ESFI World

Hello everyone, my name is Justin Whitman otherwise known as @theprodigyrlx on twitter. I am the content director for everything Call of Duty on our website.  I hope you enjoy everything that our team has already brought you and also our content in the future.  I was at home sick today from my day job so I had some extra time to do some interviews! I publicly asked via twitter for a pro volunteer for an interview and the first one was actually ESFI's own LyaR!

First off, please introduce yourself to the readers.

Hey, my names Ray but online they call me LyaR. I've been playing competitive Call of Duty since 2006 and was recently acquired to team EnVyUs for the remainder of the 2011 season.

Can you tell us about your gaming career? How did you get into Call of Duty and the competitive scene?

Well the first Xbox 360 game I ever played was Call of Duty 2 at my neighbor's house.  I fell in love with the game and shortly thereafter my parents bought me an Xbox (I was only fourteen at the time) and Call of Duty 2.  I didn't play much for the first few months as I did not have Xbox LIVE, but when I did get it, it was only a month until I was introduced to GameBattles by some person who saw me do good in public match.  GameBattles was completely different back in 2006, and the competitive community for Call of Duty 2 on the Xbox was very small and tight knit.  I remember the first season I played, my team finished 8th on the ladder.  I thought we were the 8th best team in the world and that was ridiculous to me.  Needless to say I wanted to become a better player and I switched teams every few weeks and eventually landed on a website call NxGamers.  It is basically the equivalent of 360icons today.  Anyway, that website was more popular than GameBattles because GameBattles didn't offer trophies or tournaments where you could win prizes yet.  Throughout my few months on NxGamers I became pretty known throughout the community as V1S10N which was my alias back then.  I wasn't that good, but people knew who I was.  The last team I was on in Call of Duty 2 was x-Rated, a team led by PacMaN (then GuNn3R) and MaN1aC.  Both of those players went straight to the top in Call of Duty 4 and my connection with them most likely helped get to where I am today.  I established myself as an extremely good player in the first season of MLG Call of Duty in 2008, and PacMaN even went on to win the National Championship.  Like many of the 2008 pros, I didn't  play much in 2009 as the game got extremely boring.  When MW2 came out  I again established myself as a top player and got onto a team known as Epic Impact, or Ei o for short.  We were hands down the best team in the game in the beginning of 2010.  However, as most teams do, we broke up and I shuffled teams again, winning the Machinima $5000 Frag Cup and GameBattles Allstar tournament in the process.  On to Black Ops, my placings at MLG events have been 2 and 12. I am now on EnVyUs for the rest of the 2011 season.

I know that you started the 2011 Circuit off on Resistance; a team that got sponsored by the organization CheckSix, can you go through this years circuit with the readers that haven't really followed you in the past?

To begin with, Resistance was formed less than 10 days before the first event which was held in Dallas. TuQuick and MaiN were looking for 2 players and asked me to team, and NameLeSs was with me at the time so I brought him along. We scrimmed and didn't do too well seeing as how we had little to no chemistry. However at the event we took a lot of teams by storm and won the Winner's Bracket, upsetting LvG 3-2. Unfortunately we lost against them in the finals due to their momentum coming off of beating OpTic Gaming 3-0.  After placing 2nd in Dallas, TuQuick decided to leave for unknown reasons and we picked up Sharp to replace him. At this time we also acquired CheckSix as our sponsor.  We had been playing decently online and figured we could only improve as time progressed, so we stuck with Sharp for Columbus.  We were crushed at that event to say the least, and ended up with 12th place.  NameLeSs, MaiN, and myself decided to it would be best to try to replace Sharp, but shortly thereafter MaiN stopped playing competitively, and NameLeSs and I were left looking for two.  Due to my job and a wedding I had to attend, I was unable to make it to Anaheim and Raleigh.  Now I am on EnVyUs for the last two events, Orlando and Providence.

Do you see any simularities with your current team, that you've seen in the past with other successful teams that you've been a part of?

To be honest, no I don’t. This team I am currently is entirely composed of slayers, meaning any of us can have a huge game at any time.  On Resistance, for each event, we only had two hardcore slayers at a time.  So unfortunately if one of the slayers didn't get the right kills we would lose the map for respawn game-types unless one of the other two players had a huge game.  Now it is alright if one player has an off game because the other three will step up.  It's nice to be able to trust and rely on your teammate so heavily once in awhile, because everyone has their off days.

With it being said that your team is entirely made up of slayers and knowing slayers are usually more aggressive players, do you feel as if chemistry will be a weakpoint for the team come Orlando and Providence?

Definitely right now chemistry is a weak point for us. We have been pushing the same positions to often and leaving other spots wide open. Also we don't focus on playing defensively when we should be. However, the event is over a month away and I think by that time we will have our kinks worked out.  We scrimmed LvG recently and they beat us on four maps. We tied one and the ones that we lost were only by one flag or less than twenty points in Domination.  So judging by close defeat I'd say we are pretty good right now, but still have a lot of room to improve. I think that by the time Orlando comes around we will be able to give them a much tougher fight.

Okay, my friend Corey Dunn and I are huge critiques on Search & Destroy play due to our competitive backgrounds on PC, what do you think of S&D as a player and what kind of practice is your team putting into the game-type?

We haven't really played SnD at all as a team. We've only been playing together for a few days now and haven't had a chance to go over SnD strategies or any strategy for that matter.  Personally, I really like SnD, and it is probably my favorite gametype.  It's really all about outsmarting the other team, and I am usually the last one alive for my team because I don't like rushing.  I love being put into clutch situations as they are probably the most exciting element of competitive Call of Duty and it feels so rewarding when you actually clutch.

Not many of your followers may actually know this, but you're one of the gamers that love to see the competitive scene grow and actually do something about it.  Are their any plans once your team gets their own chemistry down to help the amateur teams get better?

Right now we're really focused on getting things together and improving by playing other pro teams. Once we get comfortable enough, I'm sure we will be doing open lobbies and things like that.  I will be streaming our scrims very soon at http://www.twitch.tv/xLyaRx so for now people can check that out if they're looking to see how the pros play.  The only advice I can give to an amateur team looking to play pros to get better is to hit up the teams that placed in the 10-20 positions at Raleigh because the majority of those teams were amateurs at the last event.  You will have a better chance playing them than a highly seeded pro team

What teams would you say are your biggest rivals right now?

I think the top four teams have pretty much been established in terms of pure skill, and in my opinion those would be EnVyUs, FeaR, LeveraGe, and OpTic Gaming. I don't think we have any rivalries with any one of those teams, but the competition will surely be fierce among all of us.  I see those three teams being our biggest threats going into Orlando, with OpTic being especially dangerous with their recent addition of ProoF who is the second best player in the game in my eyes.

Ray, it was great to have you in today, is there any specific message that you would like to send to the community and the readers of this article?

I'd like to thank anyone who actually read until this point. It must've been tough to read through my extensive virtual history, but I have been playing for over five years now. If you'd like to contact me the best way is through Twitter, @xLyaRx.  If you'd like to see my gameplay, you can head over to YouTube or Twitch.tv and search for the username "xLyaRx". Other than that, I'm out.