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Manuel "Grubby" Schenkhuizen, a former Warcraft III World Champion was recently brought into the Dota 2 spotlight after the community spotted him live streaming Dota 2 as a beginner. While the Dota 2 community at first ridiculed him for not knowing certain things despite being a Warcraft III veteran, the community were positively attracted to him after seeing his efforts to understand the game better as Dota 2 professional players such as Danil "Dendi" Ishutin and Sébastien "Ceb" Debs came to his aid.
Recently, Grubby was invited to OG’s Monkey Business podcast much to the delight of the community as he revealed his thoughts on the game.
Grubby explains his experience with Dota 2
Grubby was introduced as the latest guest of OG’s Monkey Business Podcast Episode 39, along with the podcast’s co-hosts of Johan "N0tail" Sundstein and OG's CEO, JMR Luna. During the podcast, the six-time Warcraft III World Champion first talked about his experience with Warcraft III as well as people leaving Warcraft III for other competitive games such as World of Warcraft or Dota.
“I spent most of my adult life playing Blizzard games. I didn't really look at many other games and I saw things like Dota 2 & World of Warcraft [WoW] as a distraction from my career. Like sure, I had heard and I have seen DOTA 1 picking up steam over the years, but I saw people leaving WC3 for WoW and DOTA and their skill level would just start to decline. For me, I didn’t play for the money so I decided to stick to Warcraft 3 at the time because I wanted to compete in the game,” said Grubby.
N0tail then revealed to Grubby about the longevity of DOTA 2, saying that the game is still popular thanks to the work of Icefrog and the people working on the game. “I think what has kept Dota alive throughout the year is the freshness of the game and the quality of the game. It’s not because they [Valve] managed the esports scene well or Dragon’s Blood on Netflix, but because the game catches the people’s attention. I’ve seen the depth and the work that has been put into the game is simply amazing to pull off,” said N0tail when talking about the longevity of Dota.
When talking about the culture of Dota 2, Grubby mentioned that he tends to get thick skinned when a certain part of his viewers decided to backseat and criticize his gameplay; however he was also fascinated by the game and as well as the community behind it.
“You slowly start to see the new jokes, the in-jokes and a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of funny jokes that I detect for the first time that are probably like long running within the Dota 2 community. There are some very active chatters that do gave their own bad opinion or guidance of the game since I’m new and all and they’re like the smarta**es of Dota 2, but I think that they don’t represent the majority of the Dota community.” said Grubby.
Many people within the Dota 2 community credited Grubby for having a positive thinking of the game and also giving newcomers a fresh perspective of Dota 2.
