It's a new season's start - Alexei and I are also refreshed after holidays,
in a new hat,
gathered to answer some of the most exciting questions.
First things first, Alexei, can you please tell us a bit about your vacation?
It went well.
Was at a friend's wedding - two weddings, actually.
Visited Moscow, Kaliningrad.
During this season's qualifiers, V1lat was saying that
inviting Virtus.pro to the qualification stage is a recipe for farce
that doesn't allow other teams to compete fairly and proceed to higher standings, so you should be invited directly.
What's your take on it?
First of all, there are much fewer invites now - only two of them.
Secondly, our post-TI form wasn't too clear - we weren't sure about it ourselves.
It turned out we're doing fine - we indeed do pass qualifications confidently.
Except for the first one - we didn't practice enough for it.
Well, invites have to be earned.
This fight again showed that VP clearly know what to do - they know how to fight.
The match against Na'Vi - how interesting and challenging was it?
It was interesting - the guys had a great win-streak and, I think, they really wanted to extend it.
So to say, that was a CIS first-place decider.
Something of that sort. They tried hard and played well, but we played better. That's all.
There's no reason to play anymore - VP played it just flawlessly.
But would you like to get a spot instantly via the direct invite, or is there some benefit of playing in qualifications?
Well, of course, I'd like to, but there really are some benefits - it's practice, after all.
And we invented a lot of new strats in these qualifiers -
As a matter of fact, we've temporarily changed our picker - Roma stepped up to this important role.
If you were offered to participate in some other region's qualifiers, what region would you prefer?
Actually, CIS is a very comfortable region for us since we have played a lot against all of the teams here and know them well,
I'd maybe like to test the waters in Europe.
Out of all European countries I've been to, I liked Sweden a lot. It has beautiful views and is a great country.
But I didn't visit a lot of Europe yet - I've been to Romania, Germany, Sweden, Lithuania - it's not that much, actually.
I adored being in Sweden. Maybe there?
The tournaments and points system finally became clear now.
Lil said that it's very beneficial for you but harmful for weaker teams.
We'll need to see the system in practice, because, as far as I know, the points are awarded only for finishing top-4.
And every tournament will have different number of participating teams - somewhere 8, somewhere 16,
so finishing top-4 won't be an easy feat, I think.
The system is interesting - there will be eight objective invites to The International.
And how everyone will collect points over the course of the season - that I don't know yet, we'll have to see.
Recently a widespread turmoil appeared - on the topic of Dota's declining popularity.
Do you hold the same opinion or not?
Well, I think that everyone is simply waiting for some major patch from Valve.
For some fresh changes, and as far as I know, the upcoming patch will be pretty interesting, a fairly large one - Valve is probably working on a match-making system rework.
Because people don't like it that much - everyone's so over it.
And, traditionally, there's an outflow of players after every International.
Since everyone's less interested in playing after the season's end - nothing new happens, so people bail on the game a bit.
Soon you'll go to Manila where you'll be a part of a Hollywood blockbuster.
If someone told you ten years ago that Hollywood will shoot a film about Dota, would you believe them?
I'd think they're nuts and just say: "Dude, visit a doctor."
But yeah, of course, it's unbelievable - we need to see how it will pan out, but so far it's pretty exciting.
It's pretty hard to believe that we'll arrive here just to play Dota, get paid for it and on top of that also get filmed in a movie - I still don't believe it!
Lesha, recently I took you all to a restaurant of Buryat-Mongolian cuisine.
Everyone heard of it! Can you please tell everyone what did you try there, what did you eat?
Fern wasn't half bad.
Raw horse liver.
That fish - how was it called? It was tasty.
Omul.
Baikal omul, right?
That fish was really fine, yeah.
Salty tea - was good.
Those things - Bozs or Buuzs.
Did you rest enough to go ham in your games now?
We're doing great - we qualified really well:
for two out of three, qualified for Major, we practiced.
Now we'll go back home for a bit to play online - in DreamLeague and return to bootcamp in preparation to Major.
I think the season's start was great for us, and it's only going to get better.
Do you know about the bootcamp's location? Moscow?
Yes, most likely Moscow.
See you at the bootcamp then, thank you very much!
Thank you and goodbye.
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