World of Warcraft is a very fickle game, and very few players have risen to stay on the top for any real consistent period of time, however one group of guys has done such a feat; Yog, Neilyo, Woundman and Douja. These four young men have not only achieved fame and fortune, but a consistency of...
World of Warcraft is a very fickle game, and very few players have risen to stay on the top for any real consistent period of time, however one group of guys has done such a feat; Yog, Neilyo, Woundman and Douja. These four young men have not only achieved fame and fortune, but a consistency of skill not seen anywhere else in America.
The new fnaticMSI squad is lead by Max ‘Yog’ Yueh, one of the most confident players in the competitive WoW scene. Max currently plays as a Warlock on BG9 called Elle, along with Neilyo (Rogue/Nutzz) and Douja (Shaman/Douja). They were one of the first teams to reach a 3000 Rating and are also the top ranked 3v3 team in Arena at the moment.
The team has quite a few competitive achievements between the three of them; having multiple top place finishes and constant invites to MLG stops on their own. The guys may have only recently come together as a 3v3 team a couple months back, but have been dominating together ever since.
A calm and collected team always focused on winning makes them a force to be reckoned with; most teams fearful of even competing against them. A team of perfectionists, Douja is the first to let you know what you did wrong to help the team improve, Yog, always forcing practice even when they have already practiced so much. Woundman, always kicking himself for the tiniest of mistakes never feels like he is perfect, and Neilyo, one of the fastest and most skilled players to touch the game; the fnaticMSI.WoW Squad is a team with all the essential parts to become the best.
What made you first start playing WoW?
I started playing WoW after I saw the commercial for WoW on the TV with Mr. T. This made me want to buy WoW immediately.
What turned you over to the PvP side of WoW instead of the regular raiding and role playing side?
I PvP because PvE takes no skill except for STARS who killed yogg saron +0 that is the only skill point I will ever assign to PvE. The encounters are scripted and therefore stagnant. In PvP I can outplay someone so bad that they quit WoW after realizing the gap in strength. This cannot happen in PvE because the boss is a computer with no human emotions. The PvP side of WoW also has a much more interesting community. In PvP, the community consists of PvP professors telling everyone how bad everyone else is on gameriot. There is also a lot of drama in PvP. Being skilled is a big part of this game because it requires a lot of skills, so there are actually debates on what country is superior because of WoW PvP competitive scene.
Were there ever times when your family or friends did not accept your WoW career?
No my family does not care about me. They are divorced and they are happy I play WoW all day so we do not have to communicate.
How has your WoW career affected your life?
WoW has made my life good. I wake up, and I play some WoW, and go to bed I have not even eaten in over 5 days as I am typing this. I also get to make some friends in WoW that will be for life. In real life, real life issues get in the ways of your friendship sometimes. In WoW the friends you make are for a life time.
Do you have any regrets? Would you do it over?
I regret playing WoW instead of another video game, in another skill based game I will probably come out with 100% win percentage, instead of in WoW where sometimes I get beat by random noobs because of RNG.
What would you personally like to see done to the competitive WoW scene in terms of events and infrastructure?
I want to see bigger prize money. I also want to see MoB godfather at every tournament with his energy drinks. The WoW competitive scene should also hire some commentators above 1500 rated so they see the intricacies of this incredibly complex game and can verbalize them to the people watching the streams in slow motion.
What to you makes a good team? On top of that, what made you decide to play with this team?
We are a good team because I am the best player in the world. I decided to play with this team because they are also pretty good. If you assign skill points to each player, I will have 100 points (that is the biggest amount of points to have) and each of my team members will have 99 points each, making us the best team in the world, the second place team has 60 points. I guarantee to win every event this year believe it!
As a player how do you think you have affected the competitive WoW scene?
I have affected the competitive WoW scene by being the best player to play this game.
How did you come up with your alias?
It just came to me, I thought it sounded cool.
You are obviously very confident in yourself and your team. Does that ever come up as problem with other teams or even your teammates?
No, I am confident in my team but I give credit where credit is due. If someone is good, I will not go out of my way to prove that they aren’t. I am not one of those players who refer to everyone else as bad. If someone or some team is obviously good, I will be the first to acknowledge that.
You said that you would be the best in the world if you had picked a game that was 100% skill based, SC2 is coming out, is there a chance you will switch over and play that instead?
I might play it off to the side, but I don’t think America has competitive SC tournaments.
What do you do in your spare time when you aren’t playing WoW?
I play other PC games, or I’ll go spend some time outside.
After WoW what do you plan on doing as a career? Would you wish to continue on in E-Sports, maybe in a behind the scenes role?
My future career path is undecided, but more than likely it’s not going to involve E-sports. Depending on how the world of E-sports has evolved, I may choose to compete in future tournaments for other games, just not as a primary profession.
I started playing WoW after I saw the commercial for WoW on the TV with Mr. T. This made me want to buy WoW immediately.
What turned you over to the PvP side of WoW instead of the regular raiding and role playing side?
I PvP because PvE takes no skill except for STARS who killed yogg saron +0 that is the only skill point I will ever assign to PvE. The encounters are scripted and therefore stagnant. In PvP I can outplay someone so bad that they quit WoW after realizing the gap in strength. This cannot happen in PvE because the boss is a computer with no human emotions. The PvP side of WoW also has a much more interesting community. In PvP, the community consists of PvP professors telling everyone how bad everyone else is on gameriot. There is also a lot of drama in PvP. Being skilled is a big part of this game because it requires a lot of skills, so there are actually debates on what country is superior because of WoW PvP competitive scene.
Were there ever times when your family or friends did not accept your WoW career?
No my family does not care about me. They are divorced and they are happy I play WoW all day so we do not have to communicate.
How has your WoW career affected your life?
WoW has made my life good. I wake up, and I play some WoW, and go to bed I have not even eaten in over 5 days as I am typing this. I also get to make some friends in WoW that will be for life. In real life, real life issues get in the ways of your friendship sometimes. In WoW the friends you make are for a life time.
Do you have any regrets? Would you do it over?
I regret playing WoW instead of another video game, in another skill based game I will probably come out with 100% win percentage, instead of in WoW where sometimes I get beat by random noobs because of RNG.
What would you personally like to see done to the competitive WoW scene in terms of events and infrastructure?
I want to see bigger prize money. I also want to see MoB godfather at every tournament with his energy drinks. The WoW competitive scene should also hire some commentators above 1500 rated so they see the intricacies of this incredibly complex game and can verbalize them to the people watching the streams in slow motion.
What to you makes a good team? On top of that, what made you decide to play with this team?
We are a good team because I am the best player in the world. I decided to play with this team because they are also pretty good. If you assign skill points to each player, I will have 100 points (that is the biggest amount of points to have) and each of my team members will have 99 points each, making us the best team in the world, the second place team has 60 points. I guarantee to win every event this year believe it!
As a player how do you think you have affected the competitive WoW scene?
I have affected the competitive WoW scene by being the best player to play this game.
How did you come up with your alias?
It just came to me, I thought it sounded cool.
You are obviously very confident in yourself and your team. Does that ever come up as problem with other teams or even your teammates?
No, I am confident in my team but I give credit where credit is due. If someone is good, I will not go out of my way to prove that they aren’t. I am not one of those players who refer to everyone else as bad. If someone or some team is obviously good, I will be the first to acknowledge that.
You said that you would be the best in the world if you had picked a game that was 100% skill based, SC2 is coming out, is there a chance you will switch over and play that instead?
I might play it off to the side, but I don’t think America has competitive SC tournaments.
What do you do in your spare time when you aren’t playing WoW?
I play other PC games, or I’ll go spend some time outside.
After WoW what do you plan on doing as a career? Would you wish to continue on in E-Sports, maybe in a behind the scenes role?
My future career path is undecided, but more than likely it’s not going to involve E-sports. Depending on how the world of E-sports has evolved, I may choose to compete in future tournaments for other games, just not as a primary profession.
What made you first start playing WoW?
At first I wasn’t going to play because of the subscription fee, I also wanted to wait to see if the game would last or if it would just be a FOTM game where my friends quit after a bit. Eventually I decided to try it because they had all still been playing after quite some time and kept trying to get me to play, one of my friends had an extra cd key so with that and a free month trial there wasn’t anything to lose.
What turned you over to the PvP side of WoW instead of the regular raiding and role playing side?
Playing against a thinking human player will always be much more interesting and rewarding than a scripted NPC.
Were there ever times when your family or friends did not accept your WoW career?
Family of course had doubts, and friends that don’t play games themselves would of course judge to a certain extent, but nothing major and the doubts are mainly because people don’t understand how much competitive gaming has in common with sports, they require almost identical mentalities.
How has your WoW career affected your life?
It’s hard to say, I can’t really know what I would be doing instead of gaming if I never got into it, I had always been really competitive and active/athletic so I would have probably found something to compete in athletically. I guess I feel like I have more of a “whatever†attitude toward many things people are usually interested in, but that’s probably mostly just my personality.
Do you have any regrets? Would you do it over?
If I could go back I would probably try to play a sport at a high level just to see how it would turn out, most of the reason why I was able to excel in WoW was because of having the right mind/mentality and coordination that are required for sports.
What would you personally like to see done to the competitive WoW scene in terms of events and infrastructure?
There is no reason why blizzard shouldn’t hold more LAN events. TR should stay up permanently and be updated to current patches, as well as more online tournaments.
What to you makes a good team? On top of that, what made you decide to play with this team?
A good team consists of players that have a very high level of intuition for their respected classes in addition to being innovative.
As a player how do you think you have affected the competitive WoW scene?
I’m not claiming to be the only one to do a lot of the rogue techniques/strategies that were displayed first in my videos, but because of being one of the select few that came up with some very important key concepts/strategies it really helped many other rogues discover important strategies that are today necessities when playing at a high level.
How did you come up with your alias?
I couldn’t think of any creative word to use as an alias, one that actually had a meaning, where the meaning of the word had more than just face value. So since I couldn’t come up with anything creative in that aspect, but of course wanted something unique I figured it would be easy enough to just come up with something to add to my actual name, I also felt it would be convenient that people wouldn’t have to make the connection between what my real name was and my in game name. After a few times of being messaged by people saying something like YO, NEIL sup? I thought it to be somewhat humorous to use Neilyo, Neil, yo – as in its Neil or whatever.. A lot of people ended up reading it as Neelioh and calling me that which I didn’t mind the sound of so both of them work. Currently I use Rhythmic because of so many variations of Neilyo being taken, when I thought of rhythmic I felt like I finally found the name I was looking for, the original spelling wasn’t taken on the 2 most popular servers which was pretty amazing and the meaning was fitting to my philosophy on play styles, fluid etc, plus I like the sound.
You are obviously one of the more famous players in the competitive WoW scene; does that ever affect you at all?
Sure it affects me and people I play with, sometimes positively sometimes negatively.
After WoW what do you plan on doing as a career? Would you wish to continue on in E-Sports, maybe in a behind the scenes role?
I’ve never really considered in a behind the scenes role but I suppose it could be of interest, but I wouldn’t really know without experiencing a little bit of it, not to mention if the e-sport scene doesn’t look like it will grow I would probably play it safe and not count on making a career out of it. Currently I’m studying business to be safe because I don’t really know what I would actually enjoy working as for the rest of my life lol.
If you had to describe yourself in one sentence as person, what would you say?
Uhh I hate trying to write stuff like this and don’t want to think about it too much so I’ll just say “differentâ€Â. Check out my Fnatic profile “Neilyo†to see more detail on things I value / things that interest me!
You spoke briefly about your videos showing techniques as a rogue, is there any specific reason you wanted to make these videos for the community?
I felt like I had come up with some pretty innovative concepts / techniques / strategies on how some abilities could be used that I hadn’t seen anyone else use intentionally / consistently so I wanted to display this to see what people would think.
What can we find you doing when you arent playing WoW?
Playing counter-strike, working part time, school if it’s not summer, hanging with friends, theory crafting (not just gaming lol, I like to analyze and evaluate anything that interests me).
At first I wasn’t going to play because of the subscription fee, I also wanted to wait to see if the game would last or if it would just be a FOTM game where my friends quit after a bit. Eventually I decided to try it because they had all still been playing after quite some time and kept trying to get me to play, one of my friends had an extra cd key so with that and a free month trial there wasn’t anything to lose.
What turned you over to the PvP side of WoW instead of the regular raiding and role playing side?
Playing against a thinking human player will always be much more interesting and rewarding than a scripted NPC.
Were there ever times when your family or friends did not accept your WoW career?
Family of course had doubts, and friends that don’t play games themselves would of course judge to a certain extent, but nothing major and the doubts are mainly because people don’t understand how much competitive gaming has in common with sports, they require almost identical mentalities.
How has your WoW career affected your life?
It’s hard to say, I can’t really know what I would be doing instead of gaming if I never got into it, I had always been really competitive and active/athletic so I would have probably found something to compete in athletically. I guess I feel like I have more of a “whatever†attitude toward many things people are usually interested in, but that’s probably mostly just my personality.
Do you have any regrets? Would you do it over?
If I could go back I would probably try to play a sport at a high level just to see how it would turn out, most of the reason why I was able to excel in WoW was because of having the right mind/mentality and coordination that are required for sports.
What would you personally like to see done to the competitive WoW scene in terms of events and infrastructure?
There is no reason why blizzard shouldn’t hold more LAN events. TR should stay up permanently and be updated to current patches, as well as more online tournaments.
What to you makes a good team? On top of that, what made you decide to play with this team?
A good team consists of players that have a very high level of intuition for their respected classes in addition to being innovative.
As a player how do you think you have affected the competitive WoW scene?
I’m not claiming to be the only one to do a lot of the rogue techniques/strategies that were displayed first in my videos, but because of being one of the select few that came up with some very important key concepts/strategies it really helped many other rogues discover important strategies that are today necessities when playing at a high level.
How did you come up with your alias?
I couldn’t think of any creative word to use as an alias, one that actually had a meaning, where the meaning of the word had more than just face value. So since I couldn’t come up with anything creative in that aspect, but of course wanted something unique I figured it would be easy enough to just come up with something to add to my actual name, I also felt it would be convenient that people wouldn’t have to make the connection between what my real name was and my in game name. After a few times of being messaged by people saying something like YO, NEIL sup? I thought it to be somewhat humorous to use Neilyo, Neil, yo – as in its Neil or whatever.. A lot of people ended up reading it as Neelioh and calling me that which I didn’t mind the sound of so both of them work. Currently I use Rhythmic because of so many variations of Neilyo being taken, when I thought of rhythmic I felt like I finally found the name I was looking for, the original spelling wasn’t taken on the 2 most popular servers which was pretty amazing and the meaning was fitting to my philosophy on play styles, fluid etc, plus I like the sound.
You are obviously one of the more famous players in the competitive WoW scene; does that ever affect you at all?
Sure it affects me and people I play with, sometimes positively sometimes negatively.
After WoW what do you plan on doing as a career? Would you wish to continue on in E-Sports, maybe in a behind the scenes role?
I’ve never really considered in a behind the scenes role but I suppose it could be of interest, but I wouldn’t really know without experiencing a little bit of it, not to mention if the e-sport scene doesn’t look like it will grow I would probably play it safe and not count on making a career out of it. Currently I’m studying business to be safe because I don’t really know what I would actually enjoy working as for the rest of my life lol.
If you had to describe yourself in one sentence as person, what would you say?
Uhh I hate trying to write stuff like this and don’t want to think about it too much so I’ll just say “differentâ€Â. Check out my Fnatic profile “Neilyo†to see more detail on things I value / things that interest me!
You spoke briefly about your videos showing techniques as a rogue, is there any specific reason you wanted to make these videos for the community?
I felt like I had come up with some pretty innovative concepts / techniques / strategies on how some abilities could be used that I hadn’t seen anyone else use intentionally / consistently so I wanted to display this to see what people would think.
What can we find you doing when you arent playing WoW?
Playing counter-strike, working part time, school if it’s not summer, hanging with friends, theory crafting (not just gaming lol, I like to analyze and evaluate anything that interests me).
What made you first start playing WoW?
My history playing PC games started with playing Warcraft II, I've been playing Blizzard titles ever since and it just expanded to WoW since release.
What turned you over to the PvP side of WoW instead of the regular raiding and role playing side?
When I started playing the game I was intrigued with the roaming aspect of PvP in vanilla, and I've been PvPing in WoW forever. My roots in arena started at 60 doing roaming 5v5s and just 5v5s in gurubashi arena in Stranglethorn Vale against players like Vhell, Sck, Kollektiv, and Noktyn.
Were there ever times when your family or friends did not accept your WoW career?
Nope, they've always been in support with what I do, being referred to as a 'pro gamer' isn't too shabby ;p
How has your WoW career affected your life?
It's definitely opened my eyes to certain things, just how everything is different overseas and how people and cultures are unique away from home is a great experience.
Do you have any regrets? Would you do it over?
No regrets at all, this is a once in a lifetime type thing and should definitely be taken advantage of if you get the opportunity, the only regret I have is appreciating it more then I have.
What would you personally like to see done to the competitive WoW scene in terms of events and infrastructure?
I'd like to see Blizzard step to the plate and increase their commitment to the competitive side of WoW and do things like put up a permanent Tournament Realm and update it constantly with strictly 'PVP Balance'. Just completely ignore the PvE balance of WoW and strictly focus on balancing PVP in WoW. I'd also like to see Blizzard take the initiative more and do things like update the premades played on LAN to the current seasons or whichever the most balanced season at the time is.
What to you makes a good team? On top of that, what made you decide to play with this team?
I think number one the biggest thing that makes a good team is having teammates that enjoy playing together, if you hold grudges, and don't speak your mind it definitely has a negative impact on a team. Being cohesive with each other is key to keeping a team on top. Playing a lot is also extremely important so you can build those traits easier and keep a rhythm together. If you stop playing even for only a week you'll notice a huge difference in your game. The last thing that makes a good team is obviously just being good players in general with a lot of experience on the respective class you play. I play with these guys basically because of all the things I just stated lolz
As a player how do you think you have affected the competitive WoW scene?
I really do, a lot of people don't know but when we did roaming 5v5s etc in my opinion we really sparked the idea of WoW having the potential to be really competitive. A lot of the people we played with back then now work for Blizzard and have a big influence on the game and I believe if we never did those roaming nights and never did 5v5s in the arena the idea of arena would of probably come way after Burning Crusade was released.
How did you come up with your alias?
It's actually Slang for Marijuana, might sound corny but I just like the way it sounds lol
You said you don’t have any regrets and that you appreciate what you’ve seen and done. Is there anything you want to do or a place you want to go through your WoW career that you haven’t been able to yet?
I'd say I want to win a tournament more than anything, not 2nd place or 3rd, I want to win.
You seem to be the quiet one on the team compared to the star status of Neilyo and unique personality of Yog. Does this affect your role in the team, or how the team functions at all?
I don't think so, if anything it just balances out the personalities. Seems like we all mesh well together though so it seems to work out.
What can we find you doing when you aren’t playing WoW?
Sometimes I play basketball; I'm in a weekly league thing which is pretty cool. Other than that I play Dota some times and I just started playing League of Legends.
After WoW what do you plan on doing as a career? Would you wish to continue on in E-Sports, maybe in a behind the scenes role?
I'm not really 100% sure, I kind of doubt I'll have a career in E-Sports. I guess it just depends on what kind of opportunities present themselves to me while I'm involved in this.
My history playing PC games started with playing Warcraft II, I've been playing Blizzard titles ever since and it just expanded to WoW since release.
What turned you over to the PvP side of WoW instead of the regular raiding and role playing side?
When I started playing the game I was intrigued with the roaming aspect of PvP in vanilla, and I've been PvPing in WoW forever. My roots in arena started at 60 doing roaming 5v5s and just 5v5s in gurubashi arena in Stranglethorn Vale against players like Vhell, Sck, Kollektiv, and Noktyn.
Were there ever times when your family or friends did not accept your WoW career?
Nope, they've always been in support with what I do, being referred to as a 'pro gamer' isn't too shabby ;p
How has your WoW career affected your life?
It's definitely opened my eyes to certain things, just how everything is different overseas and how people and cultures are unique away from home is a great experience.
Do you have any regrets? Would you do it over?
No regrets at all, this is a once in a lifetime type thing and should definitely be taken advantage of if you get the opportunity, the only regret I have is appreciating it more then I have.
What would you personally like to see done to the competitive WoW scene in terms of events and infrastructure?
I'd like to see Blizzard step to the plate and increase their commitment to the competitive side of WoW and do things like put up a permanent Tournament Realm and update it constantly with strictly 'PVP Balance'. Just completely ignore the PvE balance of WoW and strictly focus on balancing PVP in WoW. I'd also like to see Blizzard take the initiative more and do things like update the premades played on LAN to the current seasons or whichever the most balanced season at the time is.
What to you makes a good team? On top of that, what made you decide to play with this team?
I think number one the biggest thing that makes a good team is having teammates that enjoy playing together, if you hold grudges, and don't speak your mind it definitely has a negative impact on a team. Being cohesive with each other is key to keeping a team on top. Playing a lot is also extremely important so you can build those traits easier and keep a rhythm together. If you stop playing even for only a week you'll notice a huge difference in your game. The last thing that makes a good team is obviously just being good players in general with a lot of experience on the respective class you play. I play with these guys basically because of all the things I just stated lolz
As a player how do you think you have affected the competitive WoW scene?
I really do, a lot of people don't know but when we did roaming 5v5s etc in my opinion we really sparked the idea of WoW having the potential to be really competitive. A lot of the people we played with back then now work for Blizzard and have a big influence on the game and I believe if we never did those roaming nights and never did 5v5s in the arena the idea of arena would of probably come way after Burning Crusade was released.
How did you come up with your alias?
It's actually Slang for Marijuana, might sound corny but I just like the way it sounds lol
You said you don’t have any regrets and that you appreciate what you’ve seen and done. Is there anything you want to do or a place you want to go through your WoW career that you haven’t been able to yet?
I'd say I want to win a tournament more than anything, not 2nd place or 3rd, I want to win.
You seem to be the quiet one on the team compared to the star status of Neilyo and unique personality of Yog. Does this affect your role in the team, or how the team functions at all?
I don't think so, if anything it just balances out the personalities. Seems like we all mesh well together though so it seems to work out.
What can we find you doing when you aren’t playing WoW?
Sometimes I play basketball; I'm in a weekly league thing which is pretty cool. Other than that I play Dota some times and I just started playing League of Legends.
After WoW what do you plan on doing as a career? Would you wish to continue on in E-Sports, maybe in a behind the scenes role?
I'm not really 100% sure, I kind of doubt I'll have a career in E-Sports. I guess it just depends on what kind of opportunities present themselves to me while I'm involved in this.
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