.
• 2:58:35
  So you can listen to it in German if you choose to support
• 2:58:38
  with a higher tier on Patron or Steady.
• 2:58:40
  I will also proudly read your name here in this magazine, much
• 2:58:45
  like these wonderful supporters Matz Kanak, Tom Luk, Yannick
• 2:58:50
  Schulz, Stefan Voerte, Irish Mullah, Lawrence Hurlan, Jan
• 2:58:55
  Tsuocher, Marek Kayna, Pathfinder, Limbonic, and
• 2:58:59
  Mitchell Hiller. Thank you so much for your
• 2:59:02
  ongoing support. The next magazine will be out in
• 2:59:05
  early December, but you'll find plenty of other podcasts in the
• 2:59:09
  meantime and in the backlog of this feed if you subscribe to
• 2:59:12
  the podcast feed or follow it on Spotify to make sure you'll be
• 2:59:16
  notified when the next podcast is live.
• 2:59:19
  Again, Daniela, thank you so much for being on the show.
• 2:59:23
  Thank you so much for for having me, Chris and I hope the
• 2:59:26
  listeners enjoyed our long talk. It you know, it's justified.
• 2:59:31
  It was a long month. It had a.
• 2:59:33
  Lot of events this was we had. This was even longer than the
• 2:59:37
  ACCM versus Hara game. True, we could have.
• 2:59:42
  We could have casted this with a game on going on the background
• 2:59:45
  and yell from time to time. Whoa, he's pushing, he's
• 2:59:48
  pushing. He's messing through traps.
• 2:59:51
  Have a great day, Daniela. Thank you again.
• 2:59:53
  Bye bye. You too.
• 2:59:55
  Thank you for having me. Bye bye.