I'm Carekoala, a new nick I picked up upon rolling druid in early 2008. Beforehand, I was under the nick Redhot playing mage on Reckoning, where I played first day on the 5v5 tr going 31-4 and ending #2 2 weeks later, but with a disqualification. I live in Chester, UK which is in the north west of England.

 

 

I was always active in competitive sports, even from a very early age doing silly sports day stuff. But, since my first Amiga I also played video games a lot, starting out in Internet gaming with Counter-Strike in its beta stages in '99/2000 - which I played for a very long time 'till I tried out the Blizzard game, Diablo II sometime towards the end of D2C. From then on I was hooked on Blizzard games which obviously led up to WoW.

As for me, my family did not really like me being a gamer at a young age, but they soon got to grips with it as i turned 16. What was your family's reaction when they found out you wanted to play games all the time? 

 

I only have close contact with my father, who only became truly interested and supportive upon my first tournament appearance (and win) at ESL Leipzig. Before then it always seemed frowned upon but it wasn't too bad. 

 

 
I never really 'got into' it, I was in it from the very start. I tried to play as early a beta as I could.

 

 

It was definitely not an easy ride for me. As I said earlier I played the 5v5 qualifier with an ebayed account on the team which we were informed about too late. I then played 2v2 mage/priest for the CGS qualifier in late s1/early s2, only to be wintraded out of our spot by a certain rogue/priest. I kept active in the 3v3 bracket on Reckoning, constantly having multiple teams in the top5 etc - in hope of finding a sponsor for WSVG - which never came, then WSVG died and tournaments were kinda nonexistent. The ESL 3v3 invite-only came at DH Winter 07, where my rmp tried our best to get in. We were in contact with Shawn, the admin, who said we were first on the substitute list if any of the invited teams were to not attend. Unfortunately for us, quite a few teams who weren't even playing WoW anymore accepted this tournament invite and went there only to get 0-3 WB 0-3 LB knocked out, which was very depressing. I quite randomly rerolled druid and topped ladders on Cyclone while in 2v2 playing with Paperkat. The European tournament realm then arrived which we were topping with Inflame, who we hadn't played with before. His computer broke down and he couldn't get a new one for 1-2months, basically before TR2 arrived. We grouped back together to play it, qualified with #1 and I finally got my first sponsor opportunity from Nihilum/mousesports.

 

Nihilum.

 

 

Nothing changed to be honest. I quit my work since it sucked anyways! (and I will attend university later this year)
 

 

It's a cool feeling to be in such a high profile organisation in WoW, definitely.
 

 

I've always kept up to date with their PvE progress from simple general knowledge of what's going on in WoW, and I was friends with the players they picked up first already (Cherez/Hydra/Beasteh).
 

 

We needed a way to get to all the tournaments basically, and Nihilum was easily the best offer we got. Their and mousesports reputation has always been very good so it was, imo, an easy decision.
 

How has your relationship with your fellow players changed since you joined the Nihilum team?

 

Well, I don't think things changed so much. Even when we play tournaments we try not to take it too seriously, stressing out sucks. We're good friends and we still have fun when we play, except maybe when we get rolled 3-0 by new setups made specifically for us : (.

 

Without the support from our wonderful Sponsors, this would not be possible. It is a very important feature for an eSports team to have good and dedicated Sponsors and also Partnerships. Thanks to Nihilum, we have that!

 

 

I'd say invest in the teams that win the tournaments, other than that I don't know. There's so many players who are new to esports, trying to make it big, who look at top players and buy their equipment.
 

 

It's very cool of course, and hopefully the cheering will only increase as we attend more tournaments. 

 

 

Competition? To be e-famous etc!

 

 

Standing on BE pillars, jumping back and forth over BE pillars. Hugging nagrand pillars. Soulfiring and Death Coiling groundings. Removing your windows-key so you don't alt tab during games like Paperkat does. Watching kids movies while eating room-service ordered kebabs and drinking horrible Spanish beer in preparation for a day of games. Lots of coca-cola. FPS BRAIN. And not using ns on a 2-2 of 2nd bo5 grand final then getting rnged for 5k in an intercept by a <10% warrior.

 

Go pro at online qualifiers, pick up a sponsor, go pro offline?! Practice :(.

 

 

It was cool. Didn't get much chance to check out the place though, but it was omghuge. I liked the area where we played a lot.
 

 

Should have NSHTed myself behind the pillar in the final match before showing myself for intercept. Wasn't expecting Siler to be so suicidal and rng me for 4.5k+ while dying simultaneously. Should also have not played tauren since I'm really not used to the range a tauren warrior has on a tauren druid, was getting macestunned from 20 yards all the time. But, imo, it was one of the most exciting games in a long time, too bad about playing with 200-300ms ping. Anyway, my minimum aim was to qualify for Blizzcon which we did so I'm happy with it, maybe a little disappointed to come so amazingly close on the win.

 

 

GRAMMERPOLICE, home of wowpros/cyber elfs/Tisha.
mousesports wowteam (Incarnated/Spirojörn especially) for being coooool guys to kinda share sponsorship. Jiffy, he just loves PVP. Mousesports/Nihilum management, especially archie. He makes it sound like he works so much, I almost believe it. The Nihilum sponsors, DELL, INTEL, SteelSeries, GEIL, GamePortal for making it all possible. Blizzard for making gg heheheheheh rng is the best love rng. Puffin wintrades.

 

 

 

To finish off the interview we've put up a fun small video made featuring Nihilum Plasma at the ESL Intel Extreme Masters Global Challenge in Leipzig, Germany. Editing by Yannis Ziakas.