When the newsletter team set out to build a piece centered around Vanguard, there was no way the crew in charge of the fast rising DOTA 2 division could be ignored. With Master Odin at the helm, the DA group has rapidly amassed 52 members despite recent turmoil amongst the burgeoning division's leadership. CherryLaneKilla caught up with Master Odin, who took just enough time from his busy schedule of leading DOTA 2 out of Vanguard to answer a few questions.
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--Let’s start by telling everyone a little about you, What might someone be surprised to know about you?--
I have a love for B rated stuff, whether it movies, books, or games. Nothing better than turning on the Sci-Fi channel and seeing that
Sharktapus or "Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus" is on as it's just fun to see the cheesy effects and bad acting and lines.
--Do you have any special hobbies or activities outside of online gaming/TAW?--
I swim for my college team which during the year ends up taking up a ton of my time. Between morning practice, out of the water training, and afternoon practices, I'm looking at
20+ hours a week being taken up, in addition to work and school!
--What made you decide to join up with TAW?--
I used to play Left 4 Dead, and playing solo in that game was really annoying due to how versus was 4v4, so little to no communcation would end up just
destroying a team. I ended up googling "L4D clans", ended up on a forum TAW was advertising on, and decided to give TAW a spin. Got bootcamped
almost 3 years ago, and I've been with TAW on and off again ever since then bouncing between a couple different divisions after the LD died.
--What have been some (if any) difficulties in spinning up your respective game?--
I think something that stands us apart from other spin-up teams is the change our leadership has gone through in our short history. Our original spin-up SO switched
to another spin-up team and the original spin-up lead has left TAW as well. I was originally just a DI when the DOTA division got spun up, but somehow I've found myself
being the spin-up leader.
--What do you do to recruit?--
We try to recruit both in-game and on forums. On the forums, we have a recruiting post that we have on all the major boards, that talks about TAW, with what it's about, its history, etc.
as well as some points about our division such as what you could expect with us and practice times and all that. In-game, we wear the [TAW] tags, and if the game goes well (whether people
are nice or we do well), we'll generally say "www.taw.net, friendly clan! Join!" or something to that effect at the end of a match. For the most part though, it seems like the forums
have been our best help in the exciting growth we're seeing.
--What are some of the differences you have seen that separate DOTA from other games?--
I think some of the biggest differences between DA and other divisions is just the scope of matches. When we compare ourselves to something like AM or BF, they've got matches that can consist
of like 32-64 guys no problem. For us, if we don't have exactly some multiple of 5, we don't have full teams. We need exactly 10 people to run an in-house. It makes practices slightly odd
because of it and so you'll generally see a couple people watching our in-house while we've got a pub team of 5 as it's rare to always see a number divisible by 5 always, just ask the LL division!
This of course affects how we deal with ranks, as we don't really need a PL/FL to manage the overal goal of a platoon during a match. The only thing that is really consistent is squad leaders.
The smaller sizes though gives us some interesting opportunities not really afforded to larger matches, such as the concept of "ad-hoc events" where we can run those full games if 10 people
show up online unlike AM or BF that really need the larger numbers to run events/battles.
--Were you a DOTA player from the old days or did you start with DOTA 2?--
I never played the original DOTA as I got into PC gaming a couple years ago, well after its initial peak. I originally played League of Legends as my first introduction to the "MOBA" genre, and
I ended up being in the LL division within TAW for a while because of my interest, though eventually it started to wane with how Riot was managing LoL and some other factors. Once I saw what
Valve was doing with DOTA 2, I knew I couldn't ever really go back and have been playing DOTA 2 minimally since last November with major interest a couple weeks before TAW announced its division.
--Are there any other games that you occupy your time with outside of DOTA?--
As one of the people in TAW that has one of the largest steam libraries I'm sure, I've got a lot of games I like to play. The only other MP game that I play with frequency is TF2 at the moment, and I'm
playing through the Sam & Max series, with then a whole host of games beyond that. My backlog is way too big.
--What has been the number one thing about the DOTA division that has kept you coming back to play with TAW?--
The sense of team and family that exists in all divisions of TAW to at least some extent. Everyone is friendly, and it provides you with a fun atmosphere to play games with, even if it seems like everyone's
W/L ratios drop a bit (haha)! There are also members which playing with have definitely made me a better player for it, by pointing out my mistakes and giving me tips and suggestions to be better, in a way that I
can easily take to heart and don't just react angrily towards as it's done in a constructive manner. When it's provided to one member, it's nice, but when we have ways to give it to a whole division of people, it's
indispensable, especially with seeing the rate of growth of some people. At the end of the day, that's really the biggest thing that TAW offers opposed to solo playing, is the environment to get better, and fix bad habits.
I frequent a site called SomethingAwful which has a thread on DOTA 2 that has a bunch of great players posting in it, not everyone has that resource and so end up doing some silly stuff that they might never notice.
--Every member believes his or her division is top dog in TAW, what do you feel sets DOTA apart from the rest of the clan's divisions?--
The stuff I mentioned above about team sizes and what have you. However, how many divisions can say they've seen a growth of 40 members in a month, especially compared to such a giant like WoW which is also being spun-up at the same time as us. Pretty hard not to be proud of what the division has become, especially if you're the one leading it!
--What made your game ‘doable’ to qualify for a spin up?--
The interest in the game is probably what has made things so easy for us. Since DOTA 2 is a straight port of DOTA 1 from the Warcraft 3 engine to Valve's Source, the player base between the two games isn't really split, and even though DOTA 2 is still in closed beta, it's hitting the highest played game on Steam at something like 68,000 peak everyday. Once it comes out of the closed beta and is f2p, I can only imagine that number becoming even larger considering just how popular DOTA 1 is after something like 6 years under the current developer, IceFrog (with a couple years before him where it wasn't as nearly balanced or really the DOTA we all know and love).
The game looks nice, you can be competitive as soon as you start playing (as there's no "out of game" progression beyond cosmetic items that do nothing for you), and is well balanced and rather unique, all things that make the game popular and have a lot of longevity. Couple that with the booming impact DOTA 2 is having on the e-Sports scene, it's going to be really interesting. The comparisons of course between LoL can only help both games improve as both have to, on some level, compete with each other with features and that force both companies to innovate on some of their design philosophies and interfaces (the biggest being the spectator interface).
--Was the initial spin up process easy?--
The spin-up process is interesting as initially, the first time it was tried for a spin-up, it was turned down by CC as not being popular enough (or at least that's what I've been told). So it took a couple tries, but once
we got the official go ahead, things have been smooth sailing since then as we've been able to quickly replace the management of the division that's left.