As much as I would like to blog about all my experiences in the previous month, it's probably no longer relevant. I've been feeling a mixture of happy and surprised this week. For me, my feelings about the current events at ESWC date back to up to two years ago. It goes deep into the archives of this blog.

I'll state flat up that I did not expect Zenith to win ESWC. Not because I feel the other teams are good, but because frankly Zenith has not been performing, and didn't exactly improve much. Joining them the last few days before they headed out to ESWC, there really wasn't much change in their playing, not much improvement either, except that they were more or less broken and willing to try anything - including, wisely, giving Tofu more say.

But all this I can't judge, since I'm now an external observer.

Perhaps the western teams were slightly too overrated. Perhaps a gap evolved between the Asian and western teams when they decided not to mix around with each other too much anymore, and with teams like EHOME stepping up their game, the rest of Asia was forced to do so as well. Perhaps Zenith simply went in with nothing to lose, having suffered the worst streak of defeats that any team named "Zenith" has EVER encountered, and with that attitude managed to give their all and win.

Or probably, perhaps, it was that the strategical advantage was reversed.

I have worked all my life for this day and I have met with disappointment after disappointment. IHCS and MYM's and all the international tournaments... well, refer to past entries 1 year back and earlier. I would like to think that sending Zenith to ASUS and Dreamhack did something in contributing to bringing an international DotA LAN tournament closer, but it's something I think I say just to console myself. There was a big problem in the Zenith European Tour, and that was strategy. It was not that we had an inferior strategy (perhaps, but not totally), but that we were not confident of what strategies to use, resulting in very very inferior quality of play due to strategies we simply couldn't pull off (and weren't theoretically pull-off-able).

And there was that thing about Magnus. More proof about being totally unprepared strategy-wise. Skill-wise, I believe that even the lousiest of us (me) with 2 months of no practice (me) could stand up to any member of the opposing team in the European tour. And really, on hindsight, it was just screwed up.

Cue more dissing about us losing in LAN. Shit happens. This more or less seals us in for more dissing and doom for the next year or so since we did lose. So at least this ESWC should break that seal that I sort of tightened over the last 2 years.

So I'm very damn happy that Zenith wins, heck, any Asian team would do, but Zenith even more so.

Of course, a lot of questions pop up, like 'would this happen if I was there?' and 'COULD CONSCRIPTION COME AT A WORSE TIME?'.

I would say that Asia is on strategically higher ground right now.

Would I dare say what is in for Zenith? Chances are they'll ride on morale and do well, or perhaps they'll get even cockier and screw up even more. I told Wei Ming (gamesync) after Zenith lost to |sc that Zenith is a team that, despite the change in lineup, rides on a wave of ups and downs, and simply were riding on a down period. ESWC might be a break in their 'down' cycle, or might be the start of their 'up' wave. Either way, I dare to say that the current team will lose their 'up' cycle soon. The strategical advantage doesn't hold for very long.

I'll be honest here, when I say that there are a lot of things that I DON'T respect the current Zenith team for. Don't get me wrong, winning ESWC doesn't gain much in the respect field.

But it does make me very happy.

And in a way, it justifies the two years of work I've put in for the name. So for that at least, I can thank the current team Zenith, for once, finally, like I used to thank the old Zenith when I could work for them and see results.