In this final broadcast before the long awaited official retail release of Starcraft 2, the Terran player and most feared Swede Stefan ‘MorroW’ Andersson tells us like it is:
Polygonrevue: Hello, MorroW, and welcome back to the show. Last time we did an interview you were a contender in the Teamliquid Starleague and now you are a feared and famous name at the top of the current Starcraft 2 scene. How does that feel?
MorroW: Hello its nice to be back^^ It’s a great feeling for a player when the practice hours really reflect your accomplishments
Polygonrevue: You have competed in a lot of tournaments during Phase 2 of the Starcraft 2 Beta, and have had quite a lot of success. In addition to that you have been featured several times on the “Broadway of Starcraft”, i.e. the Day[9] Daily webshow hosted by Sean Plott. That makes you a progamer-star by definition – would you agree? Is it becoming possible to make a living out of eSports, and is that something you’re planning to pursue?
MorroW: Well i wouldn’t consider myself a progamer even if I am on the Day[9] show or win tournaments. Progamer in my opinion is if you make a living off the game you’re playing. It is indeed very possible to become a progamer and you can take IdrA who is in Korea for example who has been doing a great job as a progamer so far and is happy as such. I would very much like to be a progamer, it’s been my dream ever since i got sucked into eSports which was about 2-3 years ago, not necessarily in Korea but I would like to make decent money on Starcraft in comparison to a normal job
Polygonrevue: Terran was your weapon of choice in Brood War and you have continued to wreak havoc with that race in Starcraft 2. How would you describe your play style – are you IdrA-particular about your mechanics and build orders, or more TLO-esque in your creativity? What does a perfect match of SC2 contain, for you?
MorroW: Well, I would probably like to say that I’m somewhere in the middle, IdrA is a player who always has a game plan for whatever he’s up against, just like me, but at the same time I like to throw in my wild cards once in a while like TLO does daily. Although, when I say wild card i don’t mean like stupid all-ins or improvising, all the build-orders I make are practiced and prepared for the right situations, so that’s how I would describe myself. I prepare for anything thrown at me and I have a plan for every game I enter.
Polygonrevue: In terms of memorable victories, battles and also losses – what are your highlights of the Starcraft 2 Beta? Is there a particular player you respect, and is there someone you have vowed to conquer after the retail release of the game? Everybody loves a good rivalry…
MorroW: There are no players that I have any special respect for when it comes to how good a they are, it’s just really hard to say who is good and who rides on the waves of imbalance and looks good. There are of course players that I don’t like but I don’t get sucked into it and tries extra hard against him or anything like that, from a player’s perspective I am very neutral right now. However I’m very excited to see which progamers from the Korean Starcraft: Brood war scene will switch over to Starcraft 2. I have the most respect for Flash, who is a SC1 player, and if he would switch I would respect him the most because I know what his brain and willpower are capable of.
There are no specific games that I would consider to be my highlights but in general I am very happy about games where I played well and did few mistakes, rather than just merely winning them.
Polygonrevue: During the Beta you became a signed member of mousesports, a professional gaming team based in Germany, that has a whole roster of impressive SC2 players. What can you tell us about the ambitions of your new team in terms of european and international competition – will you be fighting on all the servers, against Asian and North American teams? In South Korea there are over a dozen of dedicated “progaming houses” dedicated to the pro scene of Starcraft: Brood War – can something similar become a reality in the West with SC2, in your opinion?
MorroW: We have a very motivated atmosphere in our clan, we practice a lot and it pays off as we are winning a lot. I don’t know how far the clan itself will go to compete with the other servers when we speak about clan wars or events revolving around the different clans, but personally I will try to take part in as much as I possibly can.
I talked about this with Dan ‘Artosis’ Stemkoski before the Beta came out because he is your man when you wanna know things. He said that he doesn’t believe progaming houses will appear like they exist in Korea so I am simply just believing what he said a few months ago because it’s the best source I can get. Myself, I don’t feel like I have a good clue on how big the eSport phenomenon is in general but my guess would be that it’s not big enough to encourage teams and players to move into prohouses because that’s a huge investment. You need very big sponsors to make that work. If it’s true that Europe won’t go so serious about this and let’s say korea would invite me then i wouldn’t mind moving to Korea and play in a team over there once I finish school.
Polygonrevue: Regarding the actual game of Starcraft 2, and comparing it to its predecessor Brood War, what do you think of it in terms of depth and longevity? The original Starcraft was released twelve years ago and is still being played at an arguably higher level than any other title since it is practically impossible to master. During the SC2 Beta we have all seen high level gamers such as yourself quickly coming to grips with the new and – as many would have it – simplified mechanics. Is Starcraft 2 less difficult to master than Brood War, and if so will that prohibit the title from becoming an enduring eSport?
MorroW: Let me just start off by saying that a game doesn’t have to be nowhere near as hard as Starcraft: Brood War to become a successful eSport. Yes, SC2 is easier than SC1 because of the mechanics but also it’s very shallow right now in terms of depth because of our map pool and imbalances. Both of these things will improve but even after a year or two it will still miss the mechanics that SC1 has. Mechanics is a big part of the game in SC1 so it could be very true that Blizzard is trimming off a very important part here. I’ve seen so many players that are considered to be members of the elite but are really terrible at macro because it’s not such an important part of the game right now. Once players get more a hang of it I think we will be seeing better games and less funky strategies.
Polygonrevue: Long before the Beta was released Blizzard announced the controversial news that Starcraft 2 would enable Multiple Building Selection (MBS) and unlimited unit selection (the ability to have all units selected in one control group, should players want to). That caused a lot of uproar among hardcore Brood War players, as they argued that it would remove many crucial elements of skill from the game, by taking away a considerable amount of multitasking – thereby making it easier to keep up with your macro management even during heated battles.
To many that was a sign that Starcraft 2 was geared more towards the casual player than to the progamer. Now, you and thousands of others have played the Beta for months – did the fears come true, or did the game turn out to be skilful and challenging after all?
MorroW: Well, I expected it to be in terms of MBS, You can’t have a 3D game and not have Multiple Building Selection – mechanics of Starcraft 1 where you have to select each and every Barracks when macroing would be twice as hard in 3D. There are still many elements that you can master in a RTS game like SC except for mechanics so I think it’s pretty decent. If they made the game as hard as SC1 was then no casual gamers would get into it because they would just think ‘man, this is too impossible’ right off the bat and switch back to RPG but now when Blizzard made it easier many of them are enjoying the game.
The ideal goal for Blizzard is to make it hard enough to enable eSport to live on for many years and at the same time making it easy enough so players can give it a chance. I think Blizzard has found a nice balance but I think it would be a smart move by them if they made the game harder in a year or so. Actually I’m pretty sure it will become harder when expansions are released and new units come and so on, more depth to the game is great for eSport and it also attracts casual gamers because new units are cool. I think that is a better way to do it rather than making the mechanics harder. Blizzard is thinking through every move they make in detail, yes, eSport will take a hit the first year by not being balanced or so in-depth in terms of strategy but things are gonna get better, I’m sure of it 
Polygonrevue: In terms of mass appeal, there is little doubt that Starcraft 2 with its jaw-dropping graphics, cool-looking units and awesome battles (not to mention Facebook-integration with Battle.net…) will attract thousands if not millions of new players – both casual and those that are more oriented towards professional eSport. Just to take one prime example – the total amount of views of all the videos of the immensely popular HDH Invitational Tournament is exceeding ten million. In your view, where is the scene heading, in terms of viewer numbers and thereby corporate sponsorship and increased professionalism? Also, on that note, what are the potential pitfalls that need to be avoided in order for the scene to grow strong and stay that way?
MorroW: Awesome question.
So eSport basically works because you get viewers to watch the their content, a website a stream or anything because then people in the advertisement business wanna find places to squeeze in their label by sponsoring them and that’s how it all works together. The majority of viewers is what’s important for the eSport industry, and nothing attracts them more than watching streams and commentary.
With that being said I wanna talk about replays. Replays, unlike streams and VODs (Video-On-Demand), only attract people who are interested in the game on a more serious level. If you compare the viewers of replays and streams that are casting live games or replays it’s a ridiculous difference. So replays are worse in that way, but also in another way.
What makes magic tricks awesome and the crowd is impressed by it is that they don’t understand. If the magician tells the crowd afterwards how to do it then its not impressive anymore, because anyone can do it. So lets apply this concept to replays.
If you play a tournament and then just upload all the replays every competitive gamer will download it and learn it immediately and then that build order is “figured out” and it’s not impressive anymore.
The reason why SC1 is still going on huge in Korea is because players are still “figuring out” the game and having such a hard time executing the things they already know. As I said earlier, in Starcraft 2 it’s easier to “execute the things you know”, so the strength about SC2 right now is the “figuring out of the game”. The faster we learn the game the faster it will die, the faster we will lose viewers and the faster we will get bored.
At the end of the day these replays were only used to bring in people to watch content, to attract them to view what is there, but what people should be doing more is to just cast the replays, upload many videos and try to do as little as possible of actual replay uploading, because it kills eSport from the point where I’m standing.
In Korea it is strictly forbidden to just spread around replays from internal practice within your clan houses to not reveal the builds to the other teams. There have literally been players who joined teams, stole replays from them and then sold the replays for big cash – this is how important these replays are for players and why they should not be forced to be uploaded by default in the higher leagues. Korea has best eSport right now and they are not uploading replays for a good reason, we should learn from them. Sorry if I went off topic here, I just felt like this needed to be said.
Other than that I don’t feel like we can have any special pitfalls, sure there might be casters that are not taking things seriously and there are players who are bad mannered, cheating and so on, but at the end of they day they are still part of the community and they are helping eSports grow even if they are not ideal. If we want electronic sports to become more professional we need to act more professional, every single one of us.
Polygonrevue: Many top tier players have used their skill and community fame to go into coaching – charging players a fee to teach them how to get better at Starcraft 2, and before that Brood War. The obvious example of this would be the team centred around GosuCoaching.com who will be hosting “Progamer Bootcamps” somewhere in the deserts of Arizona. It could also be argued that the incredibly popular Sean ‘Day[9]‘ Plott is doing the same through his content – sharing his knowledge of both philosophy and actual strategies and tactics. Your own record speaks for itself, so is coaching something you’re considering in the future? Maybe commentating? Teaching sells…
MorroW: I used to do it in SC1, it’s fun, everyone wins and more importantly, eSport grows. I totally support people who are charging money for anything related to Starcraft 2, selling replay packs, selling VODs, selling knowledge, it’s all good and I don’t understand those who disagree. If you think it’s a bad deal then don’t buy it. If you think new gamers get ripped off well that’s life, every second there are guys who get ripped off.
I will probably start coaching if I can figure out much about the game, right now I feel like there are so many balance changes coming and everything that if I teach someone something, it’s gonna last a month then that strategy or whatever doesn’t work anymore. Also, the beta stage has been really busy, I mean there’s been days where I literally have been occupied by tournaments all day so i don’t feel like I have the spare time to get into this just yet, maybe in half a year or so. Helping the community is always great^^
Polygonrevue: Starcraft 2 will be released on the 27th of July, and the epicness will know no bounds. Before that, however, there’s a big party in California hosted by Day[9] himself and where every top SC2 player in Europe and North America will be present either in person or represented through the internetz. I understand that you will be taking part in the special invitational tournament that is taking place there – and that will be broadcasted live from the event – together with the best of the best. What can you tell us about that?
MorroW: There was this crew, I don’t remember who they were (sorry) who sent m and Haypro a message to make a good game that they could broadcast at the event. There’s been some other guys coming asking me too but after I said that I already had a game that’s gonna be shown there they preferred to find someone else. So yeah, you’re probably gonna find a little content of me there but I really cant give you any more info than that. As for myself, I am happy to watch Day[9]’s VODs of the tournament, yesterday i saw TLO vs HuK and Dimaga vs IntoTheRainbow, man that was sweet 
. So even if I dont take a major part in this event just like everyone else i will be watching and having a great time, I thank Day[9] a lot for hosting it
Polygonrevue: Before rounding of this interview, do you have any famous last words / shootouts / words of wisdom that you would like to share with your fans? What can we expect from MorroW next?
MorroW: Well now when we’re talking about Day[9] and learning the game, coaching etc, he’s got a show called ‘The Day[9] Daily’ and you can check all his videos 100% free and he basically talks about all the good stuff you need to know when you’re trying to improve at Starcraft 2. Even if you’re a beginner he will talk a lot about the basics and i definitely think you should check it out even if you’re new to the game. Heres the link http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=104154. Bam! ^^
I will try my best to improve at this game and people who say I won because Terran is imbalanced – well, Terran might be a little strong but all other races in the Beta Zerg and Protoss, have been imbalanced, after all my win record in GosuGamers stats and practice games are by far highest in the Terran vs Terran matchup.
Polygonrevue: Thank you for doing this interview, always a pleasure to have an internationally respected Swede making us all proud. Best of luck with the progaming, MorroW, keep owning!
MorroW: Thanks you too for inviting me to the show and I hope you can keep owning as well with your interviews
Polygonrevue: GG and out!
MorroW: Yes, even when they Baneling bust ^^
