Interview with WhiteRa

Today at Starcraft2Tournaments.net I am very pleased to announce that we have an interview with the famed Protoss player WhiteRa. A veteran Brood War player, WhiteRa is known most recently for his presence in the Starcraft II Beta eSport scene, having won TeamLiquid’s SC2 Invitational 1, and the HDH Invitational among others. We had a chance to sit down with him and talk about topics ranging from preparing for tournaments, to his families reaction to his gaming success.

* JDMojo: For about how long have you been playing Blizzard games?

WhiteRa: A long time ago, beginning with the release of Warcraft 1 when there were only orcs and humans, I participated in tournaments even in my own city, but everything came down to grunt wars. War2 , Diablo and Starcraft followed, and I played WC3 RoC a little bit.

* JDMojo: For all your new fans out there, how long have you considered yourself a Pro Gamer?



WhiteRa: It’s hard to tell, my first successful finishes came around 1999-2000, and all of them were at local or national Ukrainian tournaments. Most memorable was the victory at WCG 2003 in Ukraine since we always had a high level of competition, which makes that result harder to achieve. In my life there were often periods of time during which I could not play for at least half a month due to other interests that took priority.

* JDMojo: What are your thoughts on the new Battle.net 2.0?

WhiteRa: Of course it’s beautiful, interesting and the matchmaking system does a fairly good job; but there are a lot of irritating bugs, which will hopefully be fixed by the time the game is released.

* JDMojo: In it’s current form, do you think the races in Starcraft II are more or less balanced?

WhiteRa: Currently the balance between races is a lot better than it was before; but still, it seems like Terran continues to be too strong (mass marauder + medivac is problematic, and tanks are hard to fight against even with “charged” zealots).

* JDMojo: Are there any major issues with Starcraft II gameplay that you think needs to be addressed?

WhiteRa: Bring back the reaver, change the carrier for a more useful unit. Also Blizzard needs to make changes that will allow people to play interchangeably and with a decent latency on US, Asia and Europe. Blizzard often says that it wants to make Starcraft a leading cybersport game, but it does very little to accomplish that. Artificially dividing players by regions will hurt the e-sport component of the game. I would also like to see a build-in function which would allow players to record VODs with own commentaries.

* JDMojo: Where did you grow up?

WhiteRa: I was born in the Soviet Union ^^, and grew up on the shores of the Black Sea in Odessa city.

* JDMojo: Where do you live now and how long have you lived there?

WhiteRa: I have not changed my residence

* JDMojo: How many hours a day would you say you spend playing Starcraft II?

WhiteRa: This depends on a variety of factors such as work, mood, and whether there are any important tournaments. I can go from not playing a single game for a couple of days to playing 10 hours a day.

* JDMojo: What kind of things do you do to prepare for facing specific opponents?

WhiteRa: This takes up a lot of my time, I prepare strategies attentively and always try to prepare specific strategies for my opponent.

* JDMojo: Have you always been a Protoss player?

WhiteRa: Until WCG 2003 I played with all races. Afterwords I’ve only used Protoss

* JDMojo: How long have you been a member of Mouse Sports?

WhiteRa: Since January 2010 I have a contract with mouz for Starcraft 1, before that our entire team moved to ESC after mym broke up, and then to mouz.

* JDMojo: What is it like being on the Mouse Sports team?

WhiteRa: Mouz is a good team, I’m there only because our old team stayed together. Currently I’m getting offers to join another Starcraft 2 organization, but I am not planning on doing so in the near future. I do not want to burden myself with contracts.

* JDMojo: Do you practice in a big room full of computers with your teammates or is there a different type of setup?

WhiteRa: No, I play at home.

* JDMojo: Is your family supportive of your eSport fame?

WhiteRa: Before they were against my preoccupation with the game, but when I began participating in international tournaments they were proud of me ^^. My bride is also very understanding, though to be honest she does not like computer games much. ^^

* JDMojo: What did you do before you became a Pro Gamer?

WhiteRa: Studied, worked, slacked, everything was there.

* JDMojo: Do you have any advice for your fans that hope to one day reach your status as a Pro Gamer?

WhiteRa: If they will be dedicated to reaching their goal, they’ll make it there. But they need to know that in order to become a pro gamer, they must sacrifice a lot (and it’s not always worth it)

* JDMojo: Can you tell us a little bit about your new website?

WhiteRa: This is not just a place where my fans can leave comments or ask me questions. They will also be able to improve their game play by using my VODs from tournaments, TV shows, articles, advice and much more.

* JDMojo: Are there any plans for an English version of your website?

WhiteRa: We already have it, and there is a large team working on translating the content. I pay a lot of attention to international society.

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This concludes our interview, I’d like to give a big thanks to WhiteRa for taking his time out to do an interview with us here at Starcraft2Tournaments.net, as well as to our readers who motivate me to keep the site up and running. For more info about WhiteRa you can find his official website at White-Ra.com.