ToD has been amazing during the whole week-end,beating the three best Koreans at the moment : WE.IGE.ReMinD, wNv.FoV and MYM]Moon.The occasion for Esportsfrance to meet him and to learn more about his victory. Blizzard announced StarCraft2 at this event, Yoan gives us his first impressions.

Esportsfrance.com : Congratulations for your victory, you succeeded in beating ReMinD, Moon and FoV.It was a long time ago when we saw you make great performances like those. Did you prepare in a special way for this tournament.
Yoan "4K^ToD" Merlo : Yes. Those who have read my last interview knew that i went in Xi'an with the team World Elite to train hard. From there i also was able to play against many good chinese players.

Yoan "ToD" Merlo

How many hours a day did you train with the team World Elite? It depends but almost everyday from the afternoon to the evening, except two days where I went clubbing. But after I returned to Bejing with my very special Internet. So I barely played three games during the whole week...One of those was against Sase, and after losing this game which I completely dominated, i put a big hand shot on my keyboard which died sadly. Then I had to bring out my old 5 bucks keyboard in Korea. But once in Korea I had two days to prepare myself. I had some precious games against Check and Shy which were really helpful.

What made the difference from the WSVG?
Well i didn't met sky... More seriously, i thought a lot about how to beat NighElf, especially ReMinD and Moon. So i worked this match up exclusively when i saw the bracket. At last it paid...

Undead seems to evolve against Paladin, playing Panda only. What do you think about this strategy ? It looks fine on Terenas Stand versus Pala but totally not against a classic strategy. The hero choice is not this important, the main thing is the way you use it, timings, etc..

How do you explain that you are one of those who are able to beat Moon (as opposed to Sky) ? Is your gamestyle more adapted to beat him ? I don't know... First i played Moon a lot more than Sky, did I ? Sky is in a bad shape against Moon but it's rather recent. Perhaps he's simply his nemesis. Everyone has one or more players against who he has more difficulties to win. Sky beats everybody except Moon, so his nemesis is Moon. But we have to let him more time because i know that he is practicing very hard to beat him.

Nilk, ToD, ReMiND, Moon, FoV in WWI

How was the organization compared to other tournaments?
It's Blizzard... The organization was really good excepting the difficulty to communicate with Korean organizers, even with a translator. I had many problems to adapt to the game conditions. After Grubby lost against FoV, i was the next who had to play. So i came on the box where Grubby had just played because it was here it was meant to be. When i came here, I felt stunned by the heat. It made at least 45°C inside...I shouted imediatly "OH MY GOD". It's a secret for nobody that I play bad when it's too hot. I complained about this on previous tournaments (Season IV, Extreme Masters). So i said directly that it was not possible to play and they had to do something. They installed a small ventilator in the room beside me which helped me a lot. The door of this famous box where i had to play was open until there. It was not too hot inside but when the game started, they closed the door and the weather started to be very hot...

Echo Isles is the map which i practiced a lot against NightElf before the tournament. This first game got on my nerves, i did many mistakes, my head bubbled and i didn't manage to think correctly. After that I went mad, I called staff's guys and told them to let the door behind me open because i couldn't play without that. We discussed for a while : they didn't want to let it open for the esthetic. They added that I could listen the cast. I reminded them that the cast was in Korean... Then they said that i could see, the reflection of the big screen behind me which shows my opponent sometimes. It was almost unapparent and not visible it they half closed the door which was good.

ToD and his beautiful cheque

On these terms I agreed with them to play and from there I played much better, especially on Terenas Stand and I won the two following games. The next day i had to play Moon. They said that the door had to be closed this time. I simply answered that if it was the case, I wouldn't play at all. I explained that non-Asian people perspire more than Asian people and it disturbed me too much to play with these conditions. Blizzard, being a very developed and smart company, understood that it was not such a big deal to let this door half opened in order to let me play with optimal conditions, thing they gladly agreed to do. Everyone knows how it ended then.

Blizzard announced StarCraft2, what do you think ? Do you want to play on it ? This game looks great, really interesting but it's hard to have an opinion without any test. I think I will definitely try this game as soon as possible. Is sc2 waited by all the warcraft3 top players ? Yes, a lot of players want to switch to sc2 or at least try it really seriously like me.

Bisu[Shield] winner of WWI's StarCraft with his fans

Will this game be able to unify the starcraft and warcraft3 communities ?
Yeah, it definitely has this potential, and maybe even more.

ToD in the box

The best starcraft players are by far the koreans, are you afraid of them about starcraft2 ? No, anybody is beatable. Could we dream about a Reach vs ToD in a Starleague Grand final ? ( Reach is ToD's idol) ( laughs ) I hope so ... if the game is very interesting and if i do my best, everything is possible.

Any shoutouts ?
Yes, my great sponsor INTEL of course ! Then bigup to Wolf, Bjoran, NoX and RoScO ! thx for your support. And thx to all the French people who supported me, i really appreciate, i hope will be able to win some other tournaments and then show what French players are capable of.

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