n1 scoop :D

Thresh: I play a little bit of Quake 4

OMG!, Thresh to come back and win CPL World Tour!!!

Great interview. xfire is the best.

Great interview. Nice to see some more in depth answers (perhaps due to interesting questions?) compared many of the other ones he gave to other people :). I think the strategy bit is quite interesting. Fat used to come off as a strategic player to me, but perhaps he's correct, and fat is more of a player that just runs the map in his usual patterns.
I've been thinking about trying out xfire, but I just havent had any friends that used it, so it never really happened. Anyone on ESR that uses it regularly and can share its usefulness with the rest of us?

The only complaint I have with x-fire is you can't see what players are actually on the servers, only how many players. Other than that, it's a great program. It's sort of like ASE combined with an instant messenger. Plus some other neat features.

I can. Do you have the latest version? I don't remember if I clicked something to make it show the players though.
edit: Yes I did, in the arrow which is in the right side of the window.

wrong it shows the whole list of players

xfire is cool! but i had to deinstall it...because my soulseek wont run with xfire installed :(

If you have regular friends who you play with, yea, it's great, alot less effort to join servers and see what they're up to, and find new peopel to play with (if you enable show friends of friends)

He must be a Jonesy fan. He echoes so many of the sentiments I share on these forums. Like the one where he says:

"So if you had the chance to produce a competitive game, what features would your perfect game include (e.g. Double jumps, QW style bunny hopping, fast weapon switching)?

How about what it wouldn’t include? I really don’t like bunny hopping – in some ways I think it lessens the importance of strategy and prediction b/c with everyone hopping around everywhere, you almost always know where they are."

If you look at my latest post in my 'e-sports improvements' thread, you'll see what I mean.

And the other one where he basically says GTV ROX YOUR SOX and e-sports on tv SUX YOUR NUTZ.

Yes quit poker...play Quake 4...win more money. Everyone knows you can.

derrrr todays players are stupid and i was smart derrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

so when u play thresh he's all standing about camping and stuff...?

zzzzz

/quit


;)

thresh: 1
you: 0

Good read

see, west coast = best coast

pac said it

Yeh and look where it got him:)

a long way!

Being alive and unknown > being dead and idolised by white sock wearing home boysin baggy pants :)
Actually I really like Tupac and what he stood for a lot of the time (and ofc his rhymes), just a pity he didn't have the brain to use his influence more wisely.
He probably could have done so much if he had a chance to grown up properly and use his charisma and influence for a more positive effect.

Get rich or die trying yo!

excellent interview

lets start a petition for Thresh to return to pro gaming and whoop fatal1ty's ass!

in fact started one

http://www.petitiononline.com/threshq4/

it's a long shot but I'll sign on anyways!!

C'mon Thresh, screw poker and play quake! We all want you back

heh, I'll sign it for sure, but unless Thresh could put the time in it would be a bad move.
You only need to see how certain q2 "legends" (ott) are doing against the modern day talent in q4 to realise that things move on. Thresh was a great player, but if what he says is true, then surely he could get back into shape in a very short period of time. Seeing as he's all brain and the mechanics of the game are virtually unchanged.

Still, all you can be is the best in you're time and in all fairness he did that.
I still think he under estimates how much things have moved on though.
It would be a lot harder to fool a cooller or a CZM (or many otherdecent players) from 2006 than a Makaveli or Immy from like 97.

For the last 5-6 years many players have just been living and breathing these games. I just don't think you'll ever see a player like that again.
Cooller and CZM are good thinkers in game, but even they are possible to beat and even when they lose it's not like they own everyone.
There's dozens of players in the world who can push even the best players to their limits.

Also Thresh would obviously play in tournaments if he though he could win.
He probably plays online, but I suspect he's seen how far things have moved on and it's not as simple to out think the masses from 2006 than it was in 1996.
I hope he never plays. Immy and Purri are gonna have a tough enough time. Thresh should stay away and keep his status. It would be great to see him in shape vs someone like cooller though.

http://www.petitiononline.com/nr1ss3gl/petition.html

C'mon guys, we have only 41 signatures

Don't you want to see who's the best? Fatal1ty or Thresh? Who will win...the thinking man or the running man? How about thresh vs. cooller? Who's the smarter thinker? Who can outwit the other? Or how about thresh vs. toxic? Can he really beat an uber-aimer?

Nice interview, but I do disagree with him on one point.

People don't play aggressively only because they find it fun to play that way. They're aggressive because the best time to kill your opponent is when he's freshly spawned and without armor or weapons.

As the newly spawned player, it's quite hard to "play smart" if you're getting spawn raped every 10 seconds by your opponent. And if your opponent is moving fast and methodically enough to control most of the resources on the map while he goes about his spawn raping, it's even harder.

If Thresh went into a modern tournament with a 'slow, strategic' playing style, I personally think he'd get annihilated by the fat/z4/tox/cooller's of the world.

My guess is that it wouldn't happen that way. More likely he'd adapt to the 'newschool' playing style pretty quickly and would wind up playing with a style similar to czm, which is about as strategic as is possible to still be effective against a modern opponent.

I don't necessarily disagree, but I think a lot of this is a function of the game in question.

Consider, for example, the implications of his NOT wanting bunny hopping, and the sort of game he'd prefer to play.

Yeah, definitely - and that applied even to Q2 when he stopped playing competitively. Movement was very slow for everyone - even the 'aggressive' players.

And I think that's pretty much my point. Back when he played, the gap in speed between 'strategic' and 'aggressive' wasn't as big and so it wasn't as much of a disadvantage to 'play strategically.' But nowadays (just to use Q2 as a reference), with the extremely fast bunny hopping, trick jumping, etc., you just can't afford to move so slowly.

I think you misunderstood him,
he said that bunnyhopping takes away strategical deepness,
he didn't say he didn't use it in order to play more strategically

"Back when he played, the gap in speed between 'strategic' and 'aggressive' wasn't as big and so it wasn't as much of a disadvantage to 'play strategically.' But nowadays (just to use Q2 as a reference), with the extremely fast bunny hopping, trick jumping, etc., you just can't afford to move so slowly."

I also think so. (He still owned scoop on TV, hahaha!)

thresh didn't play qw (which along with pk, is the only 'big' competitive game to have extremely fast bunnying). he played netquake (standard q1) which didn't have the allowence for continuous movement. also, q2 has about the same paced movement as q3 and q4 (compared to qw or pk, these movements aren't really that fast).

even if he had wanted to bhop fast in q1, he couldn't.

Spawn raping is something he'd have to adopt quickly. Plenty of other occasions where both players are stacked and strategy is needed though.

Nice read, even though Thresh was before my time I would love to see his playstyle in todays games.

Seriously, what would it take for him to come back?

How about this proposal: If I can find 1000 people, each willing to give 2 bucks each, we would get 2000 dollars. Then we can pay to see his performance in a tournament with modern pros. Just one tournament!!! He would do it for 2000 dollars won't he?

Dude, 2000 dollars is piss for thresh these days. A lot of his current and future business proposals to investors and the gaming community rest significantly on his Quake reputation.

If he came back the chances are he would have would not be able to put the time in and ultimately lose and get diss'd by a million retards in the gaming community stuck in pre-adolesence limbo.

Thresh is a thinker, so that is why you WON'T see him back in the ring.

At least, if it was Fatal1ty, he would PROVE EVERYONE WRONG!

Which is awesome ;)

2000 is nothink for the lan

YOU IS NOTHINK ON IRC

if you got 2000 to all put in 100 he might come back for a tournament :)

Thresh isn't coming back.. just stop dreaming right now, because 1) Thresh thinks he's the best ever and 2) he doesn't like q3 because it's "cessy".

It will always be more satisfying for Thresh to talk himself up as a legend who never lost then it would be to try and compete against 50 competition crazed kids who have amazing aim.

Thresh doesn't understand how Q3 plays today, so he makes newb comments on how its played, big deal, he's a newbie now..

Maybe the interviewer should've asked why Thresh never played at the CPL like everyone else who was big in the PGL did.. he never lost a tourney, but he also never played in more than a handful that actually featured competition, and NEVER competition from the outside of the west coast.

yawn at his self aggrandizing schtick after all these years.. get over yourself man.

If he thinks he's the best ever, then howcome he's never claimed it in an interview. Everytime I've seen someone ask him that question (its been a few times), its he either avoids the question with "i dont think anyone has the answer to that question", or something like "I'm not sure if im the best, but I think I was a pretty good player".
He did play some people from the east coast as far as I remember by the way (like entropy for example?). Im not trying to put him on a pedestal or anything, he always just seemed like a good guy to me, with lots of natural talent. And the brains to use his skills & fame to get a job after his pro-gaming career was over.

good point anonymous. You really made a great anonymous stand. You have a lot of balls to anonymously badmouth someone you could never get close to.

I don't like your nickname

yes because having no name obviously makes you a total idiot

Not always, but it's usually something reserved for bitter little cowards who never achieved anything or scowl at those who have.
The guy obviously has a lot to say about Thresh and presumably has an online alias which he choose not to disclose and diss. Such character.

I've just seen this "anonymous" guy a lot in the past and I know what to expect reading his posts.

he had a point though

Touche!

VQ3 is cessy...

Maybe the interviewer should've asked why Thresh never played at the CPL like everyone else who was big in the PGL did.. he never lost a tourney, but he also never played in more than a handful that actually featured competition, and NEVER competition from the outside of the west coast.

I think the point that there is more competition today is valid, but I think you're underestimating how good Thresh is/was. People who are as clever as he is find ways to succeed in things they are good at.

Thresh is good at FPS games.

Something else to consider is that Thresh's success spanned multiple eras ...Doom/Doom2., Quake, Quake2. That fact alone should give him enough credibility to escape flames like this.

And the "self-aggrandizing" I think is more about Thresh's business than anything. He's parlaying the name he made for himself into success in other areas. Can't really blame him for that.

You're certainly entitled to your opinion, though.

two things i'm left wondering: the thinking players of today, who would he consider them to be? cooller? soc? .....
also, you forgot about

CLAN GUMP

was he bubbly?
gawd dammit

:=

well done scoop

Yeah, I wish he would of asked about clan Gump. =)

I have posted the demos of Gump -vs- abuse for those that haven't seen it. [ Link ]

Did gump play any duels?

Nice interview and effort scoop

Great read. I think it's fair to say that cooller has the same strategic strengths. Interesting what he said about fat too, running patterns and that.

same thing i was thinking. cooler is much of a thinking player than the aimer. alltimes rail sucks balls.

No only is cooller as smart as thresh, but he's faster. Not only would he outsmart him, but he'd just dominate him. Sucks to say, because Thresh is my favorite player of all time. Cooller just got that damn good.

bullshit all the way

zing badabing, great interview :)

[+]

"The only difference now is that there is a shortage of the “thinking” style players, and so everyone assumes that the more aggressive, robotic style works better - when that may not necessarily be the case at all."

Is he talking about the top q3 players or is he reflecting on some random noobs he found on a server one night? Because none of them play like that. Every game that matters is a huge mind game.

What he should have said is that in q3 aim is more important - and that's it. What he should have said is "i can't compete in these games because these kids have insane hand eye coordination". Go watch a cooller-zero4 demo on dm6 or ztn if you think they are just running around shooting stuff that moves. LOL.

That story about maka is fun, but there isn't a serious player left in q3/q4 who doesn't analyze his games.

Ok i've dissed two pros today, think i'm done for tonight :)

great questions :)
-kooooj

yeah i think u pretty much need insane stategy AND aiming skills to compete today, anyone with just one of those aspects (including thresh) would get owned. thats not to say he couldn't improve his aim (to the level needed to compete today) but i highly doubt thats possible at this point so basically any talk of a thresh comeback seems pointless. i mean fatality's been playing fpses nonstop since the thresh days and he's still probably not the best fps player, so with thresh having not played for however many years there's no way he could come back and even be comparable to the top players today imo.

very nice interview though.

Why would Thresh come back when he's got Xfire?

Why do we play games at all?

is earth really round?

anyone knows how you can get your hands on vids of his play? I want to see :<

http://www.ggl.com/view_forum_topic.php?TopicId=991

that's probably not what you're looking for since it just shows frags and not a whole actual game, but it's all i know of right now :((

None of those ever worked for me and now they're both 404...

They worked for me before, dont have time to try them now tho :/

Try the second set of links. Both work.

A note about that particular match. It's extremely boring. Both players are extremely defensive and there isn't a whole lot to see. Some more interesting q1 matches would be the one vs mikej on dm6 or against reptile at the pgl finals.

Good read, but dont come back thanks.

Too much competition as it is ;)

[rant]I can understand him not wanting to come back. Gameplay hasnt evolved at all even if play style has evolved alittle its still the same, run around hog all the items, kill mostly unarmed opponent. When they made quake like that it was ground breaking in a way, and was maybe the best gameplay they could come up with at the time, but several years later and still the same archaic gameplay? You'd think new technology would allow for new ways to fight your opponent but I think their imaginations must have died at some point since they have just been remaking the same game since then. Doom 3 was at least a step in an evolving direction with per poly hit detection , headshots, the ability to shoot rockets out of the air, reloadable guns. All you whiny bitches killed that though.[/rant]

and thank god!

Doom3 pretty much sucked imo, but i agree that reloading added a nice, fresh aspect to the game.

Yes but it could have been refined and improved upon in a short period of time if the community did not act like spoilt little bitches and run back to q3.

As it stands "they" waited 18 months longer for Quake 4 and peeps are still saying how shit q4 and it still needs a ton of work and you would have all had OpenAl as standard:)
And what are the two biggest whine?
Hitboxes and Railgun, both or which were non evident.

I will never understand why people whined about per poly hit detection so much, it is a genuine improvement which would benefit Q4 a lot, but no they removed it :/

How does that work with custom models if those ever are added to Q4?

It dosn't but as we all know at the moment the majority of the models are all the same anyway.

You can always have it work where the per pixel bit is like a skeleton and the model is on top but dosn't affect anything

Networking-wise a square or cylinder contains less data to transfer than a whole model. (You would have to transfer data about what exact frame in an animation the model is in to know where the per-pixel-"hitbox" is, or transfer information about the whole model, which is quite bandwidth consuming).

Doom3's netcode while not amazing was quite capable of it (No idea if it could cope with 4vs4/5vs5) and Q4's netcode instead of that sends lots of useless junk data and I am sure that somebody would be able to create an effective and efficient netcode which is capable on standard ADSL.

play counter strike if you want reloading

Yes! Never come up with new ideas or try mixing in stuff from other games. That's blasphemy!

:)

FUNNY

That's cs you're reffering to -_-

nice to read

I remember him being on GIGA eSports TV ;D

nice read :)

Thresh !! omfg

What else do you play, if you have the spare time?

I play a little bit of Quake 4 and some poker.

he's coming back

he played a little counterstrike too..hes not coming back. why would he? What other website had q4 benchmarks for dual core cpu's, he doesn't need to win anymore tourneys :)
-kojima

cooller brain > thresh brain

vodka > sake

vodka IS 'sake' which translates to 'alcohol' but I know what you meant ;)

should be

vodka > nihonshu

God am I a smartass.

sake is made from rice and vodka from grain or potatoes

'sake' is Japanese for 'alcohol'. It's a common misuse of the word in the ignorant Western World. 'Nihonshu' is rice wine (or rice vodka).

Incorrect.

Osake is alcohol.
Sake is indeed rice wine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sake

dont trust wikipedia!

revon really is a smart ass, but happens to be definitely right here. 'Sake' as known in the west would be nihonshu. Sake in the Japanese sense covers all kinds of liquor. The o in osake is just an honorific prefix.

Oh and when posting already I could also give my two cents here. I've always thought highly of Thresh, but there's no way in hell he could keep up to the likes of Purri in Q2 nowadays, because the game have evolved too far and just wouldn't match the stuff he learned and engraved into his mind. He wouldn't be able to adjust perfectly, BUT I think if it's a new game it might become interesting. Would be great to see him back in the game.

egd

:P

Have you seen alot of tresh-play?

thresh. vs. immortal

best demos EVER!

I would love to see Thresh vs Europe ;-)

Europe?

you meen Entropy? :A

I mean any mid skilled European :D

Why would he mean entropy? Entropy was american?

You could probably still find some Deathrow v Clan 9 demos ....

Thresh vs Europe was quite embarassing for us the euros :(

I wonder how much he got for the ferrari :)

i wonder why fat didn't buy it and drive up to his mum's house.

Would be great to see him come back and kick everyones arse.

Don't doubt he could do it either . . . .

Speed ?

This guy owned Q1 / QuakeWord which was twice as fast as Q3 / Q4. Have no doubts he knows exactly what he's talking about.

Errr lol. When Thresh played, Quake1 (he played 99% NetQuake not QW) was so slow you fall asleep if you try to watch a demo today.

Yea the Clan9 vs DR games were the first time the wider community (including myself) saw some of the speed techniques like brushing the wall, dodging left/right while running, etc. Bunny hopping was still rare even then, way after those guys stopped playing Quake 1.

Yeah, also just for history's sake: Sectopod's megaleath rocket-jump and subsequent bunnyhop on dm4 vs. you (TGI, 1999) is considered to be the first display of bunnyhopping to a wider audience and when pretty much everybody went 'whoa this new technique is cool'.

<sujoy>: gad damn that was fast
<sct> yea
<sct>im a ninja
<sujoy> L:)
<sujoy> hehe

It is however, said that speed-runners were using bunnyhops from early 1998 :)

I remember that. Was thinking:

"Ah finally got him trapped at mega! Time to do a bit of damage on his... oh shit where did he go?"

fats dream is ferrari,
thresh has already a ferrari since 10 years,
therefore thresh > fat

Fats dream is to buy a ferrari, I bet Thresh wasn't able to buy a ferrari through his prizes excluding the ferrari.

He probably couldn't. But they can't really be compared since gaming was a lot smaller than compared to now.

Of course :>

Was more to the one you replied to really :) But if you take Thresh's win/loss ratio and apply it to the tournaments fatal1ty played in, I'm sure you would have been able to buy a Ferrari for those money =) Maybe a used one at least 8-)

Well if you include how much he was PAYED, he might have. He was making six figures when he was playing.

I smell a comeback in the interview but jeh I dont think he will

good interview.
1 question - if thresh had input into making q3 multiplayer like he said,why does'nt he like it?

I think in some q3test version there was no bunnyhop.. maybe it was his sugestion :p

there still is no bunnyhop in q3

Strafe jumping was nerfed by Carmack in one of the test versions by removing the ability to jump more than twice in a row. It was pretty lame though and he took it out in the next test version.

And not only him; id asked for feedback from many other (American ofc) players like RiX, sCary, Kornelia, Batch, DieHard, Pat and others I don't remember/recognize. The company paid to bring them to the TX offices and have them play an early build of Q3 (that was early 1999, before Q3Test).

This makes the whole thing even more amusing, considering Quake3 is dumbed down compared to the other Quake iterations, despite it having more player input than any other Quake. Another interesting view I recall from the time, is how some of the id guys viewed competitive gamers and the whole 'pro' community. Here's a snippet from Paul Steed, creator of the Q3 models and one of the coolest guys around since he always said what he thought (which got him fired in the end ha-ha):

During the testing of Q3A I continually shook my head at the seemingly endless parade of web pimps and crack players who came in to play test. Don’t get me wrong, these are guys I generally think are cool, intelligent, talented and fortunate people. But does their opinion really matter when they represent the creme de la crème? The elite of the elite? These are the people that care only about one thing: stomping your face into the ground under the heel of their mighty mouse. They want to hear your lamentations as you become a red stain in the corner of q3dm1. They are the subset of the subset. Their opinion should be heard, notes taken and applied to those parts of the game that rate in an official competitive capacity.

A subset of a subset. So true, but when does that subset represent the majority of a player base? PK or Q4? Late Q3?

BTW, anything more to that comment? Link to an article or anything?

Well done ESR.

Great interview.

I've watched lots of tresh q2 demos. During the time it took him to get half way across the q2dm1 map, a modern player could get all the items. Well, almost.

However, the idea of playing "smart" instead of the usual could yield success in some situations. For instance, the same modern q2dm1 gameplay: everyone plays pretty much the same (the same patterns, in his words) and if your opponent does something out of the ordinary (which is rare), it is kind of confusing.

It must be noted though, that opponents never try something unusual unless they are getting owned :P I guess it means that the gameplay of the "owner" is pretty much as optimized as can be.

I am so damn happy that tresh existed in this world. only think about it, without thresh there would be no pro gaming today!!! And he is so smart and so god damn good looking, that it is a shame that i cant have sex with him. And only think of it, he is the best player in the world and nobody would ever have a chance against him, he doesnt even need to prove it! That is a fact, a dogma, just believe in it, there is no doubt. But what all of you didnt know, i am the best player of europe! When i start playing Q2 these days, every lan i held with my friends i beat the shit out of them in Q2! Nobody ever took even one win from me! And besides that, when i was playing football in my ghetto i was living in (i'm coming from a quarter that is kind of worse than the bronce), i beat every single fucking guy that competet me! I think that makes me the best european child football-player! Besides that i know superman, yeah... we had a few chats in the past. An interesting guy i can tell you. Yeah and these days, when Einstein was thinking about our universe, i gave him some hints and finally he found his theory of relativity. I dont say that he wouldnt have found his theory without me, because i am not bigheaded, but i guess i shortend the time he needed to find it by, lets say, 50 years. That makes me a damn cool guy doesnt it? Today i am running a little buisiness, nothing special, i am bringing the garbage from my mother to the garbage collector standing on the other side of the street where we live. I am making some good bucks out of it. I am so übertalented that people all the time get jealous of me, so i decided to waste my godlike intellect... and by the way, if we are already speak about godlike, i am ....

enough, thanks for your attention, hope from this point on, you will start to include me in your prayers, amen.

tresh ?

haha

You're just tresh talking now ... :)

"To be honest, I didn’t really follow it at all. Painkiller just isn’t interesting to me."

+++++++++++++++++

----------------------------------

I wud read it but its broken, GAY BUG

Nice I-view.

I thing Q4 is his game... gg Denis :*
i hope we´ll see u comming back soon man.

I would honostly like to see Thresh come back. Fatal1ty is a great player but like Thresh said its hard to play against a stragetic player. It would be nice to see players like Fatal1ty play against Thresh. After he gets back to the top of his game of course.

Best Quake 3 Player of all times: ZeRo4, Cooller or Fatal1ty?

I’d probably say Zero4 or cooller as they won most often during the peak of Quake 3.


aha how far that is from the truth... I would follow this with a how and why that statement is false, but I think I don't need to.

Depending on the criteria you apply you can argue an equally strong case for Cooller, Fatal1ty and ZeRo4. I don't see anything wrong with saying any of the three is that player (though personally I think it was ZeRo4 by virtue of his dominance or Cooller because... he beat ZeRo4 time and again).

I would consider the "prime" of q3 when there were the most tournaments with the biggest turn-out for top tier players. While "top tier" is hard to define, people get the idea. This era would most certainly be between 2000-2002 (eswc/wcg/cpl's). During this timeframe, with the exception of one WCG event, fatal1ty devastated the majority of the competition, if anything, by winning every (i think, too lazy to go look it up) CPL.

Fatal1ty devastated no one in 2001.

no one except winning CPL austrailia, 2nd @ CPL brazil and 3rd @ CPL Netherlands

id disconsider CPL brazil since he was the only non southamerican player and he lost to 2 brazilians, who although were pretty good were far from top 3 level

so you cann that devastation?

If you compare that to what zero4 or cooller did in 2001, yes, very much so. complete devastattion. fatal1ty also beat zero4 in the qcon finals on dm6 8 - -1

Fatal1ty beat ZeRo4 16 to -1, I believe, but he did not win that tournament, did he? He lost twice to daler.

ZeRo4 did more in 2001. He won qcon, beating Fatal1ty in the final, and also won wcg, the 2 biggest events of that year, whereas Fat's only won one small cpl event.

In 2002 both ZeRo4 and Fat's were really out of shape, and while Fatal1ty did beat ZeRo4 like that at qcon 2002, at least ZeRo4 was able to go to wcg 2002, Fat's didn't even qualify. Both did not win a major tourney that year.

zero4 got to go because he didn't have to qualify....

He dropped out out the NYC quali's so another amiercan could go...

And Fatal1ty didn't make it past cha0ticz, daler and socrates_ ... Unthinkable that he wouldn't be top 3 in his own country before, innit?

heh

WCG USA 2002 was one of the worst designed tournaments ever and its totally unfair to read almost anything into the final results.

We're talking about WCG 2002.

Yeah sorry that was a typo, I meant 2002.

I think Fatal1ty lost enough games in that qualifier for us to treat his performance seriously. Besides, all tournaments prior to QLAN, iirc, were in a "best of one" format and as such cannot be treated all that seriously (though they show how far ahead of everyone Fatal1ty was when he won events in 2000).

There were a quite a few best of three events in 2000, all were won by fat or lakerman.

WCG USA 2002, I don't agree. IIRC Daler qualified even though he lost badly to socrates and didn't even have to play chaoticz or fatality. That and the frag difference business was just idiotic.

Name those best of three tournaments, please. Because I cannot recall one.

XSI, LA4, Nordic championships, cyberarena, some of the wcg qualifiers, etc, etc. Even more that I don't remember so well.

That's fantastic. Save for XSi, none of those tournaments are regarded as the big tournaments in Quake history. As I said, Quake 3's history was written on random one map tournaments. And it's a big fucking shame tbh.

Thank god we are using BO3 as standard now, can't believe QLAN was the first big BO3 tournament :/

and i remember fat getting last at XSi as well =p

Not sure why you are being sarcastic with me.

cheater ... nobody listens to cheaters
why cheat cheater ?

all talk, am i rite?

this should be added to the hall of fame

Nice Interview. Better than all the carmac iview's.

nice i-view...

cheers Thresh, You will always be the top man dude.

I can still remember the good old times of playing Q1, learning from Thresh and macler(polish top star player) demos. I kinda copyed the style of playing from Thresh and moved it from Q1 to Q2 and then to UT. There's a lot of trouth in that, what Dennis says - this style isn't so nice to look at, but it's the best ever and it's effective. Next thing is that Fatal1ty plays more based on aim, perception & things like that, than thinking, even his quote is "practice, practice, practice". Skill is what is in your head, your intelligence - rest of the thing is practice. John Wendell is good becouse he plays A LOT - Thresh was good, becouse he was intelligent and skilled (+ he was a nice guy, but that's a different storry, right Dennis? :)).

Was nice to read this interview, some good memmories from old times... Thresh will always be a pure legend and no Fatal1ty can change that.

explain to me what using ur head or thinking means, i mean if timing, predicting were ur enemy is an what hes doing and doing random moves to catch ur opponent off guard etc isnt using ur brain what the hell is? , i think its utter bullshit to even suggest top players today are just all aim and timing, i dont believe their is a top player outside the top 10 that doesnt "use his head".

i didnt play quake 1 or 2 or whatever so i dont know but im going to presume the competition in 1v1 is about roughly 20times greater =]

Q1 & q2 was way more better than q3 ever was :(. While there have been some good games to watch and play in q3, it's cartoony look and it being made with newbies in mind made it too funny to take seriously :).

hah! q2 is horseshit.

What does that make q4 then?

Donkey smeg?

[-] to you

nobody knows with which kind of game he´s speaking about. If he is comming back, we´ll see soon ^^

I mean, maybe if he comes back, he (maybe) wont be the top1 Q4 player of the year...he will be one of the top10-top5 Q4 Players for sure (at least the first year). I m sure he knows what are speaking about, and maybe be, e sports now is becoming "fashion" because is spectacular, but not strategic... but same than the others sports, e sports need this two things: strategic and spectacularity. I think denis are telling us we need to play more strategic, less spectacular.

This reminds me of the hype surrounding Rickson Gracie.

Heh, I guess. No one was able to expose their weaknesses. Don't know about thresh, but Rickson never faced real competition, or retired before the real competition came around.

nice from Poland Tresh good me bad

This guy is a joke in gaming nowdays ...

"You can type “Exec thresh.cfg” on any Quake 2 machine and it would work. :)"

yeah cool lol ...

Something to add ?

Yeah i was the best ...

ok ok ... and ?

download Xfire

cya ... noob.

Wtf are you talking about?

harsh but funny lol

Anonymous flamers are the real joke here ...
go back to bed and cuddle up to mommy little boy ...

thresh \o/

he will own cooller.

no, wait, he wont, cause there's no comeback.

no comment on the pic yet...
the young jet li anyone ?

Can i have ur config
:P

"Speed is not part of the true Way of Strategy. Speed implies that things seem fast or slow, according to whether or not they are in rythm. Whatever the Way, the master of strategy does not appear fast.'

Some people can walk fast as a hundred or a hundred and twenty miles in a day, but this does not mean that they run continuously from morning till night. Unpracticed runners may seem to have been running all day, but their performance is poor.

In the Way of dance, accomplished performers can sing while dancing, but when beginners try this they slow down and their spirit becomes busy. The "old pine tree" melody beaten on a leather drum is tranquil, but when beginners try this they slow down and their spirit becomes busy. Very skillful people can manage a fast rhythm, but it is bad to beat hurredly. If you try to beat too quickly you will get out of time. Of course, slowness is bad. Really skillful people never get out of time, and are always deliberate, and never appear busy. From this example, the principle can be seen"


Now, when you compare demos of Thresh and of Fatality, you'll understand why Thresh seems so "slow". His play is smooth, deliberate, like a flowing stream, and sometimes like a crashing waterfall..it's almost boring compared to Fatality's (and many other players) twitchy, nervous style.

thresh is not coming back. it would be a lose-lose situation for him at this point. right now he is using his notoriety as a gaming legend to promote his business, xfire.

he would get absolutely spanked if he came back. i think i can say that without taking anything away from his past achievements.

I think I could say he could win any tournament given the desire on his part.
At this point, I don't think he even cares about a bit of chump change from tourney winnings. Gaming is an entirely casual thing for him these days.

Twitch and reflexes take you only so far, natural intuition, broad use of strategy and being able to see into your opponent's mind at any given time is timeless. I haven't seen another player since he left that could come close to the way he could read, surprise and utterly dominate opponents in such a relaxed manner.

Seriously though, the guy is almost 30 and there's a time to grow up .. you can't support yourself on gaming forever, it's not THAT popular.. not to mention how detrimental it is for your life outside of gaming. Moving himself from gaming into the business side of things was natural progression of his strategic mind.

Agreed with a lot you said, but I still think you have a slightly biased view of Thresh.
You're assuming he could read players of today to the same effect that he could in 1997 etc. Yes that skill is timeless to a certain degree. However you're not taking into consideration (or giving credit) that others players have also developed that skill.
The top players of today seldom miss a trick. not saying for one second he was only good cuz everyone sucked back then.
Just syaing you're treating his opponets as if they had the same A.I. as they did in 1997 without realising its 2006.
Go look at the q3 demos from 2000 then look at the demos from ESWC 2005. Pretty big difference.

FPS gaming was new in those days. It's not like boxing where Ali had trainers with decades of experience and insight (becasue he can still be compared to todays best).
The sport evoles and it goes quickly.

I don't doubt Thresh was a step ahead in those days, but that was then and this is now(R).
I guess we'll never know, but it would be awesome if he played again and showed that level of domination.
I have to ask though, if he could then why does he not. His whole career is based on gaming. He said himself he only played a few hours a day tops. I'm pretty sure that would not screw up his RL.

i think, if you watch one of the best coollers demos
thats the best 1v1 fps are gonna get
everyone playing like routine pads automated aimbots, and theres not room for a lot of improving beyond that
why?
because you cant run faster, or aim better than that (maybe a little better, but not that much), and you cant win without items, by just getting "inside the rivals head" like tresh states (yeah, maybe when he was THE BEST shooting rockets to the mega or something like that was big strategy but today everyone knows that kind of stuff), because theres no big thing going in the game, just get all the stuff your respawns allow and fight the right way, and let the most coldblooded/trainend win

Except that you can play better than cooller, he does lose occasionally :).

WTF dude I didn't know Thresh was asian. I guess that explains why he was so good.

Why?

It's it obvious?! HE'S ASIAN! HE KNOWS KUNG-FU (all asians know Kung-fu)! He's using his kung-fu moves on the mouse and he can sense the enemy. That's like... unbeatable! :)

zerg rush

Great Interview mate! :>

Thresh should make a DM game next :)

great work

i dont have a user name or password sorry my real name [Mz]Adr3N4l1n and i wonted to comment on the bunny hop thing i dont think denniz really knowz what bunny hoping in qw is all about

"I really don’t like bunny hopping – in some ways I think it lessens the importance of strategy and prediction b/c with everyone hopping around everywhere, you almost always know where they are."

it doesnt lesson the strategy and prediction because u can hop or choose not to hop when u dont hop its true ppl dont always know where u are and u can play more strategic but at the same time when u hop u are faster and can do efficient tricks which will lead u to victory. U have to combine hopping with not hopping ppl use hopping to get to armors faster and control the map better but then they dont hop because they dont wont ppl to know where they are they combine the 2 so i dont agree with deniz 100 procent

k3wl

yea man you r4wk!

fong thong thong thong thong

If possible, could the interviewer try to find out what happened to the PGL league, or at least the rights to that. GX Media acquired the rights in 2000 from TEN/pogo.com

GX Media now owns the PGL, although Fong says it's still unclear what the future holds for a league that exists in name only. "We're looking at restarting it and are doing research on league structures like the NBA," reveals Fong, although no firm decisions have been made.

http://www.gamespot.com/features/virtual/p4_01.html

The reason I'm asking is because of this league, http://www.thepgl.org/ . Have they bought the rights to this name?

*Edit* Good interview with the best player of all times (right blaz!)

sorry max , but he is overrated

Hej blaz!!!

fu genesis! :( hihi


måste hålla det vid liv! ;)

nice interview.

.. no I meant VERY nice interview :)

Nice interview scoop

Playing the way thresh did back then would get you railed 3 or 4 times in a row nowadays.

right... because everybody else around him would've developed except him...
this is such a stupid statment. there is only so much a player can. the time will come, that cooller will retire from gaming, but gaming will still evolve. and there will be people that are the new stars, and they will always doubt if cooller would be able to rule as he did "back in the day"...
no one knows how thresh would perform nowadays, it's just speculation. the only fact that remains is, that he dominated every player he faced WHILE he was active. thats the best you can do, that's how you become a legend.

Ummm...thresh goes on to diss the fast way alot of players play nowadays and I was stating that I don/'t think the slow and strategic style would hold up nowadays because aiming stats have gotten better.


I always liked watching purri demos over threshs demos anyways.

he disses no one. he just says that there might be different ways to be good at a game, and that his style worked for him.
and i like purris fast paced q2 game just as much as a very strategic and slow gameplay (shub vs. mak comes to mind)

so true

overall - some people just get him wrong, they should watch last tv i-view at giga.de with him, I really liked this guy afterwards.

gg Thresh, you'll always be an Icon of e-sport for me & a lot of people, who had a chance to play during "good old times" of quake.

Next year Quake 4 will have some huge tournaments and there will be a lot of prize money to win. What do you think about Quake 4 so far?

I think it’s a lot like Quake 3. ;-)

-----------------------------------------------

u play quake 4 and think it's a lot like quake 3...there goes your credibility ;-)

vq3 = alot of rail spam + mg cess
q4 = alot of rail spam + mg cess

atleast he's handsome *blink

Man Scoop, where did you dig up this old gaming fossil? =D

watch out! i might ask you next ;)

Pfft, better get that shovel and start digging. This old fossil likes to hide deep. haha

any q4 for makaveli? we need some immy vs. maka practice demos. ;)

I only play CS:Source and Rome: Total War haha

:(

Well, Rome:Total War is a fun game...

Why don't give Q4 a chance? So much fucked up of never made it to the peak with q3? Do you still play some q2 or q3 from time to time?
Serious question: I am searching for your POV of the legendary match versus stelam on pro-t4 at wcg 2001. Remember, the game which causes collateral damage to some hardware? ;-) Is there such a demo? Never saw it!

Regards and GL

seems to be a friendly and smart nature :)

gl in future m8

so it was he who asked id Software to bring railgun into the game. Nice move, Dennis.

Thresh was excellent in his day but there was
better players at the time such as "Lakerman"
and some of the sK guys.

my 1 cent.

The results clearly shows that as well. Why comment on that now?

"I always hear this argument and I think it’s ridiculous. What people don’t realize is that a lot of top gamers today, such as Zero4, Fatal1ty, czm, etc., _were competing_ at the time I was playing - they just weren’t at the top of their game then. In fact, Fatal1ty had tried out for Death Row and didn’t make the cut. (Though he tells me it was b/c he had a bad connect.) "

http://wiki.quakeworld.nu/Death_Row
"TwistedKiller (who appears to have a nose for talent) makes a request to add a new member to the team, which doesn't happen without serious consideration. TK, who seems to have a nose for gaming talent, promises this player, though young, HPB, a QW player, & not local (west coast SF/LA), is immensely talented, and will be "BIG" in quake in the future. After strong consideration, given TK's urgings, the team decided against it as there were too many factors that went against the chemistry of the team. Though I'm sure he was disappointed then, John "Fatal1ty" Wendel did a pretty good job of living up to TwistedKiller's predictions. "

Thresh's Jealousy>>>>>>>>>Universe