On December 19th of last year, I stumbled upon War Lords. A quick Google search, I think something like "cs source pug servers" or something similar, presented me with the inactive (aside from the Announcer bots) War Lords Steam group on the first page of results. I added the servers to my favorites, and to my pleasant surprise, one was actually populated. I spectated and watched in awe as people played a competitive CSS match in late 2018. 

These servers were an important discovery for me. I recently moved to an extremely rural area on the east coast for work after graduating college in Houston. I went from standard, rapid home internet and playing AAA PC and console titles to fixed 4G LTE internet capped at 30GB/mo and playing Old School RuneScape and other games that don't take up too much data to run. Now, next month I'll have 200GB as I've found a better fixed internet plan, so at least that problem will be alleviated, but the speeds are still ridiculously slow, even for fixed internet. All that to say this- I can't play GO because of my internet, but it's good enough to play Source. I am a very competitive person, and I love the subtle nuances that make Counter-Strike the game we all thoroughly enjoy or beyond. "Finally," I thought after discovering War Lords, "a fun, competitive outlet for me to utilize and enjoy at home." I have about 675 hrs played of CS:GO from back in 2015-2016 when I was playing with friends from school. I had a great deal of fun, so I thought here I could somewhat recreate my experiences with GO from a few years prior.

I suck fucking cock compared to about 80-90% of the server. I quickly realized this back on day 1 when I got my first couple of matches in. In fact, the rest of the month didn't go well for me either. I felt like I was at the bottom of the barrel in here, and rightfully so. People were bitching at me, being condescending, and constantly reminding me they were unhappy to have me on their team. And for the most part, I was understanding of the players' disposition. Having a shitty on your team makes the game a 4v5 and can often hinder a team more so than simply not having anyone in the 5th slot. I took all of the criticism in, took a deep breath, and continued to play.

Despite my performance, there were actually a few individuals who were quite kind to me, though perhaps patient is a more appropriate word. Peter, for example, was never shy to give me constructive criticism, which I immediately encouraged. I remember a specific match on Mill where Peter gave me a tip, then said something like, "I'm not trying to be a dick, just trying to help you out." I was grateful for his attitude and his patience, and still am. More decent people began to help as well. They would tell me what to do for practice (DM was the most common response, which I was already doing fairly consistently), and ask me about my settings. If something needed to be tweaked, they would tell me. The biggest tweak happened on the 18th of this month when Delux helped me change my lerp from 100 to 31. I felt that my difference in shot and performance made the lerp, to me, the most important change that was made. I also downloaded an aim map and began to practice on that before playing pugs each day in January as well as hopping in DMs. I used to do the same thing in CS:GO and found it aided my improvement a ton.

In all of December, my W-L was 7-13, and my avg RWS was ~5.2. I was labeled a shitty, and I reckon I'll always be one to some people here no matter how well I perform. I really think I am improving, though, and I hope to not irritate the good regulars that play here for much longer. Things have turned around recently, though, and it's evident just by looking at my stats. In my last 25 games, my average RWS is 10.41, and my W-L is 18-7. I'm actually on a 7 match win streak right now. This doesn't mean that I don't suck anymore though; I still suck, and by no means do I think I'm good now just because I've doubled in RWS avg. It's not a huge sample size anyway, but I do feel its enough to at least point to signs of improvement, which I'm happy with so far.

In closing, I'm sorry if I've frustrated you with my poor play in the recent past. I can't promise you that I'll do any better in future games, but I can promise you this; I am desperately trying to improve. I am working every day in aim maps, DMs, watching old CSS pro matches, and of course, giving it my all in War Lords pugs. And moreover, I am LISTENING. I am carefully listening to any and all pointers given to me and I can't say enough how much I appreciate those who have chosen to help me improve with constructive criticism rather than completely shit on me.

I appreciate your time. Shitty Wilson, signing out.