[*]Hello Blazen, thanks for the Chance to talk with you. For those who don’t know you, would you give a little introduction regarding your experience with Enemy Territory?

Quote Hm, I started playing about two years ago I think. My first clan was with Ste, Marvel, Pilch, nGoty, and some other North American players we were [VR] Violent Revolution (Most of us never played RTCW) and we were a campaign ladder team. From then on I been on numerous clans, the most successful probably being iLLicit who I led with fellow Canadian player Animal. I took over Team Canada after that Estonia embarassment and I believe we went 2-2 losing to UK in playoffs, in which both Ste and Marvel were playing in so it was a little bit of a cock fight ;p but we got dominated =]

[*]USA had a direct invite to NC while team Canada had to play qualifier. Some people thought that rather ridiculous. Did it bother you, or rather, was that an issue in the NA ET-Scene?

Quote Err it wasn’t too much of an issue, but a few Team Canada members were like wtf and that’s all it was really, we just decided to let our game do the talking and remained quiet about it.

[*]And that worked well in the qualifier, you actually destroyed the Brazilians. Do you think ping was the biggest issue for Brazil or would it had been as easy if you played with even pings?


Quote The Brazilians would have played much better if it had been on equal pings, it was indeed an affecting issue. However, if ping’s had beeen even I would say match would of been a lot closer but we would of still of prevailed.

[*]What do you think of your group, you think you can manage to reach the playoffs? what team in the group do you fear most?


Quote Estonia of course, and it’s not only them I think we have an extremely tough group. I think if we can scrim hard and have some luck go our way, we can finish 2nd in our group.

[*]What are your general thoughts on NationsCup. A famous shoutcaster (no names here :> ) publically expressed his dislike for the NC recently, because of low teamplay compared to clanwars. What do you think on that?


Quote I think I share his view somewhat because it isn’t very team oriented, it’s a bunch of good players thrown together on the same team. It’s like the US Olympic basketball team, however if the NC was to be done between a EC season and TWL season (I think it is atm) then teams can get together and scrim, if it was during a season people (I know I would) give preference to their team opposed to their country. However, I think the time is perfect for a NC I see a few countries scrimming almost every other day so I think it should be fine. Clan matches make for much better/closer/skillful matches as international matches bring a bigger crowd, more anticipation, and just more hype as it is people playing for their country.

[*]If NC teams aren’t very team oriented… how do you actually prepare as team Canada? is this more like “go by my clan strategy, should work if the others just know about it”, or do you actually practice a custom strategy for the involved players?


Quote I think we use the captain’s (nazzy) team strats and modify and tweak it a bit to fit us. For example, we have a great rnade on our team (Animal) and we try to exploit that by changing up some of the positioning, also a great medic in redzone so just little adjustments to an already proven strat.

[*]In the next group game you will be facing Slovenia. I know that you’ve seen them lose against Austria in their first game. What do you think, will you defeat them? Which are the most dangerous players in your opinion?


QuoteWell I know me nazzy and animal were watching that match on ETTV and we concluded the same thing we already knew, we could beat them but it’s going to be very tough as they have some really strong players on their team. For the players, I think we gotta look out for olympus, illy-ya and JaKaZc.

[*]One problem of the NC seems to be the ping disadvantage for non European participants. How does team Canada cope with that and do you think a more professional NC (i.e. playing TWL vs EC) would somehow eliminate this problem?


QuoteI don’t think you can’t avoid the problem of ping disadvantages but you can definetly make them smaller. If we were to play against any Nation, I’m not sure how the system works yet but I think they give us the server we can play on, if they were to take into consideration we are an overseas team and they let us play on a UK server at least half the team would be pinging 100-120 which is much better than 150-170. I don’t think we do anything special to cope with the ping advantage other than just killout at 1/2 opposed to cutting it short, I know I don’t aim any different still aim for the head \o/. Other than that I think the people running the NC are doing a great job although I don’t like our group too much, but beggers cant be choosers.

[*]Why do you think is there such a gap between North America and Europe regarding ET?


Quote Bigger talent pool, europe has a lot better teams than the NA but at the same time they have a lot of “not as skilled” ET teams as the NA community. Say 1 out of 10 players will be high skill, in NA about 400 players so 40 high skill.. in europe about 1000 players so 100 high skilled players (just an example not real numbers). Simply put, they have more numbers.

[*]Okay, one last question, of course: Who is gonna win NationsCup?


QuoteI guess Estonia will defend their title.

[*]Thanks for your time, Blazen. Any shoutouts for the end?


Quote Shoutouts to everyone in North America keeping ET alive, sFx iOs SoF and my wife my inspiration animal.

Summary

  1. Blazen about ET, Nations Cup and International Events