GOTN Season 1 is quickly approaching, and the scene has already observed a plethora of roster revamps. One of those revamps, Awakening, sees three former high noon players: nilla, tipzy, and verb teaming up with neo and xlzghost for the upcoming season. I sat down with nilla to discuss.

Q: As the youngest buck in the community, tell us about how you got into COD2 and your career journey to this point.

A: Well I was 8 when this game released, and one day some kid from down the street invited me over to 1v1 him on Matmata. All he did was repeatedly prone-clip on top of sandbag roof, which I must’ve thought was excellent gameplay, as I bought COD2 on my PC and then never spoke to him again. I only had 10-15 fps when any smoke or dust was on the screen, so I found my way to rifles-only servers in 1.0, before eventually patching to 1.2 where I met Mikey, Phreak, NoSound, and Tipzy with his cycle of players that we scrimmed against until about 2012-13. So coming into this scene as a nobody, I’ve achieved more than I would have ever expected to. I grew up watching GotFrag demos thinking of how I missed out on competing in this game. Since the revival I’ve been able to play with and against names from those demos, all while “carrying” my way to a ring. I believe by now I’ve proven myself to be considered within some of the best fraggers and clutchers here in the community, so now I just aim to be part of a locked in roster that wants to be #1.

Q: Many folks in the community came to love High Noon and had high hopes and expectations given your results over the last few months. How do you categorize or describe your thoughts on the teams LAN performance?

A: I’m sure we would all agree that our performance as a team was poor. We had an end result in Dallas as 5-6th, which was the worst-case scenario for us. The roster was built to be a contender, and we were for some time, but I think confidence within the team diminished sometime after the new year which lowered our floor. We didn’t have the result in groups that we expected and we then lost a couple of close maps in playoffs that could’ve gone either way. We had chances to have a better result on both days, but we didn’t play as well as we needed to.

Q: As we look forward to the upcoming GOTN Season, your team has had a few roster changes from LAN, with 3 of you from High Noon joining Awakening. Can you talk about your new roster and how it came together? Including a brief stint on the free agents list?

A: Any plans we had post-LAN fell apart, and that took a couple of weeks to confirm. We then chose to try out free agency, but with the higher-end teams staying together, there weren’t many enticing spots open for us to go to. I was thinking about not participating in the league or being a substitute instead, but then Awakening reached out, and after some discussion we decided to merge for the season. Xlz and Neo are both great players that will help give us a clean slate to work with. It’s always exciting when you have a new roster, so I look forward to figuring out how we are going to play.

Q: What are your team goals/expectations for the season?

A: While we haven’t done anything but confirm our first scrim here in the next few days. The goal will be the same as any team I am a part of, to make it to the finals and win. With who we have on this roster, I expect no less than to maintain being within the Top 6.

Q: Have you talked about team roles? Is it pretty much what we would think or will there be any surprises?

A: We have not yet had any discussions about roles, maps, or anything related to in-server stuff. You might see a different shotty, maybe a different scope as well at times. I think we will look to play differently than we did as highnoon, perhaps we will be more aggressive this time.

Awakening

nilla

tipzy

verb

neo

xlzghost