Mick: "Me and raz have been playing together for like a zillion years now, I don’t think that’s ever going to change, plazma and I have played rigether since the days of COD1 and he’s a really good friend of mine, I hope to go visit him soon in his new apartment and share his gf! lolbol"
raz: "like Mick has said me and he have been together since the beginning of cod2 and have found each others weaknesses as well as strengths, the bonds with new players comes quite quickly and developed fairly fast as plazma's and lukaz personality fitted in with the rest of the people in the team whilst there game styles added to this, I’d personally say they've bonded to the team very well."
For the past two years you are under a “curse” and have been changing the line-up almost every fifth month with the last one being in October 2, 2007. Have you passed this critical stage?
Mick: Ok, well to be honest I think this so called curse is slightly an over reaction, it just seems we change line-up a lot of the time when in actual fight we might change 1 or 2 players every 6 months. Many teams do this, but because we've been around since the end of COD it just looks like we do it more, and well there’s usually a big name player who joins or leaves and so it gets noticed and discussed a lot more. =) There will always be player changes, this is a game not marriage!
raz: Like Mick said, line-up changes are really part of gaming in general. People make out that its not the way to go forward with gaming with inconsistent line-ups, but really, sometimes changes are inevitable and cant be avoided. Most line-up changes in this team were always different, every time we accepted them and filled their shoes and I can only say, we filled them well.
"Also we are looking into expanding a bit in the future into maybe counter-strike again or warcraft 3/starcraft2"
So there will be no line-up changes in the upcoming month?Mick: There are rumours that there will be line-up changes, whether there will be or not you will just have to wait and see! Like everyone else!"
NewmaN: Line-up changes is never something wee want to do, but sometimes you have no choice. If there is a problem that needs fixing, a line-up change can be a quick problem solver, but could also create more problems.
I’m not saying we will or won’t make a change, looking back at CDC4 the result may not have been the best or what we expected but we went out playing a very good team.
Despite these changes you two seem to stay in the organisation and rebuild a new team. Has there ever been a time when the managers said: “Ok this is your last chance, if you change the line-up again we will recruit a new team.”?
Mick: To my knowledge, there has never been any question of the management wanting to recruit a different team in the organisation, sure we haven’t had the best run but dignitas doesn’t turn its back on teams that have the drive to try and try again, its easy to get to the top its harder to stay there, we've had it ruff but we know we have the potential, so does the management, and so does our fans " I think!”
raz: To my knowledge the management really have never showed signs of even considering that, which I find strange that after our under performances any other team would really do that. But I think there’s more to "Team-Dignitas" than most people think and that’s why we are still in the team giving it all we got.
Loyalty is the hardest thing to gain in e-sports and as most people will know or find out when they get to the top level of esports, knowing there is consistency and a structure in a team makes all the difference and I think from Newman’s point of view that’s what he sees in Mick and me is our loyalty as well as our ability to start from scratch and still have the potentional to be a top 10 esports team.
NewmaN: We have always trusted Mick’s and his teams judgement in the past and at the moment I feel that we will continue trusting it. The team has been loyal to us during rough patches so we will be loyal to them when they go through rough patches. Results aren’t everything to us, but it is important and if we thought it would help we might have changed the entire team.
We believe that a team needs a stable foundation to stand on and I think we have got it in this team, we just need to find the perfect balance between players and perfect preparation. I think we will succeed in the end.
Let’s talk a little about CDC4. After a successful start in the group stage you had to play against Tek9 and lost in a close match. Can this event be counted as successful or not?
Mick: This event cannot be counted as successful, the players we have, deserve to be finishing in the top3, simple as that. Every time we don’t make it into the top 3, in my opinion is a failure. Having said that we had a great time and we know what we have to do, to be better at the next cod4 LAN. Remember this was the first MAJOR LAN in COD4 after all the rule changes and stuff, so I think we will see a lot more quality at i33
raz: Like Mick said and stated the players we have in the team have the potential top be a top 5 team and going back to an article crow did early on gotfrag he also said this and added that: "the line-up has potential and talent."
Personally I wouldn’t say it was a failure just a learning curve as when we got to the LAN we found out many things about the game which we had no clue... Mick found out that u cant shoot through walls diagonally... *clap* for Mick, but overall I wouldn’t say a failure as you learn more from losing not winning. I can truly say that we learnt a lot and intend to fix the cracks in strategies as I personally think we are still using our cod2 tactical brains and haven’t fully moved to cod4 in a tactical sense.
NewmaN: CDC4 was not a failure but certainly not a success.
NewmaN you were attending this event as well, was it hard baby sitting them?
NewmaN: Going to events is nice and especially Crossfire events as they have a very nice feeling to them, it’s like a reunion of Mp40-weapon-gamers. Babysitting players isn’t that hard as most of them are quite mature and can handle themselves, unlike Mick who gets incredibly drunk after 4 beers and makes a fool out of himself.
Gamers nowadays especially outside CS are a lot more grown up and know how to behave
How many plush toys did you win this year? Or did Newman forbid you to spend money on it?
"The game will continue to develop with or without "bigger" tournaments"
Mick: So far no one has dared to challenge traine's record, but maybe sometime later in the year someone will be brave enough to take him on !
raz: Mike rigged the machine, as we all know tosspot investigated the machine after the interview and found that mike was using the new Intel processor and won lots of toys
So what is the thing that you will remember the most from this event?
Mick: The things I will remember the most are that we tried our best and didn’t succeed, we will try harder and harder until we reach our potential again, there is a lot of competition in cod4 but I know we have what it takes, oh and yer ill remember getting drunk after losing to tek9 on 10 euros, it was proper bo I tell tho.
raz: The things that I will remember is to never stop trying, our preparation for cdc4 wasn't all that great and we took the blow from that but what don’t kill us (team wise) will only make us stronger. And from cdc4 we have learnt a lot and it has truly opened our eyes to what can be done within cod4 as its just not cod2 anymore... it really is a completely different game
NewmaN: What will I remember the most from CDC4, hard to say really. We showed a really strong performance in the ETQW tournament and won it, but we also had a very good time just hanging out with everyone, spectating games or just having a laugh.
The next event is in your “home ground” - i33. As current champions, what are your chances to defend this title?
Mick: Home ground, yes, current champions, yes, I think our chances are extremely high just like for some of the other teams. The prize money is insane and it will motivate us even more to do well =)
raz: i-series is our home ground but that doesn’t change anything, but I can say it will motivate us to keep the title. Though anything can happen and we will try our very best to keep our title, just don’t get Mick on beer plx
NewmaN: I would say the biggest advantage we will have at i33 is that we are used to the location, the organisation and the extremely good help we get from Intel and Scan at the event with computers and monitors.
What are your future visions for the Call of Duty scene?raz: With big named teams picking up call of duty teams I can only see the game getting bigger and the more that the community helps to push the game forward there is no stopping the COD series. But the main factor is the support it will get, if the game has non it will just crumble, like any other game it needs backing and support, the more support the bigger it gets.
Mick: My future visions for the COD scene are that the game will continue to grow, more and more organisations will put money into the game and we will see more big tournaments, maybe not WCG or ESWC but ones that will definitely bring a lot of interest and media to the game =)
NewmaN: The call of duty scene has been developing a lot since Call of duty 2 , we expected this to happen and have been planning for it and its nice to see that other big organisations like ourselves, have picked up the game and aren’t afraid to step outside of CS. The game will continue to develop with or without "bigger" tournaments.
A little about Dignitas, isn’t that strange that many people and organisations still say that 4kings is the only professional UK team?
NewmaN: Well the only ones I have heard saying that, is 4Kings themselves. Depends on how you define professional and whether you think 4Kings are professional or not. They have gained a lot of strength after Geepak joined them and I hope they continue catching up to us.
In my opinion, I would say that there are several professional organisations in the United Kingdom. Us being one, 4Kings another but you also have Reason Gaming, TLR and Team Coolermaster doing a good job.
So can you be considered as a bigger team than “Four kings”?
NewmaN: We try not to compare ourselves to other clans that much, we just do our thing and it seems to be working out. Guess it depends on how you define bigger as well, in player numbers? Yeah we are.
What do you have to say on the fact that they ignore you and never write about their lost matches against you, whilst it always has lost matches against other teams?
NewmaN: Really haven’t noticed and I don’t think they do, if they do I guess its mistakes and not an evil strategy of theirs. I don’t visit their site too often and it doesn’t really concern us at the moment, we try to focus on our own website and little projects. We are currently working on a major overhaul of our website with some real good tv/vod-functions for fragmovies and such. We are also hosting a FIFA cup together with EA, abit and Qpad which is getting really popular within the FIFA community.
Ok, so besides this never ending rivalry and the upcoming fifa tournament, what else does await Dignitas in the near future?
NewmaN: We are really excited about an upcoming tournament we are attending at Wembley Stadium, we have some of the best Unreal Tournament 3 players in the world and we hope they will do good. Like you mentioned earlier we are also attending Multiplay i33 with the Cod4 team among with a lot of other players.
Also we are looking into expanding a bit in the future into maybe counter-strike again or warcraft 3/starcraft2.
I would like to thank you all for sparing some practice time for this interview. Anything that you would like to say to your supporters?
Mick: Shout outs to all my friends and family, I also want to shout out to all dignitas sponsors who clearly love me and of course the management that want my babies and I also want to shout out to cod4.invite, everyone who went to CDC and just cod4 gamers in general!
raz: id like to say a special thank you for Intel, Scan, Razer, X-Fi, Abit, ZyXel, and of course DELL for supplying the hardware which allows us to run Call of Duty 4 as before I couldn’t at all but shout outs to all the people that are still supporting dignitas even though we haven't showed a lot.
NewmaN: Thanks to all of our partners; Intel, DELL, Razer, Creative X-Fi, Scan.co.uk, Zyxel, abit and Qpad, Without them our ultimate goal of getting gamers to tournaments would never be able to happen.
:p Great bunch of lads, even if they look like emoclub.uk - hope they ezbash iseries.
xD
Good work stormm :P
:D:D
wooot i must be cool now
and btw...
the thing i will remember the most after cdc is george & ti´s stitch with a f**king sweet mini impact shirt haha :D
i think dig were very unlucky at cdc, they seemed to be playing pretty well but jus got raped by kammyz on a good day, gl for the future
nice itw
(byebye blackmane?)