woxic: "I am really proud because I am leading this team"

Özgür "⁠woxic⁠" Eker has led Eternal Fire to the Challengers stage of the PGL Major in Antwerp, but it was not an easy journey.

After a long road at the European RMR, Eternal Fire have finally secured their place among the Counter-Strike elite in Belgium. The tournament saw them go all the way to five games, defeating Dignitas, fnatic, and OG in the process.

Following their victory in the do-or-die match against OG, the Turkish AWPer turned in-game leader sat down with us to talk about the experience of playing from Turkey, the influence of his past IGLs, and the bomb incident against Dignitas.

Congrats on your win. You are going to the Major! It was a pretty long run with all five games, most against pretty big names. How does it feel and did you expect it to be ending like this?

Yeah, we had a pretty tough schedule actually, only playing games against very good teams, basically top teams. We just said to each other that if we wanted to go to the Major, we would have to win against anyone that comes up against us, the fact that we could not make it was not even discussed.

All the games you won were pretty close, such as the one against fnatic, and especially against Dignitas. For that game, you had a problem with the bomb and there was a pretty long technical pause, talk me through it.

Basically, if I want to make it short, it was when I was calling during that round, I was not even checking the radar because I was not supposed to carry the C4. When we were up on the A site, I was dead, and then after imoRR died too he said: "guys, there is not C4," and XANTARES was on the site but could not plant. That's why I said to the guys to push and try to kill them, and after that, we talked about it with the admins.

The round finished and we got the technical pause, and the admins came to Dignitas and asked them what had happened, and then they came to me and I explained the situation as I did now to you. Afterward, they said that they were going to check the stream and come back with a decision. Even though it was a 3v2 situation, the round had to be repeated because XANTARES had the time to plant, but actually ran away. If the CTs were not pushing through the smoke, we could have planted and that's probably why they wanted to restart the round.

You have been together as a team for quite a bit now, two of the most important changes with the squad have been the benching of ISSAA and you taking the in-game leader role. So talk me through the first, what went wrong with ISSAA?

He could not adapt in Turkey. He started to get lessons, but of course, it's really hard when you are doing hard work in CS while also doing hard work outside of it for the language. The Turkish language is really hard, the grammar is really difficult and even though he had some time to adapt, he could not, and we cannot blame him. After, he just told us: "guys, I cannot make it. It's not about you or anything, I cannot learn the language and we would still have barriers in English."

imoRR doesn't speak English so well, he understands it, but he can't create many sentences, that's why it was it was difficult. Sometimes one guy might say something, but another might understand something else when speaking in English. That's why we had to change the language back to Turkish.

Talking about the IGL, it was initially XANTARES but it did not work out so well. You took the reins and have gotten some good results since, and now you are going to the Major. What have you been doing differently?

Well, he [XANTARES] started playing as the entry fragger with imoRR and I said: "I could do it [IGL] for you guys, this is not my main role, but when I am just holding with the AWP I can just call." Also, I am well experiences after playing with guys like karrigan and ANGE1, so I learned stuff about this game like rotations and everything, but the other guys had to help me as well because I was not the main IGL, and I was doing it for the first time in my career.

That's why it was hard at the beginning, and it's still hard actually because sometimes my mind goes away when holding an angle and while I do that I don't see what's happening on the radar, and if I look at it I die if someone peeks. I am always checking on the top right corner who's about, who is throwing the flash for the other, who is playing there, etc. Sometimes these things make me not have my usual impact at all, but if we are winning in the end, it does not matter.

You said you are sometimes not doing 100% of the calls in games, who's the one that steps in these kinds of situations?

In that case, we just say at the beginning: "I will do that, but XANTARES, if you see something in-game you just tell me and I'll change the call." We've been working like this, and it's working well if we look at the results. Sometimes I don't need the input at all, but when the game is so close and tough while I'm holding something or just doing moves with the AWP, I can tell him [XANTARES] just control the others or do the calling while I'm doing something, because otherwise, we would have no opinion.

You mentioned ANGE1 and karrigan, but you have also played with ALEX. Which IGL has been the one that you look up to the most for inspiration, and the one that had the most influence on you?

I would say karrigan, but I cannot say ANGE1 had no influence at all because I was in my first professional team in Europe with him and I had just started speaking in English. I was so bad, I could not create any sentences, I was just saying words together and it was very bullshit actually. He suffered a lot actually [laughs], but also helped me a lot, and whatever happened he just saw me as a star, and he wanted to make me one. ANGE1 had played with s1mple before so he knew how to use me.

I have to mention karrigan because that guy is the mastermind, we went to five different tournaments and played five finals, winning four of them. That's why if you are learning from him, you cannot be a bad player at all.

One of the other changes you had at the start of the year saw Calyx benched for a few days before coming back. What was the deal with that?

He had some personal issues and said he could not focus on his game, but we needed another guy because we had officials. That's why we got the guy [duggyversus], but it was never permanent, when he arrived he knew that he was going to give the place back once Calyx was ready.

It's not the first LAN for you, or for XANTARES and Calyx, but it's the first one for you guys as a team and especially for imoRR and xfl0ud. How does it feel for you? Are the youngsters feeling any kind of pressure? if so, how are the veterans helping?

I don't feel any kind of pressure because I used to play in LANs, Majors, Pro League, etc. I know how these games can be hard and stuff, but of course, it's different when you are in-game leading because you need to do the calls and that can change everything, that's why it puts some pressure on me but not 100%. As a player, I am confident, but as an IGL it can sometimes happen.

For the boys, we are really proud of what we have done because it was really hard to make it here, way before from Turkey, and now we just came back and shared our experience to help them and level up their game sense. They are listening well and working well, so basically, I am really proud because I am leading this team.

You mentioned playing from Turkey, why don't you tell me about the difficulties of playing from there in regards to ping, visas, etc.?

The thing is that if you are from Turkey you need to basically get visas to get anywhere around the world. Anywhere a Counter-Strike tournament is happening, we need a visa.

Also, this might not be the most important part for me, but having really high ping. It's not super high, but everyone who we play always has better ping than us. We never had a better ping, sometimes it can be just an excuse, but sometimes when it's happening on screen it can get in your head and you start to complain about it.

Sometimes, I need to say on TeamSpeak: "guys forget about the ping, write 'net_graph 0' in the console, don't see it, and don't press tab." It should not even happen, but this is what we are able to get for now, and for the future big events which we missed like Pro League, if we could play this in some boot camp area outside of Turkey, it would be better. We cannot say we lost because of this, but this is a part of our excuses [laughs].

Now you are going to the Major in a little less than a month. Have you got anything prepared for it? Any boot camps, any scheduled practice?

Yes, we are going to do it. After this, we are going to discuss what we are going to do with our coaches and analyst, make the schedule and we are going to go forward on it. It depends on when our guys get visas because some of them will have to have to apply again for Belgium as some are out of date. It might not be possible to organize a boot camp outside of Turkey, but we can still make it there because we are in a gaming house.

It doesn't matter, there will be a lot of practice, and if we are working on our things knowing that they are going to work on LAN, it's a win-win situation.