The MW3 99%ers : Team DeathWish

Submitted by csn_johnclark on Sun 1/22/12 6:45pm EST

The Cyber Sports Network is proud to announce a new weekly series devoted to the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 community for the xbox 360 console. This series will be about the 'base' of the community, or as we like to call it, the 99%ers. These are the teams and players that feed the popularity of the game and give it life in the world of competitive eSports. CSN believes strongly in supporting the growth of eSports and believes that by supporting the base of each community a strong foundation can be structured to truly grow eSports in NA, EU and world wide.

This week we sent some community related questions to Team DeathWish. The full interview is below. CSN encourages the community to invest their time in reading about other Amateur teams and to help support the growth of MW3 as a viable and sustainable eSport.

----------------------------------------------------

CSN: 1. CSN and Aver Media recently ran an Open MW3 event in which your team competed. What were your overall thoughts on the event?
DeathWish: The event itself was really smooth, well organized and adding the two brackets into the event just made it more interesting to compete in. Otherwise, it was a great event to play in and hope they keep hosting Modern Warfare 3 events.
CSN: 2. The event was an opportunity for new teams to rise to the top. Your team did fairly well; could you give the readers a bit of history about your team? Who is on the roster?
DeathWish: Well, this team generated in Modern Warfare 2 with Organized Confusion and New Standards meeting up. Organized Confusion had Showtime, Sarkazem and Skrillex while New Standards had Coach and Monsterr. Down the road in Modern Warfare 3 Death Wish pick up two more guys from Public Enemy. Those guys being Burns and Shark, making Death Wish final with Showtime being the captain. Sarkazem, Skrillex, Monsterr, Burns being the players/sub of the team. Coach is the manager while Shark of the coach of the team.
CSN: 3. Do you feel that your team met expectations?
DeathWish: Not really, felt that with our captain to keep things organized just made our game lack in performance. If we had our two best slayers Monsterr and Showtime playing, then possible felt that game would have changed. Next time, we will make sure our whole main roster will be ready and play for the next event.
CSN: 4. Often times in the COD community teams will break up after a few loses or a bad showing. Is your team still intact and if so, what makes your team dynamic different than others?
DeathWish: Our team is for sure intact, it helps knowing that a good amount of Death Wish knows each other in personal and all have the same mind set towards our goal. I would have to say that we have all had time to build up our chemistry and that is what most AM teams lack..
CSN: 5. With the increase in streaming and media related to the console COD community, how do you plan on positioning your team to benefit from these opportunities?
DeathWish: Just by streaming what the fans would like to see. If they would just like to see a full day of scrims, then we will do our best to give them that. If another day, they want a Q&A of the team with just voices; we will do our best to give that too. Lastly, we will also stream as much as possible for our fans to see the hard work we are putting into this game trying to make them proud to be Death Wish fans.
CSN: 6. CSN believes strongly in supporting the 99%ers... these teams and players are the 'base' of the community and what feed the opportunities for the 'pros'. Does your team feel that you are getting enough support from others to reach your goals?
DeathWish: Yes we do, we have almost 800 likes on Facebook within 2 months which is flat out amazing and shows we have all the support in the world from our fans and most importantly our families. We have played against pro teams before and competed at a very high level with them. We have a lot of pro team respect which in this community seems to be huge. Our twitter we have over 300 followers and we are contacted everyday by followers and fans to Team scrim our team which we try to do so that they can see we give teams the chances we got to scrim top teams. As a team we believe we have all the support and backing we need from fans, family, and our friends.
CSN: 7. Personally... I have a huge issue with GameBattles. The ladders serve a purpose, but I feel that other options need to be available to the community for it to grow. What are your team's thoughts on the increase in competitive opportunities for AM and PRO teams?
DeathWish: Gamebattles to some of our members is a waste of time because you can play against people who are not even close to your skill level and it doesn’t help you get any better. Personally I feel GameBattles is a waste of time because you can get hit offline and that’s not how the game should be played. My team personally prefers iCn tournaments because you have a really good chance at playing against actual PRO players. They don’t have any issues with hitting team’s offline and the big thing for a lot of people is they are FREE. The very first tournament iCn held the team played in it and took top 8 out of 512 teams which are outstanding for our first tournament as a team on Modern Warfare 3.
CSN: 8. Where do you see your team 3 months from now?
DeathWish: 3 months from now I see this team getting ready to compete in MLG Pro Circuit. That is our ultimate goals is to make it to a MLG event and place well if not win and get PRO status then just improves every event on our placing. Our team is very stable I’ve never seen or been on a team with guys who are all pretty much best friends. They have a respect for each other where if someone has a problem or isn’t doing something right they approach them and the TEAM works on a solution and that’s something a lot of teams lack in my opinion. This team has all the potential in the world. Our slayers Showtime and Monsterr can drop 30-40 kills a map and still cap flags, Burns our objective player can cap 5+ flags and drop 20-25 kills, and our support players Sarkazem and Skrillex can both drop numbers and flags at any given time. The team has a very unselfish attitude even our slayers which is rare in a team. We are not even at our peak yet as a team and we can only get better from here. Our overall scrim record as a team playing against numerous top AM and Pro teams is 145-7. Dropping only 7 maps is amazing as a team and we are one of the most respected teams around right now.
CSN: 9. What sort of support or competition would you like to see from the community organizers like CSN, ICN and GoldenBoy? Are there formats, structures or other events that you would like to see for AM teams?
DeathWish: I would like to see these sites give more AM teams chances at PRO teams if they’re in listed in the tournaments. To be honest a lot of PRO teams are stubborn and are extremely hard to get scrims against if you’re an AM. Which is unfair but understandable at the same time because PRO’s want to play the best and you’re unproven at the time so there are two sides to the argument? But as a community I really wish we could see a lot more AM teams play against PRO teams. Even have the prize for winning a tournament is that you can scrim a PRO team for a week and see what it’s like. Every pro says they want to see COD grow as a community but they can be some of the most selfish people and not chances to people to scrim them and that shy's people away from attending events. Personally I love scrimming PRO's because I know even if we win 1 MAP we did something better than them on that map alone that shows we can play with some of the best players in the world.
CSN: 10. Now that we have created a wall of text... are there any shout outs or final thoughts that you would like to share with the readers?
DeathWish: First off, would like to thank our fans, friends, and families. Without you guys we would not be the team we are today. The dedication we have put into this already is crazy. Scrimming every night for 5-8 hours just to prove to everyone we are trying to do this for them. Second, our sponsors GamerRade, GreenDoorGeeks and Jakes GFX. You guys have all helped us out so much in such a short period of time and we are grateful to have your backing and support. Lastly, I want to give a shout out to my team. Most dedicated group of men I’ve ever met in my life. Even though we may get heated at times we stick together and we're doing this as a family and team. And I truly believe we have all the talent in the world to win multiple MLG events. I also want to thank Cyber Sports for this chance to express our opinions on these topics and hope to work with them in the future.