I managed to get hold of Morg, a very well known manager and player in the CoD scene. He led MYM to some great victories and is now with the Dignitas team to see what he can do with them. I managed to have a chat about not only i35, but the whole of CoD.

Hey Morg, do you think you could introduce yourself to our readers, and what you do in the eSports scene.

Hi my name is Robert Black, I'm 20 years old, I live on the South Coast, Goodeh says I'm gay. I work for Dignitas helping to manage their CoD4 team.

How would you rate i35 to other i-series?

It is a smaller event to i34. i34 was obvioulsy the first one here at Coventry. I really liked Newbury, different floors for different games. I wasn't a particular fan of i34, the venue, i didn't really like it. I miss having the winter LAN as a smaller LAN aswell. It used to feel more personal, but now its a situation where as in i34 I didn't like the atmosphere, but now its growing on me.

And what about the CoD4 tournament? How do you think that is going?

I think its going pretty well, I think its more of a fashion back to the old CoD2 tournaments we had at other i-series. Only non UK team is EG. It sort of shows how the down turn of the CoD scene is going, but also how the UK scene is growing.

Part of the lack of big teams can be accredited to MaxLan. Do you think without it we would have had all the EU teams here again?

I think if MaxLan wasn't on you would probably see 3 or 4 more EU teams here. It is more expenseive to come to uk, same prize fund, so people always go to the cheapear place. The same sort of thing would happen the other way round if this i-series wasn't on this weekend, and maxlan was on, EG would have gone to MaxLan, as would have Dignitas ourselves and Reason.

Dignitas have stormed through the group stages, without any opposition. How do you view these group stage matches?

You've got to play the group stages. It gives a really good opportunity for teams that aren't that great to come into a LAN event, as obviously they are here for fun, and get to play one of the best teams in the world. I remember when I went to lan you used to think, oh wow, Dignitas, and the other top teams, I'd love to play them if i can. I think its a good thing that they play them. You can spend a day solidly playing, it gets your aim in a little bit, no more than it should be anyway. It's a bit of a formaility. Having said that, if there were good teams in the group stages it would be a formality as well.

Your next game, and your hardest game so far is against Infused. They have played a lot against each other and with each other in mixes too, do you think this will affect the out come of the match?

Both the teams Infused and Dignitas mix in various games togeher, as well as in LAN. They all know how each one plays. The only thing with Infused, they don't have the team dynamic that Dignitas do and i think its going to be a game of individuals showing us what they can do. There are goig to be some rounds when Infused are looking good, they have some great players in their linup, its not going to be an easy game, but im still confident Dignitas can win.

If you go on to the win that then you are going to have to play EG most likely. They are seeded 1st, but do you think you will be able to beat them?

The map is going to be pretty important, crossfire. Its a map that is probably EGs weakest map, they don't play it in america very much. Both teams have been quite inactive since the summer LANs. I think it will be just whoever holds their nerve. EG are massively experienced, but then again so are Dignitas. We will see.
The stage may affect it, if there is stuff going on the stage. Players get annoyed from noise that isn't coming from your game. EG are just going to get on with it regardless even if they are really unhappy with it as they are really professional.

Do you think you can win the whole tournament?

This is one of the best lineups in CoD that there has been. All the players are experienced, their team work is great, they get on well with each other. they can definitely win the whole tournament.

Right lets move on from i35 to CoD4 as a whole. The next few months are going to be really important for the future of CoD. How do you think the community is going to react? Will it split over CoD5?

The next two months leading up to xmas are going to be the deciding factor with what happens with the games and who goes where and who does what. But you've got gameland in italy, they are definitely sticking to cod4 not changing to cod5. CC5 is also definitely cod4 too. There might be a cod5 fun tournament at the event. We will see how that goes.

Eventually it is just going to come down to personal preference. There is going to be a competitive mod for the game very soon I'm sure. But everyone needs to wait for the full release, until they deicde if they are going to play the game. From the way i see it at the moment i don't think cod5 is going to be a S&D possible game. The maps are just not for it, and you would have to make them, which would take months, which is definitely detrimental to cod4, which has become a huge game in eSports after the Summer LANs. We have seen massive amounts of money injected into the CoD4 scene recently. I think that is a lot down to how watchable CoD4 is, and how everyone wants to watch it. Whether cod5 can keep up that level of spectator interest is still yet to be seen.

Some people view CoD5 as a step back as you are heading back more towards CoD1 and 2 at least from a game settings and surroundings. Do you agree with this idea and also how detrimental do you think it is towards CoD4?

The back a step argument, with WW2, well i don't really think that is a factor. It is just the skin of the game. the game has developed so much since cod1, nades etc. It is funadementally a different game to what the old cod title was, a step back would be going back to the gameplay of cod1, you still have the same type of gameplay in world of war, as you do in cod4, i don't really understand the step back argument. but i also see the argument that if we do go to cod5, we should not promod it up to make it like cod4. I see what people see about that, taking certain elements out of the game. but ultimately that is what made cod4 competitive, but it would not have been as good to watch over the summer, and if cod5 is to be played competitively, it can not be played with the way it is at the moment. There have got to be changes, you can't have packs of dogs being released in a top final, in a clutch situation.

Well if CoD5 fails, and people don't move across, what do you think is the next step? Do changes need to be made to CoD4 to make it the game that everyone wants?

As i said earlier, it is going to take a while to make cod5 competitive, it is going to need a lot of tweaking and mod making, it could take months. With cod4 we have a game, its has been heavily modded, but there are still changes that could be made to make it more of a "skilled" game and less random.

Can you let us know what you think these changes are?

Taking into consideration all of the changes that could be looked at, or changed, the cook nade issue, the fact that you can cook nades and the massive blast radius from it. Also the fact you can throw it so far. Other parts, the sprint feature, in both 4 and 5. Personally i think it makes it better to watch, adds the element of speed to the game that people like watching. Also regen, a lot of people think it makes the game less skillful, people can run around the corner bait and then regen again. So one idea is to bring back the health bar, which is essentially a step back, going back to how it was in vanilla cod, but a lot of poeple think it would be better for the game.

The other thing that is a possibility within the game is completely stopping wall banging apart from through say tin or a door way, if it was bricks we could really stop it. This is sometihng that could promote aim, and help stop the whole spray factor of the game. If some of those changes were made there is still the iseue if the game is still balanced. Is it taking too long or still very quick to kill someone, especially with the regen? There is one more change that people have been saying, especially with cod5, is to have weapons based on side, rather than any team can pick any weapon which we were used to with cod1 and cod2.

Who will make these changes? Raf has said he isn't going to update ProMod again....

Raf said he didn't want to do anymore changes to the cod4 promod, but there are a lot of coders who are quite capable of taking up where raf kicked off. Raf said he was probably going to do a early release for cod5 to show us how it would be, but it is not hard to find someone to mod the game to something to make it how it could be.

Do you think CoDTV is an important aspect of the game that is much needed to make this a more successful game and possibly even challenge the likes of Source and 1.6?

I don't think there is going to be a game that is going to be able to challenge counterstrike any time soon. CS 1.6 is such a powerhouse, not even its offspring, source, could knock it off its top spot. But its becoming a lot easier now with cod4 making it easier to view the game, mainly due to quadv, who have been amazing covering nearly every major tournament both online and offline, and i really think that has helped the game no end. looking towards the future, if tv was brought to cod5, i really don't think its that big a thing for cod series. We have seen with cod4, that its not that required to make it a massive game.

A lot of the time I get the feeling that it is the publishers who are killing the game, but bringing out new versions every time. What are your views on this?

You have to look at it in terms of competitive community and general community. it makes sense in business to make as many products as you can as it makes you more money, the general community will buy it. What people fail to see is the competitive line, where they don't have to move over to the next game,

How can we stop people moving across to new games? If we could keep them here then there is a big chance CoD4 will get better. For example CoD2 was getting massive, just got WSVG, and then CoD4 was released....

I think the whole part of moving across to a new game is do to the community. Cod2 was out for such a long time, but it hadn't changed much at all, only pam and 1.3. CS had so long, changing from 1.0 to 1.6 in its 10 year life span. It really is up to the community to decide whether they move on to the next game or even back in some cases, such as source where they went from 1.6 to source and then back again because they didn't like it. Ultimately they should play the game they enjoy and they think is the most competitive.

What do you think of the idea of a futuristic CoD, like CoD6 is meant to be?

i don't know, i think its like any game, personally i feel that the whole setting be it vietnam, ww, modern day, futuristic, doesn't matter its the game play, and what is required to be good at the game, and keep it there and secure.

What do you think are the chances of one of (or more than one) of the major leagues taking on CoD as a series?

Ask me that 4 months ago i would have said one of them probably would in the next year or so, but of course with cod5 now out we have a different situation. It is going to depend where the competition is, or where we go to. If we stick with cod5 and it is still getting the viewing figures that cod4 was, then i think there is probably chance of some competition larger than the ones we had taking an interest in cod4. We had ipower at eswc, it was a packard bell one but ESWC chose it, CGS had cod4 at its combine. There is definitely a lot of interest with cod4 from the major organisers.

Ok well thank you for the interview, and final shout outs to anyone?

Shoutouts to, "all the dignitas sponsor" and to millen.