I got the chance to sit down with Vitriolic Gaming’s miikeys, an active member of the SoCal HoN Community since 2024. Michael Wong is a 20-year-old professional HoN player who played professional Counter-Strike: Source for years before switching to Heroes of Newerth.

He is known for hosting HoN LAN events in his area, with his last event held in January '12. He says that he is currently looking to put together another event, so people should look forward to hearing more about it in the future.
miikeys’s previous team consisted of ZaxiroK, Darkwonyx, Brized (Emperor), and Zetpro. a crew known for running the War Beast strat. With Zetpro playing on Pencils now and Brized making his own team, Domain of Pain, they ended up picking a new roster—though they are still known for making use of the War Beast.

Vitriolic Gaming now consists of miikeys as full support, FearTheZap as utility/jungler, Parakletos as the main carry, ZaxiroK as a solo/mid Player, and Bitchzlapped as another solo/mid player.

Parakletos and BitchZlapped are players who have not seen much competitive play. miikeys had this to say about it:

"The competitive scene is usually contained within the top 7-10 teams with players swapping around. They are skilled, so there is no point turning them down because of a lack of competitive experience."

With this lineup Vitriolic Gaming won the Clan Milk tournament their first time playing together. miikeys says that within the team, they have agreed that real life comes first. miikeys will be going to school to further his career in Music Production, with plans to move to Korea to get into K-Pop production. Because of this, he says, "HoN will be my last competitive game."

With their team stretching across several time zones, including Europe, Costa Rica, US Central and US West, this group is still somehow able to be online at the same time. miikeys says:

"As a new team I find it very fortunate that we are all flexible; everyone has a real life and everyone is dedicated, despite the time difference they find the time to be active."

This past weekend miikeys and Vitriolic Gaming faced off versus Panny and BetterLookingThanYou in what was a very exciting and action packed series, in the end Vitriolic Gaming came out on top 2-1 sending BetterLookingThanYou to the losers bracket. Going into the next round of the winners bracket next weekend miikeys speaks on his teams behalf stating,

"As a team we go into the match thinking we are going to win; having the mentality of what will happen when you lose doesn't help. Both teams are good so it's really going to come down to proper execution and whoever wins their lanes."

Lately there has been concern over the random factor of Blind Ban in the Lock Pick Mode with players like swindlemelonzz and Mynuts saying that the random factor has no place in a mode that should be entirely strategic.

miikeys, on the other hand, says that he thinks that Blind Ban plays a big part in the Lock Pick phase because there are those heroes which are god tier and need to be banned, with Wildsoul, Fayde, Tundra, Keeper of the Forest and Ophelia all being Blind Ban material. miikeys thinks there should be an extra ban added because of the additional heroes and the amount of them who are ban material.

miikeys is a known lover of KBBQ, and when big players such as CaKeS, Lalond, bkid, Milkfat, MoonMeander, and Tralfamadore come to town, he often meets up with them for food and in-person socializing.

The HoN community is known for repeating things that the pros are saying, and miikeys has expressed how much this irks some of the pros when it gets repeated to them whenever they meet someone in TMM.

“One time I was TMM’ing with bkid and our team somehow figured out one of us was streaming and started calling out our names and saying random stuff; we pretty much just ignored and blocked them and continued playing."

Still talking about the HoN community, miikeys went on to say,

"The thing I am annoyed most about is when 1600s think KDR stats are more important than win percentage. I wish HoN didn't have stats shown from the start, even though it is one of the things that makes HoN what it is. One thing that would change the game is if they only showed your winning percentage and most heroes played. I played professional Counter-Strike and the amount of shit talking in HoN is more than I've ever seen."

Two heroes that miikeys wishes would see more time are Flint and Myrmidon.

"Flint is easy to kill and has no early game presence, but he is such a hard carry and a very strong hero. Myrmidon hasn't seen any playtime since the tri-lane era died."

Some of the heroes that miikeys dislikes are Rally and Artillery because, "they just don't fit any kind of lineup."

When asked about HoN in general and why he likes it so much, miikeys says,

"The client is amazing and I'm really happy that S2 has had such great success with how smooth everything has run, compared to when I played professional Counter-Strike, when we had to try and run the anti-cheat system on our PCs during competitions and it was a pain to login sometimes and get the green light to go. There have been a few Alienware arena tournaments in HoN and the client was amazing, simple click and go."

"It's important to play to have fun. If you're going to be good at something, put total effort towards it because you're never going be good at it if you half-ass it."

miikeys spoke about how he would skip some high school classes and would take his laptop to his friend’s house to play Counter-Strike: Source. He ended up doing the same thing in college to play HoN.

"I got great fulfillment from dedicating so much time to the game. I got to travel and meet so many great people."

Shoutouts to Vitriolic Gaming, S2, Epitone Productions, Dailo Lao, Fullerton Boys, Moon, bkid, Lalond, and Kim Taeyeon.

- Crowslaw
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