Personal Computing

Game On interviews Moyes and Low-Life after the World in Conflict squad snatches victory in the nail-biting CPL 2008 World Tour grand final

On February 28th 2008, at the HMV Gamerbase in London’s Trocadero, the Cyberathelete Professional League’s 2007 finals for World in Conflict were played out by battle-hardened rivals Team Dignitas and Don’t Care. Both teams fought bitter skirmishes to take and hold the ground crucial to ultimate victory. A crowd of onlookers whooped and cheered as their favourite teams pulverised each other. In the end, it was closer than a rush hour commuter’s odorous armpit but the training and the tenacity of Robert Haxton (Moyes), Martin Rome (PuReBall), Niklas Björkendal (Low-Life), Jesper Hallberg (EnergetiC) and Felix Stålenhag (Cleric) paid dividends, and Team Dignitas emerged as world champions.

Game On: Congratulations. How do you feel?

Moyes: Unbelievable, to have come from the losers’ bracket, to beat them twice in the final. We beat them in the game before this on Farmland and that set the stage for this game. This game though was so, so close.
We played D/C last month in the qualifier and we beat them in the early stages but in the run up to this final, they beat us in the early stages. That put us in the losers’ bracket.

GO: That gave them the advantage of choosing some maps to discard.

Moyes: That’s a small advantage but the bigger advantage is that if you get to the final, you’ve got to beat the other team twice as much. We had to beat them on two maps today and we did that.

GO: How close was it?

Moyes: That will go down as a legendary game in the WiC community. When you swap sides on a map, it’s not unusual to have total domination. But when there’s less than ten per cent in it over forty minutes – that was forty minutes of gaming over there on that last map – then that’s just incredible. Every second, every unit, every re-supply, everything was significant.

GO: Was there a time when you thought you’d won it?

Moyes: Yeah. Yeah, there was. There was about a minute and a half before the end and I probably shouldn’t have thought it but I couldn’t help it. I thought, “We’ve got this.” Anything can happen when there’s a minute and a half to go but I just felt that we had it. I just really did.

GO: Was there a time when you thought you’d lost the game?

Moyes: The first ten minutes of the game, when we did the switchover, we weren’t really making enough ground. We’d lost the first side by about eighty per cent, which was a large percentage to go into the second map on. We weren’t making ground up quick enough for the first ten minutes of the game. I thought it might be ebbing away from us but something just changed. We gained some momentum on some key locations and others started to come our way. It increasingly looked inevitable.

GO: So, you’re now champions. How does it feel?

Moyes: Yeah, CPL UK – well, world – champions. Superb. To beat the quality of opposition to become champions, it’s not an empty trophy. It’s not an empty win. This is the pinnacle of the World in Conflict community. And we’re number one.
In the aftermath of the final battle, Game On spotted Low-Life, another Dignitas veteran, emerging from the rubble.

GO: How was it?

Low-Life: It was really exciting. We were kind of shaking. We didn’t really know if we were going to win or not.

GO: How much pressure did coming from the losers’ bracket put on you?

Low-Life: A lot of pressure. Yesterday, first we played Reason Gaming and won [2:0]. Then we played D/C. That one we lost, quite heavily [0:2]. We were shaken by that, I think. Then we played Druids in the losers’ bracket and won [2:0].
Then in the semi-finals we played Inferno. We’re good friends. We were pretty confident but they always do good stuff, so it’s hard to tell.

GO: Why do you think you won it?

Low-Life: It’s hard to say. There are so many factors. Something about our mix, the way we do things. I don’t know exactly what it is.

GO: Watching and listening to you play, everybody seemed quite calm.

Low-Life: Yes, you’ve got to be calm. You kind of distance yourself, actually, to not get too involved. If everyone was fixated on the event, you wouldn’t be able to do anything.

GO: What are you going to do next?

Low-Life: I’m going to take a break from gaming, for a while, and see what comes up next. Today, we just going to get drunk, I think. I’m never leaving Dignitas but we’ve been playing four or five hours a day and the training intensified over the last few months and it takes it out of you, especially as I’m studying civil engineering in Stockholm. I have to concentrate on that now.

GO: Can you sum up the last year?

Low-Life: It’s been the best year for me, in gaming. I’ve travelled around the world, to different events, playing really hard and it’s just been fun to compete.

GO: Well done. And thank you very much.
With that, Game On left the team to enjoy the moment. Don’t forget, you can keep up to speed with what the world of pro gaming has in store for Team Dignitas, by reading Moyes’s regular Gamer’s Journal, here at Game On.

Intel Racing Tour Finals

Saturday, 9th March
1 pm
Hannover, CeBIT

Last Saturday the finals of the Intel Racing Tour 2008 kicked off at the Intel Pavilion at the CeBIT. The best ten drivers of the season met to show off their skills in Hannover, Germany. The main prize for the best of them was a BMW Z4 M Coupé.

The race took place on the track “Cyoto Ring National” in Live for Speed. But the participants did not use normal PCs but sat in BMW Sauber F1-chassis to provide the real racing feeling and spirit for the finals!

Due to the importance and the great prizes on the line, emotions ran high right after the start. The pace car came out multiple times, because of some collisions – just like in Formula 1 racing!

Steffen Stranger even left his chassis during the 14th round of the race, because he had been kicked out twice by the Dutch Vincent Staal in a chicane. At the end of the race, the nine remaining drivers risked everything to gain ground on their opponents. Hot action on the track! At the end Markus Gunzelmann secured the first place in front of Theo Laas and Patrik Burleson.

Markus Gunzelmann received the brand-new BMW Z4 M Coupé for his first place. A worthy prize for a worthy champion! The secon place was rewarded with a Fujitsu Siemens Computers Entertainment System consisting of a plasma-display, a notebook and a home-server. The third placed Patrik Burleson will attend a BMW driver education.

Intel Extreme Masters II Finals

Thu 6th – Sun 9th March
10am - 9pm
Hannover, Congress Center and CeBIT

Last weekend, the second finals of the Intel Extreme Masters took place in Hannover, Germany. The world's ten best Counter-Strike teams and Warcraft 3 players met to crown the champions, who would get their hands on their share of the 285,000 US Dollar prize money.

The tournament kicked off on Thursday at the Hannover Congress Center, where the contestants played through the group stages until Friday. No big surprises occurred during the Warcraft 3 tournament. The international stars Lyn and ToD went for the win in their groups, while Grubby and Lucifer had to consider themselves satisfied with the respective second place. German gamer Protois (group A) and Happy (group B) ended up on the third place of their groups, while last year's runner-up HoT didn't manage to get past the fourth place and thus was eliminated from the tournament.

Big surprises were to be seen in the group stage of the Counter-Strike tournament. The odds-on favourite fnatic couldn't display their usual quality and didn't reach the knock-out stage. Nobody could have foreseen that. Not less surprising were the strong performances of the German CS teams. Mousesports and SK Gaming from Sweden ended up first in their respectable groups. Alternate was strong enough to climb onto the second place of group B, just in front of the Korean team e-STRO. Team Roccat qualified as runner-up of group B, while SoA had to live with the ungrateful third place.

On CeBIT's first day of the Intel Extreme Masters II Finals, the teams that managed to end up in second and third place of their group met for the relegation. The winner of each match would qualifiy for the play-offs. Grubby and Lucifer retained control in WC3, while Alternate and e-STRO held the upper hand in CS.

So the play-offs began and Lyn showed a strong performance against his Korean fellow-countryman Lucifer, kicking him out of the knock-out stage. Grubby came out on top of his match against human player ToD. But the Dutchman was stopped by Lyn in the orc mirror match. The Korean was unstoppable and even last year's champion, French player ToD, couldn't defeat him in the big final after six incredible maps.

In CS, everything seemed really smooth for Alternate. They defeated mouz and raised their hopes, that they could reach the final by knocking out e-STRO in their next game. But they hadn't reckoned with the strong and motivated Koreans, who conquered Alternate and thus entered the final. Meanwhile, the popular ensemble of SK Gaming was defeated by Mousesports. They also won against Alternate, which meant that they would meet up with e-STRO in the final. Here,mouz ran rings around the Koreans. They won both maps and can now enjoy their 50,000 Euro prize money, as well as a good amount of fame and honour.

Team Excello wins Game On: World in Conflict inCup Winter Season Final

On Sunday January 6th 2008, Team Excello won the final of the Game On: World in Conflict inCup Winter Season, at which which the eight best teams had gathered for the showdown. At stake was 1000€ prize money and state-of-the-art Intel hardware for the winning team. After an impressive four weeks’ winning streak, Team Excello proved their dominance of the World in Conflict scene one more time. This was reason enough for us to get in touch with the 23 year-old team leader Ken ‘xLo^Xanath’ Johnson from Port St. Lucie, Florida for a chat about his team’s success, World in Conflict and its future in e-sports.

Game On: Congratulations for winning the Game On: World in Conflict season finals! How does it feel to be on top of the rankings after such a thrilling season?

KJ: Feels great! We won four out of eight inCups this season and victory in the finals is just the perfect roundup. We couldn’t be any happier, especially after the thrilling overall final versus Don’t Care, who had beaten us before.

GO: WiC is all about teamwork. Tell us something about the players in your team.

KJ: What sets us apart from the majority of teams in the community is that we’re primarily composed of leadership-oriented play styles. While in most teams this would lead to nightmarish conflicts of interest, we’ve managed to combine everyone’s abilities in such a way that there’s little we’re challenged by.

GO: Your team is made up of people from four different countries over two continents. How did the team come together and don’t problems arise from the time differences?

KJ: We came together because we were unhappy with the teams we were in. There is not a single player on our roster who was without a clan when recruited. While a roster from a singular country would have been ideal, the competitive community in WiC was not yet large enough to allow for that. But by working with one another to deal with barriers such as languages as time zones, we were able to incorporate unique styles and perspectives into one melting pot of a team.

GO: Was WiC the first game you played as a team or did you play something else before that?

KJ: WiC is, at least for three of us, our first competitive RTS. None of us has played together before; we come from extremely diverse backgrounds. We’ve played everything from competitive War3 to CPL-level CS.

GO: Why then the switch to World in Conflict? What's so special about the game some are calling the next-gen RTS e-sport title in your eyes?

KJ: As a competitive FPS player myself, WiC integrates the level of teamplay I’m accustomed to into a new and interesting format (RTS). For our experienced RTS players, WiC is a breath of fresh air with incredible tournament and ladder support. With the game’s three sides being mostly mirror images of one another, any imbalance is typically open to being exploited by both teams, so you tend to find balance within imbalance, if that makes sense. With community growth and continued sponsorship from organisations such as Intel and the CPL, I believe that WiC has every potential to grow into the world’s next competitive RTS experience.

GO: It’s said that your team, Excello, is currently the best in the world, an accolade which seems to be borne out by an impressive four week winning streak in the Game On: WiC inCup and by your victory in the season final. Are you really a step ahead of the others and why do you think that is?

KJ: Although we may have won four in a row, we’ve dropped the last two – we’re by no means invincible. In spite of our losses, however, I’m still confident that we are the world’s most powerful team, player for player. What has brought us here has been our dedication to ourselves and one another; the hours we give up to make practice times work, the ramen noodles we eat while practicing! Though we’re by no means perfect, we’re continually improving and can only get stronger.

GO: The American based team Don't Care seems to be your toughest competitor these days. Would you agree or who else would you add to the list of strong opponents?

KJ: Don’t Care is definitely number one on our hit list. They’re a great bunch of guys and they play the game equally well; if we’re off our game the slightest bit, they’ll make us pay brutally. Afterwards we’ll all hang out in Ventrilo, laughing and making fun of each other. Beyond them there’s Wilda, though with the loss of Lipton I don’t see them remaining a competitive force. Besides Wilda there’s Dignitas, although they’ve taken something of a back seat in WiC (which will hopefully change as their new roster settles in). There’s a handful of teams with great potential but nothing to really set them apart from each other; Fist of Zen, inFerno, Progressive, and so on.

GO: Although the World in Conflict scene is very close-knit, there were discussions between the players during the final matches. How far does the competition go?

KJ: We all love this game and the competition, and of course everyone wants to perform well, which sometimes leads to discussions. I don’t think that’s anything to worry about. In the end, we’re all good friends and hang out together in Ventrilo and have fun with each other, as I said before.

GO: While the WiC inCup is held exclusively online, the CPL will have another big WiC tournament in London at the end of January. Can we expect to see you there or do you only play online?

KJ: LAN? No way! Would take too long to load our cheats! Seriously though, yes, we’re planning to attend the London qualifier and subsequent world finals, provided we place well enough, which I don’t foresee being an issue.

GO: Talking about online and offline tournaments, how does victory in the inCup season compare to an offline event? What does it mean to the team?

KJ: It is definitely a huge success and we’re proud of it, since it’s been a hard challenge. I think inCup might even be the most prestigious title to win in WiC, because not only are all the best teams there but you also have a lot of young teams who can’t afford to go to offline tournaments. Those young teams come up with new, innovative strategies and it’s fun to meet them in the tournament.

GO: World in Conflict is produced by the well known Swedish developer, Massive Entertainment, who are working closely with the community. What's your opinion on their work regarding balancing and community support?

KJ: Massive is incredible. I’ve never before seen a group of developers that will get down in the trenches with their players; we’ve had Massive members playing for our team, hanging out on our Ventrilo, even sitting down for discussions lasting several hours about how we feel about the game’s status and progression. They genuinely seem to care about working for the right answers and not just the easy ones.

GO: Sounds good and makes us hopeful that WiC will have a great future. Thanks for your time and feel free to give some final shouts.

KJ: Thank you! Shouts to my team, who really did well this Sunday, and of course to all the other players. It was fun! Thanks to Massive and Intel for making this inCup possible and also to the crew, who did a great job.

Read more