Meet Fnatic, Part 1<br> NightEnD: 'Koreans don't scare me at all'

Welcome to our multi-part (obviously!) feature on one of the leading European StarCraft 2 teams: Fnatic. Within the following weeks we shall introduce you to the roster that hosts the names of Alive, ToD, Moon, Rain and NightEnd, we'll find out how their time on the team has been and their takes on all things SC2. Buckle up, first stop: NightEnD!

Next on "Meet Fnatic":



Moon: "I feel pitiful about WarCraft 3's demise"



Yes, that's right. We are giving you the almighty "fifth race" Jae Ho "Moon" Jang. Expect him on Thursday, April 26th!

Coming from a WarCraft 3 background of less dazzling proportions--at least compared to his team-mates ToD and Moon--Silviu "NightEnd" Lazar was a relatively unknown player to the StarCraft 2 community post his switch-over. After a series of good weekly cup performances, NightEnd finally made his way to a stage which awards way more recognition: the TeamLiquid Starleague 3.Although falling in the first round after being assigned a controversial loss after a disconnect in game one, the soon to be ex-Praetoriani protoss player played with a rigor that few expected, easily giving The Empero himself SlayerS_Boxer a good run for his money.On May 8th, NightEnD left Praetoriani (disbanded the same day) for Fnatic and kept attending major tournaments with medium success until DreamHack Winter 2011 in November. On Swedish ground, NightEnD defeated Mana, Kas, Naama and WhiteRa to reach the semi-finals, being the best performing foreigner along Liquid`ret. Although losing 1-3 to eventual runner-up and top tier Korean terran Puma, NightEnD would no longer be a minor name on the scene.Feeling that he now has a reputation to defend, Silviu flew to Korea to join his team-mates in the Fnatic house in preparation for another possibly smashing run through DreamHack Summer.To feature him in the opening chapter of our feature, we caught up with NightEnd not 10 days past his arrival in South Korea to pick his brain on various topics. How is life in Korea? What's the atmosphere of practice like in the Fnatic house? How does he appraise his team's chances upon hypothetical GSTL entrance? Why is he not afraid of Koreans? In what ways is ToD helpful?Enjoy a long and good read!NightEnd: My main expectation is to be capable to win DreamHack Summer after the 2 months of practice here. I always aim for 1st place but I think I've never had this level of practice so far and as a result I've never taken 1st in any major offline event. I was never good enough to be first.No, it's perfect for me. At least so far I've been feeling pretty good but I've been here for 8-9 days, so I don't know exactly how I'll feel after one month. I hope it'll be the same as now. Also, when you want to be the best you need to make some sacrifices, which I hope will pay off.I don't know yet, Fnatic want me to come back after DreamHack but I said I will decide after 1 month of stay here.I can't exclude anything and it's also very possible that I stay here for longer.I actually only visited GSL for like 30 minutes and went to eat barbeque with my team after that. I also visited some restaurants around the house but I was actually a bit sick for like three days. I think I drank too much cold beverages from the fridge. Most of the time I have I use for training.Overall, I think the time with Fnatic has been good but I wish it could have been better. There were some hard moments for me.Small things that don't make much sense being said but maybe the most important one for me was that after every tournament at which I did not do that well, I would feel really, really bad for my team. I would be depressed for some days and it was very hard since I knew I could have done much better.Well, I'd rather not say what I think so my answer will be diplomatic. Puma was, of course, better than me since he won. I think I know what is going to happen if we play now but I just want to wish him good luck for when we meet in NASL.No, just the best of luck to him.To be honest, I think it's very good that the house is in Korea because thus I can get a lot of good practice on the ladder. If the house was in Europe, I would've indeed liked it to have many more training partners.It's really hard for me to give a good answer on this because I don't know exactly how it is to live with so many players. I mean, I don't know how good can it be. If I imagine and try to compare those two, I would say that it's better to live with more players, yes, but I can't know for sure until I try it out.I actually don't talk with the Koreans at all about the game and the communication is so so. Rain is the only one that speaks a good english for a Korean.I did some practice with them but not too much. I played like 20 games against Alive and the rest was laddering. To my surprise, I play more than them.If I would compare him to the other terrans I play, he is more flexible and knows how to abuse the drop potentian of terran to the maximum. So far, I've been having good results but I guess we'll see at DreamHack Summer.I would like not to measure ourselves if possible. I don't want to compare to anyone, actually, and I don't want to have any rivalry with anyone also. I just want to win, that's all I care about!Hm, I really don't know. Maybe you should ask my team-mates about how am I different from them. *laughs*I think with our current roster we would be able to take a medium position or a bit higher if we get lucky. I hope that we can place top three but that would be extremely hard!Koreans don't scare me at all. I actually love playing versus Koreans, it's much more fun. If someone is afraid, I'll let them be afraid. I'll just stay really calm.I doubt that any teams will be easy. I just think we are good enough to get a medium or higher placement.I actually like casting but not if I have to do it for too long. And yes, I would!I'm very proud that I'm Romanian and I always try to make my country proud and I hope I can win a major title soon enough. I love my country and I wish things will go as I want them to.He is very helpul, he knows which food is spicy and which is not *laughs* P.S. I don't like to spicy food. So *bow* to ToD!I want to thank my fans and also our sponsors Raidcall, MSI, SteelSeries, EIZO and Gunnar. And thanks to GosuGamers for the interview. Europe fighting!