LoLadies: The Chinese Female Powerhouse

This interview is conducted by me with the lovely LoLadies.Lou, the team captain of the Chinese all-girl LoL team, she is a top ladder player with over 2000 points in solo rank as well as a cosplayer for video games and recently, LoL commentator, let us see what she can tell us about her amazing teams of ladies.

Hello and thank you for accepting my interview. Will you please introduce yourself first?

Hello everybody my nick is LoLadies.Lou and I’m the captain of the Chinese all-girl LoL team.

LoLadies can definitely be considered as a pro-team in China since you participate in all the major tournaments such as IEM, WCG and WGT. However as to my understanding you guys are not yet sponsored, so how does the team run without sponsorship?

Actually we do not consider ourself as a pro-team, we are just a bunch of girls who love and are good at LoL. The girls in my team have abilities which I think are no different to male gamers. We participated in a lot of tournaments to show our strength. We do not have a sponsorship nor do we train offline together, and we all got our own jobs. We mostly train through the Chinese LoL ladders and we will have a bit of intensive training together just before major tournaments.

So have you ever thought about becoming a fully professional team through getting sponsorship? We have overseas teams such as PMS and SK.Ladies who are sponsored and competing in various e-sports categories. Does that interest you?

At this moment we do not wish to become a professional team simply because we all got our own jobs. Another major reason is that LoL does not provide a long-term all-female league for us to participate in and play teams from other countries. I think if that was to happen we’d all leave our jobs and put 100% into gaming.

You have emphasized a lot on your jobs? Can you tell me what you and your girls do in real life?

Um ok, I work in NeoTV(Chinese E-Sports TV) as a commentator, Estelle works for Tencent (Chinese LoL distributor/Server provider), Sherry works for CLC (Another Chinese Pro LoL team) as team manager, SugarMM also works for Tencent, Mint works in E-sports sponsorship, Cherry works as a model as well as Yan and Lu.

Since you have 8 members can you tell me the position distribution of your team?

I’m the captain and I play mid solo APC, Sherry plays the jungle position, Cherry plays ADC, SugerMM plays top solo, Lu and Yan are both support players, Mint is also top solo and Estell plays ADC. Our main squad are usually me, Estelle, SugarMM, Yan and Sherry.

You mainly participate as a group in offline tournaments, do you think you achieved a lot in 2011?

The 1st offline tournament was IEM Guangzhou, we almost got the championship but we messed up in the finals and ended up 3rd place. TGA our members got scattered in different teams, Sherry’s team defeated Ehome and got into the final 8 and became the only girl left standing. And in WCG China I became the only girl left after the final 8. During WGT, we got through to the final 8 but got knocked off, however we came back along with WE through player voting to the semi-finals in which we lost. We are actually extremely happy with our 2011 performances since in 2010 we are all noobs who can’t farm 100 in 30 minutes. Now in China there are a lot of emerging girls teams and we need to work much harder in order to stay at the top of female LoL.

You guys mainly play the Chinese LoL server, do any of you play US or Euro servers? Do you ever think about joining international tournaments?

Personally I’d love to play US or Euro servers but the lag is unbearable even with VPNs, so we never bothered. Obviously we’d love to play in a bigger stage to show our abilities but that chance has yet to come.

Does your team care about the western scene? Whos some of you girls’ favourite players?

Only a few, I like watching Reginald’s Own3d streams as well as HotShotGG and ChaoX’. And mainly we watch team matches of CLG and TSM.

Chinese LoL is emerging to be stronger everyday, since you’ve fought with all the Chinese top teams, which team do you think has the best potential? Any specific players?

iG and WE are the two strongest Chinese teams hands-down, Ehome after some roster changes are also formiddable, CLC is the dark horse which will be stronger through experience. As for players I think the 2 best players in China now are WE’s Misaya and iG’s xiaoxiao.

What sort of champions do you like to play and what type of strategy do you like?

I play mid APC I like Morgana and Annie, my strategy is actually really simple, perfect synced ulti combination which basically makes a big-bang and you can storm through the game. Combos such as Galio, Morgana, AD Kennen, Amumu and Sona’s ultis all at once are simply nuclear powered.

Thank you for accepting this interview, any final words to say?

Thank all our supporters over the past year, we’d quit if it wasn’t for all of you. We’ll continue to fight harder in 2012 and make them understand that girls are not inferior to guys when it comes to gaming.