Famed for his adventures with NoA, XeqtR is arguably one of the world's finest players and team leaders. With proven experience in many top tier tournaments, XeqtR's competitive background stretches far beyond the archives of E-Sports websites. Once a StarCraft player, XeqtR made a successful...

Famed for his adventures with NoA, XeqtR is arguably one of the world's finest players and team leaders. With proven experience in many top tier tournaments, XeqtR's competitive background stretches far beyond the archives of E-Sports websites. Once a StarCraft player, XeqtR made a successful transaction to Counter Strike and never looked back. He has been on the summit since 2001, when he was playing with the legendary NiP team, and later on became known for his successful work in NoA, that brought them several titles, including a CPL Winter 2004 and WEG Season 1 back-to-back championships.

The last months however were bleak for the star. After the international team of NoA collapsed he attempted to build a European version, but following a dismal performance at the WEG third season the members scattered. He had since then based the team on new foundations, with Danish and Norwegian stars by his side.

Now fresh from the team's first victory at the SHGOpen event, XeqtR sheds light on the process of forming the new group, what went wrong with the previous team and states his opinion on several subjects.

As you need no introduction, please begin by telling us one thing the majority of people don't know about you.

I cant sing for shit.


What's your favorite alcoholic drink and why?

Whatever gets me drunk is a-ok. But I rarely drink at all, so thats why I have no favourite one I guess.

Give us a rundown of your gaming history: what were you doing before CS, how did you start with it(CS) and the happenings throughout your career.

I didn't do anything abnormal before I started playing CS, just your basic: go to school, be with friends and play sports. I was introduced to CS by a friend of mine at one of his LAN parties. He was a map-maker for one of the real classic maps of all times in CS, cs_desert. We got to test the map and that's how I started playing it, on someone else's computer, since I didn't have a computer good enough to play Half-Life or CS at that time. I actually played Starcraft a lot online and didn't really like fps games like quake because I got motion sickness by playing it. It was only one day when I was really bored that I wanted to play some other game but StarCraft and by a random chance I had installed HL with a valid CD-key, so it was the only other game I could try out online. That's how it started I guess.

After a couple of weeks a friend of mine from Starcraft was going to try out for a clan in Norway, that was the best at that time apparently, and asked if I would do the try out with him. Back then it was all about how made the most frags on public servers, and I had gotten to be quite the public master so I made the cut and that's how i got introduced to the team aspect of the game, by joining the top fraggers of the Norwegian public servers. I Didn't really play that many clan wars back then, and during the next couple of years I just drifted through various clans such as N.A.T.O, HIFI and MAD, finally ending up in SoA with whom I was going to participate in the first CPL tournament ever.

It went really well there with a second place, losing only to a Finnish team called Z who actually knew more about how to tweak their configs than playing CS, but hey- they won a cpl by doing it so I guess that worked out for them. Sadly for them, it didn't work out so well later when CPL actually enforced some rules about configs in their next tournaments:). To cut a very long story short, at that CPL I got to know Potti for the first time and from there on it was all about me playing with NiP, being kicked from NiP, rejoining them, winning a lot of tournaments with basically the same guys, with couple of stand in performances for various clans and winning some more with them until I joined up with eoL and then later on with team9. Both were very successful periods of my career.


Then in the beginning of 2004 after some personal issues I decided to take a little break from playing CS and focusing more on real life issues, never really quitting though as I played with adrenaline at the ESWC that summer. But I never felt that was a team I truly believed in, like nip or eol or SK or team9 were. After that the plan was to just quietly stop playing CS and start studying in Bergen, but faith had other plans for me. I was still pretty close with some of the guys from NoA and when they underachieved the summer of 2004 they were looking for new players, and I got asked to join them and see how we'd perform playing some random tourneys, it went pretty OK for my own sake so they took me in as an replacement for knoxville who had lost the motivation for the game or something like that. With NoA we won first CPL Winter 2004 and WEG 1 and I took over more and more of the responsibilities with the team, and here I am, still playing under the NoA flag and preparing for the upcoming events of 2006.



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With the intercontinental version of NoA during WEG 1. From the left: ShaGuar, method, elemeNt, XeqtR and Naikon.


NoA was very unstable after WEG 1. was it due to you being unable to find the right team mates to play with?

NoA as an organisation was build on air and when the air went out it all fell apart. Ever since that time we've been trying to rebuild both the team and the organisation and finally I think we're getting somewhere. The different roster changes have been a part of that process, and that's it, nothing more nothing less.

The previous version of NoA seemed to have quite a large amount of talent and you weren't performing that bad either. What was the cause of these internal conflicts that led to the break up?

Everything was going as planned before WEG, we did well at the CPL UK considering the short amount of time we had to prepare, and we cruised through the WEG qualifiers. But I guess you learn a lot about the team and its players when you have to live together for a longer period of time and the experiences we got from Korea led to the break-up of the old team.
You've been a long time partner of DarK, from SK.Sca times to legendary eoLithic. Why did you decide to let him go as well?

It was a hard decision to make, but I felt that it had to be done to be able to compete at the level I was aiming for with the new NoA for 2006. The reason was not his lack of skill or dedication but I just didn't want to take the risk of having a player that I considered to be an "injury prone". Basically, it means that I was afraid he would make the practise routines for the rest of the team unstable because he gets sick a lot.


Was it harder to drop him than it was to drop the other three players?

It was never an easy job to drop any of the players, but I felt that it had to be done, and I just did what had to be done, nothing more to it really. I still see him as a good friend, and I hope he feels the same way towards me.


Why did you pick up Zonic and hpx from Denmark instead of creating an all Norwegian team?

The original plan was actually to create an all Norwegian team, but that didn't work out, so I needed two more players. zonic was a player that I had known to be very good for some time, and hpx had proven himself to be an excellent AWPer, and the fact that they were good friends as well made the choice kind of easy. And now I couldn't be more happy about how it all turned out.


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With the first European version of NoA. From the left: Speedi, KixeR, DarK and XeqtR. Sitting: Red


After the last split, did the thought about going International occur to you?

If you mean another intercontinental team like the old old NoA, no, not really. Its very expensive to have such a team where you have to gather all players for boot camps to be able to practice, and that makes it very hard to practice consistently over a period of time. And that's something I think is very important in order to be able to compete nowadays.


You've been on countless top teams and won as many events as one can. What still urges to play Counter-Strike on a very high level and keeps you from burning out?

I like to compete and win tournaments.


You are famous for your strong grasp of tactical CS. Was there ever a point where you decided to focus on that part of the game in particular and how did you develop that sort of a tactical mind?

Actually, its pretty funny because every team I joined, from NiP to NoA I refused to be in-game leader, because I've always been a good fragger and wasn't very interested to stop doing that and I felt focusing on tactics as well would make it harder for me to perform 100%. But I always ended up being the guy the team said was the most capable of doing it. So I was just kind of stuck with that role, and now I've just accepted that I have to be the guy that calls the shots. I've been lucky to have gotten to play with and against the best for many years now, I learn from others very fast as well as I have a pretty fine sense for logic I guess.
You also became very infamous for the demanding training regime you were implementing in the teams you were leading. Retrospectively, do you think you rightfully earned that kind of "reputation"?

Don't really know, I just want to be prepared for any tournament, and if I don't feel that we are I just get very disappointed with the team for not wanting it too. I can't understand how teams can go to an event and not be fully prepared when there's so much at stake.


Do you miss being in the NoA that won CPL Winter in 2004 with shaGuar, elemeNt, Method, and Naikon?

I've played in many great teams, and lineups, that was one of them, but I'm not one of those who like to dwell over things in the past and this is no exception.


From all the teams you played in, who is the best player you've ever played with and why?

I remember I thought of potti as the best player in the world at one time, so I guess he made the biggest impression at the time when I thought about it.


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With the current European version of NoA. Along the line: zonic, hpx, XeqtR and xione.


Why don't you join an established team rather than rebuild NoA time after time? Especially since it's not easy to form a team, even more difficult to make it a successful one and you're not one of the original founders of the NoA.

Because I got very close relations with the management of NoA, and I don't give up that easily.


When you rebuilt the latest formation of NoA, Catch-Gamer was creating its own "Norwegian All Star" team. Did you feel somewhat disappointed that you were not included in that team and were not able to help basing Norway's stature in CS like you did with eoL?

Never thought about it like that, I had no intention of leaving NoA, and I didn't think of Catch-gamer as any Norwegian all star team, but just another good team that was founded and happened to be an all Norwegian.


What is the purpose and status of XeqtR.com?

It's an idea that came up around the time when we won CPL 2004, and it's a test project, my main focus is on team NoA and its success, anything else is just a bonus. But the new site is done and its just matter of me filling in the blanks before it can be released, but I'm very busy with noA nowadays so it's been neglected for a long time. I hope it can be up soon though since many have been asking for it, and I don't want to disappoint my fans!


How did competitive gaming influence other parts of your life such as family, friends and sports?

A lot of course since I'm spending so much time with it, I cant really pinpoint specific parts of my life that have been influenced, but right now gaming takes up a lot of my time.


Looking back you surely have several extraordinary memories. Are there any particular ones, both during matches and outside them, which stand above the rest?

Winning CPL Winter 2004 with NoA from the lower bracket was a pretty amazing feat, just how the whole event turned out. With us getting knocked down early because of a stupid flash bug incident, and playing all day in the lower bracket to finally be in the final and actually managing to win twice against the same team from whom we lost because of a stupid glitch in the game- the whole experience from start to end was just unbelieveable.


XeqtR would like to thank NoA's fans and sponsors, www.SteelSeries.com and www.kappa.com.