This is an intimate and candid interview pertaining to all things Uraflamer -- No such thing as tl;dr in this thread! Enjoy!
What got you into twinking?
I have older cousins (twins) that both played WoW, and they are the ones who got me into this game. I was interested in the game, but my mom was hesitant about letting me play it largely due to the subscription fee that the game has. At the time I was younger and did not have my own credit card. So for a while, I knew about the game and would watch them play sometimes when I went over to their house, but didn’t have my own account. One of them played twinks and explained the concept to me, so before I had even made an account I already knew about twinking.
Right after the release of Cataclysm was when I was finally able to convince my mom to let me make an account. I started with the intention of leveling a main first, but by the time I had gotten to level 20 I was completely burnt out from the leveling process. I decided to make a Rogue (Stealthcnt), but stopped playing WoW before I had finished gearing it because I was starting to lose interest with the game and wanted to focus on sports. Until June of 2012 I played on and off as I casually leveled my main and geared up various twinks. It was funny because I would start gearing a twink and before it was completely geared, I would lose interest and make a new class. June of 2012 was when I started queueing twink BGs regularly. It’s also when I went out and bought a mouse and stopped playing with the trackpad on my laptop and figured out that you could keybind abilities to keys besides the default 1234567890-=.
It’s funny because my cousin played twinks because he basically liked pwning noobs. Ironically, the reason why I continue to play twinks is because I like the competitive atmosphere that 19 twink XP off BGs bring as well as the premades and now the Twink Cup. I also like the community aspect. You can go into a BG and if you have been around for long enough, will always see familiar names. There aren’t many other games that you can experience this in and it’s what makes twinking so unique.
On what class did you make a name for yourself?
Definitely mage. My cousins both played on Azgalor, so that was the server that I chose to roll on. The guild <Meat Puppet> was already established on this server, and that’s the guild that they told me I should aim to get in to. I got into the guild during mid Cataclysm, but I wasn’t very active in the game in general. I’m not completely sure about what was going on with <Meat Puppet> during this time, but I do know that it became more and more inactive until June of 2012 which was coincidentally when I re-subbed due to being on summer vacation.
When I came back, the guild was going through a revival and forming a premade team. There were already two rogues actively playing that were much better than me (Air and Requielm), so I decided to gear up a mage in hopes of getting a premade spot largely due to there being no other active mages in the guild. Due to my activity, I soon established myself as <Meat Puppet>’s Mage for premades. From this point onward it became my main class until the end of MoP.
Around the beginning of MoP was when I started to become a well known twink. The first half of MoP was when I improved a lot. This is where I started to work on areas of the game like CC and interrupts/fakecasting. I still remember my first game of MoP when I used Counterspell on a healer that wasn’t casting and was confused as to why they weren’t silenced.
It wasn’t until the second half of MoP that I became one of the better players in the bracket and from there I became better and better. I think something that is unique about me is that I pretty much learned how to play this game through playing 19 twinks.
Guild Resume. Favorite guild of all time?
This one was a toss up between <Meat Puppet> and <Skill Ratio>. They really are at opposite ends of the spectrum. As most people know, SR is more of an elitist guild where you have to be one of the better players in the bracket to get into. <Meat Puppet>, on the other hand, was almost the polar opposite. Pretty much everyone was welcome and looking back, we were pretty bad. However, it was a really friendly environment and we all had a great time.
The reason SR is in the equation is solely because of the Twink Cup last year. Although it didn’t exactly end the way I hoped it would due to uncontrollable circumstances, it was still a lot of fun and it was my first time premading with a top guild in the bracket. It definitely came with a lot of pressure though. We were pretty much representing the 19 twink bracket and defending it against the top RBGers at end game.
I’m going to have to go with <Meat Puppet> for this one. It was my first twink guild, and when I think of when I had the most fun twinking, it’s definitely Summer of 2012 with <Meat Puppet> even though we weren’t that good. If we had beaten instead of tied TSN in the Twink Cup last year I might have chosen SR due to the glory that would have come along with being the sole winner of the Twink Cup.
What's your sub at SUBWAY?
Growing up it was definitely the Italian BMT. However, for the past year or so, I’ve been eating healthy and try to avoid fast food as much as possible. The last time few times I had Subway I actually had a Double Chicken Chopped Salad because I didn’t want to eat bread. Believe it or not, it was actually really tasty. I know, I probably sound like a little girl haha.
Chips or cookies?
Once again, growing up I always preferred chips over almost any other snack. Lays Barbecue flavor or Old Dutch Salt and Vinegar flavors were my two favorites. Oh, wait. I just remembered Beer Chips. Those are without a doubt my all-time favorite. If you haven’t tried them yet, you are missing out. They’re pretty much the Jrbigchief of potato chips. These days, if I was offered either of these snacks, I would most likely respectfully decline and make up some excuse as to why I’m not hungry. Both are really delicious, but just a handful of chips or one cookie usually isn’t satisfying for me and I end up wanting more; it’s very easy for me to start binging on them which is why I try to avoid snacks like these. As good as they taste, I’ll be an emotional wreck if I eat them. Oh well.
After reading through my answers, I realized this question was probably in regards to Subway. Right now the answer would be neither, but before I turned into a health nut it would be the Dutch Crunch Barbecue Potato Chips without a doubt.
What is your favorite class? Why?
Overall, it would be Mage because it is by far the class that I have spent the most time playing throughout my twink career. With that being said, since WoD was released I have made the swap over to Warlock. I like to think of Desto Warlock as the new Arcane Mage of WoD. During the Twink Cup last year, on paper Arcane Mage looked good. However, most teams didn’t have a good enough player to pull it off. If you have a good player the Arcane Mage was a strong asset. If they weren’t good, then they became a liability to the team. It has high burst, and can be very good but requires a very skilled player to pull it off. This is exactly what Destro Warlock is like right now. I like playing an underrepresented class.
What is your favorite race? Why?
Asians. Because we are intellectually superior to every other race.
Kidding, lol. I really like Night Elf. The female casting animation is awesome. Plus, Shadowmeld is a great ability.
Watch or no watch? Any wrist swag goin’ on at all?
Not right now. Hopefully in several years when I have a full time job and can afford a nice one.
<Raw Tawent> and the beginning of that relationship?
It’s funny because I was never actually in <Raw Talent> specifically. I’ve only been in <Waw Tawent> and <Skill Ratio>.
I joined <Waw Tawent> in December of 2012, shortly before Pizza was banned. At this point, the guild was almost completely inactive. I asked Pizza if I could join and he seemed hesitant about it, but decided to invite me. My guess was that at that point he just didn’t give a shit.
When he came back on a new account, he changed the guild to <Raw Talent>. This involved changing the name of the guild and pretty much kicking everyone and then re-inviting the players he wanted to join the guild. When I asked him to join the new guild, his words were “Not right now. Maybe as time passes by.”. In retrospect, I realize that I wasn’t a very good player back then, and have come a long way. But at the time, I’ll admit that I was a little frustrated that I wasn’t in the guild when it seemed like pretty much everyone else was. This led to me publicly trolling/trash talking Pizza, the guild, and it’s members which formed a grudge between Pizza and myself that continued to grow for quite some time.
Shortly after Patch 5.4 came out, I resubbed and played during my winter break from college. I appearance changed my Male Blood Elf Mage to female and name changed from “Uraflamer” to “Cammarata”. The goal of this was to join Pizza’s new guild, <Skill Ratio> under a new name. Unfortunately, people quickly figured out that I was Cammarata and the word spread. Pizza was streaming at the time, and knowing that I was listening to the stream, would say things like “Jetlife is the best mage blah blah blah”, when I was in the same game as both of them to piss me off.
This was pretty frustrating, so I pretty much said fuck it and decided to redo the process, but even more secretly. I decided to create an Alliance Mage on a completely random server that no other twinks were on. The result was Snèákybèáver on the server Azshara. I suppose it wasn’t a completely random server for me because Azshara was one of the servers merged with my home server Azgalor, which made the gearing process very convenient. If Snèákybèáver was on Azgalor, it would have been a lot easier for people to figure out it was me.
I quickly built up a strong reputation for myself under this new name. At first, it seemed like absolutely no one knew who the hell Snèákybèáver was, although Grizzlefoot insists that he knew it was me from the beginning. It was funny because for the first few days that I queued, I would enter the BG with only a few level 10 or below green gear equipped. Before the gates even opened people would be telling the team to report me AFK. When the gates opened, I would Blink+Blazing Speed to the boots, and grab zerker hut. This made my team furious. Right before the initial mid fight, I would quickly swap back to my real gear set and go on to do high damage and KBs. With SR dominating PuGs with their 5-man group queues, I soon became sort of a hero for the Alliance.
I remember listening to Pizza’s stream, and the first game that I queued on Snèákybèáver happened to be against Pizza’s group. Curley pointed me out and they proceeded to make fun of my poor 700 HP Mage. Curley even commented, “Where the hell do these random shitters even come from”, which I found extremely ironic and got a good laugh from. After a strong performance during that game, Pizza was dying to know who Snèákybèáver was because from the outside I pretty much came out of nowhere.
This went on for about a week or two where I queued BGs every day under this new name and built a name for myself as Snèákybèáver. Pizza was very impressed with my play under this identity, even saying, “Snèákybèáver is the greatest player to ever play this bracket.” on stream. Meanwhile, on the forums in those Best of 19s threads, people constantly listed Snèákybèáver as the best mage, while leaving out my other Mage, Cammarata. I’m the same player, just under two different identities, which goes to show that there is certainly a degree of bias involved with those types of threads/polls. For example, people that hate me and never put me on their lists in the past like Cogbrew listed Snèákybèáver as the best Mage.
On the podcast 15 Minutes with HB, HB tried to make a point about how he was seeing new players come to the bracket and play at a high level, which he felt was very rare in the past. To support his point, he went as far as listing a specific player. I saw this coming from a mile away. Snèákybèáver. Listening to this podcast made me laugh pretty hard at the irony and how he unknowingly ruined the point he was trying to get across.
Eventually Pizza came to the conclusion that Snèákybèáver had to be me. With this in mind, he decided that he would be down to have me in SR, and I finally joined the guild. My winter break was coming to an end, and I soon stopped playing as the bracket died down.
I resubbed in May after finals, and played for SR in the Twink Cup that summer. Playing double Arcane Mage alongside Grizzlefoot was so much fun. We literally blew everything up in sight, and the best part was that there wasn’t any other mages on our level at the time and very few mages could even compete. It really was a dream combo. I stopped playing about a month after the Twink Cup due to college starting up again.
Just like the year before, after finals of fall semester, I resubbed. With the class changes, I was hoping to play Warlock for SR as they were finalizing a premade team for the winter. When this didn’t happen, I was pretty frustrated. Luckily I got a spot on HB’s team for some wargames against SR. As Demo lock, I displayed my dominance in the game, having more damage than the Boomkins, Arms Warriors, and BM Monks in the game. On top of that, I had over twice as much damage done as SR’s Warlock. On stream, the healers on SR commented about how hard it was to heal through the pressure I was putting out so this wasn’t meaningless damage by any means. Needless to say, after these wargames, I was on my high horse. With my winter break coming to an end, I spammed the <Skill Ratio> guild skype chat calling various players in the guild bad. I did this for quite some time, until one day when Pizza posted in skype chat that he was removing two players from the guild when he got home. Although I wasn’t sure who they would be, I had a strong feeling that I would be one of them. While sitting in Orgrimmar on my warlock, I debated whether to /gquit or not because of my ego. I decided to leave the guild on my warlock but kept my Twink Cup Mage and alts in the guild. This felt like a win/win for me. When Pizza got home, he ended up removing Bam and Melseadys, two players who were extremely inactive. I’m still not sure if he chose one of them last minute because I left on my Warlock, though.
After these two kicks, I felt that I was out of the woods. Barbarous and Skeezine went on to do the same thing as me largely due to how embarrassing <Skill Ratio>’s players were at the time. About a week later Pizza cleaned all 3 of our characters from the guild with the reasoning that we had left on our main twinks. This didn’t make sense though, because Barb left on one of his alts and left his main twink in the guild but was still removed. Whatever.
I went back to school shortly after this, and resubbed and played for about a week during March while I was on my Spring Break after I cancelled my PCB plans. With the Twink Cup in the near future, I had the urge to rejoin the guild. I asked Restosexual to re-add me to the guild’s skype group. Usually, when people not in the guild are added to the skype group, Pizza promptly removes them without saying a word. However, Pizza coincidentally happened to be on vacation and only had access to skype through his phone. This meant that he couldn’t remove people from the skype group until he got back home and could to it from his computer. I thought this was absolutely hilarious and a lot of the members were frustrated that I was back and there was nothing Pizza could do about it. When Pizza announced that he was back from vacation, I was surprised when he didn’t remove me from the group right away. Shortly after, he messaged me letting me know he’d be down to have me back in the guild, so I joined. The next day was the last day of my spring break and I didn’t play again until mid May.
I started out laying low with the trolling and spamming in the skype group. But after a while, I started making fun of Curley, calling him fat and whatnot. He would send countless shirtless pictures to the whole skype group every day and I would spam the chat, talking shit about him. This is the main reason why threads like the Twink Bodybuilding Cup were created on TI. Some of the other core members of the guild became annoyed with my trolling as well as the fact that I joined the guild and went inactive in-game but spammed the skype group. I thought it was pretty funny. One day, Zeiren made a strawpoll regarding whether Pizza should kick me or not and posted it in the skype group. Several days later, I was removed from the skype group and saw that my twinks had been removed from the guild on the WoW Armory. Once again I had been kicked from SR, lol.
At this point I don’t really care too much about being in SR. Premading for them is a lot more desirable but that’s mainly because I want to have a strong team to play for during the Twink Cup and they happen to be one of them..
Explain the recruitment process involved with joining such a highly admired guild.
Although I’m not entirely certain, I do know that the ultimate decision comes down to whether Pizza wants to invite the person or not. However, I think other members of the guild can have an influence on his decision, with the core members of the guild having more influence than others.
I think the majority of the players get into the guild by either asking Pizza in-game if they can join, or Pizza asks them to join. I sometimes wonder if anyone that applies for SR on TI actually gets into the guild.
For those of you who have never been in SR, I think Skeezin described what it’s like to be in the guild best. Something along the lines of: “SR is like a piece of candy that looks really good but when you actually eat it, it tastes like shit”. Sure, being in the guild is cool at first but at the end of the day it’s just a guild tag. You might get to group queue with Pizza, but stomping pugs gets boring fast. If you’re premading for SR, then disregard what I’ve said in this paragraph. But the majority of the players in the guild aren’t, and a lot of those spots are practically reserved for players that have been in the guild for a long time.
Premades? History? Feats of strength?
As I’ve sort of explained earlier, I started out playing with <Meat Puppet>. However, due to the long process involved with setting up premades back in Cataclysm, we never actually had a full guild vs. guild premade. In early MoP we had a few wargames against <Up on the Rooftop>. After Cataclysm, there were not any serious premades until summer of 2013.
The first legitimate premade I played in was for <Xtreme Gang Crew> against <Viciously Delicious>. It was organized largely due to my friend Barbarous’s effort, and <Xtreme Gang Crew> was pretty much a real ID team full of very strong players. We won all of the games, but <Viciously Delicious> put up a pretty good fight much to my surprise, despite having mostly average players on their roster.
Later during the summer, I became friends with Agonist. He was forming a premading team, <Ne Obliviscaris>, and offered me a spot to play for them. This guild was on Bleeding Hollow Alliance side. We had several premades scheduled, but due to absences from other teams none of them actually went through. We managed to play a couple games against some last minute Real ID teams and won all of those games.
Whilst being in <Ne Obliviscaris> on Alliance side, I had joined <Endorsed by Kujatax> on BH Horde side, a guild led by Slyddur which was pretty much the new <Noodle Arms>. Although my main premading guild was Agonist’s, Slyddur asked me to fill in for a few premades for his guild so I played for them as well. Eventually, a last minute premade was set up between <Raw Talent> and EbK. Slyddur asked me to play, but the morning of the premade he told me that one of their main players was going to be able to make it, when he originally thought they would not be able to. I was a little disappointed, but I was just filling in for them so I wasn’t really upset. Although EbK had a lot of big names, the majority of the players were not very active in MoP. They ended up getting 3 capped by RT, and the guild pretty much died after that embarrassing game. In the end, I’m glad I didn’t play in that game.
The next premading guild I played for was <Skill Ratio> for the Twink Cup. We had a very strong team, with the exception of one spot that was an obvious weak link. The tournament went pretty well until the finals when Pizza pretty much got DDoSed every game. Although it was cool to finally premade for Pizza’s guild, I didn’t really like the defensive turtling strats that we ran that many spectators criticized our team for. But then again we were in the tournament to win, not to provide the most entertainment to viewers of the various streamers.
I am now planning on playing for <HARVEST> for the Twink Cup this year. Going into the Twink Cup this summer, I was guildless and a little worried about whether I’d be able to find a solid team to play for for this year’s Twink Cup. A huge hurdle for me was the change in meta. My main classes are now Warlock/Mage, and these classes are fighting for that 6th DPS spot on premade teams, with many teams preferring a 2nd hunter. After playing one wargame with Tapout’s Real ID team, he offered me a spot on his Twink Cup team. I felt relieved that I at least had a team to play with now, but knew that in reality, Tapout’s team didn’t have too much of a strong chance of winning the Twink Cup. Luckily <HARVEST> picked me up and I couldn’t be more excited. Despite the strong performance by <Against the World>, HB’s Twink Cup team for last year, I feel like he has an even stronger team this year. In addition, I feel like the team consists of a lot more dedicated players; my impression is that AtW had to do some last minute fill ins by players not rostered on their team due to attendance issues from some of their rostered players. I don’t see that as being a problem this year.
One feat of strength is that I have 10 MoP geared mages. Only two of them are geared for WoD though, mostly due to the Gift of X enchants being expensive. When I started to get bored with the bracket, I found enjoyment in creating a new twink under a new name and starting over, building up a new reputation for that name. Unfortunately, people would eventually figure out that it is me. I guess my playstyle is easier to spot than other people like Drayner who would do something like this.
How was the leadership during your stay? Too many chiefs and not enough Indians?
Actually, no. Good leadership is a tough quality to find in this bracket. I definitely don’t have it. If I’m talking the most during a skype call for a premade, then my team is probably a shit show as far as communication goes, lol. I think a big contributing factor to this is I almost only solo queue, so I’m not used to calling things out while I’m playing. It’s also not my personality to be the one talking on and on amongst a large group of people whether it’s in WoW or IRL. That’s <Skill Ratio>’s biggest asset. If you have a person who’s been the leader of the only consistent powerhouse guild over the last several years, they’re going to be a damn good leader. With that being said, HB and Grizzle both do a great job at leading as well. There aren’t many other leaders on their level in this bracket. I’ve never experienced too many leaders in a skype call being a problem before.
What got you into twinking?
I have older cousins (twins) that both played WoW, and they are the ones who got me into this game. I was interested in the game, but my mom was hesitant about letting me play it largely due to the subscription fee that the game has. At the time I was younger and did not have my own credit card. So for a while, I knew about the game and would watch them play sometimes when I went over to their house, but didn’t have my own account. One of them played twinks and explained the concept to me, so before I had even made an account I already knew about twinking.
Right after the release of Cataclysm was when I was finally able to convince my mom to let me make an account. I started with the intention of leveling a main first, but by the time I had gotten to level 20 I was completely burnt out from the leveling process. I decided to make a Rogue (Stealthcnt), but stopped playing WoW before I had finished gearing it because I was starting to lose interest with the game and wanted to focus on sports. Until June of 2012 I played on and off as I casually leveled my main and geared up various twinks. It was funny because I would start gearing a twink and before it was completely geared, I would lose interest and make a new class. June of 2012 was when I started queueing twink BGs regularly. It’s also when I went out and bought a mouse and stopped playing with the trackpad on my laptop and figured out that you could keybind abilities to keys besides the default 1234567890-=.
It’s funny because my cousin played twinks because he basically liked pwning noobs. Ironically, the reason why I continue to play twinks is because I like the competitive atmosphere that 19 twink XP off BGs bring as well as the premades and now the Twink Cup. I also like the community aspect. You can go into a BG and if you have been around for long enough, will always see familiar names. There aren’t many other games that you can experience this in and it’s what makes twinking so unique.
On what class did you make a name for yourself?
Definitely mage. My cousins both played on Azgalor, so that was the server that I chose to roll on. The guild <Meat Puppet> was already established on this server, and that’s the guild that they told me I should aim to get in to. I got into the guild during mid Cataclysm, but I wasn’t very active in the game in general. I’m not completely sure about what was going on with <Meat Puppet> during this time, but I do know that it became more and more inactive until June of 2012 which was coincidentally when I re-subbed due to being on summer vacation.
When I came back, the guild was going through a revival and forming a premade team. There were already two rogues actively playing that were much better than me (Air and Requielm), so I decided to gear up a mage in hopes of getting a premade spot largely due to there being no other active mages in the guild. Due to my activity, I soon established myself as <Meat Puppet>’s Mage for premades. From this point onward it became my main class until the end of MoP.
Around the beginning of MoP was when I started to become a well known twink. The first half of MoP was when I improved a lot. This is where I started to work on areas of the game like CC and interrupts/fakecasting. I still remember my first game of MoP when I used Counterspell on a healer that wasn’t casting and was confused as to why they weren’t silenced.
It wasn’t until the second half of MoP that I became one of the better players in the bracket and from there I became better and better. I think something that is unique about me is that I pretty much learned how to play this game through playing 19 twinks.
Guild Resume. Favorite guild of all time?
This one was a toss up between <Meat Puppet> and <Skill Ratio>. They really are at opposite ends of the spectrum. As most people know, SR is more of an elitist guild where you have to be one of the better players in the bracket to get into. <Meat Puppet>, on the other hand, was almost the polar opposite. Pretty much everyone was welcome and looking back, we were pretty bad. However, it was a really friendly environment and we all had a great time.
The reason SR is in the equation is solely because of the Twink Cup last year. Although it didn’t exactly end the way I hoped it would due to uncontrollable circumstances, it was still a lot of fun and it was my first time premading with a top guild in the bracket. It definitely came with a lot of pressure though. We were pretty much representing the 19 twink bracket and defending it against the top RBGers at end game.
I’m going to have to go with <Meat Puppet> for this one. It was my first twink guild, and when I think of when I had the most fun twinking, it’s definitely Summer of 2012 with <Meat Puppet> even though we weren’t that good. If we had beaten instead of tied TSN in the Twink Cup last year I might have chosen SR due to the glory that would have come along with being the sole winner of the Twink Cup.
What's your sub at SUBWAY?
Growing up it was definitely the Italian BMT. However, for the past year or so, I’ve been eating healthy and try to avoid fast food as much as possible. The last time few times I had Subway I actually had a Double Chicken Chopped Salad because I didn’t want to eat bread. Believe it or not, it was actually really tasty. I know, I probably sound like a little girl haha.
Chips or cookies?
Once again, growing up I always preferred chips over almost any other snack. Lays Barbecue flavor or Old Dutch Salt and Vinegar flavors were my two favorites. Oh, wait. I just remembered Beer Chips. Those are without a doubt my all-time favorite. If you haven’t tried them yet, you are missing out. They’re pretty much the Jrbigchief of potato chips. These days, if I was offered either of these snacks, I would most likely respectfully decline and make up some excuse as to why I’m not hungry. Both are really delicious, but just a handful of chips or one cookie usually isn’t satisfying for me and I end up wanting more; it’s very easy for me to start binging on them which is why I try to avoid snacks like these. As good as they taste, I’ll be an emotional wreck if I eat them. Oh well.
After reading through my answers, I realized this question was probably in regards to Subway. Right now the answer would be neither, but before I turned into a health nut it would be the Dutch Crunch Barbecue Potato Chips without a doubt.
What is your favorite class? Why?
Overall, it would be Mage because it is by far the class that I have spent the most time playing throughout my twink career. With that being said, since WoD was released I have made the swap over to Warlock. I like to think of Desto Warlock as the new Arcane Mage of WoD. During the Twink Cup last year, on paper Arcane Mage looked good. However, most teams didn’t have a good enough player to pull it off. If you have a good player the Arcane Mage was a strong asset. If they weren’t good, then they became a liability to the team. It has high burst, and can be very good but requires a very skilled player to pull it off. This is exactly what Destro Warlock is like right now. I like playing an underrepresented class.
What is your favorite race? Why?
Asians. Because we are intellectually superior to every other race.
Kidding, lol. I really like Night Elf. The female casting animation is awesome. Plus, Shadowmeld is a great ability.
Watch or no watch? Any wrist swag goin’ on at all?
Not right now. Hopefully in several years when I have a full time job and can afford a nice one.
<Raw Tawent> and the beginning of that relationship?
It’s funny because I was never actually in <Raw Talent> specifically. I’ve only been in <Waw Tawent> and <Skill Ratio>.
I joined <Waw Tawent> in December of 2012, shortly before Pizza was banned. At this point, the guild was almost completely inactive. I asked Pizza if I could join and he seemed hesitant about it, but decided to invite me. My guess was that at that point he just didn’t give a shit.
When he came back on a new account, he changed the guild to <Raw Talent>. This involved changing the name of the guild and pretty much kicking everyone and then re-inviting the players he wanted to join the guild. When I asked him to join the new guild, his words were “Not right now. Maybe as time passes by.”. In retrospect, I realize that I wasn’t a very good player back then, and have come a long way. But at the time, I’ll admit that I was a little frustrated that I wasn’t in the guild when it seemed like pretty much everyone else was. This led to me publicly trolling/trash talking Pizza, the guild, and it’s members which formed a grudge between Pizza and myself that continued to grow for quite some time.
Shortly after Patch 5.4 came out, I resubbed and played during my winter break from college. I appearance changed my Male Blood Elf Mage to female and name changed from “Uraflamer” to “Cammarata”. The goal of this was to join Pizza’s new guild, <Skill Ratio> under a new name. Unfortunately, people quickly figured out that I was Cammarata and the word spread. Pizza was streaming at the time, and knowing that I was listening to the stream, would say things like “Jetlife is the best mage blah blah blah”, when I was in the same game as both of them to piss me off.
This was pretty frustrating, so I pretty much said fuck it and decided to redo the process, but even more secretly. I decided to create an Alliance Mage on a completely random server that no other twinks were on. The result was Snèákybèáver on the server Azshara. I suppose it wasn’t a completely random server for me because Azshara was one of the servers merged with my home server Azgalor, which made the gearing process very convenient. If Snèákybèáver was on Azgalor, it would have been a lot easier for people to figure out it was me.
I quickly built up a strong reputation for myself under this new name. At first, it seemed like absolutely no one knew who the hell Snèákybèáver was, although Grizzlefoot insists that he knew it was me from the beginning. It was funny because for the first few days that I queued, I would enter the BG with only a few level 10 or below green gear equipped. Before the gates even opened people would be telling the team to report me AFK. When the gates opened, I would Blink+Blazing Speed to the boots, and grab zerker hut. This made my team furious. Right before the initial mid fight, I would quickly swap back to my real gear set and go on to do high damage and KBs. With SR dominating PuGs with their 5-man group queues, I soon became sort of a hero for the Alliance.
I remember listening to Pizza’s stream, and the first game that I queued on Snèákybèáver happened to be against Pizza’s group. Curley pointed me out and they proceeded to make fun of my poor 700 HP Mage. Curley even commented, “Where the hell do these random shitters even come from”, which I found extremely ironic and got a good laugh from. After a strong performance during that game, Pizza was dying to know who Snèákybèáver was because from the outside I pretty much came out of nowhere.
This went on for about a week or two where I queued BGs every day under this new name and built a name for myself as Snèákybèáver. Pizza was very impressed with my play under this identity, even saying, “Snèákybèáver is the greatest player to ever play this bracket.” on stream. Meanwhile, on the forums in those Best of 19s threads, people constantly listed Snèákybèáver as the best mage, while leaving out my other Mage, Cammarata. I’m the same player, just under two different identities, which goes to show that there is certainly a degree of bias involved with those types of threads/polls. For example, people that hate me and never put me on their lists in the past like Cogbrew listed Snèákybèáver as the best Mage.
On the podcast 15 Minutes with HB, HB tried to make a point about how he was seeing new players come to the bracket and play at a high level, which he felt was very rare in the past. To support his point, he went as far as listing a specific player. I saw this coming from a mile away. Snèákybèáver. Listening to this podcast made me laugh pretty hard at the irony and how he unknowingly ruined the point he was trying to get across.
Eventually Pizza came to the conclusion that Snèákybèáver had to be me. With this in mind, he decided that he would be down to have me in SR, and I finally joined the guild. My winter break was coming to an end, and I soon stopped playing as the bracket died down.
I resubbed in May after finals, and played for SR in the Twink Cup that summer. Playing double Arcane Mage alongside Grizzlefoot was so much fun. We literally blew everything up in sight, and the best part was that there wasn’t any other mages on our level at the time and very few mages could even compete. It really was a dream combo. I stopped playing about a month after the Twink Cup due to college starting up again.
Just like the year before, after finals of fall semester, I resubbed. With the class changes, I was hoping to play Warlock for SR as they were finalizing a premade team for the winter. When this didn’t happen, I was pretty frustrated. Luckily I got a spot on HB’s team for some wargames against SR. As Demo lock, I displayed my dominance in the game, having more damage than the Boomkins, Arms Warriors, and BM Monks in the game. On top of that, I had over twice as much damage done as SR’s Warlock. On stream, the healers on SR commented about how hard it was to heal through the pressure I was putting out so this wasn’t meaningless damage by any means. Needless to say, after these wargames, I was on my high horse. With my winter break coming to an end, I spammed the <Skill Ratio> guild skype chat calling various players in the guild bad. I did this for quite some time, until one day when Pizza posted in skype chat that he was removing two players from the guild when he got home. Although I wasn’t sure who they would be, I had a strong feeling that I would be one of them. While sitting in Orgrimmar on my warlock, I debated whether to /gquit or not because of my ego. I decided to leave the guild on my warlock but kept my Twink Cup Mage and alts in the guild. This felt like a win/win for me. When Pizza got home, he ended up removing Bam and Melseadys, two players who were extremely inactive. I’m still not sure if he chose one of them last minute because I left on my Warlock, though.
After these two kicks, I felt that I was out of the woods. Barbarous and Skeezine went on to do the same thing as me largely due to how embarrassing <Skill Ratio>’s players were at the time. About a week later Pizza cleaned all 3 of our characters from the guild with the reasoning that we had left on our main twinks. This didn’t make sense though, because Barb left on one of his alts and left his main twink in the guild but was still removed. Whatever.
I went back to school shortly after this, and resubbed and played for about a week during March while I was on my Spring Break after I cancelled my PCB plans. With the Twink Cup in the near future, I had the urge to rejoin the guild. I asked Restosexual to re-add me to the guild’s skype group. Usually, when people not in the guild are added to the skype group, Pizza promptly removes them without saying a word. However, Pizza coincidentally happened to be on vacation and only had access to skype through his phone. This meant that he couldn’t remove people from the skype group until he got back home and could to it from his computer. I thought this was absolutely hilarious and a lot of the members were frustrated that I was back and there was nothing Pizza could do about it. When Pizza announced that he was back from vacation, I was surprised when he didn’t remove me from the group right away. Shortly after, he messaged me letting me know he’d be down to have me back in the guild, so I joined. The next day was the last day of my spring break and I didn’t play again until mid May.
I started out laying low with the trolling and spamming in the skype group. But after a while, I started making fun of Curley, calling him fat and whatnot. He would send countless shirtless pictures to the whole skype group every day and I would spam the chat, talking shit about him. This is the main reason why threads like the Twink Bodybuilding Cup were created on TI. Some of the other core members of the guild became annoyed with my trolling as well as the fact that I joined the guild and went inactive in-game but spammed the skype group. I thought it was pretty funny. One day, Zeiren made a strawpoll regarding whether Pizza should kick me or not and posted it in the skype group. Several days later, I was removed from the skype group and saw that my twinks had been removed from the guild on the WoW Armory. Once again I had been kicked from SR, lol.
At this point I don’t really care too much about being in SR. Premading for them is a lot more desirable but that’s mainly because I want to have a strong team to play for during the Twink Cup and they happen to be one of them..
Explain the recruitment process involved with joining such a highly admired guild.
Although I’m not entirely certain, I do know that the ultimate decision comes down to whether Pizza wants to invite the person or not. However, I think other members of the guild can have an influence on his decision, with the core members of the guild having more influence than others.
I think the majority of the players get into the guild by either asking Pizza in-game if they can join, or Pizza asks them to join. I sometimes wonder if anyone that applies for SR on TI actually gets into the guild.
For those of you who have never been in SR, I think Skeezin described what it’s like to be in the guild best. Something along the lines of: “SR is like a piece of candy that looks really good but when you actually eat it, it tastes like shit”. Sure, being in the guild is cool at first but at the end of the day it’s just a guild tag. You might get to group queue with Pizza, but stomping pugs gets boring fast. If you’re premading for SR, then disregard what I’ve said in this paragraph. But the majority of the players in the guild aren’t, and a lot of those spots are practically reserved for players that have been in the guild for a long time.
Premades? History? Feats of strength?
As I’ve sort of explained earlier, I started out playing with <Meat Puppet>. However, due to the long process involved with setting up premades back in Cataclysm, we never actually had a full guild vs. guild premade. In early MoP we had a few wargames against <Up on the Rooftop>. After Cataclysm, there were not any serious premades until summer of 2013.
The first legitimate premade I played in was for <Xtreme Gang Crew> against <Viciously Delicious>. It was organized largely due to my friend Barbarous’s effort, and <Xtreme Gang Crew> was pretty much a real ID team full of very strong players. We won all of the games, but <Viciously Delicious> put up a pretty good fight much to my surprise, despite having mostly average players on their roster.
Later during the summer, I became friends with Agonist. He was forming a premading team, <Ne Obliviscaris>, and offered me a spot to play for them. This guild was on Bleeding Hollow Alliance side. We had several premades scheduled, but due to absences from other teams none of them actually went through. We managed to play a couple games against some last minute Real ID teams and won all of those games.
Whilst being in <Ne Obliviscaris> on Alliance side, I had joined <Endorsed by Kujatax> on BH Horde side, a guild led by Slyddur which was pretty much the new <Noodle Arms>. Although my main premading guild was Agonist’s, Slyddur asked me to fill in for a few premades for his guild so I played for them as well. Eventually, a last minute premade was set up between <Raw Talent> and EbK. Slyddur asked me to play, but the morning of the premade he told me that one of their main players was going to be able to make it, when he originally thought they would not be able to. I was a little disappointed, but I was just filling in for them so I wasn’t really upset. Although EbK had a lot of big names, the majority of the players were not very active in MoP. They ended up getting 3 capped by RT, and the guild pretty much died after that embarrassing game. In the end, I’m glad I didn’t play in that game.
The next premading guild I played for was <Skill Ratio> for the Twink Cup. We had a very strong team, with the exception of one spot that was an obvious weak link. The tournament went pretty well until the finals when Pizza pretty much got DDoSed every game. Although it was cool to finally premade for Pizza’s guild, I didn’t really like the defensive turtling strats that we ran that many spectators criticized our team for. But then again we were in the tournament to win, not to provide the most entertainment to viewers of the various streamers.
I am now planning on playing for <HARVEST> for the Twink Cup this year. Going into the Twink Cup this summer, I was guildless and a little worried about whether I’d be able to find a solid team to play for for this year’s Twink Cup. A huge hurdle for me was the change in meta. My main classes are now Warlock/Mage, and these classes are fighting for that 6th DPS spot on premade teams, with many teams preferring a 2nd hunter. After playing one wargame with Tapout’s Real ID team, he offered me a spot on his Twink Cup team. I felt relieved that I at least had a team to play with now, but knew that in reality, Tapout’s team didn’t have too much of a strong chance of winning the Twink Cup. Luckily <HARVEST> picked me up and I couldn’t be more excited. Despite the strong performance by <Against the World>, HB’s Twink Cup team for last year, I feel like he has an even stronger team this year. In addition, I feel like the team consists of a lot more dedicated players; my impression is that AtW had to do some last minute fill ins by players not rostered on their team due to attendance issues from some of their rostered players. I don’t see that as being a problem this year.
One feat of strength is that I have 10 MoP geared mages. Only two of them are geared for WoD though, mostly due to the Gift of X enchants being expensive. When I started to get bored with the bracket, I found enjoyment in creating a new twink under a new name and starting over, building up a new reputation for that name. Unfortunately, people would eventually figure out that it is me. I guess my playstyle is easier to spot than other people like Drayner who would do something like this.
How was the leadership during your stay? Too many chiefs and not enough Indians?
Actually, no. Good leadership is a tough quality to find in this bracket. I definitely don’t have it. If I’m talking the most during a skype call for a premade, then my team is probably a shit show as far as communication goes, lol. I think a big contributing factor to this is I almost only solo queue, so I’m not used to calling things out while I’m playing. It’s also not my personality to be the one talking on and on amongst a large group of people whether it’s in WoW or IRL. That’s <Skill Ratio>’s biggest asset. If you have a person who’s been the leader of the only consistent powerhouse guild over the last several years, they’re going to be a damn good leader. With that being said, HB and Grizzle both do a great job at leading as well. There aren’t many other leaders on their level in this bracket. I’ve never experienced too many leaders in a skype call being a problem before.
