woxic: "People can get frustrated because there's crowds and they might cheer for the other team"
Aurora have been on fire this year. After making the grand final of BLAST Bounty in the opening event of 2025, the Turkish team have continued to be playoff mainstays and a constant threat to the World's most elite teams.
Although a trophy may still allude them, they go into the Major as a dark horse to rain on Vitality's parade, and there's plenty of experience and firepower within the roster to turn that dream into a reality.
With Aurora set to enter the Major in Stage 3, we sat down with woxic to discuss the repeated playoff appearances, the struggles on big stages, and the tactical depth within the team.
"To satisfy yourself you need to win trophies"
2025 has been a good year for your team, did you expect to be in the playoffs as much as you have been?
Yeah, since we started to reach the playoffs a couple of times I had a feeling that we would keep making it at every event. But, I was expecting to go further than just making the playoffs and getting eliminated in quarters or semis.
I think that we can keep going further, and then I'll be happier, but personally I was expecting at least this.
So are you happy with how the year has been going, or are you disappointed because of the quarter-final exits?
I'm happy, but there is some little disappointment that I have. Making playoffs at every tournament isn't easy, but to satisfy yourself you need to win trophies or at least play finals in front of crowds, and you need to do it for your supporters as well.
But it is what it is.
Photo: Stephanie LindgrenTalking about expectations, would you have expected at the start of the year that you would've been going to the Major as Aurora and not Eternal Fire?
Yes, but it wasn't for sure that it would be Aurora, it was just urgent things that happened. We knew that we'd be in the Major because of VRS, so it was just a matter of the team name.
When you get into arenas and onto big stages, what's the thing that is holding you back?
Personally, I think that we just make more mistakes. We play differently on stage and in studios, but I think we beat that feeling in Astana when we reached the semi-finals.
The team just has to get more experience together to play in stage games, but I think there are missing parts like communication or people being frustrated easier because there are fans and they might be cheering for the other team or something like that.
Everything outside the game can have an effect on the game, especially when we're playing on stage. I think if we just keep making the playoffs, the tournaments will come soon.
Does the crowd have a big effect?
It can do, personally I like to play in front of the crowd, but I don't know for everyone else. It's important to play really well together as a team, so I think we're just getting better and we're close to making it now.
You've played The MongolZ a few times this year and the two teams are in a similar place, how do you feel about the match up you have against them?
Their playstyle is different to other tier one teams, that's why they beat us sometimes and why also we beat them when we have a good day.
When we play against them we should look like we do against other tier one teams, but their gamestyle is timed differently, like 3DMAX, they catch you off-guard, you don't expect the situation and they're already there. We need to be more aware when we play against them, and when we are, we'll beat them all the time.
Photo: Stephanie LindgrenYou mentioned that the team needs more experience but is there also extra tactical depth needed to go further?
It can be, but you can have really great stats that never leak and the more important part is just that the team understands each other when they're playing together on the stage.
If you have really good tactics but the team isn't on point in that second, it's still not going to work. It's going to be thrown as a bad team play or bad strat. There can also be a bad call, not a bad strat, just maybe the guy opening doesn't do what is needed.
Looking ahead to the Major, you enter the competition in Stage 3, how much of a boost is that to you to not have to play any of the opening stages?
It's a boost because we don't have to play the early games, we have more time to prepare as individuals and as a team. Also, we get more bootcamp time and we're already within the tier one teams.
It'll help our mindset going into it, we're going in the last stage, that's good for everyone. But we'll see, we'll work on our mistakes and try to do our best.
What are the hopes and expectations for the Major?
We want to go so much further, being able to play in the final will be satisfy everyone in the team and also outside of it. Of course, it's hard, but we need to show some great CS as individuals and within the team, too. So, we know we need to do our best and we know what we want in the end as a reward.
We will see, no big words, only hope that makes us hungrier day by day. I hope we are able to go closer for hold the trophy and make people forget how we struggled before in front of them.
