DIG Palafox on His Past and the Return of the LCS
We spoke with DIG Palafox, discussing his past before becoming a pro League player and his thoughts on the LCS returning.
After a heartbreaking defeat to Team Liquid Alienware in contention for the last spot into playoffs, we spoke with Cristian “Palafox” Palafox to discuss the team, the format, and his past history before becoming a pro.
First, how does it feel to be running it back with FBI, Ignar, and Jonathon again?
Palafox: Honestly, it feels pretty good, it's nice to be with familiar faces. I think the last two years of League I've played have been pretty stressful, and I just like everybody on the team. It just feels really natural, really easy
The winning LCS squad from LCS Summer 2023 reunited with three members now on Dignitas - Palafox, FBI, and Ignar. Image Source: LCS Flickr.
There definitely was a bit of excitement over bringing back the winning NRG roster, I'm curious how did it all come together, was it just like separately you all joined or did it somehow get organized?
Palafox: Maybe you can ask Jonathon a little bit, but I would just keep in touch with Ignar a little bit, I watched FBI at Worlds, I sent him some messages, I think we all kind of joined more separately. I think Jonathon kind of coordinated a little bit, but I was mostly talking to Ignar about joining, because I really wanted to play with him again. I'm not going to lie, I didn't expect FBI to be a free agent. I think he got a little bit screwed, so yeah, things ended up working out on DIG.
It is old news, but I'm curious, any thoughts on the return of the LCS name and I suppose what's basically the return of the original status quo of three worlds spots and two MSI spots?
Palafox: Aww, the original LCS name, banger. It should have never been LTA, honestly, I think if they wanted more of a story, they could just do that in other ways, between the Americas. It just doesn't make sense the way they did it, so it's nice that we're back, and the return of the original status quo of three Worlds spots and two MSI spots. Honestly, I would have went to Worlds last year if there were three, so it kind of sucks, but it's honestly pretty nice. Whether Riot really realizes this or not, when you go to Worlds and you go to MSI, there's going to be teams that have really good days, and really bad days, and sometimes it's literally just whoever plays better on the day. But if you have like two spots, and another region has four, the chances that you will win are super low, especially if you're considered a worse region. I mean, the way you can think about it is if there are two regions that are completely equal in skill and one has four and another has two, the chance of winning is like halved, or, well, maybe not halved but it's definitely lower.
So the format for LCS is mostly the same as last year. I'm curious on your thoughts between say the older formats where there was two splits and every team would play one another, versus the current setup where we have Bo3s but you might not get to play everyone and have generally less but higher stake games.
Palafox: I think it would be great if we could have more games in general where everyone plays against each other, that'd be nice. I don't quite understand the format for this year, so maybe I'm not the best for answering this question. I mean, best of ones suck, best of threes are nice, but if we have to sacrifice a bit for best of threes, then that's fine. It's also kind of interesting at least for LCS, but some teams literally have bad matchups into other teams, but like good matchups into different teams, if that makes sense. So lets say the team that wins the split, if they never face their bad matchup, then that's just weird. It sucks you know? But sometimes that's just how it is. At least you get to go to Worlds and see.
Yeah, that's true, I think in particular there were a lot of hype matchups we managed to get at least, like Shopify vs DIG or DSG vs Sentinels. Old players vs new players kind of thing.
Palafox: (laughs) Yeah, it's like, I guess there's that in the format, but honestly I think we kind of just got screwed format wise. You know it's fine. If the last series was a best of three, ugh, it would have been so much better, instead of us just playing three series then best of one after waiting five hours.
Yeah that TL matchup was close but heartbreaking to know it was just one game.
Palafox: Yeah, to be completely honest, we should have won. I was playing pretty poorly that game, like even though I was playing poorly, TL was just playing so bad, and FBI was playing really, really well until the end.
There were definitely some points where it was like "Oh shit, something is happening!" and then it somehow just works out or blows up completely. Though at least on social media people were mostly just joking about DIG Barons.
Palafox: (laughs) Honestly, I think everyone kind of had their moment in that game, but I'm not going to lie, usually everybody doesn't get a moment to int, but it definitely happened that game. It was like that for both sides, everybody just like ran it real hard at some point. In that game, I was misplaying a lot on sidelane timers, I should have just went.
It was fun game for the viewers, at least.
Palafox: Well, I'm glad. I hope people have someone to cheer for this year. It just sucks that it's just so long until our next games, that's all.
One of the earliest photos of Palafox’s career playing for Golden Guardians Academy in 2019 - Image Source: LoL Esports Flickr
So backstory questions, how did you originally get into League of Legends before you broke into pro play?
Palafox: So the story is that I had a friend, his name was Matthew, and in the 7th grade, he would ask me, "Hey, you should really try this game, it's really cool, really fun to play." and he pretty much just like always try to find ways to get me to try it. And then finally, one day, I was really into WoW and Runescape at the time, but the WoW servers went down, and I went over to his house, and he was like, "Alright, you're finally trying this game."
I think in my first game I played like Teemo, and the second game I played Twisted Fate, and he was like "Hey, build some Giant’s belts, you're going to do great this game." Honestly, it was pretty fun, and I was kinda hooked from there, but I'm a game hopper to be completely honest. I played League for one month, then quit for a year. Then I played League for three months, and quit for another year.
Wait, Giant’s Belt on Teemo?
Palafox: Oh no, it was Giant’s Belt on Twisted Fate, attack speed Teemo. I built a LOT of daggers. I want to say Recurve Bow, but I don't know what item it was at the time.
Game hopping yeah, I can get that, but League I think is like that game people like to fall back to a lot, for some reason especially among MMO players I noticed.
Palafox: Yeah, for me, the reason why I fell back on League a lot was because a lot of my friends were into it, and I just really liked the competitive aspect of it a lot. I think for me League was like the first competitive thing that I played. I mean I played Arena in Cataclysm, a lot of it to be honest, but I was just playing to play, I wasn't playing to be like a high rank or anything. I just wanted to deal damage and kill people, you know? And that was my approach to League as well.
Was it like, once you were good enough to be a pro, was it like "Wait, I can actually do this now?” compared to just playing for fun in WoW PvP?
Palafox: I mean, when I played League, I played League for a month, I hit Bronze 5, I quit league for a year and came back, I went to Gold within like a month, I stopped playing for a long time, maybe like 7 or 6 months, a long time, then I started playing again, and I went from Gold to Diamond 1 before masters was a thing in like 3 months? At the time I was like, 14 or 15? So I was almost like what would be considered Challenger nowadays, I would be that, but I wasn't Challenger at the time. Yeah, I mean as a 15 year old, I was just playing with a bunch of streamers, playing with people I watched when I first started, it was rewarding.
At the same time I wasn't honestly thinking about it as I want to go pro in this, I just wanted to play League, haha. There's a couple times where I considered joining a 5s team would be fun, but I never really joined like a 5s team with the intention of joining open qualifier. Like, I would have been open to it, but I just kind of played tournaments for RP.
I think was it like once you did that Scouting Grounds thing with the team names being after like the drakes was when you fully went into the pro scene?
Palafox: So more of my backstory is like, when I was in the 6th grade, I used to get super sick for a long amount of time, so I just played a lot of games because I couldn't go to school. And I was sick like every six months, for six months, to be honest. Six months where I'm sick, six months where I'm not sick, I had really bad allergies, and that lasted until I was a sophomore, and then I figured things out medically, and that was all fixed.
I did want to continue to play games, but the way I went about being a pro, when I was playing a lot of League, I was thinking about becoming a streamer, because it was just fun at the time. I never thought I had a chance to get into pro league, because to be completely honest, it was about who you know, and I didn't really know anybody at the time. I don't really think people just got picked up at the time, especially mid laners (laughs), for NA. I didn't think I had a chance of being pro. So like you said, when Scouting Grounds came about, I thought to myself, "maybe I have a shot of becoming a pro for franchising, you know?" and I thought to myself, "I'll regret not going pro, if I had the chance."
So I went to RMU, so the college for a little bit, and my parents told me like, "we just want you to go to college, so you have something to fall back on. I told them like, no, I'm probably going to go pro in franchising, it should be really easy, there's 10 new spots. It wasn't easy.
Honestly even though I won in Scouting Grounds, like even at that point people didn't want to take a chance on somebody new. Maybe they all found their mid laners, but I kind of got screwed by the Scouting Grounds format, to be completely honest. I just didn't know too many people, so such is life.
Yeah... even back then people talked about importing too many players and recycling old ones too much.
Palafox: Yeah, I mean, League was so new that it was hard to tell who was good back in the day, it feels. Well... (laughs) I remember clearly thinking to myself that I would watch and play against a lot of the LCS mid laners in solo queue, and I would think to myself, "These guys are boosted. If they're in LCS, for sure I can make LCS."
That confidence definitely helped you break in. Though thinking back on that Team Ocean Drake roster [in Scouting Grounds], three of you are still in LCS today. You, Blaber, and Vulcan?
Palafox: Yeah, Max Waldo who coached C9 was also on that one, and Prismal was as well. Yeah, three of us are still in LCS.
Anything you'd like to say for the fans of yourself and DIG?
Palafox: I hope we can do something good for you guys this season, I really think we can. That's all. Thank you for the interview.
We thank Palafox for his time, and if you would like to keep up with Palafox, you can check out his socials here!
