With the NVISION 2008 event taking place in just a few days, here are some mini-interviews with two of X3O’s players that will be in attendance. Below you can view a short chat I had with Matt “PaTyoJoN” Iantosca about the ESWC Grand Finals and Rob “griM_” Koster about the CoD4 GeForce LAN.

Matt “PaTyoJoN” Iantosca of X3O Counter-Strike 1.6, ESWC Participant:

First off Matt, congratulations on winning the Dust-Off Championships. How much does this win boost your confidence going into the ESWC Grand Finals next week?

It was nice to win this event to prove that we are the best team in the United States. It also shows that we are pretty prepared for the ESWC Grand finals with only minor changes needing to be made.

Speaking of the ESWC, what do you think about it being held in San Jose this year? I’m sure it’s not as exciting for you personally; being somewhat of a local, but will this event be as popular here as it was in Paris?

Paris was a great place for ESWC, but I think that it will still be very exciting in San Jose. I also think that there will be many people watching the event because of the amount of CS players in Northern California. It's hard to say if the crowd will be like it was in France because it was pretty amazing there, but hopefully being the home team it is.

This ESWC event is being talked about, by the community and many top players, as the most competitive LAN of the year. What are your thoughts on that?

ESWC always seems to be the most competitive LAN of the year because more than 1 top team from each country is able to compete. There's no excuse why any of the top teams in the world should not be at this event.

Which teams do you think will be the toughest competition for you? Are you any less worried now about American teams having just won the Dust-Off Championships?

Well the good thing about ESWC is they try not to put teams from the same countries in the same groups. So we would not play against another American team at least until bracket play anyway. Right now were just taking it 1 group at a time trying to beat eSTRO, n!faculty and puntocL, but like every other team in the tournament we'll be looking out for the usual favorites mTw, mYm, and fnatic.

Lastly, what’s next for X3O.cs after the ESWC? With the summer LAN season coming to a close, how will you and the team end out the year?

Well as the summer LAN season ends there are still many events coming up in the next couple of months. WCG USA finals, then hopefully Grand Finals in september/october. There are also many ESL events in the next few months as well. This has been a great few months and hopefully we can continue to progress and represent the USA in all the upcoming events.

Rob “griM_” Koster of X3O Call of Duty 4, GeForce LAN Participant:

Thanks for taking the time to talk to us Rob. Firstly, what enticed you and the rest of the CoD4 team to attend this tournament being held at NVISION?

Well the whole team wanted to get to the west coast to participate in the LAN scene. Since the event is being hosted by NVIDIA we felt compelled to compete in the tourney and we know they will hold 1 hell of an event!

If I recall correctly, your last LAN as a team took place at NERV quite some time ago, has anything drastically changed in the team since then?

Yes, one of our starters was scouted by me at the last LAN. Stephen “Mav” Groat played great for MoB Gaming at the last LAN and now I’m proud to say that he is part of the X3O family.

With a couple of the top teams (such as EG & Pandemic) not registered to play in San Jose next week, what are your expectations for this tournament?

Our expectations remain the same for every event whether top teams attend or not. We aren’t happy until we take home first place at every event. We won’t take any team for granted and we will continue to play to win.

Are there any teams or pugs that you and your team are going to be looking out for? Do you feel this X3O.CoD4 team is better prepared for anything that comes their way?

We are much more prepared for this LAN then we were at previous events. Much of this has to do with the help of teammates Sean Apostle McGrath and Stephen Mav Groat. They both helped me tremendously with nades/strats that we were in desperate need of. The teams going are still not 100% certain but the few that I know we should watch out for is MoB Gaming, Nexus, and maybe team Pure but as I said before, we are fairly confident in taking home 1st place.

In closing, is there any other event or attraction you’re looking forward to at NVISION next week? With quite a bit going on, there has to be something you want to do besides play CoD4.

We are actually really excited to watch our CS team compete at the ESWC finals for 1.6. When we aren’t practicing or having a match I’m sure you can find us behind our 1.6 teammates cheering them on as they go for the title!

I'm also sure that NVIDIA put together some real nice booths and shows to show us gamers a good time, we all are extremely excited to go!!