Hi reheppap. Could you introduce yourself to everyone who doesn't know you?
Hello, I’m Rehepapp, 23 years old, I live in Estonia and am studying communications with psychology as a side dish. I’ve been playing Quake since about 2004 and have kept with it.

Can you tell us when did you start playing Quake Live and why did you pick it instead of any other popular game?
I started with beta, but did not play too much because there weren’t any servers with good ping for me. Played a lot in the second half of 2009 and first of 2010, went to the army for a year and have been active again since last summer.

For me Quake Live was just the successor for Q3, mainly because the whole community moved there. Why did I pick Quake instead of any other? It comes down to the depth of the game and it being a FPS. I’ve been shooting around ever since I got a PC and Quake just was the natural evolution of things. I imagine the other alternative as a competetive game could have been Brood War, but I found the local Quake community first and just stuck around there.

Tell us more about your gaming history. Did you play any other game competitively?
Competitively? No, gaming has always been for fun and shenanigans for me. Other than that my FPS evolution goes like this: Delta Force Land warrior -> Unreal Tournament -> Soldier of Fortune 2 -> Medal of Honour: Allied Assault -> Quake 3 -> Quake Live.

We currently don't see much of you, since you haven't attended any of latest QL Lan tourneys, and it's not normal to see you playing online cups like Zotac. Will that change soon?
The lan part is iffy for now, but we’ll see. I would be more inclined to go to some community lan rather than a big „official“ one. I haven’t been playing too many Zotacs because they start too early for me :) and well, online cups just take a chunk out of your day as you are kind of forced to keep the mindset, which I just don’t feel like often enough.

I would like to play more cups during the near future because generally they prove to be fun, but it’s summer so I can’t promise anything.

How would you describe your playstyle?
Way too impatient and aggressive for my own good. Usually I pacman around and expect my bigger stack to do the work. I’m trying to change it to be more about picking better fights and change rushing to positional aggressiveness. And I like it fast, fast and dynamical.

Given the current rumours of certain stars deciding to attend the Parisian SOPA LAN which takes part at the same time as Dreamhack, do you think this summer's DreamHack will be one of the last major Quake Live events?
The „next big Quake lan“ has been the „last one ever“ since 2004/2005? I think it’s more about the death match niche and which game covers it. If Shootmania or Tribes will be the next big thing that promises easy money for the pros then probably big Quake lans will die out. When top20 players suddenly quit without leaving any successors then you have a problem as a game.

And I don’t blame them going to the SOPA lan instead. They wouldn’t do it if they didn’t get paid more than they could get from DreamHack. Let’s be honest, if your trip to whereever would be paid and you will earn extra 1000 euros for example by just going there – wouldn’t you go? It’s sad for the community, but this is how it goes.

If you could change anything about Quake Live, gameplay or website wise, what would it be?
The website part has already been nicely covered on ESReality over and over again through argumentation and whine. The gameplay is much more interesting topic for me. There are 3 main things that I would change for now:

1) Spawn picking – I just hate the randomness it has at the moment. Often you just have to slow down your game because you don’t know where he spawned – did he get one of the majority that is safe for you or did he get that one particular out of 6 that screws you over? Or another part is spawn fragging – will you get 2, 3 or 4 spawn frags? At the moment it’s a coinflip. I would like it to be pickable so you can predict what your opponent wants to do. This obviously means that you have to adjust the spawns and the spawn picking system for it to be fair for everyone, but it would advance the game in the long run.

2) OSP style weapon behaviour – little delay for hit-scan and maybe more power would make traps and in-position-play more rewarding.

3) Remove footsteps with gauntlet – you can hear so much in QL right now and I feel it really limits your options when trying to pull elaborate tricks, traps and moves that include sneaking. Having gauntlet in hand should be large enough trade-off for having higher speed.

I would like to test these firsthand.

How is it to be a competitive player in Estonia? How known are e-Sports in your country?
It’s pretty underground. A really narrow age group actually knows what it means. From time to time we have this one major lan that gets little news coverage in the media, but that’s pretty much it. It is just taken as a hobby.

How do you find Estonian Quake Live scene related to the global Quake status?
I think per capita we have decent amount of players, if Qlranks is to be trusted, but other than that it’s the same as everywhere – vegetating. We do get our occasional new players, which is always nice, and we could use more organisation to catch them all.

What advice and motivation would you give to someone who was just starting in Quakelive?
Motivation:
The harder they rage, the better you do.

Advice:
The better your mechanics, the more rewarding the experience will be. So practise movement and aim. And if you have a reason for doing something, it usually comes out better.

Thanks for your time rehepapp. Any final shoutouts?
Thanks for the interview and thanks twister and Memento_Mori for the cup.

Shout-outs to the people at #qlpickup.ee @ quakenet, where Estonian scene gathers, and to all the people I’ve had laughs with on the servers.