The Hotties of Battlefield 2 — TWL Forum Archive

2006-11-20 19:28

TeamWarfare Presents Team Hot!

TeamWarfare League sat down with Team Hot recently to chat with them about their Battlefield series accomplishments, and to ask them exactly how they got to be the king of the mountain and at the top of their game.

Team Hot has been a name since May 2004 when they started together as a Battlefield 1942 clan, mostly just pubbing it up. Lashton Bryth started the team out of players who frequented one of their favorite servers, run by TeamFHA, and originally aimed only to run a successful public server. Their very first competition foray was TeamWarfare Leagues Battlefield 1942 - 5v5 Infantry Ladder. Soon after, they found themselves competing on the 8v8 Conquest Ladder. With early success in competition, Team Hot's ideals and goals slowly began gravitating toward the competitive side of gaming. According to Lashton, "I basically had to beg top pub players to join my team so we could get away from the server admins at FHA. I happened to get lucky with the level of talent that frequented the server and we were pretty good instantly."

Team Hot's favorite part of Battlefield is the infantry side of it, where the members of Team Hot obviously shine, as it shows through in their favorite maps: Dalian, Sharqi West, Strike at Karkand, and Kubra. Lashton says that if you want to beat Team Hot, your best bet is to take advantage of what they consider to be their weakest point: Dragon Valley and chopper fights. "Our weakest map at this point is probably Dragon Valley since whoever wins the chopper fight wins the map regardless of how good you might be at other things."

Team Hot has determinedly met their obstacles head on, winning multiple championships in every installment of the Battlefield series. They consider one of their biggest accomplishments to be winning against Crucial in now-defunct Battlefield 1942 12v12. Lashton says that the "gaming IQs" of their players, team dedication, and a good work ethic got them to where they are today. These concepts, among others, are very important for new teams who want to fall in and compete with the big dogs, including leadership reponsibility and time management.

New teams are always good to see in a game. New people means new compeitition, new ideas, new strats, and new friends to make. The best thing about the competitive gaming scene, Team Hot thinks, is that you "can play teams spread across the country and continent and play with players that you would have never met otherwise. When you are pulling from a talent pool of that size, you expect the competition to be really good. We like how it is growing right in front of our eyes and that we are all caught up in it."

For those players and teams who have been around the block in competitive gaming, there is always the downside. Team Hot is no exception: "I dont like the stigma attached to gamers (fat, lazy, unsocial). I dont like how expensive it can be to send your team to a LAN. I dont like that some people and teams cant or wont respect competition and instead will try anything to win."

Maybe someday that will change. Certainly, to a certain extent, it's changing now. Gaming is becoming more and more mainstream, even if a bit slowly but surely. Ideally, all gamers probably want to see big LANs every weekend and gaming TV channels becoming very popular when the mainstream starts wishing they could watch them in their living room, as they would a football game.

Does this mean that professional gamers should start stepping up their image? What exactly does it mean for professional gamers to have a 'professional image' in terms of apparel? We put this question to Team Hot. "Weve been on TV multiple times and its a good question. I think certain images actually hurt the general perception of gamers, and that people should be exactly what they are. I feel comfortable wearing regular clothes, but I can also wear a suit. Other guys on my team dont wear suits, but feel comfortable dressing like crap. I would never endorse people pretending to be something they arent so I say let people dress however they wish. As gaming grows in popularity, youll see all sorts of people dressing all sorts of ways and there wont be any particular style associated with gamers anymore."

Regardless of image, things change and people move on to different games and different teams. The competition though, stays the same. Team Hot hopes to start working with Quake Wars upon its release. Curious, I asked Lashton how they liked the new Battlefield installment over the old one. "I personally like the infantry much better. The guns feel more accurate and the registration seems light years better. I also like how they adjusted medics so that you cant throw out med packs any longer. On a whole, it seems to have its good and bad, but, so did Battlefield 2...The ultimate challenge in Battlefield 2142 will be figuring out the flow of the game, which is often time consuming, and requires a high level of dedication and extremely talented players. I think and hope we have the desire and the talent but the ultimate proof is in the result."

Team Hot is currently holding the number one spot with a 17-1 record in Battlefield 2: NA - 5v5 Infantry Ladder, and has achieved first place in a number of big LAN tournaments. Check out their website here. Thanks to Team Hot for spending some time with the News Department at TeamWarfare League, and good luck in your future endeavors!

Team Hot Website Team Hot TeamWarfare Profile

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