It was truly an impressive lineup consisting of players of the absolute top-level of the CS scene in Norway. It was a clan that would prove that Norway belonged in the top of the best teams in the world - but this was just a heavy understatement of what they really did. The clan became one of the most successful clans that ever existed in the history of Counter-Strike.



At the time the clan was created CPL was just around the next corner, and the team's home nation was the host of the event. In order to be prepared for the event, the team needed training; training on LAN was however no option for them, so instead they had to practise their teamplay on the Internet. Before CPL the biggest rivals of eoLithic were considered to be SK, mTw.se, esu.swe and mousesports. A little time before the event, SK decided to skip this event due to their newly updated team's lack of preparation (Hyb had recently joined the team.)



Their performance on CPL Oslo was marvelous, completely undefeated through the whole tournament they could look back on a safe win over mousesports in the winner bracket final, and a rather convincing CPL final win over mTw.se - which also had a really impressive lineup, consisting of ScreaM, brunk, fisker, ahl and Filur.



eoLithic kicked off the final as terrorists on Nuke. They lost the pistol round and two following save rounds. Also the first weapon round was lost and mTw.se had the whole first part on their side. It took a little while before eoLithic really got in to the match; but in the middle of their terrorist side some really tight, even and exciting rounds showed up and the round wins were shared to both teams. In half-time it was 8-4 to mTw.se. When eoLithic were Counter-terrorists it turned out better however. They started their winning streak by winning the two-on-two situation on the pistol round, and after that they just let the game flow. They played really good, especially Luke who got a rather big amount of frags. mTw.se actually just got one round before eoLithic had got the nine rounds they needed for the win. 13-9 was the result. eoLithic's whole adventure was documented and a movie was created, called "eoLithic - Oslo By Storm". A movie made by Hesesses.



Shortly after CPL Oslo a major bunch of player changes happend in the team. Three players left the team - Luke, nVy and element. Apparently the team decided to exchange Luke and nVy for the former SK players XeqtR and DarK, which they had had their eyes on for some time. Now the lineup was almost as the one which followed eoLithic to their death. To clear things up a little - the lineup was knoxville, Naikon, DarK, XeqtR and Damien. Gamingeye interviewed knoxville and the team's manager, Styla, about all this. element was then clanless and said in an interview:

- CS is a esport where ppl go behind ppl's back. I've done it before, happend to me this time. It was mostly because knox want to play with xeqtr and naikon with dark. damien was chosen because me and x don't get along. I didn't wanne bench the rest of my life so I left.

In eoLithic's nearest future CPL in Paris and in Dallas was now the next event (The CPL event in Paris was however cancelled a time before the event would take place), and between the team's prestige-filled LAN events they decided to play some official games on the Internet - the competition was EuroCup. It was during a time when EuroCup's prestige was on its top, with top-clans like SK, matrix, Ocrana.fi and esu.swe also participating, and we could look forward to several exciting games between the best teams in Scandinavia (and the teams in Europe). Even before CPL Oslo they had started the tournament. They won their group with Swedish CosaNostra as runners-up.



Now the month was November in this year of 2002. Fragbite's birthday was over, and instead of celebrating the new powerhouse of Swedish CS coverage, all eyes were on the next CPL competition - this time it was a CPL qualifier. Mindtrek was the name of the LAN where the qualifier was held and the country hosting it was therefore Finland. eoLithic was seeded as number three, right behind SK and mTw.se - and now eoLithic would finally meet SK on LAN - on a qualifier to the greatest Counter-Strike tournament in the world. If your memory, or knowledge, betray you I can tell you all that Mindtrek was another success for the Norwegians. In the winner bracket final they met Sweden's most famous team - SK. Do you think it was an even game? No, not at all. eoLithic crushed SK, and with the excellent score of 13-4 the Norwegians skills in playing Counter-strike was confirmed.



After a more even game between mTw.se and SK in the loser bracket final (13-10 to mTw.se), mTw.se could have their chance to get revenge of the loss in Oslo - but instead they had to face another loss against eoLithic. Once again Nuke was the map, once again 13-9 was the result and eoLithic was now a step nearer CPL's winter event in Dallas.



After this eoLithic's greatness and world dominance was now a plain fact.





Another CS movie by Hesesses was realeased after Mindtrek, just as after CPL Oslo. This time the movie wasn't only about eoLithic, all participating teams were in it. We also did an interview with the creator, Hesseses, about the movie.

Now it was December this year of 2002, and CPL Dallas was on everybody's lips. Before the tournament both zEx and 3D had financial problems with attending the event, but both teams managed to solve it on one way or another. The biggest threats for eoLithic were just those American teams, and none less than SK, Team9, GoL and esu.swe.



eoLithic opened the competition by winning against a rather unknown team, but just after that they were to meet zEx on Train. eoLithic won the pistol round as CT and played pretty nicely the whole first half and the half-time score was 8-4 to eoLithic. As terrorists they once again won the pistol round, but lost the third round after a nice save round by zEx. zEx got in to the match and started winning some rounds, and after a while the score was 11-8 to eoLithic, but the winning streak for zEx wasn't over. The score turned 11-11, after two very spectacular rounds by zEx. One of them was a really nice frag by sunman on Damien, and the other was when Volcano managed to take out the whole eoLithic team in a snap when the Norwegians saved money. zEx' winning streak didn't get to an end. They won the game with 13-11 and kicked down eoLithic to the loser bracket.



While in loser bracket eoLithic won once again against a rather unknown team. Next up was Titans, a American team, and with a result of 13-4 they could show them the way home to USA. Next match was on the, for europeans, still rather unused but still recognized map Mill. DoP was now supposed to stop Norway's star-team, but eoLithic had the control of the map - 13-5 to eoLithic. Now there were only two more games before the loser bracket final, and next up was Team9 who lost against GoL in the winner bracket in a exciting game on Train. Now the Norwegians were to play against the Swedes on a fair game on Cobble. eoLithic started the match strongest, but after a pretty even first half the score was 7-5 to eoLithic. Team9 managed however to turn the meat upside-down and play a little bit better, and won their half with 8-4. A result of 13-11 was therefore a fact. This was therefore, and sadly, the end of eoLithic in this tournament. Almost. One last match about the seventh place was played, and eoLithic met Riot-Squad - who on a LAN before CPL won against Swedish esu.swe in the final. Perhaps they were a little bit depressed, because they had to write down another loss in their result book.



This was of course a disappointment, eoLithic had created lots of expectations and now when they participated in their first CPL Dallas event - that perhaps is the biggest tournament you can win, in a matter of prestige anyway - many wanted them to show what they could do. Now some people started to doubt in eoLithic, were they really that good? Many clans make changes in the team after performing under their expectations, but not eoLithic. They continued, and next up was the ending of the online part of EuroCup.

eoLithic only had one more game before the LAN finals in Rotterdam. It wasn't however just a random team they would meet. Tthey were to meet SK. The match was played on Cobble and Inferno and after many intense rounds eoLithic stood as a winner with the result of 25-23. In this game element was replacing knoxville, temporarily. The reason for this was because knoxville only was on 56k at that moment. This was however something Clanbase couldn't put up with, so the game had to be replayed. Sadly, SK could only offer a WO result, this was because there were some hardware and other computer problems in the team. This meant that eoLithic won the game and were invited to the LAN finals in Rotterdam.



Only five days after the WO win over SK, next big thing happend in eoLithic's history. They got a sponsor - e.sports united. This resulted in a name change to esu*eoLithic and some financial help by the multinational clan. A statement about it was realeased, read here. A bunch of interviews were made with all kinds of affected people, you can find links to those interviews here.



With a new sponsor helping them out they could now, maybe a little bit more motivated, enter a prestige-filled LAN tournament in Rotterdam against three other teams of the elite of Europe - Finnish Ocrana and the German clans mTw.aTn and a-Losers. After a couple of safe wins against Ocrana and mTw, they met mTw once again in the final, which they won. Any doubt of which team that were the best didn't exist, eoLithic was just too good for the opponents. Finland's Ocrana was a little of a disappointment, they had created lots of expectations earlier in EuroCup when they had won against SK for example.







The 23rd of January in 2003 Damien left esu*eoLithic and instead joined up with GameOnline. The reason for this was because he wanted to play with his mate element, who also played there. This seemed to be the only reason, because only six (!) days later both Damien and element joined eoLithic again. This got, of course, effects for both eoLithic and GameOnline. GoL, who earlier had the very successful lineup consisting of Souledge, Hyb, VicoN, mysse and element now lost both element, and VicoN - who decided to be inactive after Damien joined. In eoLithic the effect was that DarK left. In our interview with Damien he told us that DarK had lost his motivation in playing Counter-Strike when they lost Damien. From eoLithic's point of view this mess turned out that they got element and lost DarK, add the fact that their rivals GameOnline now had been weakened and all of this perhaps wasn't all bad - for eoLithic that is.



However, it didn't started that well with this lineup, eoLithic lost some EuroCup games (13-35 against matrix, 22-26 against ig3l and 17-31 against xPerience.se). One match they manage to win however, against dopefish. The 14th of March CPL Cannes opened its gates, but one team was missing - eoLithic. In an interview we did with XeqtR, he told us that the financial expenses that would be created by an CPL Cannes trip would be too much, even though they might get some money if they would've won the event.



Not that much happend during this time, except for some EuroCup games, but almost exactly two months after the Damien-and-element incident next player change happend.



In a little statement on SoGamed element told us that DarK was on his way back in the team after he had started a Quake 2 career in Austria's Infernum. The guy who had to leave room for DarK's rejoining was Damien, who simple got replaced. Shortly afterwards we could see Damien in a newly recreated version of zX9. Now eoLithic had got their final lineup that wouldn't change before the clan's death would be a fact. Naikon, knoxville, element, XeqtR and DarK were the players.



In the middle of April the team had a bootcamp in Gothenburg, on GameOnline - against GameOnline. They got in touch with the Internet-cafe's staff during the bootcamp and they decided to leave the e.sports united organisation and instead let GoL be their main sponsor. The Norwegians seemed to be disappointed in e.sports united's financial help in paying trips to CS events. Once concrete example of this was their absence from CPL Cannes. GameOnline was now sponsoring both their team, plus the rivals in Norway - and both teams would be sent down to France to Clikarena that started later that week. A short interview with element was made on Gamers.nu in connection with the sponsor change, read that one here.

The 19th of April 2003 Clikarena started, and after a day with lots of trouble with servers and delays etc. eoLithic had won their group. Before the event eoLithic was seeded as number four, after SK, 3D and Team9. The tournament rolled on for eoLithic and in the semi-final in the winner bracket, they met SK. It turned out to be a very even match that couldn't be settled on full time. An over-time was next-up. In the over-time eoLithic was however a little bit sharper and could rather clearly settle the game. The game was played on Train and you could find a demo here.



In the WB final they met Team9 that really had impressed many people in the tournament, and perhaps was in their absolut best shape with the lineup of vesslan, Lucchese, Luciano, quick and not at least the former eoLithic-player Luke. The match was played on Cobble and Team9 opened strongly as terrorists and could nail a 8-4 lead to the scoreboard. eoLithic managed however to come back, and in one round the score was even - 11-11. That was, however, the end of the round wins for the Norwegians and vesslan and company could take the two last rounds which resulted in a 13-11 win and a spot in the grand final.



Loser bracket final was next up for eoLithic, and the opponents were once again SK, after SK had won their game against Danish level on Prodigy. After a such of an even and exciting game the teams had in the semi-final in winner bracket, many didn't expect anything else than an even game, again. The map was a hell, Inferno that is, but eoLithic still managed to win the game against the Swedish giants. It wasn't so even as in the winner bracket, but a 13-10 result perhaps isn't that one-sided when you think about it.



After three even matches in a row against two of the best clans in the world, eoLithic now had the second spot in the grand final of Clikarena, against a very impressive Team9 - and the even matches wasn't over yet, not at all...



The final started on Train with the Swedes as terrorists. Team9 played really well, and eoLithic played less well, and in half-time Team9 had won their terrorist half with 11-1! Team9 now only needed two more rounds to take the Clikarena win home, but it got a lot more difficult than they thought. eoLithic managed to play really well, just like Team9 did, and actually took 11 rounds in a row, so a total result of 12-11 showed up. If eoLithic took the last round they would take the final to one more map - but Team9 had other plans, and they manage to instead take the map in to an over-time. Perhaps did Luke get a tap on his back after he killed three of his former clan-mates on the last round.



The HLTV viewers had a hard time trying to sit properly on their chairs when the restarts begun in the over-time. Team9 started as the, apparently, popular terrorist side, and won the pistol round. Team9 won eoLithic's save round but the Norwegians took the last round. eoLithic now needed to win all three remaining rounds for a win, and two more in order to get it to a tie, again.



This meant that the pistol round was extremely important. The second round would be really bad, economically, if they would lose the pistol round. Unfortunately this was what happend - they lost the pistol round. Fortunately the Norwegians didn't have plans of giving up, and after a nicely done save round, which they won, they could - just as Team9 - win their terrorist half with 2-1. This made the over-time turn in to one more over-time.



eoLithic started, once again, as Counter-terrorists, and managed to grab the pistol round from the dominating terrorists. Team9 tried to keep away from the equipped Norwegians on the next round, and Luke tried to run away from the crazy Norwegians - but eoLithic got their bullets on the right place and could therefore make sure that there economy would be stable in the next round. When Team9 got their big guns it was too much for eoLithic, and Team9 could get one more 2-1 half-time result - but this time for the CT's, for eoLithic that is.



eoLithic now needed two rounds to win the map, and the pistol round was extremely important - just like in every over-times. The Norwegians seemed to have warmed up their pistols, because they won the pistol round as terrorists also. Now the situation looked bright for eoLithic, and they won the round they needed for the win. The total result of the map was 19-16 to eoLithic. Next map was Dust2. Now all results were set to zero. Now you just had to forget the exciting Train match and instead to 100 % focus on the next map. The winner of Dust2 would win the whole final.



This time eoLithic started by taking on the L337 Krew uniform, and they had to face a loss on the pistol round, and we could see that it didn't go as eoLithic wanted all the time in the match. They actually lost the often terrorist dominated map with the lowest numbers - 5-7.



Pistol rounds on Dust2 weren't as sharp as on Train for eoLithic, this showed when they also lost the pistol round as CT's. On the save round, eoLithic, almost, manage to win. But close doesn't, as we all know, shoot any hares. eoLithic continued to lose rounds and never really got in to the match. Team9 played really good and could settle the match with the score of 13-7.



You can find HLTV demos from Train and Dust2 here. Two interviews were also made shortly after Clikarena, with Naikon and DarK, read here and here.

After they had played so well in an online-qualifier to the Swedish ESWC qualifier on LAN, eoLithic could, together with seven other Swedish teams enter a competition on Cafe Nine in Stockholm the 10th of May. The Norwegians first match was against dopefish on Train. It was an exciting game but eoLithic could stop dopefish before they got more than 13 rounds. Max rounds 15 was used so the result was 16-13.



Next match was the semi-final in the winner bracket, and the opponent was ArchAngels. ArchAngels started the match the best as CT's, but the match turned around and eoLithic showed up to be the better team, as predicted. 16-9 was the result.



Now eoLithic was already in the winner bracket final, where none other than SK was waiting. This great match was played on Cobble and eoLithic started the match by winning the CT pistol round. After the save round losses for SK, the Swedes started to win many rounds and could take 10 rounds before the half-time. 10-5. The Norwegians wasn't, probably, that happy with that score, but after one more won pistol round they could start their winning-train. They managed to get the result to 10-1, and they only needed one more round - but SK managed to take all of the four rounds and we had an over-time.



SK won the first over-time half with 2-1 and eoLithic's pistol rounds had extra pressure on them. The aim was however there for eoLithic and they could nail the result of 4-2 in the over-time to the scoreboard, and wish SK good luck in loser bracket where they would meet Team9.



SK won the loser bracket final with 16-10 and the antagonists would once again meet, now in the grand final.



The match was played on Dust2 and eoLithic started as Counter-terrorists. They won the pistol round, but after SK had won some important rounds, they destroyed eoLithic's good economy. Big parts of the first half went as SK wanted and the score was 12-3 to SK in half-time. eoLithic couldn't take the pistol round as terrorists, and SK took the four rounds they needed and therefore won the first map with 16-3. This was now set to zero, and history.



Next map was once again Dust2, and eoLithic started once again as CT. One more pistol round was lost, and the first weapon round. Next round that both teams had enough money to buy some proper guns went to a five-on-two situation to eoLithic's advantage. To many people's surprise the two SK players managed to take that round. The match didn't look to well for the eoL's and you could tell by the players. But as many times before they did a comeback, and could even the scores to a win for SK with "only" 9-6 in half-time.



After an exciting and won pistol round as terrorists eoLithic could get a little advantage in the game, and the total score went 9-9. The upcoming weapon round was therefore very important, and after a succeded bomb plant in the big bombspot eoLithic could win the round. With SK's next save round loss in the calculation, the score was now 11-9 to eoLithic. When SK got their hands in some Colts they could even the score to 11-11. At this time the tight numbers was however over. eoLithic took all five remaining rounds and by this they won their spot in the ESWC event in France. They would leave together with the second and third best team - SK and Team9.



During the latest month eoLithic had participating in an online invite-cup named ESL Invite. Teams like SK, caYa and Team9 were participating, bud sadly the WO results was not rare at all. Both SK and Team9 only played one game each. After an even game against caYa, a WO win against SK and a pretty even game against ironZion in the winner bracket final, they met ironZion once again in the final. It wasn't as even as in the winner bracket, eoLithic could win all of it by beating ironZion with 16-6.



Now it was June, and the summer was here. In the end of July a LAN named LAN Europa would take place in Germany, a LAN eoLithic would participate in. The event was however cancelled, due to economical problems. You can read a little bit more about it on their homepage. But at this time something else was in the air. One day after we had get the information about the cancellation of LAN Europa we got in confirmed. The 13th of June, 2003 element left eoLithic to instead join up with SK. In a short interview with Naikon he told that element had been tired with CS for a while and that he thought that a switch to SK would get his interest in CS come back. A statement from bds could be found here. Now eoLithic only had four players: knoxville, Naikon, DarK and XeqtR. Many speculated in how eoLithic would solve this, but the future didn't turn out to be that bright. 10 days after element's departure the team decides to shut down their activity. The date was 23rd of June, 2003.

XeqtR joined Swedish Team9, while the rest of the members decided to lie low. Of course an interview was made with XeqtR and vesslan about all this. XeqtR said this about the close-down:

- Well first of all it wasn't something that we wanted less than, say 1 week, ago. But as time went on and we didn't seem to have the motivation and strength needed to find new players etc etc, we just felt we had no other option, or at least i did.

This was the end of the time with eoLithic. Now, when we have a little better perspective one year later, we could take a little look in what the eoLithic members are doing at the moment. XeqtR joined, as I wrote, Team9, that now is Adrenaline, where he still is. Naikon joined the Norweigan team zX9 before the ESWC event, but after a not so convincing achievement by zX9, Naikon's presence in zX9 wasn't long. In the middle of July knoxville and Naikon did a very short visit in the talanted clan from Sweden - HiGhland Online, but I guess you have heard about the story of HLO and mTw.



It didn't happen so much during the next-coming time with the players, the time just rolled on. Naikon, element, knoxville and Luke played together with bsl in the mix clan "It's all good" on OsloLAN where they didn't placed so well, instead they let GameOnline taste the win. In the end of the year (we're still in 2003) one of the biggest happenings happened. NoA was created, with Naikon and knoxville. NoA is now also a part in the latest drama with former eoLithic players. As you should've heard by now, element left SK a time ago to join NoA. This created disputes, but disputes that could be solved by showing some money.



Luke hasn't been suffering from such disputes. Today he's playing in Incredible Teamaction that is one of the best clans in Norway, but to be honest a clan that wouldn't have a big chance against an eoLithic. This was proved when element, knoxville and DarK gathered together with the Finnish guys diGitaL and natu on the big Norweigan LAN The Gathering, where they showed Incredible Teamaction how to play in the final. DarK joined, after eoLithic's death, the England based clan 4Kings, where he has been both active and inactive. nVy is playing with zX9 (who aren't that active at the moment).



This sums up the players' present position, but one other very interesting idea was created. It all started as a team to ENC, European Nations Cup, where a team very similar to the old eoLithic could be formed. DarK, element, knoxville, Naikon, XeqtR and Luke could now gather again, with some help of a Norweigan called juve9le. The same team decided to participate in the Norweigan WCG qualifier that took place in DreamHack in Sweden. The two ideas didn't turn out well. They didn't go through the qualifiers in neither tournaments. Since then it has been quite quiet around eoLithic, but still the old members of eoLithic is the best players in Norway, so what do you know - perhaps we'll se a rebirth of eoLithic in the future. Only time will tell.







Thanks Gamers.nu for the pictures!