Interview with TORNADO by MEDIA MW

Lanchilot:
Hi. tell me a little about the personal. What is your name? How old are you and where do you live? Studying, working? We heard out of the corner of our ear that you moved to another city. Is it true and why did you move? How has your life changed, has it gotten better or worse?

TOPNADO:
Well, hello to you, Lance, and to You, dear reader. Thank you for your attention to my humble person, I will try to answer all the questions in detail and honestly so that you will be interested in reading. Spoiler will be a lot of boof.)
My name is Dima, game nickname TOPNADO. Nickname is double, in Russian it reads like a Tornado or a tornado, it most well reflects my character and goals in life, so I have been using it everywhere for 11 years. I am 30+ years old, now I live in the north of Russia.
I lead a channel and public on the game Modern Warships:

Telegram channel:
https://t.me/MWTOPNADO

Discord Server:
https://bit.ly/3bymAy6

Cart Gazebo
https://bit.ly/3nwGnkf

Public VK:
https://bit.ly/3bMI0YE

Youtube channel:
https://youtube.com/c/TOPNADO

I used to live in the South, I moved recently, because of the children, and for working moments, and because of the difficult geopolitical situation, of course, too. There are children, my son is three years old and my daughter is 11 years old. My work activity is connected with Atomflot, specifically with icebreakers, which I am engaged in providing. Therefore, it was decided to move closer to the type of activity. Living in the South, I quietly worked remotely, made wine, chacha, it was my hobby. However, my wife insisted on moving.

Lanchilot:
What PC/mobile games did you play before Modern Warships (hereinafter – MW)? When did you start playing MW? What got you hooked on her? What qualities of the game influenced your choice at that time?

TOPNADO:
Once upon a time, I played World of Tanks for 6 years, back at the dawn when tanks were just developing. Then there was a break, a lot of time was occupied by work, career, then family. And four years ago, I accidentally installed Last Day Rulez on my phone, this is a survival sandbox like Rasta. And disappeared in it for two years. I met the guys in the game and we created the most dangerous clan there, which kept all the servers in this game at bay. Also, my friend, the head of the clan, started shooting our game and reached 60 thousand subscribers in the end. It was a fun and interesting time. Then the developers sold the game, and it was strangled by the new owners with a donation and cheaters. It was very insulting to look at it, so I deleted it and never came back.
At that time I was watching Brain’s blogger, in one of the videos he was playing Modern Warships. I was struck by the detailed graphics of the game and I installed MW. After playing a little, I picked up the fallen jaw from the floor and realized that I fell in love with this game. Since then, I have not parted.

Lanchilot:
How did you come to start any kind of active blogger activity, YouTube videos, chat moderator, and in general, to be on the same wavelength with the development of the game, as a direct active participant in the community?

TOPNADO:
At that time, MW was just emerging, and I was wildly annoyed that there was so little information on such a good game. The most suitable resource where you could find out at least something was a game chat. There were also, of course, reviewers, Misha MWC and Sasha Vedroid, but mostly information and news had to be literally extracted, on some third-party resources, mostly foreign. In some public places in Viber and Vacap, generally trash and that’s all. And I was not satisfied with this state of affairs, So I decided to create a channel where I would transmit what I know with the help of videv, in simple, understandable language with humor. By the way, thanks to everyone who subscribed to me, brothers, hugged everyone. )))

And the second reason why I took up YouTube is a long-ago terrible accident in which I miraculously survived. The speech apparatus was very badly damaged in it, it’s probably enough to say that I was silent for three and a half years to understand the depth of the problem. And YouTube helped me a lot to socialize and recover.

Lanchilot:
You had a period on the channel when you started publicly doing charity work. He even created a busti, where he promised to help with donation money to MW players in a difficult life situation. How are things with this now? Do you help anyone from this category of players?

TOPNADO:
Why was there? This period continues even now. All the money I get from advertising, from donations from a paid subscription, I collect on a separate (specially created virtual card) and buy vipki for those who do not have the opportunity to buy it. By there is no possibility, I do not mean those to whom the mother did not give money, but those MW players who really got into a difficult life situation and, due to certain circumstances, cannot afford it. These are the same players as us, you probably communicate with them every day. Each story deserves coverage, but for the most part they do not consent to the disclosure of their identity, being embarrassed by their position. There are also players who play without one hand, while successfully leading entire clans, there is a disabled girl who cannot get up from her chair, but does not lose heart and found herself in our game, there is a guy who has never heard any sounds in his life, but this does not prevent him from playing well and bending over without Donating on the account. At first I wanted to cover this activity, but I realized in time that it should be done without pathos and fanfare, it’s unnecessary. However, it is not necessary to say that I am donating cosmic sums, often I have to add from my own to get enough for vipka, but once a month I try to help subscribers. And I also urge all my colleagues in the shop to support their audience.

Lanchilot:
The community knows you first of all as a media personality in the MW space, but you had a period when you were in a clan and played in tournament competitions quite actively. Can we say that you were at the origins of the creation of the clan “Russian Knight” and was one of its founders? Tell us in more detail how the idea of creating a clan came about, who was originally part of the organization, how quickly participants were recruited and did your YouTuber authority help you in this, because by that time you had already made some content?

TOPNADO:
Well, you can write a whole book about it). The founder of the Knights was Serega Burelom. At that time there were no clans as such and we just added the name of the clan to the nickname. At the time when I joined it, there were only 8 people. Slowly, the main backbone of the clan began to gather and form, and we were very lucky, since mostly sane and adequate people came to us. Together we learned and studied the game, honed galaxy tactics, shared experiences and life hacks, helped beginners, organized intra-clan tournaments and activities, and just had fun. By that time I was already starting to shoot and my first subscribers were soklany. When the patch came out where the clan functionality was added, I was just on alpha and officially registered the clan, on the clan ministry. I then handed over the leader to Burel, but in fact I developed and led the clan with a small group of people. The clan was rapidly gaining popularity and was one of the most numerous, we occupied the top places in the ranking of clans for many months in a row. Did my YouTube activity help in this, from a part. Most of the recruiting went through the game chat, we carefully looked after the newcomers and helped them develop. Plus clan activities, they did not let people get bored and everyone enthusiastically participated in them. In general, we had fun as much as we could, it was interesting and fun.

I still communicate very well with many participants and we work on many projects together.

Lanchilot:
In the spring of 2022, you had a close-knit team and a strong tournament team, which took part in the spring tournament among clan teams. You took the 4th place there, which in principle is a pretty good result. You were part of that squad, but then, after a certain period of time, you left the tournament squad, left the clan. And in my opinion, your departure served as a starting point for the “fall of the Knights”: the clan less successfully and not so often began to participate in competitions, as well as replaced several clan leaders. What did happen then? What made you leave the clan and what can you say about it at all?

TOPNADO:
We really participated in the very first official clan tournament and took the 4th place there, we didn’t push it quite a bit, but at least we could. I consider this defeat to be my mistake as the organizer and captain of the team. I didn’t finish it, I took on too many tasks and the result didn’t take long to wait. Nevertheless, it was a valuable experience, from which I drew many conclusions. Which, in turn, were transferred to the Artillery Preparation tournament and now to the Cataclysm tournament organization, headed by Zhenya Zeus, who was also in the Knights, where we met. I was very lucky to get to know him, he did a lot of work from scratch and created an extremely good tournament organization. He’s a great guy. The main message of the Cataclysm: Play and win, and we will help you with this.
As for the clan, at some point a certain group of people decided that they could pull the crowd that I pulled and began to reinvent the wheel. I didn’t mind, because at that time I received an offer from the developers to become a moderator of the game chat. And thus I didn’t have time to delve into clan issues properly. Therefore, I left the clan and devoted myself entirely to restoring order in the game chat, and the times then were, I’ll tell you, very fierce. And Zebra went into the development of the game, and there was only one moderator for the entire Russian chat, Igor (then Legion). And sofa politicians did not let you relax, you had to sit in the chat for 8-12 hours in order to somehow provide the players with comfortable communication. But nevertheless, I think he and I coped brilliantly with the task and brought the rules of communication to the players and ensured order in the chat. In no chat, in no game is there such a lamp and atmospheric movement as in Modern Warships. Meanwhile, the developers were seriously thinking of closing the chat, and it cost us incredible efforts to convince them.

END OF THE FIRST PART.