XBOCT interview to Grind.fm June 27 2013


Q: Hi, how are you?
A: Not bad, training.

Q: Training to TI3?
A: Of course to TI3, what else? Dota today is like this - you do nothing whole year, play here and there and then you have a month till TI3 and you try to reach best form and win this tournament. Anything else doesn't matter.

Q: Ok, first of all talk about yourself. Many of your fans and people, who play Dota, knows about you only from your Dota career. So tell us where have you been born, where did you study, your hobbies besides Dota and how do you manage to combine them.
A: I have been born in Yalta, I am 22 year old, turning 23 this year. I have been living in Yalta until 17 years old, studied in school and so on. Started to play Dota at 8th class, before that I have played WC3, CS, Lineage, everything that I could get money from. Then I have gone to Kiev and everything started from some obscure tourneys from 1v1 to 3v3. I went to Trade and Economics University, studied so so because I'm lazy and Dota interfered as well. I was at 3rd grade in Uni when it raised to a normal level, when Na`Vi have been created and my interests went to completely different direction.

Q: Nobody has seen you in Uni i guess.
A: No, I've been going there and passed all exams without paying for anything. Passed everything myself, using tricks and so on - helped here and there, or the girls in my class have been helping me. I have finished Uni and Master's degree a year ago.

Q: Do you have any interests besides computer games? Because it's a common impression about cyber athletes, that they sit behind their PC at home or in training house, or they travel to tournaments.
A: Well, now my life have gone to the stereotype you've described, but before I've been doing sports up till 2nd grade, then stopped because Dota takes too much time, and besides that you want to relax, go to some barbeque, spend evening at some restaurant or night club.

Q: So, the friends can still see you.
A: Yea, I spend much time in Dota and besides scrims I play on my own to maintain form, but all my spare time, all free days and evenings i spend with my friends. I often travel to Yalta where I have unplugged Internet and everything. My mom doesn't use it, so I'm unreachable for 7 days or so.

Q: Do you feel like a caveman in those moments?
A: Oh no, I'm feeling great. It's the best time it could be. First of all, all of my childhood friends have gone back, some finished studies, some working there and it's a summer, so there's plenty to do and secondly - we have shared memories and places, friendly atmosphere all around.

Q: What your friends think about your hobby, are they supportive and positive, or have they been calling and screaming at you?
A: Like 60-70% of my male friends have been playing themselves, the ones who didn't, knew that I've been playing and everything felt ok, because almost all of young people are playing some computer games. Of course I spent more time on this, but seems it paid off.

Q: About payback. You mentioned before, that when you have been playing not only Dota but in general, you searched for a ways to make some money. So, you took gaming serious from the get go, not only as a sport but as a way to make money, or was it just for fun and money was just a side effect?
A: It was a free money, why not especially when you have fun playing the game? Be it CS, Lineage, Quake or Dota, i have fun playing them all.

Q: Do you have some achievements besides Dota?
A: Some time ago at WCG 2004 or 2005 I took 4th place in WC3 in Ukraine. Then we had some tourneys in Crimea and I have been going and winning them, CS included. As for Dota, we had a hometown team before Na`Vi  and we had been going to the tournaments and it was the most memorable time. There was no sponsor, nobody knows about you, you are a "darkhorse" among Dota stars and you watching them play. Now you are going to the tournaments as heavy favorite and the feeling is not the same.

Q: Don't you feel relaxed going as a favorite, where everybody is fearing you?
A: No, it's the opposite. You come to a tournament and everybody wants to play their best strats against you, play at 180000% and it can very well lead to your defeat. If the enemy is bad or if you are in the best form, then yea - there is no chance. But if people have been preparing, like for TI3 for example...We'll go right now and I fear to imagine what will be thrown at us.

Q: There is also a groupstage, so i can imagine it will be hard from the day 1.
A: We will see how it goes.

Q: Talking about Na`Vi. It is not a secret, that you are with your team atm.
A: Yea, we have been scrimming and took a break for this interview. They are all sitting here doing their own stuff, 2 playing pubs, 1 watching SC2 and 1 watching some German stuff. Don't know what he's seeing (laughing).

Q: About a team, first question - Dota is a team game as we can learn from pub chat, and I want to ask on how it's difficult because you said you've been playing WC3. How it's difficult to play in a team, remember your role and not try to take other's. How difficult it is, how do you cope with your personal role and how did you come to it?
A: To be honest I didn't want to play Dota at the beginning. It was around 8 years ago when it was downloaded in our local LAN cafe, and I was playing WC3. I went there and there was 15 PC's and 14 of them were playing Dota, while I came to play WC3. All of my LAN friends started to tell me to come play with them, but I didn't want to, because there is 5 people and any one of them can ruin your game. I hated it. In WC3 I was on my own, and if I had to lose I knew it was my own fault. But later I understood that WC3 had no perspectives in my city, so I switched to Dota, but played for fun only and only after a 1.5-2 years there was held some tourney in Simferopol, so we went there and won.

Q: What was your role in that team?
A: I was mid.

Q: How it's happened that you started to play carry? Also, wouldn't you want to be Na`Vi's captain?
A: No. I don't like captain's role because I don't like to take responsibility. Not in the way that I would not perform, I will do my part of the job done, but to dictate others and then there will be quarrels about what you have told other player to do or what he did on his own. And there is a choice - either he should listen to you or to himself, and I don't want to argue because I understand that every player are an individual and he will think on his own. But Puppey can manage it. Of course he have his own default problems, but overall we do fine as you can see. We have a rule that we all listen to each other, but when captains speaks, we all go quite and do what he said. This is the only way to win anything.

Q: Was it easy for you to get used to that system?
A: When you are winning...Trust me, we had such quarrels that you wouldn't ever want to see or take part of it, sometimes just on the edge of a man fight. But overall, when taking reasonable route and lessening emotions, we do fine. We had a slump and when you are losing - you think that you must do this but you've been told to do that, and you did as you wanted and it went good. But in the end, if everyone would do this, it would be just around 20-30% of good actions and 70% - bad ones. In the end you still lose and go back to that default obeyance.

Q: In the case of success and victories, is there a situation when all the glory goes to one player?
A: It happens, but not for me (laughing).

Q: That's exactly what I wanted to ask - someone says "Oh Dendi won that game!", but if the team is losing its "XBOCT hasn't farmed and carried!" Have you got used to it, getting offended or not and is there any discussion within a team about it?
A: We laugh about it. All of them do understand it is not true because all of them are participating in the game, and if we lost then it's because all of us did something wrong. It is possible to lose a game by yourself, but it's hard. Of course I have managed to do even that (laughing).