Yoan "ToD" Merlo

Age: 22
Nationality: French
Race: Human

Yoan started his career as WarCraft III professional player in 2002, after spending some time playing StarCraft: Brood War and Counter-Strike. At the beginning he joined the french ArmaTeam, to which he came back after a short stay at SK-Gaming in 2003. Starting with a fourth place at ESWC 2003 he made his way to the top.

He spend most of his time with the british team 4Kings. Together with players like Grubby, Zeus and FoV he managed to win the WC3L three times. ToD himself won, besides other tournaments, the WEG Masters in 2006, as well as the Blizzard World Wide Invitational and the IEF Masters (both 2007). ToD currently lives in China most of his time and is playing for mousesports since 2008.

You are spending a lot of your time in China, where do you live and how do you communicate with the locals?

I live In Beijing downtown where I got my own apartment, I communicate with the very few mandarin I know and in English sometimes aswell.

What is your opinion about the chinese food?

Chinese food is extraordinarily wide, there is different food in all provinces of China, I like a big part of it, unfortunately I cannot eat spicy food and I heard China has some great spicy dishes so I sometimes feel like Im missing out good things.


How much time do you spend in your homecountry france?

Not much time at all lately, there wasn’t many events in Europe and France so I stayed in China for quite a while, but currently im staying in Europe for around a month, spendinh half of it in Germany and the other half in France.


How do you experience the communication inside the team, especially with the chinese players?

The communication is pretty easy with everyone except the Chinese players, mostly due to the fact that they don’t speak much English, but I hope in the future we can learn more Chinese and they can learn more English to make the communication between us better.

Which personal goals do you have for this year and what do you want to achieve with your team?

I would like to win at least a few tournaments, possibly good ones. As for with the team I hope we can win some teamleagues, winning WC3L sounds like something which would be cool to do.

How many hours do you usually practice a day? Do you play a lot with your teammates?

From 0 to 4hours playing time total everyday, but apart from this I think a lot about strategies and ways to improve my game, I like to think everything through, focus for a long time and then play. I don’t like to practice a lot without thinking because it brings me nowhere and I think it’s a waste of time.

Describe a usual day in your life.

I wake up, shower, eat, watch some replays, play some solo, play many dota, eat again and go to sleep.

Do you have hobbys besides WC3?

I like shopping but haven’t done it too much lately, and clubbing aswell which I have done way too much these past weeks.

How did you get your nickname and what names did you have before your current one?

I used to play Starcraft and one day I got to join a clan with many friends from the same city as me, the name of the clan was MaSsE, and I chose to name myself MaSsE-ToDoNtE, my 2on2 mate at this time with whom I was playing everyday started calling me ToD one day and I just kept it after that. Im too embarrassed to tell what my previous nicknames were but I will share 1 of them with you, the first nickname I used when playing Starcraft was [SFO]~YoYo~ :D