Dutch RTS legend and Warcraft III champion Grubby breathes in fresh air into the Dota community, attracting Ceb’s and Dendi’s attention
If you are one of the OG Dota players who came from the Dota Allstars days, chances are you recognize who Grubby is. Known as the King of Orcs, Manuel "Grubby" Schenkhuizen is a renowned real-time strategy (RTS) player who won multiple Warcraft III world championships.
List of his biggest accolades include:
- World Cyber Games 2004
- Esports World Convention 2005
- World Series of Video Games 2006
- World Cyber Games 2008
- World E-sports Masters 2009
These are just some of his accomplishments from one of the longest-standing professional Warcraft III players. Grubby also dabbled in Starcraft II and some casting work for Heroes of the Storm. Now, he has finally transitioned into Dota 2 and has been streaming the game extensively on Twitch.
What does Grubby think of Dota?
The advantage of Dota 2 is that everyone in chat is already an expert. So when I'm playing it everyone knows what they're looking at. So that's been really fun. The game is really good and everyone understands everything already
Grubby has been streaming Dota for almost a month and he is already enjoying the game to the fullest despite it being one of the most intimidating games for newcomers. He stated that he likes the game a lot because his viewers are knowledgeable on Dota. This saves him the time and burden on having to explain the game.
"The advantage of Dota 2 is that everyone in chat is already an expert. So when I'm playing it everyone knows what they're looking at. So that's been really fun. The game is really good and everyone understands everything already" said Grubby.
One of the things he is trying to achieve in Dota is learning each hero from A to Z. Dota has a total of 123 heroes, which would give Grubby a lot of content to work with if he commits to trying out all heroes. One of the heroes he attempted was Clockwerk which he thoroughly enjoyed.
On top of learning the game on his own, Grubby also received some coaching sessions from former TI champions Danil "Dendi" Ishutin and Sébastien "Ceb" Debs. Both of them co-streamed their sessions respectively. Speaking of Ceb, Grubby had already seen and the famous TI8 and TI9 True Sights. He was especially captivated by the TI8 True Sight that he shed a tear towards the end.
On making Dota 2 more complicated than it actually is
Stop making a self-fulfilling prophecy would be my advise to the Dota 2 community. It is not as scary as you make it sound.
One of the biggest factors that reportedly kills Dota's player base growth is the game's excruciatingly high skill cap. While Dota can be quite challenging with its numerous hero-item permutations, it is the community's unreal expectations on newcomers that drive people away from the game.
Grubby believes Dota's perception is blown way out of proportion. In his stream, he stated that he was more scared with the messages being put out for Dota instead of the game itself. He then advised the community to "stop making a self-fulfilling prophecy" and to embrace the idea that playing against bots can be fun and helpful especially for newcomers.
Some stats on Grubby's streams
Grubby had seen tremendous growth on his Twitch channel within the last month of streaming Dota. On August, he had gained more than 10k followers, which was almost six times more than his previous gain. On September to date, he already well surpassed his gain in August with a total of 14k followers. He had recently hit his 500k follower milestone on Twitch.
Whether it is because of his previous achievements, his coaching sessions with Dendi and Ceb, or the fact that he streams Dota during Battlepass and TI season, Grubby brings in a breath of fresh air that the community seems to enjoy. How far will Grubby go in his Dota journey? Will he be the latest caster? Or will he potentially become a pro player? Only time will tell.
Stay tuned to esports.gg for the latest Dota 2 news and updates.