A couple days ago, I took some time to interviewed a couple of players from our Counter-Strike team to get a closer look at the WCG LAN Event they just got back from. The event was better known as the Dust-Off Quiver Shootout, and there were several teams that showed up at this event. The players interviewed were no new comers to the game. Jesse "pAUii^8" Giambatista and Chris "rillazLH-" Ramjohn take some time to answer my questions and give us a good idea of how the WCG event went.


Drew: First off, would you mind giving us an introduction of yourself and how/what influenced you to start playing Counter-Strike competitively.

pAUii^8: My name is Jesse Giambatista and I've been playing CS on and off for the past 10 years. I was introduced to the game by a few friends in high school, but didn't really get the chance to play it consistently until my freshmen year of college. I'm super competitive by nature, so playing CS was no different.

rillazLH: A close friend from my neighborhood introduced me to it actually. I used to play here and there, when I was in high school I used to get in to tons of trouble, I found myself pubbing one day after being grounded and I was like "wow this game is nuts", long story short the kids I use to pub with in the infamous SN server made a team and showed me competitive counter strike.


Drew: Going into the WCG Event, was there any sense of nervousness or doubts?

pAUii^8: First let me answer the question by saying that I personally went to the event for three reasons. One, to have some fun and meet teammates and others in person. Two, to shake some LAN rust before the big Texas LANS coming up. Three, I wanted to see how my teammates would conduct themselves at LAN and how their abilities would transfer from online play. I wasn't remotely nervous at any point during the LAN. I had doubts about the chairs holding people after friZy's chair collapsed underneath him (lol nick, I had to kid).

rillazLH: I wasn't nervous at all, being nervous comes from not having faith in your teammates. I had total confidence and faith in my teammates.


Drew: Do you think your performance lacked due to being at the LAN with all the noise and people around you? Was this your first event?

pAUii^8: I'm not one for making excuses, but since I know people enjoy reading them, here we go. I think we performed poorly due to not having our full lineup, not preparing with the lineup we had, and the lack of having any audio at the LAN made it impossible to have any communication, which therefore made having teamwork very difficult.

rillazLH: This wasn't my first event, it was my 3rd/4th LAN event. The noise was annoying, but every LAN is almost like that. I think our performance lacked because we didn't get enough time to set up our controls and everything. Torbull was being biased towards us and some other teams.


Drew: How does a LAN Event such as WCG differ from matches online such as ESEA?

pAUii^8: WCG, ESEA, ESWC, it doesn't matter what the name of the competition is. The only thing that is important is whether you're playing at LAN or Online. When you're playing at home your used to setup, so success depends solely on your ability to perform on a day-to-day basis. On LAN success depends on your ability to adapt your online settings to a totally new environment.

rillazLH: Well, for once it's hard to compare them. Online matches for ESEA, you're playing at the comfort of your home, you're more comfortable,you can adjust better. WCG, it was loud, a little cramped and we didn't get enough time to set up for 2-3 matches.


Drew: Are you satisfied with your performance? If there were anything you could change about the preparation/going into the LAN Event, what would it be?

pAUii^8: I'm never satisfied, not even when we win. What would I Change? Maybe we would have prepared? I don't know, the LAN was more about finding things out about ourselves and having fun, and less about preparing with a different lineup.

rillazLH: Am I satisfied with our performance? Nope, not at all. I would change everything about it, I would change the sitting spots, I would of yelled at Torbull for not letting us set up. See the thing is, we went in to that LAN as a pug in a sense, Yeah, we had four team members but we also didn't call strats because Jesse's(pAUii) mic was low. Only major problems was the time to set up and Jesse's microphone. Other than that, I feel like we would of been a force to reckon with at LAN.

Recap:
We hope to do more interviews with not only our teams but with other teams as well. We would like to thank our proud sponsor, End of Reality Servers. They provide nothing less than the best servers on the market and have great prices too! If your not playing on an End of Reality server, then your not playing at all! Until next time, stay classy! #eXult