The recent news that LGD were setting up an international team brought some refreshing news to the DotA 2 scene. Now the players are in China and ready to train hard to be the best, SGamer managed to get an interview with Misery and Pajkatt.

Some insiders say LGD forming international team is to join hand with LGD.int and imprve strenth and chance of winning million dollar in TI3, is that ture?
Misery:I dont know anything about that, Its definitely not for TI3 alone. First of all theres almost a year to the next International, and we dont know much about the tournament at all. Second, I believe we will be good training partners with LGD.cn, and with time we should be the best DotA2 club in china! My focus is now, and always the next tournament, ofcourse TI3 is huge, but in my eyes every tournament is important!
Pajkatt:Having two teams living under the same roof and who can also practice with eachother all the time is very beneficial for both teams, you can try out strategies that no other teams will know about and practice is almost always available.

Team LGD.cn successfully entered grand finals,however, they lost their champions as they defeated by Na’Vi and iG, which is their biggest regret in 2012. What do you think of LGD’s faith?
Misery:I think the top 3 of TI2 was very close, it could have been anyone of those 3 that could win the tournament. LGD.cn is a very talented team and they should just stick together and keep playing, they will win in the future.
Pajkatt:Going into TI2 I felt that LGD was the strongest team, as we had practiced against them online and never won…I was surprised that they didn’t win and I think they were unfortunate, but both iG and Na’Vi played very well during the final day of TI2.
I think LGD.int and LGD.cn will help each other and hopefully become two very strong teams!

What is the difference between them and iG or Na’Vi?
Misery:Mainly their playstyles, LGD is probably the more passive team of those 3, where as IG recently has been showing a lot of agression within the new patch. NaVi is just NaVi, and they will always be a unique team with a unique playstyle.
Pajkatt:The way I see it, the difference between LGD and iG or Na’Vi is that their playstyle can be easier to read, but harder to deal with. In TI2 up until final day, everyone knew how LGD drafted but no one managed to stop them anyway.

Now you are training with LGD together. Do you think it would contribute to you strategy communicating and all strenghs improvement?
Misery:Definitely. We just started practising seriously yesterday, as 1437 recently arrived in china. I can see that we are improving from every game.
Pajkatt:Yes ,I belive it will.

Chinese teams are still strong in TI2, and five team all entered final eight, even 3 team entered final four. Some foreign players say  Chinese professional would “destroy” DOTA2 as they did on DotA. Do you agree with it?
Misery:Yea I kind of agree with it, I dont think theres any potential left in europe besides NaVi, a few good players, but no teams that can play up with the chinese. European DotA now, is too much about streaming random public games and boosting your own personal fanbase, instead of practising with your team and generally focusing on the team.
Pajkatt:I think it’s not about chinese, european, american or SEA, it’s about the professionalism that exists in the chinese dota scene. Hopefully we will be able to prove that a team consisting of players of differenet nationalities combined with the dicsipline of chinese teams can compete with the best.

Are you still playing DotA? What is the biggest difference between DotA and DOTA2 do you think?
Misery:I have only played a few dota 1 games the last year, the main difference is that dota 2 is much much easier to play, all the new features and hotkeys etc in dota 2 as well as the engine itself, makes the game very easy to play for new players. Ofcourse this doesn’t matter too much on the highest level, since its the same for everyone, but from my point of view this is the biggest difference. Some heroes are much stronger in dota 2 than in DotA 1, and the drafting is more interesting in dota 2, it feels like you can use almost any hero in DotA 2, where as in dota 1, you will get punished much harder if you try to pick outside the box.
Pajkatt:I played a couple of DotA games since I got to china, but we will not participate in any DotA tournaments so now there is no reason for me to play DotA. I think the biggest difference is how the game looks and feels, it takes some time to get used to switching to DotA or DotA 2 if you played one of them and decided to switch.

Full interview over at SGamer