HolyMaster: 'Our aim is to outperform the first F4F'

Not long ago we announced the successor for one of our very famous and successful tournament series - the FARM4FAME Second Blood. Along with the announcement the first eight participants have been revealed. Now we sat down with the series head-admin Dennis 'HolyMaster' Schumacher and held a detailed interview. Disclosures in it are things like the last four invites, the schedule and of course much more!

Tell us something about your path in the electronic sports business? How did you end up at the Dota-League?

HolyMaster: I started to write scene news at dotasource.de one and a half years ago and became the scene moderator. At this time I played DotA for just about 9 months. dopeshow noted my knowledge and diligence and invited me to join the staff during F4F#3. At the beginning I mainly did coverage but from time to time I took more responsibility and started to stream games etc. And finally, I ended up as headadmin, when dopeshow retired before the playoffs. And this is also my position now for 2nd Blood.

Did you ever want to become a professional gamer yourself or was it always your intention to take a supporting or administrative position in the scene? Where would it shipwreck and why?

HolyMaster: Of course I dreamed about being a pro-gamer and when I started to own publics and so on I already felt pretty pro at DotA! But after exploring the scene I recognized pretty fast, that I won`t make it so far. The intention to take an administrative position was always in my mind as well, I always was a good organizer - and for this position, I definitely turned out as the right one.

How do you manage your time? Tell us about your daily routine and what you do when you’re not busy working for the Dota-League?

HolyMaster: At the moment I have absolutely no routine, since the holidays are still running. Next week my last school year is going to start, which means I have to get up earlier, but still there is very much free time and I invest a lot of it into DotA. Besides that I love to play football or go to the cinema and sometimes I go to parties of course. Ah and of course: DotA is not only DL: I also have a fun clan called DonE and I`m working as a semi-active news writer for the german sites fragster and dotasource.

You surely still play a DotA yourself from time to time. Where can people see Dennis ‘HolyMaster` Schumacher playing some matches?

HolyMaster: As I said I have my clan. We take place in the midfield of Div 5.2 and where thrown out of the GosuCup in round one recently. Furthermore I play Dotasource-Inhouses, High Level Room and sometimes SIGs or Garena-Publics.

In SIG, are you warmly welcomed by your team or are your allies doomed?

HolyMaster: I would say I`m a bit better than the average in SIG. So none of the two usually. Just sometimes people think I`m pro just because I`m admin, but that’s not true! 

The blessed FARM4FAME Head-Admin

The expectations in the scene for FARM4FAME Second Blood are gigantic. Do you think you can step into the shoes of your forerunner?

HolyMaster: Of course I do! Our aim is to outperform the first F4F. We took the successful system and improved some things that turned out not to be perfect. Especially the very long duration.

Do you really think that the long duration was a negative aspect? A lot of people loved FARM4FAME for constantly providing high level matches over such a long time!

HolyMaster: The problem was: The clans weren`t stable enough. We had 32 teams at the beginning that did not have very much in common with the 16 teams playing F4F#10. Too many of them disbanded and new ones were formed. For this time, we hope do see mainly the same teams throughout the whole event.

 
You changed some major things in the second edition. How long have changes like for example a reduced team size or having only half as much tournaments as the first time been a sure thing?

HolyMaster: When we (mainly Mooseman and me) decided to continue with the core system of FARM4FAME, we agreed from the beginning on not to hold 10 tournaments again. Furthermore, I was convinced on introducing a relegation and the new point-system all the time as well. Regarding the reduced team size, we made this decision just a week ago. I always flirted with the thought of inviting some pretty unknown teams, but all the other admins overruled me and we finally choose 16 as the number of participants.    
 
 
In the current line-up of teams for the FARM4FAME Second Blood no Asian team has made an appearance which caused some critic throughout the scene sites. Delineate our readers and your detractors you’re point of view and the reason for this decision.

HolyMaster: We had a lot of Asian top-teams last year. It was not just bad luck that not one of them was left in F4F#10. First of all, they of course had always problems with lags. Moreover it was very difficult to find a fitting date for their matches, which made it also very difficult for their opponents to schedule in time. A third reason is that there are much more LANs in Asia, which makes an online tournament less attractive. As a result of this the motivation was low and most of them started to hardly care about FARM4FAME more and more. In the end we came to the conclusion that they caused us more problems than giving us the benefit to see some nice Europe vs. Asia clashes and decided not to invite clans from our neighbor-continent this time.  An exception are the Australians from MCiTY. They were 6th in the end rankings and are now very motivated to fight with the Europeans and North Americans again.
 

What other teams will most likely be participating in the tournament series? Another point of critic has been that there is no Xeo.Int listed yet.

HolyMaster: It was really funny to read all the comments flaming us because of some missing invites. Especially Xeo.Int was mentioned very much. But don`t worry community: This team will be part of 2nd Blood, we just wanted to publish exactly half of the participants in our first news post and it really doesn`t matter if you`re one of the first eight teams or not. For the other 3 invites we needed a bit more time, but they are fix now as well: Number 1: Storm Games Clan, being 7th at first f4f and winning LanCraft recently. Number 2: EVOPLAY, a relatively new team, being part of Division 1 and showing a good performance at GosuCup.  And last but not least: Poker Stars, which can be called the number 2 of North-America (behind EG of course).
 
 
Why did you decide to make the qualifiers invite only too?

HolyMaster: Last year 16 teams reached their F4F-spot through DotA Masters 9. The majority of them were out after 2 or 3 tournaments without a single win. The reasons were disbands, inactivity or just missing motivation because of their non-existing chances against the invited top-teams. We had of course the possibility to give away 4 slots at a qualification, but this makes it very luck-dependent. So I stocked on this compromise to organize an invite-qualifier to really get the 16 best teams from Europe and North-America into the tournament.

What can you tell us about your co-workers for this FARM4FAME. Where did you find them, what are their tasks and skills?

HolyMaster: First of all, everyone should already know dopeshow.aka exhale, Co-founder and head admin of the first Farm4Fame. He retired once but last week he seemed willing to come back, so I asked him to rejoin the staff. It’s great to have a very experienced admin at my side, that brings in new ideas. Furthermore I added two new faces  to DotA-League: Shine and Arrow^Gunz are both people that I already knew a bit (I even met Shine in real life three times) and I estimate them as the right people to complete our team. Besides our 4-man-staff we have of course the support from all the other DL-Faces like Rage_nox, Mooseman or neXXus. (Seen below, left to right: Rage_nox, HolyMaster, Mooseman and neXXus)

HolyMaster: Each playday will last one week, but we have set 4 times. Only at these times the teams are allowed to play their matches and they have to inform us at least 1 day before. This makes it easier for us to do coverage and setup shoutcasters and it is also easier for the fans, who will always know, when games are played. The dates are not final yet (we will ask for feedback from the teams to set them perfect), but it looks like we will take these:

All Central European (Summer) Time!

Competitive DotA from the view of an insider

Would you say that it’s a good or a bad thing that DotA as game is constantly changing with every version?

HolyMaster: It is mainly a good thing - we always see new content which lets DotA never get boring. But of course there is a bad side as well: The balance should take even more attention than it does now. Overall I think, Icefrog is doing a great job.
 
 
What about the ‘new heroes’? HexOr recently told me that he thinks that the Tauren Chieftain is fine while the Batrider deserves his constant ban. Would you even consider auto-banning them for the FARM4FAME?

HolyMaster: We consider it, but there will most likely be no autobans. Anyway we hope for 6.63 being published early enough with a better balance. As long as we`re not sure about the mapversion, we will not finally decide this.

How would you describe the situation of the competitive DotA scene at the moment? Would you say DotA is still moving on or did it already reach its zenith?

HolyMaster: DotA is still moving but not as fast as it did a year ago. Nevertheless I am convinced that it will continue to grow and become an even more important part of e-Sports. We at DotA-League are doing our best to reach that.

While Counter-Strike has SpawN, Warcraft has Grubby and Starcraft has SlayerS_`BoxeR we rarely see stars or emotions in DotA, at least not in Europe. I always liked the way your precursor and co-worker Mathias `dopeshow.` Schmedeshagen described this problem in his article ‘We Need personalities!’, which he published like five months ago. Do you think DotA has or will make steps in the right direction any time soon?

HolyMaster: Huh, difficult question, Im really not an expert at such topics. But when I look at players like Loda or Maelk, I can say: More of them would be nice!

MeetYourMakers is back with a brand new editorial staff and Warcraft III team. Which talented DotA team, if you could decide, would you like to see playing with the prefix ‘MYM’ in the future?

HolyMaster: Well I think I already know which team it will be, so no comment on this.

What`s the first thing that comes into your mind ...

Annoying - Flamers
Lazy players – Exhausting
Feeder – Shines Rhasta
Loda in a pool - Friendship
German politics – Better than most
Blink Dagger – Perfect at the moment
Dota-League Masters – Best event Ever
 

We’re finished! Now it’s time for you to greet your mates and taunt your enemies!

HolyMaster: Shoutouts to all DL-Admins, my clan, dotasource.de, the fragster-team and Icefrog ! And don`t forget: Farm 4 Fame doesn`t exclude Gank 4 Glory!

Evil Geniuses The Elder Gods Razer.CGC Int Roskilde Ravens Xeo.International EVOPLAY

Fnatic MSI diamondZ e.V. MCiTY sGty DTS Chatrix Storm Games Clan Poker Stars