SMITE and Paladins World Championship Day 1 interviews

The first day of the World Championships for both SMITE and Paladins brought plenty of exciting action, with some notable members of the community offering their thoughts on the proceedings.

The World Championship is the culmination of the two game’s respective seasons, as eight of the best teams from both SMITE and Paladins compete for the ultimate glory.

Throughout the first day of the competition, we caught up with SMITE Lead Designer AJ Walker and Ninja in Pyjamas Paladins’ star Ted ‘kowa’ Hansson.

AJ Walker is the lead designer for SMITE.

One of the biggest announcements to come from the World Championships was that SMITE would be making its way to the Nintendo Switch, something that Walker said gave the team at Hi-Rez a unique opportunity.

“We are really interested in the Nintendo platform as a whole,” Walker said of the record-setting console. “With the Switch, you can play SMITE really well [whereas] a lot of games like SMITE, you can’t play on the Switch. So we’re really excited to bring a unique type of game to that platform.” 

• Read More: Cross-platform play and progression is coming to SMITE, Paladins, and Realm Royale

When it comes to balancing for the new system, though, Walker made clear that Hi-Rez focuses first and foremost on making sure the gods perform well thematically and according to their character design before doing any sort of specific balancing.

Ted ‘kowa’ Hansson is the flex/damage player for Ninjas in Pyjamas’ Paladins team.

Ninja in Pyjamas came into the Paladins World Championship as the second seed from Europe, but were knocked out in the quarterfinals by Spacestation Gaming. According to flex player kowa, chemistry issues ultimately led to the team’s rough exit.

“We never connected as a team. The chemistry wasn’t there,” recalled kowa after the series ended. “Everything was really good in the online season, but we had issues that we couldn’t help. The practice wasn’t really there.”

• Read More: Upsets abound on Day 1 of the SMITE and Paladins World Championships

Kowa further explained that personal issues cropped up for some players that were unavoidable, but nonetheless looking forward to building team and developing team chemistry in 2019.

Day 2 of the event kicks off with the semifinals of both SMITE and Paladins at 8:15am PST / 11:15am EST. 

For everything you need to know about the SMITE and Paladin World Championships, be sure to check out our official hub with streams, brackets, and more.