I am here with AEF's Most Valuable Player and one of the top riflers ever in the game - Italy XyLoS, who has amazingly never been interviewed before. His team United Kingdom Impact Gaming managed Silver at the recent AEF lan with XyLoS shining as the star player. I got a moment to talk to him about his opinions, feelings and future plans..

image: cardxyloscopy


So first of all, how do you think the lan went, in comparison with Crossfire Lans?

This was a great lan. The location was nice and the schedule had no delays at all, in comparison with the usual 4-5 hours wait at Crossfire Lans. This game is not dead and I'm glad that the Antwerp eSports Festival gave us another chance to prove that.

As a top 4 team, not many people (including myself:p) predicted you would finish so well in the tournament. How do you feel about your teams performance and what do you think was the key to your success?

Team Impact had a lot of troubles in the past with finding a good and stable lineup so I'm not surprised everyone had no trust in this team. With this new lineup, we had no big names in it but everyone was doing their job. To be honest, I’ve always said I would be happy if we could reach top 3 but I didn’t really expect a 2nd place. Our key was just to be a team, in every match we played, we trusted each other.

As you might have noticed, you were voted AEF's MVP with an astonishing 33%. Beating the likes of Squall, RELOAd, gifty, sqzz, teKoa, Matias and mAus. Why do you think you performed so well at this lan, compared to other lans? Did you do anything different in terms of your preparation and such?

The main difference for me between AEF and other Crossfire Lans is probably that this is the first lan where I actually prepared for more than 2 weeks. After CPC2 and CDC3 (where I played good), I stopped playing ET and I always had the chance to come back when it was 2 weeks before the lan so I couldn’t practise that much.

We all know about the ET Player Italy XyLoS but what about you? Tell us a little bit about the person behind the name, Single? Working? Studying?

Well, my name is Dario. I’m 21 years old and I live in a little city in the middle of Italy and I am a student. I’m in 1st year of university and I have a girlfriend.

This brings me to my next question. So what about your future plans? Will you remain active in ET or are lans the only thing that motivate you nowadays?

I don’t really want to play ET just for online cups/tournaments, as I did in the past. I’ll probably go inactive until I see another lan announcement (let's hope for that Croatia lan in October) and then I’ll see what options I’ll have to go there.

Ok, time for some random interesting questions..

Allstar team from AEF (excluding yourself)?

Estonia RELOAd
Belgium mAus
Finland Matias
Switzerland gifty
Germany drago

Favourite moment in ET?

When I won CDC3 with TLR and got the MVP award there.

Most enjoyable team you played for?

I’ve always been lucky with lan teams. All the teams I've been in were fun but If I have to choose then I’d say polar eSports at CPC2 but probably just because it was my first lan.

Biggest inspiration in ET?

Latvia Clown. He's the best team leader I played with so far.

Favourite rifler of all time?

Estonia Night is probably most effective but I’ve always liked the way Switzerland gifty plays.

Most Underrated player?

Netherlands hayaa / Belgium Jere

Most Overrated player?

United Kingdom kamzzz

Any shoutouts?

Shoutouts to everyone I played with in the past and to everyone I had a laugh with at AEF.

Italy XyLoS is looking for a movie maker to make his frag movie. Message him if you are interested! He will also be starring in the upcoming movie, This is ET - Coming soon.