View source for User:XeroK

{{Userboxtop | Myself}}
{{User Peru}}
{{User es}}
{{User fr-5}}
{{User en-4}}
{{Userboxbottom}}

Welcome to my user page dear visitor !

==My Gaming Bio==

I'm a natural born [[Wikipedia:Gamer|gamer]].

While living in [[Wikipedia:Peru|Peru]], in 2001 (keep in mind I was very young at the time), I started gaming by discovering [[Wikipedia:Half-Life (video game)|Half Life]]; At almost the same time, I discovered its famous mod, [[Wikipedia:Counter-Strike]], which was in version 1.4 ([[Wikipedia:Sierra Entertainment|Sierra]] version), later on, in 2002, CS was updated to 1.5 version, and that's when I started competitive play in organized [[Wikipedia:LAN party|mini-LANs]] with friends and people from a huge [[Wikipedia:Internet café|cyber-café]]. The 1.6 version was a huge update in 2003, the arrival of [[Wikipedia:Steam (software)|Steam]] allowed us all to play online, we formed a tiny CS team which did pretty good, I enjoyed playing against Americans (playing vs. European people was impossible at the time due to [[Wikipedia:Ping|ping]] issues). In 2004, [[Wikipedia:Counter-Strike: Source|CS:Source]] came out; We didn't really like it, and in fact, we totally ignored it and kept playing the old 1.6 version. 

I personally stopped playing CS in early 2004, that's when I discovered [[Wikipedia:StarCraft]], played it for 6 months, meanwhile, [[Wikipedia:Defense of the Ancients|DotA]] became extremely popular in Peru, that's when I switched to [[Wikipedia:Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos|WC 3]], to play DotA. I was 11 at the time, I was offered to go and contest in a small championship but due to my young age, I couldn't participate. In fact, due to my young age, I realized a lot of things were impossible to do. That's when I stopped playing competitively and began playing just for fun and also began playing [[Wikipedia:Massively multiplayer online role-playing game|MMORPG's]] (played [[Wikipedia:Mu Online|Mu Online]], [[Wikipedia:GunBound|GunBound]], [[Wikipedia:Ragnarok Online|Ragnarok]], 4Story and [[Wikipedia:Knight Online|Knight Online]] for a while). 

I did that until late 2005, in November 2005, I [[Wikipedia:Emmigration|moved]] to [[Wikipedia:France|France]]. France meant new life, not only real life, but a whole bunch of things to discover in the gaming world. France is of course way more advanced than Peru in terms of technology, but when I arrived, I kept playing MMORPG's, I joined several French Guilds/Clans, I have to admit it was pretty fun. In 2007, I got fed up with MMORPG's, and decided to go back to [[Wikipedia:First-person shooter|First-Person Shooters]], I took my told 2004 steam account, blew the dust off it, and installed CS:S. At the beginning, I had to get used to it (shooters weren't my strength anymore), I began playing for fun, in public servers, I even joined several "fun" teams and became admin in several multi-mod servers (fun mods, mainly). One year later, in 2008, I started [[Wikipedia:Competitive Gaming|competitive play]], I did a lot of pcw's/mixes/scrims/clan wars, none of this was in a league though, it was "unranked" gaming. I discovered the [[Wikipedia:Electronic_sports#Professional_Leagues|ESL]] in 2009, I [http://www.esl.eu/eu/player/xerok/ registered] but didn't really pay much attention to it, I just kept playing/training for myself. 

In early 2010, I decided to give the ESL a try and signed-up in several 1on1 [[Wikipedia:League table|ladders]], it was fun, and I quickly "fell in love" with the ESL, the matches system, the ranking, the competition, all that good stuff fascinated me. But all of a sudden, [[Wikipedia:Call of Duty|Call of Duty]] hit me in the face with its awesomeness. Of course I had heard about it (a lot), but never decided to give it a try (mainly because I found the game was expensive and didn't really know much about it). In late 2010 (October), I bought a copy of [[Wikipedia:Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2|MW2]], instantly fell in love. I loved the smoothness of the game, the content, the huge community and how rich the game was. Sadly, I was a little bit too late, I wasn't really good at it (the transition between the [[Wikipedia:Source Engine|Source Engine]] and the [[Wikipedia:IW engine|IWEngine]] wasn't easy), plus everything had already happened in the ESL, no more events were still going on, the MW2 section was almost dead. Gladly for me, I was informed [[Wikipedia:Activision|Activision]] were used to release a new Call of Duty game every year, and I was told about [[Wikipedia:Call of Duty: Black Ops|Black Ops]], there was still a hope for me in the e-Sports scene ! November 2010, Black Ops came out, bought it as soon as it was available and started playing. The Black Ops ESL Section was extremely active at the time. I personally decided to start playing on ESL (basically 90% of [http://www.esl.eu/eu/player/log/xerok/ my activity on ESL] happened from this date) by doing some 1on1 Matches, I eventually made it to the 4th place in the [http://www.esl.eu/fr/codbo/dm/1on1/ladder/ French 1on1 DM Ladder]. I never really looked for a clan/team at the time, I thought that 1on1 play was better than teamplay, of course, I was wrong. I eventually started looking for a team in early 2011, I was tested in a lot of teams, I joined a few of 'em: Facefull, UBITEAM, stimuLAN, eLone (sorted in chronological order).

Sadly enough, the game was almost dead by May 2011, indeed, as you may or may not know, the game was poorly optimized for PC, the [[Wikipedia:IW Engine#Games|IWEngine 3.0 was used]] (even when the previous version of the game, MW2, used the 4.0 version), plus [[Wikipedia:Treyarch|Treyarch]] had promised [[Wikipedia:Mod (video gaming)#Tools|Mod Tools]] (tools allowing people to make mods for the game) several times, failing to accomplish that promise, people stopped playing the game on the PC. Meanwhile, I personally had planned to train hard and get a serious team in order to play competitively, but instead, found a hopeless, almost-dead community. That's when I decided to forget about my serious team project and stood up and started working on that Competitive mod the game needed so badly. I started developing [http://www.xKMod.com xKMod] in late May, I spent all my days and nights working on it, I legitimately spent more than 500 hours behind my screen reading [[Wikipedia:C++|C++]] on [[Wikipedia:Notepad++|Notepad++]]. After I [http://www.itsmods.com/forum/Thread-xKMod-LIVE-v1-0-Competitive-Mod.html released the mod] in June, the 2nd, it quickly gained popularity and eventually became the most played mod for Black Ops. With the release of the Mod Tools on June the 23rd, people were able to upload the mod to their dedicated servers which made the mod even more popular. By the time I'm writing this (August 2011), you won't find almost any Black Ops scrim/clan match being played without xKMod. '''I brought Black Ops back to life''', and I'm pretty goddamn proud of myself. 

Nevertheless, I have to admit I really don't like the game itself. Today, I'm waiting for and all my hope is on [[Wikipedia:Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3|Modern Warfare 3]], I'll forget about modding and will focus on competitive play.