North American DotA Syndicate

 

This article is mainly written by Third Child himself, with some editing and spice thrown in from yours truly. From here on out, all the reading is credited to the Beast Soul himself, talking about taking a step back from DotA...

 

 

 

First of all, I’d like to thank everyone that I’ve had the pleasure to play with over the 6 years+ I’ve played DotA. I played plenty of Warcraft 3 from the moment I could play the beta illegally on Chinese servers. This is where I created the name Third_Child. No, I am not actually the third child in my family, my younger sister is. Third_Child is actually a reference to the first anime I have ever watched; Neon Genesis: Evangelion. Anime also become a very large part of my life at the time, and the third child was the main character of the series.

After a few years, I tried some customs like Aeons of Strife a few times and determined that they were horrible mods. Once I heard about DotA, I knew it would be just a larger version of the horribleness that was AoS, (pick an agi hero, level to 10 and rape map rofl) and it was indeed very imba and not a good game. So I kept playing wc3 until my brother mentioned something called DotA Allstars, and a special channel that hosted games for good players. Oh yea, we all know the channel! TDA was training grounds for most of us I’m sure. I started playing around the same time as my IRL friend Pat (1337_Dawg / Orig Pawner boy) and we used to LAN together a lot and smoke TDAs with our awesome wc3 micro. (in 2003)

I made a few friends through TDAs and then something awesome happened. Apparently I totally man handled 5 friends from a team called MOTA in a random TDA with Leshrac (and yes I still remember that game). They invited me to tryouts and I quickly became one of the best on the team along with Bum-Spanker, Ezy and BG (once I taught him how to last hit). This is where I got my nickname TC, since everyone already nicknamed BattleGround to BG; they did the same for me. The TC was always my favourite wc3 hero so I always loved it when people called me TC. MOTA had created something called MIHL, which was the first North American league ever created. Through an excel worksheet and a crummy website, about 25 players played games together daily and recorded their stats, and created seasons. I have to say that was a great time to be playing DotA, and I thank everyone that played with me in MOTA for all the awesome times.

Check out TC's awesome co-hosting abilities (and Panda lessons) on episode 7 of The Last Word: Another Round? 

The era for DotA leagues was approaching; IHL was created (loosely based on MIHL). I left MOTA to join the rest of the good DotA players out there. IHL was awesome; those of you who have been playing long enough to remember those days know what I’m talking about. It was DotA at a new level. The delay was terrible compared to now but things were shaping up for the game in terms of organization, and in the end, for the whole battle arena genre that has now spawned 3 new titles on the market. We all have to thank a guy called Ucross for making this breakthrough league possible. This was the golden age of North American DotA. It is in this league that I got my name known by owning with these non-standard heroes in high level games.

Randomly, this guy called Emperor contacted me because he was holding tryouts for his team called Xylo. Apparently Merlini had told him about me since he’s seen me play in IHL (thx Merlz). Emperor, from now on referred to as Cyrus, became my best online friend down the line. We played pretty together and ended up merging with Verge. By then, Verge had plenty of players and IHL died shortly after. It was a sad day but a new league called IHCS was all the rave in Europe. A league that used IRC to mimic the now popular RD mode.(inexistent at the time) So I took my next step, going beyond North America and started playing with another continent, full a new and generally better players. I played plenty of IHCS1 games and felt that I was among the lesser skilled players, which I wasn’t used to at the time. Through playing with several players in IHCS, I eventually joined [P]andemic by impressing them with my panda skills. (They had a spot opened up by Swissbeatz, my arch-nemesis) Everyone on the team was awesome. We had a great time, but only played matches, no scrims. So I kept playing plenty of IHCS. Swiss came back, so clearly I left. I ended up with RB or SRS, whatever you call them now; a French team that used me when facing very hard opponents. Didn’t take very long for me to get tired of picking heroes for 40 minutes just to play a 30 minute game, so I quit competitive DotA completely.

I had recently hooked up with a girl, and I was determined to hold on to her longer than 3 months, and I was nearing the end of my University schooling, so I hibernated in TDA for a whole year under akas.  Then I met Cyrus in a TDA on this fateful night and we caught up. He was recreating his team named DoP, DOMAIN OF PAIN! I was ready to restart playing seriously again, so I joined in. This is when we became really good friends, and I got to meet other people like Kaiser, giX, phoX, Mofo, and of course Zach (Ekotren). We had great times, and we became a top tier team rather quickly. Unfortunately, because of IRL situations, I could not keep playing with them. I could only play late night because of my new job which, in the end, allowed me to play with this group of fun guys called xGs. They played every night and very late. Originally I played with them to keep my juices flowing, but eventually DoP could not stay together, and xGs (eventually FyC) were too much of a good group of guys for me to ditch. So I joined them and finished up my DotA career with them instead. What a great group of guys to end my DotA days with, I have to admit they weren’t all top tier players, but definitely class A dudes. 

There’s a reason why we like video “games”, it’s because they are awesomely FUN to play. I fear that this has been a concept long lost in more competitive games like DotA among many others. Sure winning is nice, but it seems like it became the one and only goal that most competitive players have. Because I think much differently from this, I’ve pissed off several league players since I never played at my full potential. But that is the way I liked it, and I would hope that more people would play games more for the fun of it rather than being 100% focused on winning.

This mentality of mine was great for newer players, since I would not get angry when they screwed up and actually told them; next time just do this instead of running in 1v4. Whereas your average pro would say: wtf noob, you went in 1v4, uninstall wc3 right now k thx. This attitude will never help anyone, if anything it will put the player on tilt and he’ll go in 1v5 next time. This being said, my attitude in high level games must have been frustrating for more serious players seeing that I technically could be playing better if I actually cared to. For this I apologize. It is true that I have never been able to reach the potential skill level that I could have reached if I took DotA more seriously with a ruthless attitude, but to me going there was not worth it, especially at the cost of lesser skilled players’ enjoyment.

Is TC Panda or is Panda TC? 

I also only enjoy playing a small amount of heroes (like 20, about 10 of those being viable), and these heroes were mostly melee semi-carries (the ones that get kills from start to end but doesn’t do huge physical damage at end game) Because of this rather selfish play style, my teammates had to pick up the slack for other (more important) roles like support. So to all of those who have supported me throughout the years, A BIG THANK YOU, you’re the best.

I hope that whoever has decided to read this part will maybe take a better look at your in game reactions and its impacts on other players. I’ve actually written a few papers on online gaming for University courses and I’m determined to make the online world a better place for gamers in terms of respect, but it’s hard to find a starting point to actually influence others to act in a friendlier manner with each other. So I just decided to act the way I have, and hopefully be a good influence on others.  

The reason why I’m quitting DotA forever is because I am moving to Japan in one month to live there for a year. Being a huge anime fan, I’ve always enjoyed the culture and the language very much. I am meeting up with a friend and teaching English for a year, then coming back to Canada to become a DJ. (DJ Syrup) Unfortunately, I cannot allow myself to put so much time into pro/competitive gaming, since it does require a hefty amount. Additionally, I will be 14 hours ahead of everyone back in NA so I can’t imagine trying to get scrims and matches coordinated with that big of a time difference!

TC before & after post one year in Japan?  

Another reason is that I find DotA to be a bit out of date considering many games coming out soon. I have enjoyed playing pub HoN for a long time now, and I think that it’s a really great game. There is also Icefrog working with Valve which could potentially create something even better! On top of that, huge games like StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3 are coming out soon-ish. (Let’s hope) I will definitely keep playing HoN in Japan, under the classic name Third_Child. I’d be glad to play with peeps if the time difference works out.

I have made so many friends through DotA that it’s probably what I’ll be missing most about the game. Cyrus being one of the best friend’s I’ve made. He has actually changed the way I think about life by creating my philosophy of the Beast Soul that I now live my life by. (We kind of co-created it) I have a note on Facebook explaining the philosophy if you wish to read it. I’m sure I’ll get to meet Cyrus again in the future. Other people I got the pleasure of meeting are those that went to LA for the League of Legends roundtable. I must whole heartedly thank Neha for giving me the opportunity to go there and experience one of the best weekends of my life. I only spent 30$ on a surfboard, everything else was paid for. (Good thing too because I really had no money to spend) I got to meet Cyrus for the first time, and other awesome people like Neha, Kaiser, Taku, Zujio, Pendragon (really cool guy!), and of course all of the Riot guys that were super cool!

Beast Souls united.  

Gotta give a shoutout to my friend Michelle too! We watched Ultimate gamer together along with Cyrus and I wish them both good luck in getting on the second season! (Neha too!) Of course, I gotta shoutout to every single one of my teammates on all of my teams. Also shoutout to Akiri for helping me get this online so we can share with those that are interested in reading this monstrously huge article. And well I also have to shoutout to everyone else that has played with me and cheered me on over the years!

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