A lot of very busy weekends. Whoo.

With so much to blog about not relating to DotA, I should actually go back to my personal blog, but then no one reads it so what's the point?

Unlike a normal blog, where what is written is subtly disguised to imitate personal private matters when the full intention is almost always to address the public, this blog has the privilege of being allowed to fully shamelessly write what is intended for public consumption, with me having to sneak in thoughts and emotions of my own just so I can whine about something.

"Sneak." Heh. *snicker*.

It's pitiful that this glorious venture (which surprisingly went about with all its glory for more than a year, and counting) is being abused by me to project any DotA-related thoughts instead of being, as it originally started, anything to do with Zenith at all. For any updates on team Zenith which I can no longer provide, you can turn to www.teamzenith.net for what you already know expressed as personal exposition, or ask any of the existing members and be probably ignored.

Or alternatively you probably won't care and will continue reading this rant, wondering where it leads to :D

As a matter of fact I have no idea how I came about to discussing the state of this blog. It just came up.

Where was I? Right. 2 busy busy weekends.

Oh right. And Rapture Gaming begins to start disqualifying teams who show up a few minutes late.

More on that later if I have time. It's an issue that is persistent enough to be discussed at a later time anyway, but my general opinion is that it's about time they did it.


So anyway, 2 weeks ago, wondering what to do with my weekend, I went down to WCG Home Team qualifiers around Balestier to maybe have lunch with people I know, check out anything new and interesting in the scene, and play guitar hero.

Bad news one. Surprise, Zenith came late and got disqualified.

Bad news two. Guitar hero is actually an official WCG game so no more free play.

Good news. I find a bunch of my inter-school teammates who are gracious enough to let me play with them! Yay! Something to do!

Better news. They manage to get 3rd, which lands me YET ANOTHER free mp3 player (to be collected next month), and 40 hours of free gaming at GG, which I have yet to touch. Plus I get to spend my weekend doing something, and I get to watch "Wanted" before I book in, which in a note totally unrelated to DotA, is probably the best show I have ever watched. Highly disputed opinion though. Some people say it totally sucks.

I could go on about how the matches went, but it did happen quite long ago, and frankly it wasn't all that interesting. What is interesting though is how different the experience was, playing in a competitive environment leading a team that for the past year I have never played a single time with.

The first and most important lesson though, is that personal improvement in skill can happen even after a long time of playing. The last time I played with any of these people was in Funan Inter-school about 16 months ago, and even with all their NS and Study commitments, they have all made significant improvements in individual skill.

The second lesson I learnt is one about team organisation. The feeling I had when playing with a team I had never played with before, was surprisingly weird in a competitive environment. Often I don't care what happens to my teammates when playing pub-draft matches, but when your teammates are right next to you and you still have no idea what is happening, except that there are things happening, it feels very weird. It has never struck me before this as important to actually know your teammates, but I realised that up till now, I have been playing with the subconscious knowledge of what my team is probably going to do, when I play with people I know. There is a certain way a team will naturally play.

Conversely, it should be thus possible to know the natural way your opponents play and expect certain things from them. Of course, this is much more difficult, but playing the same opponents over and over again actually made me able to predict their actions quite naturally.

You might also notice, that when you try to force a change in the way your team naturally plays, it becomes quite unusual. Certain things that your teammates used to be always reliably able to do aren't happening anymore, because they aren't playing in their natural manner. Teamplay falls differently.

The question of course, is how much of teamwork comes naturally, and how much of it is deliberately controlled and consciously done?

I would say more, but with book-in time approaching, I don't tend to write very well, or have much time to write anything at all.

Maybe more next week, with the whole 3 concurrent competitions that happened last week, and the whole DQ issue. Until then, next week looks very exciting. WCG Qualifiers.