I first played CoH in a demo that came with a game magazine (when those were quite popular,which is not much the case anymore), I remember playing the campaign and finding that for a RTS game the graphics were gorgeous, I was mostly a console player until then (playing Halo since I was very young), the only PC games I actually spent time on were without much surprise a bunch of RTS games like AoE1&2,Empire Earth1&2,Rise of nations,Command and Conquer,Warcraft,Starcraft and homeworld1&2(which is another nice relic game), the list probably goes on but I feel like these games were the start. So after playing the small CoH demo, I was interested but still not enough to stick to the game, some time later and after reading some more about the game in PCgamer it really peaked me and my brother's interest, so we bought the game, this was around 2006/2007 and we were really bad at the game as expected. I quickly finished the campaign and went on to play against AI in skirmish games where I would always get beaten even against Easy AI's, after having played these initial games I was ready to pass on to any next game I had in mind.
However, after some time my brother just kept asking me to play again which made me play some more games which somehow sparked my interest to a point that I wasn't going to quit any time soon. So with this new interest in the game I spammed games against AI's and eventually surpassed even the expert AI's in what were some epic games that I still fondly remember even if it was many years ago. The next step was actually play against other players, I jumped into multiplayer and as I am a very competitive person in nature I just went for 1v1's where I would get stomped, keep in mind that I was probably 11 or 12 at that moment. Everyday after school I would basically rush in to play CoH and had acquired around lvl8 or lvl9 which was a big accomplishment(at least in vCoH I feel like ranks were much tougher to get), I played in the same account as my brother and at this point I was already much better than him(basically any losses in the account was his) which made me create a smurf and rank up, that got me to around rank12 or 13 which again was quite high(think rank 13 was already in the top 100's),it was around this time that I was super active on a forum called gamereplays and would often read guides, download top player replays, analyse my own replays and even end up participating on my first tourney over there which put me against GunnersMate (pretty sure it was something like that, spoiler:I got beaten pretty hard) which boosted my will to want to be better and learn about the game. Soon after I created another smurf where I got to the top positions, maybe even top 1 as WM. Along the way I met many people that I still talk to this day, I remember creating various smurfs and getting to the top positions with each, that earned me some recognition over on gamereplays.org and overtime since those first times in gamereplays my english got much better since I wanted to be able to read any guide or talk without sounding like a caveman.
Then eventually the big tourneys came, I was prepared and did well in them and even though at the time I consired myself to be at the level of some great players as seb and 12azor I always struggled to perform in any kind of event and even watching back to games prior to the last SNF made for vCoH I see many mistakes being done that at the time I just couldn't see. Even watching SNF4 today I can spot many mistakes from my side. It was around these times that I met even more awesome people like Marcus, Aimstrong,Sungea,Zjoekov and many more. All in all, coming home was always a happy time for me since I was basically addicted to CoH and read anything to could help me get better, I probably studied more for CoH than for school at the time of my game spamming to get that rank1, it was also a bonus to be recognized by many people in an online community.
So after SNF4 in which at that point I had evolved much more mentally and even in terms of gameplay ,which made me perform much better, CoH2 came along that really hyped me up since I was going to be present for the next part of the franchise, the game had a rocky start and that is being optimistic since the game was really shallow at the beginning and had some kind of "feeling"missing to it but I still played it for a while, unfortunately it was at that time that I tried to be a top player in another game called LoL where I got somewhat good (top 60 in EU server) and this made me be pretty absent in any tourneys, even SNF5 or 6(cant recall), I knew I had it in me to comeback at anytime and be a top player though, all the "study" that I did in vCoH, every game I ever played (which certainly amounts for many hours), all help in terms of gameplay knowledge, that is mainly the reason I can come in without playing for months on end and still perform with few practice. After an announcement of an incoming patch that would change the game for the better I started playing and like two days after OCF was announced which in the end was hilarious since many people thought I came back for it even though I playing it before, creating the cashgrab DevM meme, anyways me and aimstrong played and shared strategies and thoughts, I was pretty bad at the beginning but I just spammed ostheer and USF until I got those nailed down. USF was consired a shit faction and I complitely disagreed, Vonivan made USF a joke among the community and my intent was to show that the faction was actually really good and to prove my point further and to not make me lose time catching noobs in automatch I always stream sniped Vonivan that ended up with a few prideposts and with me losing 90% of my games but eventually that raised to a 50% winrate from my part and after that he couldnt get a single game from me, I can say that vonivan was actually the catalyst for my good play. OCF was probably the single tourney that I practiced most for in CoH2, I basically went from a noob to a top player in a month and people were already noticing that you could actually do something with USF(even if most of my USF proficiency game from playing US in vCoH, a faction that always fit my agressive playstyle), then after some time we got to the point we are now and what a journey it was, from the countless hours practicing micro and making my agressive playstyle with factions that had no business being agressive like the vCoH ostheer and even CoH2 ostheer, I had the chance to meet the people that made the game that I played so many hours of and spent so much time enjoying each second of it, I dont care what people think when they say things like "DevM didnt deserve to go to canada he barely plays CoH2", without a doubt they dont know how many hours I expended in vCoH, so many that I barely need hours in CoH2 to consistently be good(you can compared helpinghans hours for instance with mine, pretty sure its 600 to 4k or close to that),so obviously I was super hyped up to have this chance and made sure not to lose even if I didnt have the time to put myself at the really best level.
I won and the experience was awesome, unfortunately Im not the most out going person and I think the relic guys might have gotten a bit of it but they sure made the trip much better and everyone at relic was really friendly, which really made me get more excited for my next goal that is a chance to work at relic in the future even if it is small and requires work , making games was part of the reason Im studying computer science and programming in general.
To conclude I want to thank relic for years and years of awesome gaming and I hope DoW3 is successful, I might give it a good try. Ill also try to get some time to help the guys that are now helping balance the game.
ps:before releasing a new company of heroes give me a call relic
Relic Entertainment
cblanco ★ 
보드카 중대 
VonManteuffel 
Heartless Jäger 
