Interviewing anyone with a significant time difference can be a weird experience. When you’re out of sync with each other it can be a struggle to really keep the conversation flowing in the way it should. Usually one of you is tired and unresponsive, you might miss essential branch off questions if you’re not fully focused… You might have the whole day ahead of you while the other has one eye on a warm bed and possibly more than one ear attuned to a nagging partner.

Thank God then for my next subject who understands the importance of this. Moe “mOE” Assad is one of the biggest names in the history of American CS:S and came to within a hair’s breadth of winning the CGS World Finals as part of San Francisco Optx franchise. He still remains active even as the US scene slowly recovers from the death of CGS, new leagues and organisations slowly starting to fill the void. He experienced disappointment at the ESEA LAN finals as part of Ayedog and has become part of Blight Gaming, who recently merged with Immortal 7 to make the much discussed “super-roster”.

“We can do this in just a moment. It’s been a long day, I’m going to grab a beer and a bite to eat” I tell him.

“It’s 11 am here, not too early for beer.”

So we shoot the breeze, separated by both hours and miles, but with plenty of common ground. I ask him questions about his current team, his time in the CGS and a whole lot more, and receive some surprising answers.

Moe in extremely jubilant mood during the CGS

I see you recently joined Blight Gaming as their US team and it caught the attention of a lot of people by having a large roster of a lot of the big name players from US Counter-Strike. Can you explain to me the rationale behind the roster as it seems to have confused some people.

Basically the US blight team only has 5 starters right now. Rambo / Mustang will not be playing anymore CS:S this season. clown and warmachine will be playing a little bit in CEVO-P and ESEA. The main players who are active right now are me, dazed,casey,and frozt. It is weird to not be playing around the same players that I have gotten used to for the past 4 years, but the new styles and dedication of the new team is something that’s missing from my old one. As far as being dropped I am not too worried about that. I take this one day at a time so I don’t like to think to far ahead.

Some people have accused players in the squad of living on past glories and that there are much better American players in their scene that don't get opportunity or recognition because of their lack of reputation - what do you think of that?

I think that every player on the team doesn’t need to live through past glories they have all proved time and time again that they still are among the best in the world. as far as other American players that don’t get the opportunity that might be true, but it’s true in every scene... It hard to break into the level among the elites, but it’s not impossible take the roster I’m on now 3 of these players were virtually unknown last year, but through hard work and practice they have gotten their name out there.

Recently there has been a lot of talk about US teams coming over and competing against European sides. It's not happened yet for some reason, but it's getting closer... Is that something you will be looking to do with Blight?

Blight has assured us that they have the resources to send us to a Euro LAN. With that said I have tremendous respect for the Euro scene and if iIfeel that the roster I’m on isn’t ready to compete against the euro style of play then I will not rush it.

What do you perceive to be the major differences between the two scenes? Why is it you feel this respect for European CS:S?

The major difference is more people play CS:S in Europe making it more competitive. with more competition players get better and better, and after watching countless STV match-ups from multiple European tournaments its clear to me that they are among the best in the world therefore earning my respect. Right now I feel that our team is still trying to build chemistry, but in time I think we can compete to be top 3 in the world.

Moe watching his Optx franchise play from the sidelines (Picture courtesy of GotFrag)

Let's talk about CGS. Obviously at the time it was a huge deal for CS:S and e-sports, but personally I think it wasn't all it seemed. From a players perspective how do you remember it now it isn't there any more? Was it the pinnacle of your gaming career?

It definitely was the pinnacle of my career. The CGS really was a dream come true. Yes, the rules were a little iffy but the opportunity to compete against the best in the world on live TV was a feeling I cannot describe. I’m sure every player, in the United States at least, felt the same way. The fact that the rest of the world didn’t have a full CGS season might be the reason people didn’t think it was what it seemed… I think making it to world finals was the best memory since we were the wildcard team in it and we ended up making it all the way to the finals. It’s that or us almost getting into a bar fight with the players from salvo CS:S.

Wait, what?

We played salvo in the finals. In CS:S they only needed 8 rounds to win so we needed to keep them at 7. Basically they got to 8 rounds and match ended 8-7. They started out as CT on inferno so they had the slight advantage. When they hit 8 rounds it was over so they all got up and celebrated not finishing the game. Later that night in the CGS after-party clowN was at the bar disappointed all night. When we were leaving we ran into two Salvo CS:S players who shall remain nameless. They were gloating about the win and that made clowN very angry since he believes that the match if continued would have ended 10-8 in our favor. So then they start yelling at each other and of course I get next to my team mate and the other Salvo players get by their team and we were 2 inches away from a brawl... Odee stepped in and basically defused the situation, but if he hadn’t have been there…

So was there a genuine dislike between the two teams, or was it just something that came about because of pressure and emotion? Have you since buried the hatchet?

Well we all had no problem with majority of the salvo players just a few and i guess there was some dislike. since then we haven’t really talked but I would assume there are no hard feelings. we pretty much didn’t really engage with them other then that night, but salvo definitely didn’t really interact with the other players in the CGS the CS:S team only had two players who actually made the effort to go out and have fun. The rest of the salvo franchise partied hard especially picaso.

On that theme I'm often told stories in confidence about some of the wild times in CGS and some of the hijinks people were getting up to. Even though it's dead and gone people still don't like to come out and publicly say some of the stuff that was going on behind the scenes. Were there any moments or stories such as this you'd care to share?

Out of respect for everyone I think it’s best not to go into other peoples details but in my experience I can say me and my roommates got wasted a lot. Of course, we were only a quarter mile away from the beach and the bars so we never got lost on the way home. I can see what you mean within the CGS or any other place where you have so many people living so close to each other stuff happens.

Drinks flowed late into the night at the CGS World Finals after-party

With your early playing career at what point did you realise you wanted to turn professional and start earning money from the game? Was there one defining moment that made you think "this is what I want to do"?

Actually, I wasn’t planning on it being anymore then winning some tournaments since I saw the announcement of CGS and that was when I actually made it a goal of mine to get into the league it was more then a hobby I was younger I was able to be online for at least 4 hours a day playing CS:S with my teammates so we definitely took it seriously, but we were having a lot of fun playing together.

So, what do you think about people that put in almost every waking hour to improving and continually finding new things in the game? We call them "keen" in the UK, which is a term with as many positive connotations as negative ones.

So it’s like the word "nerd" here in the US. I think with out those kinds of people the game would never evolve... I think every team needs at least one keen player on it. It’s not for me though… I mean I can barley keep my eyes open during a strat session.

The US scene at the moment has been struggling a lot since the death of CGS both in 1.6 and CS:S. Have you seen any encouraging signs to think that maybe it has turned the corner?

I think just recently the interest in source in the US is getting bigger and more tournaments are popping up. so i think were past the "dead" era. I don’t know if we have an influx of up and coming players yet. Most of the players in the upper division are ones that have been playing for a long time, but there are some.

I have to ask you about Immortal 7 as well... You lost to them at the ESEA LAN finals as part of Ayedog when they went there amid cheating accusations. Did they surprise you, did they earn your respect with how they played and what did you make of the accusations at the time?

After our intense matches I couldn’t have anything but respect for them. They are the type of team that have 5 keen players who play all the time and love to practice. and it showed because everything we threw at them they had an answer for. Unfortunately our experience wasn’t enough to get us the win in that bo3. Merging with them was a great thing because as I said before I needed a team that likes to play a lot and I found that.

And what do you think of x3o? At the moment I think most people would say, if asked, that they are the best team active in NA right now…

I think so too. They seem to have found the perfect 5 players to mesh together.

How do you occupy your spare time and what are your long term plans within e-sports, if any?

Basically, me and dazed have come together to make a commentary/lesson site. It’s called netcodeilluminati.com and for now it’s just a forum, but we have plans on making it into a full blown site with in a couple of months. We’re going to branch out in match commentaries and that sort of thing and I’m already putting together some from the best players in Europe. I don’t really plan ahead in gaming because real life can always take a sharp turn, but I do know that I’m open to anything in e-sports if I decide to stop competing. Who knows? Maybe a moepad.

And the last question - what is all this "Ya Hear mOE?" thing about?

(laughing) This is how I think it started… I was at CGS in the practice areas backstage. method from 3d comes up to me and asks me if I have seen the Wuhan Dragon site. I say no, so me and him log into the site and we look in the forum section and there’s literally only 5 forums in the site and all of them are about me. So we click on them and we see so many people asking if I’m “hear?” My theory is that people mistakenly went on the Wuhan dragon site instead of the Optx one and started a thread asking “is mOE here?” but spelled it wrong. But from my knowledge it all started on the Wuhan Dragon forum so I will forever be thankful to my Chinese fans.