The Hope
Maxwell “Aror” Jackson on Staying Positive, Adapting to the Meta, and Beating Expectations
Maxwell “Aror” Jackson celebrates with his Splyce teammates following their victory in the season five SMITE World Championship. Image courtesy of Hi-Rez Studios
Maxwell “Aror” Jackson is a winner. He has proven it time and time again. Sure, Jackson has been on his fair share of underperforming teams—most recently with the season nine Tartarus Titans. After a first-place finish, those Titans failed to secure a top-four seed both in the regular season of Phase 3 and in the Phase 3 playoffs heading into Worlds, forcing the once-favorites into the play-in tournament. Weighed down by roster changes late in the year, the Titans, despite cruising through the play-in, were heavy underdogs in the first round of Worlds against the defending champion Atlantis Leviathans. They won in two games and went on to finish in second place—an improbable run that came up just inches short.
It wasn’t the first time Jackson had defied expectations. In season five, Jackson’s Splyce team finished a paltry 1-9 during the season’s spring split, dead last in North America. In summer, they improved to 5-5—good for third place, but hardly enough to make them favorites. Fall was kinder to them; their 8-2 record was enough for second, but even with the improvements Splyce was firmly in the shadow of defending champion EUnited, who had finished second, first, and first in spring, summer, and fall respectively. They were handily the favorites out of North America.
The benefit of being the second seed for Splyce was being on the opposite side of the bracket from their North American rivals, who were knocked out of the tournament by Trifecta, themselves eliminated by Europe’s RivaL in the second round. RivaL had an inconsistent year but had qualified for their second straight finals, and were looking like the favorites facing Splyce who had cruised through their weaker side of the bracket. After stumbling out of the gates in that series, Splyce battled to win in five games. From dead last to Champions of the World.
How do you do it? As Jackson tells it, you just believe that you can. The facts, the standings, the odds—they all melt away; if you expect to win, you will. For a few great competitors, like Jackson, it really is that simple.
I sat down with Jackson to discuss staying positive during the lows of a long season, adapting to a changing meta, and defying expectations.
[The following interview has been edited for clarity.]
The Long Lane: You had a surprising but ultimately disappointing run at Worlds, and then you made some shake ups to the roster before this season and you moved on from Stuart and SoloOrTroll. What went into those decisions? Specifically to pick up Baskin, because we'll get into CycloneSpin a little bit later.
Aror: Coming out of Worlds, I didn't 100% know exactly what I wanted to do and I was giving it a couple of days. I knew that I wanted to play with Cyno again and Paul seemed like he wanted to play again. And then from there, Paul started talking to me about picking up Cyclone again because we both felt like he did really good things for our team. And part of the reason why we let Cyclone go was because SoT and Layers didn't get along with him. So we just thought that if SoT didn't want to play with him then, he probably would have not wanted to play with him after Worlds as well. And then Stu. It just came down to us wanting to play with Cyclone. Stu had a really good run at Worlds, though, and I was really surprised that he didn't get picked up by another team because I really thought he was going to one of the teams that would automatically qualify. So it was kind of unfortunate that he didn't get picked up, but I'm glad he ended up making it back into the SPL.
TLL: The thing about CycloneSpin that's so interesting, I don't know that anything like that has ever happened in SMITE where a roster has dropped a player for that last phase and then picked them up again at the start of the next season. Do you regret dropping CycloneSpin for Phase 3? You said a large factor of that was how he got along with Layers. Obviously Layers ended up being a problem for the team. So do you wish you had stuck with CycloneSpin?
A: There's not really regret for me at all for everything that happened. It is what it is. There was nothing that was going to change people's minds because it was more than just Layers, it was also SoT who didn't really want to play with him. Having to lose SoT and Layers at the same time would have felt really bad and it would have probably been harder to replace two people midseason, especially when all the teams are already decided. So, no, there's no regret at all and I think we did really well despite dropping him, but I'm excited to have him back this season.
TLL: And then you mentioned you knew you wanted a team with Cyno [after Worlds]. And it's interesting because you won a World Championship with him and CycloneSpin, obviously. And then you tried him out before picking up Layers with the Titans in season eight. He was kind of the first choice, the obvious choice, when Layers was suspended, but now to start the season, we're only two weeks in, but I think people have seen maybe a little bit of a slow start from Cyno, especially with the warrior picks maybe not quite suiting the meta. Could you give some insight into what you see with Cyno and why you were so eager to team with him again?
A: I had a feeling that we were going to have a slower start this year. I didn't expect us to lose as many games as we have lost, but Cyno is super reliable when it comes to winning. I feel like our mindset towards the game is very similar, so it's really easy for me to work with him and I feel like we both share very similar ideas in terms of drafting and how we want the map to be played. The slow start is not attributed to him at all. It's like a whole team thing. Especially the game where I went 0-8 on Ah Puch. That was no one else's fault but mine. That was bad. I tried a pick, it didn't work out very well. But it's early in the season, we're trying things, we're seeing what we like, we're seeing what we don't like, and we feel like as the season goes on we're just going to get better as a team. As long as we keep practicing, that's the biggest thing. As long as we keep practicing and not giving up and just trying our best, I feel like we're going to be in a really good spot coming the end of the year and then even the end of this phase as well.
TLL: Is it hard to keep morale up when things aren't really going your way? You experienced this last season and again at the beginning of season eight a little bit. Just those struggles to really cement yourself as a winning team. Is it difficult to stay engaged when it feels like nothing's working?
A: For everybody, I feel like there are times in any competitive atmosphere—any competitive game, sports games, whatever competition—you're going to have ups and downs. And it feels really bad during the downs, but it does feel good during the ups. I don't think the slow start defines the whole year, and I'm okay with having a slower start. And I wouldn't say nothing's been working out for us. We had a really good game against the Warriors in game 2, and I feel like it showed that we can compete with the top teams because they're considered either the best team right now or the second best team behind the Kings. You can call them one or two, whichever you want. We played really well against them. On Sunday, our fourth set against the Ravens, we had a really good game 1 as well. We just weren't able to close the game out. And we played pretty well against the Gladiators. I know that they're struggling as well, but a win is a win. So I wouldn't say that nothing's worked for us right now, but it's just the consistency. We haven't been able to win a lot of games and put together a string of wins. That's the biggest thing. It is really hard to keep morale up, but that's just part of playing, and the more experience you have with it, the better it is to get through it. But it's always rough no matter what. People could tell you otherwise, but it's always hard.
TLL: I think this roster, as it is right now, is dramatically more experienced than the one you started and ended last season with. Because CycloneSpin and Baskin have been around the block, and Baskin has a lot of experience being a good player on teams that weren't necessarily top teams. Do you think that [your team’s] experience and this team environment make you a little bit more resilient to the lows of a long season?
A: Yes. Especially me, too. I've had a lot of success playing. This is like my 10th year playing in the SPL, and I've been on really good teams, I've been on okay teams, and I've been on some bad teams. So it just comes with time and things will always get better as long as everybody keeps trying, because I feel like we all know that everybody's really good on this team and we just need to figure out what works for us and how to be more consistent. And I think Baskin and CycloneSpin have both been in similar situations as well, where they haven't been on some of the greatest teams, but they've also been on really good teams too. So I think it definitely helps the resilience just having players like that.
TLL: You mentioned that Ah Puch pick that really didn't work out. What was the idea in that game? Because Ah Puch support is not something the fans have seen before.
A: It's just really good against Hel. And it was a pick I was practicing a lot in ranked and it was going well there, but it just didn't transition well into the SPL. And that game, I'm not going to get too much into it, I guess, because I don't want to give things away, but I also feel like, in hindsight, that game was probably not the best game to pick it in either. So that's why it looked even worse.
TLL: You've been on a variety of different teams, and I want to start with a contrast between the team you started on in season one, which was the Fat Chunks. And they weren't the worst team. People who were watching back then will remember Thurst, who really struggled to win a game. But you all were one of the bottom-end teams, all relatively unknown players at the time. Cyclone was your solo laner back then and you were with SamShrew in the duo lane. So that team, without much of a realistic chance at winning Worlds, versus the season eight Titans, where you were dominant most of the season, won most of the tournaments, and got that runner-up finish. What was the difference in being on those teams?
A: The season eight Titans roster, I feel like we were winning everything. And that was a really weird year because we were winning, I'd say, 90% of our scrims, which is a very high win rate for scrims in general. So that was pretty different. And back on Fat Chunks, we did pretty well in scrims, but we were never considered a top team. There really isn't that much of a difference. It's just that more people think you're going to win than not. That's the main difference. There's a higher expectation that your team is going to do well, but for me, it's not really that different because every team I've been on, I always felt like I had a really good chance of winning every year.
TLL: It's interesting that you mention that because you've been on a couple of teams now that really weren't expected to do well. Obviously, we've already talked about the last year with the Titans, that late-season roster change, and no expectations to make a run at Worlds. And then that season 5 Splyce team wasn't bad by any means, but I don't think anyone predicted the way you all finished the regular season and then won the Championship. But is that just a mindset you bring that sort of helps these teams show up when it counts?
A: I was talking to [PolarBear]Mike—self-plug, but Mike and I just started a podcast, and in the last episode we were talking to [former Splyce coach] Cabom. We had him on as a guest, and he was wondering what we felt going into the event. And I told him I thought we were going to win. And I don't know. I've always believed that. I feel like if you don't believe that you're going to win the event that you're playing in, you're not going to do well in it. It gives everybody else confidence. If you feel like you're going to win the event, then everybody else should feel that way as well. And then also just having wins prior definitely helps too.
TLL: That season five so far is your only World Championship. What was it like when you secured that game five victory and knew you were the World Champion?
A: Going into game five that Worlds, we all knew what picks we wanted and they kind of just gave us all the picks in the draft. I remember everybody was really excited. I'm like, 'we still have to win the game.' So then we went in the game and won it and it felt really good. But that Worlds win is kind of how a lot of my seasons have gone. Start off slow and then have to battle back into the season. Because at the start of that set, we got crushed in game one. Game two was kind of looking like the same thing, but then we were able to bring it back and then we kind of brought back the series after that and fought our way back in. So I've always felt like that's something I've always had to do. Not intentionally, but it happens, I guess. But it works out in the end.
TLL: And I think this is more of a footnote in your career now, especially as you've had continued success since, but that Splyce team during season six had, I would say, a historic collapse for a defending champion team. You replaced three players during the year and it started with Cyno and Moswal being replaced by Screammmmm and Venenu. What happened that season where you ended up having to make so many roster changes?
A: There were a couple of things that played into the roster changes in season six. The first thing was that I don't think everybody was happy going into Worlds and not everybody was happy with the roster, just in game and how people acted sometimes. There were major conflicts between CycloneSpin and Divios, and Cyno and Divios. So there were just some disagreements in-game that didn't go very well between those two. So that's number one, and number two, which I feel like is one of the bigger things, that was the first year of the LAN League and everybody moved [to Atlanta] late in February and SPL didn't end up starting until late April that year. We were there for over two months before any other team was there and we were scrimming a lot after Worlds. So I think we got burnt out before SPL started because it was supposed to start in early March but it kept getting pushed back due to visa issues. So we all thought if we went there in February it'd be a good idea. But it ended up not being a good idea. And it's funny that you ask because me and Cabom and Mike just spent two hours talking about it, so it's really fresh in my mind.
Jackson (left) with Titans teammate Paul during the season nine SMITE World Championship. Image courtesy of Hi-Rez studios.
TLL: Your first big jump to a more competitive team was in season three with team Eager in the duo lane with Zapman, and you ended up leaving that team and going to Cognitive which was that team with Cabom actually. And after that team did well, you joined Zapman and Eager to return to being a top team. What was that journey like with Eager, departing Zapman and then coming back?
A: I loved playing with Zap. He's probably one of my favorite people I've ever played with. I had a lot of fun playing with him even on the first iteration of Eager in season two when I first started playing with him. He kind of had a rep of being a little more toxic, but he was never bad to me ever when I teamed with him, and he was really supportive and he really tried his best because we had to work our way through Challenger Cup then, which is SCC now, because Eager didn't qualify to the SPL in phase one. So that's why they picked me up—because they weren't happy with their qualification performance. So I played with them in Challenger, we qualified to SPL, and then I played the first couple of weeks.
But going into SPL, the biggest thing was that I wasn't really happy with how some people were treating practice on that team, and I wanted some changes that weren't happening, but they all convinced me to stay. I didn't want to, but I did. And then things got even worse, so that's why I ended up departing. And then I sat out that phase two that year and then going with Cabom in phase three, and it was really good. I loved playing with Cabom. We had success in the future after that in season five, and in season six, and of course in season three back with Zap. I loved playing with him and we worked at Worlds together in season two as casters and we roomed together and we just got along really well in person. So I feel like we really became good friends and then from there we teamed with each other the next year and I really love that Eager team. I had a lot of fun playing with everybody and I'm still really friends with all of them today.
TLL: And then later, in season seven, you were on one of the most stacked rosters in SMITE history, to be frank. And I'll just read the names. Yourself in Support, CycloneSpin ADC, BigManTings in Mid, Adapting in the jungle, Benji in the solo lane. That's just ridiculous when you stop to think about it. And that Radiance roster had a lot of success all season and you always went up against Ghost in the finals of the main tournaments. Of course, everybody kind of fell on the Pittsburgh Knights' sword at Worlds in their crazy run. Do you feel like one kind of got away from you that year where you had this incredible team, maybe you should have won the whole thing that year?
A: Actually the one that got away was season eight in my opinion. I felt like we had a really good shot in season eight. We were having really good scrims. We were improving every week. And I feel like that's the biggest thing. Like season seven. I was surprised that we did as well as we did. I thought we didn't make a lot of improvements. We always just ended up playing pretty well at the tournaments, because we finished [the regular phase] around the middle of the pack most of that year. I think we finished fourth one split and then I can't remember what we finished the second split, but I remember we were a middle-of-the-pack team. That was also the COVID year, which was not great. That team... we just never could get on the same page that year, it felt like. But we were all good players, so that's why we did as well as we did.
TLL: Let's talk about season eight, then. You start that year with ScaryD in the Jungle. And this will happen anytime a pro player role-swaps. People will have questions. They'll be curious. And that was no different with ScaryD. Everyone was asking, 'is this going to work out?' And of course, when it didn't, everyone says 'I knew it!' But what happened with ScaryD and his tenure in the jungle, and what kind of led to moving on from him?
A: We picked him up because Paul played with him for the past two years and Paul really wanted to team with him again. And also Scary kind of got screwed over, I guess is what I've heard. I don't know the full story because I wasn't part of it, but apparently, he couldn't find a team and Paul really wanted to make sure that he was on a team again because they just won Worlds back-to-back with each other and they queued a lot of jungle and mid together in ranked for fun before the tournaments. And Paul was really confident that he could play jungle well because they played so much ranked together. And I thought, 'you know what, I'm down.' Because I like Scary. I played with him in the past when I left Eager, actually. I played with him on a team for a little bit in season two, and Zap held an 'Eager Cup' and we played in that and we actually won. So I remember I liked when I played with him then. And I always thought Scary is a pretty nice guy, and I always thought he was a good player as well. So we gave it a shot. And the first phase, we didn't do the greatest, but we did okay. It just felt like it was hard to improve as a team with a new jungler that is also new to the role. And then we go into playoffs. We did pretty well. We brought Dragons to five games with [Scary] and they ended up winning that first phase. I feel like we didn't do the worst with him, so we were pretty happy with our performance. We went into phase two and it felt like we weren't improving at a rate that other teams were improving.
It kind of reminded me of season seven as well because in season seven, I felt like Radiance didn't make improvements as fast as other teams, and it felt really bad. But it felt like that even more so [in season eight] because Scary was in a new role. We gave him a pretty good amount of time to try to adjust. Part of the problem was that a lot of the team wanted him to play gods that he was more comfortable with, like some of the Warrior jungles, which ended up being the meta going into the playoffs in phase two. He was playing Gilgamesh, but stuff like Achilles, Erlang, and some of the gods that he's probably played in solo lane before. Osiris is another one that was really good at that tournament. We really wanted him to play warrior jungles, but Cherryo, our coach at the time, really wanted him to play assassins only. So there was a divide on that and it made it hard to improve because Scary couldn't really get his confidence up because we were not doing very well in scrims. And that's why it didn't seem like it was going to work out and why we made the swap. And then, like you said earlier, we were going to get Cyno, but then ended up going with Layers, and then from there we had a really good year.
TLL: That decision was really fascinating. The Layers fallout with the Scarabs happened just before you chose to move on from Scary. And behind the scenes you're trying out junglers, but publicly you have SPL games to play in the meantime, so you got Layers to sub.
A: We didn't even try junglers out. We were going to get Cyno, but Cyno was moving to college, so he was driving across the country which was going to take him three days. And that was when we had SPL, so we had to get a different jungler for the first week. So that's why we used Layers as a sub. And then it went well and that's what made us choose Layers over Cyno at the time.
TLL: You do well with Layers, the next week, you show up with Cyno and you went 1-1. Was that a hard decision or to move on from Cyno [at that point] and go with Layers?
A: Yeah. For me, it was a really hard decision. But there are two major reasons that we chose Layers over Cyno. First was that Layers was more practiced because Cyno was in school and he wasn't really playing SMITE that much outside of the SCC on the weekends. His team didn't scrim. He'd just show up on the weekend, play SCC, and then that's all the SMITE he really played for the last couple of months. So he wasn't really in top playing shape. And then the second reason was that Cyno was still in college and Layers wasn't, so Layers was able to move down full-time. He was just able to be more committed. So that's the two major reasons why we went with Layers over Cyno.
TLL: It was interesting to watch because when you got Layers, it was like a switch flipped. And Layers, he's a great player, but he's not Michael Jordan. You all were struggling with ScaryD, and then you struggled still some with Cyno, and then Layers comes in and immediately you're dominant. And by dominant, I mean head and shoulders above the competition for months on end. Was it just that good of a good fit, or was Layers on something different that season? What was going on with the team that you became so dominant so fast with just the one change?
A: The week we played with Cyno, he did really well one set. I mean, he did well in both sets. The team we lost to the week that Cyno played was the Leviathans, and they were doing really well during that phase. But the reason we just started doing so well with Layers is it was really easy for us to fix mistakes that we had on the team once we were able to pick up Layers. It was hard to fix certain mistakes with ScaryD since Scary was so new to jungling. There were a lot of basic, small things that are hard to work out as a team and fix compared to when you have someone who's used to playing in jungle that knows what they need to do in the role. So when he came in, we didn't have to worry as much about the smaller things and we were able to focus on what our team needed to do to be better.
Jackson (middle) holding the hammer as celebrates his first championship. Image courtesy of Hi-Rez Studios.
TLL: You said this was the season that got away. What happened in that grand finals where you lost 3-0 to Zapman's Leviathans?
A: Everybody on our team was a little nervous. For me, I wasn't really that nervous. But it seemed like Layers was a bit nervous, and then Benji knew that it was going to be his last set, so I feel like he was a little nervous as well. I don't know if he was nervous, but he was not the same [and maybe] he put maybe a lot of pressure on it being like his last game. Game 1 was pretty close and we ended up losing a late-game team fight, and after that, we didn't really play that well in the rest of the series. We also didn't pick some of the picks that we practiced a ton and did really well with in scrims as well. That always feels really bad. Cliodhna had just released and Layers was destroying everybody on that pick, but we didn't even pick it once that Worlds run, I'm pretty sure.
TLL: Does it slip your mind or does it happen to not fit in the picks? What happens there when you miss those picks in actual games?
A: We go into the set and everybody thought Bastet was really good, and we ended up picking that game three. That was like the game that we could have probably picked Cliodhna out of all three of those games. And Bastet just was really good. So we thought, 'eh, we'll just play Bastet.' But it just comes down to whether the player really wants something or not. I feel like we didn't talk about it enough in the draft. That's all there is to it. We should have said that we wanted to play [the Cliodhna] more.
TLL: Fast forward to season nine and your surprise run at Worlds. You had Cyno, who was just back with the team to replace the suspended Layers. And I don't think anybody realistically picked you all to beat the Leviathans, but you come out with, to my eyes, the Thanatos pick that really caught them off guard and helped you win that set. What was the preparation like? How did you arrive on that pick nobody saw coming and why was it so effective?
A: Cyno probably has a different story than I do, but I always laugh because I was queuing ranked with Cyno and I kept banning Thanatos and he's like, 'why do you always ban Thanatos?' Because Moswal lost me my rank 1 Ares [on the ranked leaderboard] in a game against a Thanatos that went like 26-5 earlier that season. So I would always ban it because Moswal will be like, 'Thanatos is so broken in ranked.' And I'd always get wrecked by Thanatos in ranked in season eight and season nine. So I'd always just ban it back then just because I didn't like playing against it in ranked and I was playing a lot of ranked with Cyno. So he's like, 'I'm going to try it.' And he liked it a lot and it fit what we wanted to do as a team really well.
TLL: That's an amazing story. Just sort of stumbling into the Thanatos. And it was really effective into the Da Ji. Is that something you saw it as, a Da Ji counter pick? Or is that just good fortune against Panitom?
A: That was the other thing. Cyno was looking for characters that were good against Da Ji because Da Ji was really popular that entire year in season nine. I think it was like one of the most banned jungle gods throughout that entire season. And Cyno's go-to pick Ne Zha that everybody knows him for is really good against Da Ji as well. He wanted another pick that was good into Da Ji. And that's a good catch by you, that it was good into Da Ji and that's why we went with it.
TLL: [The Thanatos] was still effective in the Dragons set that went to five games, and I think people were surprised, too, that you all were able to win that set. What was the prep like going into that set? Because it really felt like the weight of some of these picks—the Cabrakan, Thanatos, the Ne Zha, the Amaterasu, Paul's He Bo as well—were too much for the Dragons to manage.
A: The week leading up to Worlds we actually scrimmed the Kings for three days and we did really well with all the picks that we were playing and all the picks that we played at Worlds were the picks that we scrimmed against them, and that last week of scrims is where we really... clicked is the most cliche thing to say, but things started going really well for us because we won ten games and lost one game to them going into the event. So I think the Kings thought we were going to crush our side of the bracket after playing them that week. The Thanatos and He Bo went really well every game. The Cabrakan was also doing really well in those games. Going into it, we just picked what was working for us and we knew we were going to get what we wanted in that set. It felt like at that event if any team got Amaterasu, they were probably going to win. So when we got Ama twice against them—I can't remember if we got it twice or only once, and I know we gave it to them game four and they crushed us with it, but I can't remember how many times we got it. I think we got it twice, but we were really confident in our picks and we just knew if we could get the picks that we practiced with and got the picks that we wanted, we would do really well into any team that we matched up against.
TLL: Is that what happened in the Kings set then, that they just did a really good job keeping you off of your picks?
A: Game one, I think we got a really insane draft against them and they beat us by playing better in the first game, because I feel like we really outdrafted them in the first game. The one thing that we could have done differently in that draft was ban Vulcan bottom two, but I thought if we got either Ama, Thanatos, or He Bo, we would just win every game at that Worlds. It doesn't matter what the rest of our comp was, we'd win. So going into that game, if we were able to win with that, it would have made picks and bans really hard for them, but we weren't able to win. So then we tried switching it up in game two and that didn't go well either. They were well prepared because we played against them a ton.
It's so funny. Going to a World Championship, if you're a team that's losing scrims, you're going to win because the year prior, we scrimmed probably 70% of our scrims against the Leviathans the last two weeks before Worlds. I think they beat us maybe two or three times in two weeks. And I feel like they kind of downloaded us from playing [against us]. And then when I won back in season five, it was the only time I ever triple-blocked, which was three blocks of scrims. We were triple-blocking and we lost every single game outside of two games for a week, and then we won Worlds. So the team that's losing scrims going into the event—high chance of winning.
Jackson during a World Championship match against SK Gaming, season six. Image courtesy of Hi-Rez Studios.
TLL: Does that not make everybody feel bad going into the event? Just like, 'oh man, we've been losing non-stop and now we're about to go on stage and get crushed.'
A: I feel like you learn more when you lose. That's what it is. And you're forced to make more changes because if you're winning, you're just going to play the stuff you've been winning with, and then if you're losing, you're forced to change things up because when we scrimmed [the Kings], they played some of the same stuff that they played against us at Worlds, but they changed a lot of stuff throughout the event. They kept seeing what would work and what wouldn't work. The Kings, even though they had a pretty dominant run, they got a lot out of the first two sets that they played.
TLL: Something that's interesting about your career is, especially early on and really during your Championship run as well, you were really known for these aggressive picks. The Fenrir, the Hercules, the Ares. And in the last few seasons, you've incorporated more backline supports into your god pool rather than just the 'get in there' dive picks you were known for. You've been playing Hel this season, but the Terra has been a part of your game, the Khepri has been very successful for you. Obviously Yemoja has been a top pick for ages. Was that a point of emphasis for you to diversify your play style and be able to play these 'keep people alive' peel-based supports in addition to the dive picks?
A: I love that question because I feel like season seven was when I kind of made the change to playing more backliner gods like Khepri. That's when Yemoja released as well. I played Terra then too. Prior to season seven, I just really liked the aggressive play style. And with being able to invade in season six, it was easy to play the really aggressive gods. A lot of people remember the Hercules from that year and then the prior seasons, like season five, season four, season three. I was invading in season three as well with Erlang. Sobek was really popular back then as well for invading.
But there are two different versions of my game; pre-season seven and post-season seven. I definitely added more gods and it wasn't really by choice. As you play so many seasons, you're kind of forced to change your god pool and the way you play a little bit, but you can still incorporate some of the stuff that you've done before. You're forced to add on to what you have because if you don't, you're going to fall off or be out of the league. If you don't keep adapting and changing to teams that you're on, like the Radiance year, I had to change my play style with the players that I had because I couldn't really play that aggressive style. But even with the meta itself. The Invaders curse got added [in season seven] as well, so there was no more invading. I just had to change with the team that I was on and the meta that ended up happening. So I think it's a good thing, but I never went out of my way like 'I'm going to pick these gods to just diversify my god pool.' It was more that I or my team felt like we needed these picks to succeed.
TLL: That's a good segue into the next few questions. This has kind of been an informal kind of segment in these interviews with the players who have a trivia section on the SMITE esports Wiki to go through a few of these and see if they're accurate. It says you're credited with the creation of assassin supports, in particular Fenrir. Do you see yourself as the father of the assassin support?
A: If people say that, that's great. I was the first one to play Fenrir, I guess, in SPL. I'm sure there are plenty of people that tried assassin supports in their own games, but in competitive, I definitely was the first one to play Fenrir. So I guess if that's what it means to be the father [of assassin supports], then I guess I'm that. But it's cool to hear that for sure.
TLL: It says that you play arena as practice for every pro match. Is that true? Do you hop in the arena to practice the mechanics?
A: Yes. So I play regular arena now most of the time before my pro games. But what I used to do was play arena practice against bots. That was like the first four or five seasons all the way up until season six when I moved down here. I don't do that anymore. I don't know why. But in season six, I remember I had a Hercules warm-up that I used to do, so that's what I started doing then. And now I just do a quick warm-up on any god because the matches start pretty quick now. There's not as much warm-up time. I feel like it just depends on what god I'm playing. I'll maybe warm up on that god a little bit, but yeah, I used to play arena practice, like, against the Bots before every SPL game. That is true. But nowadays, if I have time, I try to play an arena match. Like on Sunday, before the Ravens set, I played like five arenas. I got up pretty early that morning so I was playing a lot of arena. And everybody's like, 'are you Aror?' I'm like, '...Yeah.' [Laughs]. They say, 'good luck today.' It's always pretty funny to see.
TLL: And this one I know is true. You're the brother of League of Legends player Lourlo. What's it like seeing your brother's career in a more popular game? Do you ever wish that you had played League of Legends?
A: I played a lot of league in 2009, 2010 when it first came out, and I loved playing it back then. But I was never a fan of clicking to move. I was pretty good at League. Not as good as my brother. My brother was always better than me at League, and he's always just been really good at any game that he plays. If he picks up a game, he gets it really fast. I feel like I do too, in some aspects. If it's more of like a strategy game, like a card game maybe, or like a tactical game, I can pick it up and get pretty good at it pretty quick. But any game, like tactical, FPS, any game he picks up, he does pretty well.
We both grew up playing a lot of World of Warcraft as well, so WoW and League were my first two big PC games that I played, and SMITE's literally a fusion of those games, and it's like the most perfect fusion of those games that you can think of. And I really don't like clicking to move, so I don't regret not continuing to play League at all. And when I first started playing SMITE, I never thought in a million years that there would be a whole competitive scene and that I'd be playing SMITE professionally and for ten years at that. I didn't expect it. I just played it because I had a lot of fun playing it. I never expected to go as far and do as many cool things as I've gotten to do.
Jackson (second from right) with his Titans teammates as they are introduced to the crowd, season nine SMITE World Championship. Image courtesy of Hi-Rez Studios.
TLL: When did you realize that this could be a career and that there was a future for you in SMITE?
A: I don't even know when I first realized it. I always thought I was really good because I came from League, so when I first started playing SMITE, it was unfair because back in season one League, I was Platinum, which was like the highest rank there was back then, as a jungler. So I came over to SMITE and I had a lot of WoW PvP experience as well. And I was good at that game. So just having backgrounds in both WoW and in League and being really good at both of them, it was so easy for me to play SMITE and I just had so much fun. I remember when Guan Yu first came out, I think I played like ten games and I died only once in ten games. I had over 100 kills. It was so much fun. And then running around the map as old Arachne and old Kali, getting all the jungle buffs because I would jungle on the old map when it first came out. I played a lot of Kali, Arachne, Vamana, Odin. And then when Ares came out, played a bunch of Ares jungle as well.
And then going into ranked, I always did pretty well. And it's funny because all the players that were considered really good, like Zap, I've known Zap forever, and Lassiz. I had a lot of them blocked because they did something that either irritated me in the game or they were really toxic. [Laughs]. So my friend and I played SMITE together in June 2012 when it came out and we played that entire summer together. I remember going over to his house with my laptop and we'd play every single day and I can't remember if it was late 2012 or summer 2013 when ranked came out. I remember the first day of ranked, we were like, 'oh, there's no duo queue.' So we both had to solo queue. He got on Zap's team and I got against them and we won. And Zap was being super toxic to him the entire game, like calling him bad. And my friend was really good at the time, but he never queued ranked after that first game. So I blocked Zap after that game. And then there was another funny story. In a ranked game with MLCst3alth—and I've talked to him about this, but he doesn't remember it. He was playing Ymir and we were against an Agni and we were doing Fire Giant. And the Fire Giant used to be enclosed.
TLL: It was like a volcano.
A: Yeah. So you'd walk in. And Stealth was playing Ymir, and he Ymir walled us into Fire when the lava came up and we all got Agni bombed over the Ymir wall and we couldn't get out. And I'm like, 'what was that wall that was so bad. Like, you lost the game.' And he got really mad at me, so then I blocked him that game. But there were a bunch of funny stories like that with the pro players that were really popular back then. But going into SPL season, season one, there was like an open bracket to just play to qualify for SPL. And I thought I'd always been pretty good. Like, why not play in it and just play SPL? It sounds kind of fun. So I tried to get all the people that I talked to and played SMITE with randomly to play with me in the open bracket.
And I was also good friends with Kiki as well back then. It wasn't the Launch Tournament, but it was the tournament prior to season one. I forget what that tournament was called. It was after the Launch Tournament. It wasn't PAX. I don't know who won that tournament, but I went to that tournament, I remember, just a friend of Kiki's. And that was like my first taste of competitive SMITE in person. And, yeah, it was a lot of fun. And then I thought I might as well just try to make a team for whenever SPL comes around. I made one, we qualified, and then I played.
And then still, I didn't really expect it. I don't know. I didn't really realize that it could be like a real career, I guess, until season three when the prizing became more consistent. Because in season one and season two, the prizing was really more for the teams that finished at the very top. There wasn't really a lot of prizing for any of the other teams. I don't think any teams had a salary. And if they did, it was not very high in season one and season two. But season three is when they started having more consistent prizing that was kind of just given out to all the teams that competed in the league. So I guess season three is like when I first started realizing that [a career in SMITE] could be a thing.
TLL: One more trivia. It says you love to dance. Are you a dancer?
A: I'm not a dancer. I like to dance, but I'm not the best dancer at the same time. But it is fun to dance, for sure.
TLL: Finally, about the podcast that you mentioned earlier with PolarBearMike. How did that podcast come to be and what do you see for it in the future?
A: I talked to Hindu, I don't know, four years ago about maybe starting a podcast when I moved down here, because he said there was like a podcast room that Hi-Rez had and that if people wanted to use it to talk to him. And I said I'd be interested in doing something like that but it just never came to be. And then this year, he came up to me during one of the content days, I think it was when it was the Styx Ferrymen content day prior to the season starting. He came up to me and he said, 'yo, do you want to do a podcast? I think it'd be cool if I got Mike with you because I feel like both you guys have both played for a long time and you guys have done stuff with the caster team.' And I was like, 'yeah, that sounds like it would be fun.' But I told him I wanted it to be more like just about things that have happened in SMITE [in the past] and not really about the current SPL. I don't want to really talk about the current SPL because I feel like that would not be good for either of us competitive-wise. Barra has one and he does well. But for me, I don't want to talk about the current SPL with other SPL players in that manner. I just wanted it to be more about just SMITE in general and past seasons and stuff like that. And then Mike agreed to do it. So that's how that happened. Hinduman was the creator of that.
TLL
Well, certainly glad to have it. It's been fun, and I wish you really good luck with the podcast and this season with the Ferrymen. Anyone you want to shout-out here at the end?
A
Shout-out to all the people that have supported me over all the seasons. I know there's a bunch of you guys that have watched me from the beginning that always come in and say hi when I do stream every once in a while. And then shout-out to all my friends, my teammates, and then to my family as well. My mom and my brothers and my dad.
Jackson and the Styx Ferrymen will continue trying to beat the odds this season as they face the Eldritch Hounds on Saturday, May 6th at Twitch.tv/smitegame.
