Recently, MediaESports finished the first of three rounds of the ever-increasingly popular Ascension tournament after the viewers voted Polish MYM.Dreiven into the ninth and final spot for round two.
Round 1 Recap
Eight official groups of three players each were played each week, with no mirror matches taking place. The maps were Python, Zodiac, and Blue Storm, and no others. Games are played non-stop for two hours with the winner staying, loser sitting and waiting for redemption. After eight incredible weeks of play, the ninth player was decided by letting the audience vote from the list group runner ups. All of the games are uploaded to the METV part of the site with commentary from Gentho[Media] and Artosis[Media], who also navigate and follow the action of the games. Ever improving, Ascension has ushered in a new era of Brood War gaming and E-Sports in general.
The interview
Nony was the second round winner after defeating DG.Fosken in an extremely close series. Now that we are seeing the players begin to narrow down, we asked Nony about how he has been preparing in the time since, and about how confident he feels going into the second round. He says that he is "confident about my chances in the next round. I am preparing specifically for Ascension and I will be doing some quality practice on Ascension maps against top quality players for these last days before the second round begins".
When asked for details, he tells us: "I've played a lot of ICCup but none of it has been worth anything. I have friends who are good players that I practice with on West or on Hamachi. I've also got an open invite to practice with the top Chinese players, but I haven't taken advantage of that yet". It's safe to say that when he does take advantage of it, Nony will be quite a dominant force on the Media Roster.
We asked Nony how he felt about the general level of skill and experience we have to look forward to, since Ascension is an invitational tournament with no qualifiers. Nony says that "the skill level is really high. The Ascension crew did a really good job of getting a lot of good players and there weren't many upsets so the skill is going to carry on to round 2".
Statistics going inPlayervZvPvTTotal
IdrA[Media]2-02-10-04-1
NonY[Media]3-20-00-03-2
ToT)Mondragon(0-02-23-15-3
MYM.White-Ra2-10-01-13-2
ToT)XiaoZi(0-02-11-03-1
Excello.IefNaij2-00-02-04-0
RoX.Advokate1-02-10-03-1
RoX.localhost2-00-03-15-1
MYM.Dreiven2-00-01-23-2When asked about the general presentation thus far, he says "The presentation of Ascension has been great. I knew that mediaesports.com was always intended to be more than just the team's web site, but I wasn't what exactly it was going to do. Ascension has been a wonderful way to kick-start Media and I'm anxious to see what other video content and other features the site will have".
“I knew that mediaesports.com was always intended to be more than just the team's web site
- His thoughts on the site
We also asked who he looked forward to playing against the most in the upcoming round. He pauses, before saying "I want to play Mondragon the most. It's nothing personal with him. I just want to play against really good ZvP so I can show my skill!".
He also mentions that his top five players likely to make it to the next round are his fellow teammate Idra[Media], as well as ToT)Mondragon(, MYM.White-Ra and Excello.IefNaij, who went undefeated in the previous round.
Nony's FPVODs
To end our interview, we asked Nony about his FPVODs, which have gained quite a cult following on Youtube as well as TeamLiquid. He states that he has made several. "I just posted two yesterday on my youtube account: http://youtube.com/user/wazdawg " as well at his blog at TL. http://www.teamliquid.net/blog/nony "... but since I only have 70MB of web space, I've been deleting old ones whenever I upload new ones. Hopefully my youtube account will finally serve as a permanent home for all of my future FPVods. Most of them have been serious, but I think the one where I was joking around and drunk was the most popular. I enjoy giving newbier players something to look at. Sometimes I try to teach strategy and sometimes something funny happens in the game."
Nony is an extremely active and mannered player who is also very skilled and has room to grow. His time to come out on top of the foreigner scene is nigh and we thank him for giving us an opportunity to speak with him.
