Gameskinny’s sister site Guild Launch is hosting the annual Dragon Slayer Awards right now. These awards try to showcase and promote some of the best that gaming has to offer. There are five nominated for the category of The Most Epic Twitch Streamer and now you get to learn about one of them: James “PhantomL0rd” Varga.
This Los Angles native had humble beginnings – at one time he was a hotshot gamer on the FPS scene, playing games like Counterstrike, Quake3 Arena, Team Fortress Classic and World Of Warcraft on occasion. It wasn’t until Riot implented Twisted Treeline when PhantomL0rd really dove into the world of League of Legends, thanks to his brother introducing him to it.
PhantomL0rd quickly became a master at the game, and before too long he became number 1 in Solo Que in 2011. He became both famous and infamous for his teleport/revive Karthus, quickly becoming a player known for going all in or “balls-deep” as he likes to say, in a game. On October 1, 2011, he went to his first tournament as part of the v8 eSports team. After he was released from that team, he moved to OrdinanceGaming in 2012. He was later replaced, but all hope was not lost for this tenacious young man.While his tenure in both teams was short, it did help PhantomL0rd become a better gamer, which he later uses in his Twitch Streams.
PhantomL0rd’s twitch streams are a riot to watch – he’s always making jokes, and takes the angry gamer stereotype to a whole new level. Headphone users be warned, between the loud music and the screaming, players might need to turn down the volume for his stream.
While this is something a lot of gamers have tried to do and fail, somehow PhantomL0rd makes it work and gets a good chuckle out of his viewer base.
He’s ranked Diamond 1 in NA right now according to Lolking.net, and his mains are Ziggs, Karthus, Syndra, Kayle and Thresh. He’s recently taken a trip to Korea, and has created an account on the Korean servers in order to play there. His streams are still hilarious as usual.
Not everything has been sun and roses for this talented player. He has been hacked several times, and has even had a swat team sent to his house courtesy of DerpTrolling. PhantomL0rd was arrested, and while everything turned out alright, it was still a startling thing to see live. Watch his response to the incident here.
But nothing’s kept him down.
PhantomL0rd has taken everything in stride and has really grown as a player since he started playing all the way back in 2011. He’s started teaching classes on his Twitch stream about how to play League of Legends, helping people get out of their bad habits and becoming better players as time goes on. He is very beloved by the Twitch community, and has the highest amount of concurrent viewers, with 143k viewers coming back for more of the L0rd.
He has a very positive relationship with his fans, and interacts with them on his Twitter, Facebook, and Stream. PhantomL0rd doesn’t just play, he really gets to know the people that adore him. He is constantly doing giveaways and fan meet-ups and he even invented his own mode of game called Donger Dash, a deadly race, League Of Legends style:
Despite his excessive swearing, PhantomL0rd is a great guy and he obviously cares about his fans. It’s hard to think of anyone else that’s more deserving of the honor of the Most Epic Twitch Streamer.
Published: Aug 2, 2014 09:20 am