Tralfamadore changes name to Singularity, continues to be bad

Tralfamadore has been the subject of many posts not only on HoN Gossip but also on the forums. Widely known as Tralfamathrow, and other negative names, he has decided to change his name to Singularity. Unfortunately, this has earned him the nickname STINKULARITY as he continues to perform poorly and lose games vs Pew.

Skyzoe to replace Sender for the Swedish Pride Tournament!

Inside sources from team LION eSportKlubb revealed to me today that Skyzoe, formerly of Team stayGreen/GaryJohnson will be leaving the organization after what seems like an incredibly short stint with the team.

According to a certain LION player, Skyzoe did not take the losses very well and became quite emotional as the games went on, leading to a near blowout in the series vs coL. The player is well known to be one of the most versatile and passionate players in HoN, and the LION team is used to a more laid back atmosphere.

With Skyzoe becoming available and the recent announcement of the Swedish Pride tournament, Team iG, who Skyzoe has a history with, must dump one of their non Swedish players to participate. This leave iNsania a choice of Sender or noobg. I love both of these players, especially Sender, but with Skyzoe now on the market, it seems like the perfect match.

I questioned iNsania about this speculation but he was not available for comment. Remember, when iNsania announces Skyzoe replacing Sender, you heard it at HoNGossip first!

New Blog @ teamstaygreen.com / iG upsets coL in Dreamhack Qualifiers

Since the direct link is currently the only way to access the new blog I'm gonna post the link here until we get access to it on the main site:

http://teamstaygreen.com/?p=451

Enjoy

My Beef with Tralf

This has been slowly building up over the past 3 or so months, and I'm pretty tired of being asked about it on streams, on skype, and even by fucking text message; and I'm just gonna air it out on my last blog post on hongossip before I move to the stayGreen website. So here goes:

I never really understood why Tralf decided to get so mad at me for seemingly no reason. At first I thought it was because I blogged here about him. Shortly after those blogs went public I started to get people coming to my stream telling me that Tralf called me a faggot. Understandable, I guess in some way, as I had basically outed his intentions of playing competitive HoN again. But at the same time, I wasn't really posting anything in an inflammatory way about the guy.. just the information I was getting. And it's not like I was the first and only person who was talking about it.

Then I posted the second blog post, which speculates about him posting under the name T90ly, where T90ly (who is supposedly Tralfs former roommate) praises Tralfamadore in a few threads and also disparages his at the time teammates, including current (assumed) teammates; Moonmeander and Bkid. I ended the post saying that if it were actually Tralf posting on T90ly it wouldn't surprise me. Again, this is hardly anything offensive.

My third post about Tralfamadore was about his very controversial exit of the clan One Trick Pony, which lead to a flurry of hate posts on the HoN forums. I simply picked posts out of the threads and left some remarks as to what I thought about the posts in general, as well as had some very obvious sarcastic comments like:

 "Luckily for OTP, CM decided to let Xibbe have Chipper both in both games 2 and 3, leading me to believe that Milkfat asked CM to throw to allow OTP to stay in Diamond while cursing the name of Tralfamadore under his breath."

Again, nothing really spiteful or even untrue. Everything I posted about Tralf quitting the team and the way he did it was completely factual, which was supported in the fourth blog post about Znoowy's response on the official HoN forums.

So, as this continues on, I start losing focus on HoN Gossip. Yet while streaming I keep getting people coming to twitch.tv/S2phil and telling me stories about Tralfamadore talking copious amount of shit.

"Phil is a sad person. He's such a faggot. Why would someone who got fired still try to support the company by keeping the S2 name. Why is this person still allowed to be on podcasts. I can't stand the guy."

The entire time, I'm thinking about my history with Tralfamadore. So I'm gonna talk about it here. I never really knew Tralf that well when he was in SK. I was pretty friendly with Cardinal and we TMM'd in low brackets every now and then. Sometimes I would see Tralf but never really talked to him until we launched NASL Season 2. Of course by that time I was working for S2 Games but it hadn't been made public (Honcast was acquired by S2 Games in July 2011). My times talking with Tralfamadore were pretty minimal as Swindle was the captain of the team, but we spoke every now and then. I started to get more involved with the event coordination of things and Breaky mostly took over the administrative roles for NASL and I basically tried to back him whenever I could but my heart was mostly in casting the games and working with the marketing team on the new Honcast studio, the NASL Finals and the upcoming  MSI Beat IT tournament which would lead into Dreamhack Winter 2011.

I knew that Dreamhack Winter was going to be my last Dreamhack spent casting, as things were getting rough around the office with the Director of eSports position. So when Dreamhack Winter 2011 rolled around, I made sure that I started talking with the players. I made sure to meet with Bkid, Sender, Tralf, Swindle, and all of the vocal members of the competitive community who were in attendance. I wanted them to know that things were in the right hands now, and even though I said a lot of things and made a lot of promises that took a long time to appear, I truthfully meant what I said. I wanted the best for those players and for competitive Heroes of Newerth. In December when I was appointed as the interim Competitive Director I tried my best to show that I could be of worth as more than a shoutcaster, and in January after a successful CES event I was offered the position full time. I knew that I had to get out of the casting role because the scene had been left in complete shambles. This is a bit off-topic but I want it to be said here plainly: It takes time to plan events guys, especially at the time because S2's upper management wasn't really buying into the eSports/marketing venture after watching NASL's 3 week turn around post production errors.

I knew that we needed to make a change and some of the competitors were already on the move. Rumors of Fnatic leaving for DOTA 2 lit the fire under our asses at the office, and I can't count the amount of times that Breaky came into my office asking "what can we do to save HoN." This was around the time when I left casting and Breaky was stuck with the King of the Hill tournament that we were trying to get off the ground but the teams were just so unstable due to lack of events. This is also the time when Breaky started casting with Zyori. Now, I don't want to sound like a huge dick, but I was never a fan of Zyori's casting. I didn't think he was a better caster than me. Maybe a better main caster and certainly a better cameraman, but he didn't bring anything dynamic to the team and when they were talking about bringing him on I was not a fan. Want to know who I was advocating before he even expressed interest?

Tralf.

It doesn't really matter though, because he didn't know that and I'm sure my desire to have Tralf brought to Honcast wouldn't have made any influence at all into the hiring decision, but I'm still gonna put it out there. I was supporting Tralf before he asked for my opinion on him possible casting. When Tralf and team sent in their deck to Complexity Gaming do you know who they asked first about the team? Yep, it was me. I told them, they will be the best team in HoN for you to pick up. This is the only team who can give Fnatic a run for their money. Ask Jason Lake or Jason Bass, Tralf, ask them what I said about you personally. That you were a stand up guy who could lead your team to success.

Then Dreamhack Summer 2012 rolled around and man we had problems. Not Tralf and I, but the tournament had problems. I'm not gonna go into why, but still, we all toughed it out. Tralf and I would go out and smoke cigarettes during breaks and just shoot the shit. He asked me about the quality of life at S2, and I told him he would be a great addition. I wanted my friends to get hired at S2, because who wouldn't? Who wouldn't want to have that kind of work environment. And so it was. You got the job as the new co-caster and we all couldn't wait for you to get there.

And when you got there everything seemed great. We talked all the time at the office, I even offered you and Lisa the option to sleep in the spare bedroom that I had if your apartment wasn't ready. When I left, I sold you a $1,500 bed and box spring for $200 because I wanted to help  you out. I know my desk and chair weren't in the best shape, but I offered them to you for free, because that's what friends do.

So tell me Mark, at what point did I get "annoying." At what point did I wrong you so badly that "you can't stand the sound of my voice?"

I might troll, and I might be caught in a place where I'm in love with a game that is run by a company that hates me, I might play Legionnaire every game and still be fucking awful at it... but those are my problems.. not yours. To my recollection, between the two of us, we've never had words. Nothing but a smile, some light humor, HoN talk and bummed cigarettes ever passed between us... yet I get to hear things like this:

http://www.twitch.tv/tralf/b/398769032?t=30m30s

Listen to yourself.

Congratulations. You've won the hearts of 1,000 stream viewers, all the YEA PHIL SUCKS and LOL'S PHIL FAIL LEGIONNAIRE comments are the wind beneath your wings. But remember, that guy who "you don't like" was always one of your biggest supporters. I'm sure you won't lose any sleep over this; but once HoN is gone, once your ability to press buttons on a keyboard has faded away, I hope those people will still be there...

Because I won't be.

CEO of S2 Games Confirms: Two Will Lose Their Jobs

And the lucky winners AREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Nathan Garcia: Director of Operations for Heroes of Newerth
and
Laura Baker: Director of Marketing for S2 Games


According to my sources within S2 Games, both employees were terminated earlier this afternoon and a post on the forums by Maliken helps to confirm this bit of gossip:

Laura aka S2LuLu has been a part of HoN since the very beginning. LuLu has made appearances and been the leader of HoN's eSports events since all the way back to Dreamhack Summer 2010, and probably prior to that. She was the first person I ever interacted with from S2 Games and was one of the major people involved in the acquisition of Honcast. I would like to thank her for everything she taught me while I was with the company, and for being a true friend.

Nathan, better known as Zero_MnotW was at one time the marketing assistant to LuLu and having shown great promise he was promoted to Director of Operations after Brad Bower aka Konran departed to lead the iGames division. His Facebook page confirmed his departure from the company stating that "S2 Games no longer has any future for me." Nate was an integral part of the eSports scene and my right hand man when I was the Director of eSports, even though he did not answer directly to me he was always the person who I knew would get things done. The successes of Dreamhack Winter 2011 and 2012 can be partially attributed to his willingness to get shit done.

Both of these figures I considered friends at S2 Games and it is sad to see them go, especially because there is someone else who should be accountable as well, but he's one of the favorite pets around the office, so he wont be. And no, I don't mean Milkfat.

tdM Team Manager "AvuKamu" Talks About Dropping HoN and x-tdM disbanding

So apparently, Trademark eSports is officially done with Heroes of Newerth. Tonight in Tralf's TwitchTV stream chat the following was posted:

According to the Team Manager of Trademark eSports, not only was the split between tdM and their HoN squad "mutual" but the organization itself will disband. Avukamu went on to say that CEO of Trademark eSports, John Jenkinson, has decided to call it quits. Avukamu and noted Trademark eSports writer "Showtime" will continue on with the goals set down by Mr Jenkinson originally but this time with "better management."

Avukamu also made the statement that he believe that noobG and possibly Limmp will continue to play HoN, while Fittske and Zai` may test their mettle in DOTA 2. He speculates that Mynuts will simply retire.

With the future of Heroes of Newerth competitive scene still somewhat cloudy after the HoN Tour Finals, and a massive balance patch on the way, what kind of shake ups will we see?

Pew Breaks Newest HoN Drama Involving Killerorange

As most people know, Pew is about half a chromosome short of actually being a human being. But while this turd is often a waste of internet and oxygen, occasionally he posts something of value.

You can head on over to Pew's blog to get all the info:

http://xcetpew.blogspot.se/2013/04/warning-drama.html



I didn't post the image here because Pew discovered it and he deserves to get a few blog hits, since I already get about 5000x as many.

Edit: KillerOrange responds (click for full size)

I really respect KillerOrange. Always have and always will. When we worked together, there were times when we didn't agree with each other, but we always aired things out and made sure we tried to do what is best for the community. He deserves all the credit for what Honcast became during HoN Tour, and the lack of his presence in Thailand and in Vegas was not only miss, but VERY VERY noted. We spoke briefly after he put his two weeks notice in and I pasted him part of the XanderK article I didn't publish, which resonates in the post he removed from the forums. I don't know exactly what Matt will do in the future but I hope I run into him again at some point so we can play some Euchre and drink a few beers and laugh at everything that happened while we were S2 employees.

Here is the excerpt from the XanderK article I never published:

"S2 Games is an indie company, as much as they want to believe differently. They have three games under their belt, two of which were relatively unknown and Heroes of Newerth. There's nothing wrong with being an indie company, some of the most loved games have come from or were inspired by concepts that were initially from indie companies. The negative stigma however, is that indie companies are "supposed to make mistakes, because they are just indie companies." This is the stigma which S2 has tried to distance itself from moving into the future. Needless to say, nepotism runs rampant in many indie companies, and S2 is no different. While some of these hires have paid nearly literal dividends, others have either continued to be illogically coddled at the breast of S2 Games executive members or dismissed due to consistent failure to achieve results which were either unobtainable or undefined."