#3. More maps - toss out the old, in with the new

Take away my ztn and I will hunt you down.

I am prepared for the russian invasion.

I have hired Sylvester Stallone to be my body guard.

What say you?

he's old and on steroids
failed

Me and Insan3 played against Fatal1ty on thunderstruck a few days ago when he was doing one of his promo things. I guess he was just messing around because we were just trolling using shit weapons and avoiding each other but still outscored him a few times... Either way, he's still got decent fighting skills. If you want my opinion on it though - #lvl^ !quote 69



As for the other American oldschoolers, doubt it since most of them mention that they're moving into houses and have kids and shit, though this I laughed at

rofl, kids? The ultimate trap.

Oh well

ROFL

looks like wcg is going to get quakelive this year already anyway

did they run out of counterstrike-clons?

So a handful of old players return, yet dozens/hundreds of players are leaving each day, and it's a revival?

You mean optimist.

lol i got nuked for that? much worse has been on this site imo

Yeah, like pics of your face.

ahahaha :DDD

why did the post get nuked, i was relieved someone spelled that out :p

I don't believe that..

Why?

#4 Optimization for old computers and laptops.

Yeah.

Sure.

only one tdm player I'm missing..... MIKES!!!11

mik3d?

you are upsetting the quake gods :(

http://www.cyberfight.org/site/demos/search/?...;image.y=0

and Blue

stelam :( zyz :( slinger :( neok :( kane :( etc. :)

paracyde, kila, speed ? :)

CaptureStrike premium, yes, or even better: CaptureStrike free.

P O L O S
O
L
O
S

Rotfl you are way too optimistic, I see it quite the opposite.

ESL with Quake = only because of Carmac, I think they won't pick it for the next season seeing how it hasn't really provided that much of excitement (objectively speaking); hopefully I'm wrong.
DH with Quake = only because of few guys that likes Quake. Big thumbs up to them though.
MLG with Quake = not gonna happen prolly, maybe one stop and they'll see how it fails = long-term fail.
WCG might give it a shot one time.
Is ESWC even alive?
Quakecon is qUAKECON = the paradox is that it has largest money but at the same time it's the worst tournament.

The game/community is not healthy. We get tournaments because of some people's good will (Carmac, stermy, DH guys), but that's basically it. Quake has low numbers comparing to probably all esports games.

The amount of money in Quake is laughable to take it seriously, to play like a mad man (practise, practise, practise) and commit to it like SC2 players do for their game. Even if you'd play 10h a day, found a sponsor for trips, you still most probably won't end up in TOP3 where the money is = pointless. Plus Quake has no new blood whatsoever in terms of rising stars and breaking through players = not healthy. Those 15 pros are miles ahead of everyone else and it's like that since forever. Ok strenx is "kinda" new but that's basically it.

Fox is smart enough to know when to let go :) (sad about him missing DH tho)
Tox is back only for DH :)

Sad story bro.

so sad T_T xD

you're kinda looking at it too short term. When Rapha made his "5-steps ahead" comment there were like maybe 5 people on this site that didn't consider him a scrub. I know that's been a couple years now, but still, here and there we get stuff like agent the like mixing stuff up.

Rapha was planing his crusade for years in his basement beforehand, when he didn't have any internet connection, only playing with bots and watching some demos, just like Bulat! He's a one time wonder, that's for sure. Z4 then took him under his wings and metamorphosed him from a chrysalis to a "5 steps ahead" butterfly.

what about strenx?
he is also not new to quake but just recently he stepped up his game and im sure otheres can do aswell if they are motivated (not a lot are and that is understandable)

Well I don't know when strenx popped up, for some time I thought strenx=slx :) surely he played Quake before but he has been recognizable since just two-three years which in Quake isn't really much.

You can't be motivated when there's nothing on the line, TOP3 is beyond to anyone out-side of pro-circut, it's just even worthless trying and wasting time to take it seriously. That's my point.

You can't be motivated when there's nothing on the line, TOP3 is beyond to anyone out-side of pro-circut, it's just even worthless trying and wasting time to take it seriously. That's my point.

well trying to get better is a personal goal that everyone can have and thats always worthwhile, no matter if the top3 is in reach or not. but yeah, for players to really commit and invest a lot of time there is a lack of motivation in form of big tournaments. there is talent out there in a lot of national communities but right know its rare to see players hungry for more, but its understandable

anyway i think your painting the picture a bit too black. some big e-sports boom will not hit pro quake but the mid-high competitive basis is healthier than ever it seems. and thats great and really important for me as a player. but as you pointed out, a lot of people in key positions grew up with quake and make bigger tournaments happen, it wont go much further than this but i dont see it just dieing away either

Reload, twister (is improving a lot lately), fire_bot (I guess he started with ql) and there are many more players who are new and already on a decent level.

Some of my cs mates picked up the game recently and although they won't be future stars they increase the low tier base.
Zotac numbers are growing.
Bundesliga
Polish league
Over 300 players in the int esl ladder
First big tdm lan in years
Return of oldsqlers

IEM finals weren't the best but the europe games were amazing and I don't think that I have to say much about dreamhack's games :P

fire_bot has been playing for ages :D

Zotac numbers are growing - not really, it's randomly up and down.
Bundesliga - ESL is German so I'm not surprised, good thing though.
Polish league - there are some cups/leagues but it in most of them you really can't see anyone trying, good players aren't even participating.
Over 300 players in the int esl ladder - wow :o
First big tdm lan in years - yes that's really, REALLY great, but it's probably also the last one in years :P
Return of oldsqlers - which one? :) you mean those playing for fun from time to time?

-seeing how it hasn't really provided that much of excitement (objectively speaking)

and how would you objectively judge that? is there a general consensus that the IEM season sucked? I sure as hell don't think so! and what about the stream numbers? i have mostly watched the games at cebit through VODs but I remember the streams that I did watch having good numbers for quake and not only cebit, the streams from kiev have had pretty good numbers aswell iirc.


-We get tournaments because of some people's good will

I don't necessarily agree with you here although I think that without carmac picking up quake for IEM it would probably be dead by now.
on the other hand, what do you think ESL is supposed to do? CS seems to be dying on a national level and I don't know about any new teams or star players except for na'vi, then again I don't really follow CS maybe someone can clear that up.
WoW is basically unplayable at a competitve level AFAIK.
There aren't any other games to complement SC2 and the IEM are probably too insignificant to be SC2 only, especially with the NASL on the horizon.


-The amount of money in Quake is laughable to take it seriously

I'd say it's enough for players to take the events seriously although they may not build their future on playing quake which, IMO, is a good thing. I'd rather see some amateur players that peak during their education than players dropping out of school left and right and becoming some sort of fatal1ty who runs around conventions and trade fairs promoting their sponsors' shit, all because they took quake too seriously. lets face it, even if you do pretty well in SC2 you probably won't be able to build a future on that either, except for maybe korea where you won't be laughed at in a job interview for saying that you played video games professionally.

1. Streams have good numbers because of two other games: CS and SC2. Create an event with Quake only and you'd get 5-7k viewers at most. I think that from excitement point of view most of the games which were shown on main stage during IEM were rather meh, boring or uber +b, generally speaking. The audience (which aren't Quake players) were ubber happy Quake was over and CS and SC2 were about to start. That's what I saw at least.

2. CS is so called "dying" since 4 years or so, but still you have really plenty tournaments popping up every year. Teams are mixing up their rosters quite often, adding new players and you can see really some great new talents - maybe not teams, but players. I agree with WOW but I'd say the problem with it is that it's soooooo unfriendly to watch games. If you haven't played WOW you won't understand literally nothing with even good cast, it's fucked up totally. I don't know what IEM will do, since you are quite right - there aren't really good esports titles around. Quake is awesome but I think it's just too elite (hence small community/numbers) and they have to deliver numbers :C

3. I meant that new players can't take Quake seriously, not the old ones/current pros. That's why you don't see much motivation from the new the rising "stars", so to speak. You are wrong about SC2 I think. You can build a future in it because a) it has shit-load of money (everyday online tournaments, lan tournaments, GSL/MLG/NASL with huge stacks) b) game's lifespan will be quite long, hey it's StarCraft. And when your career is about to end, if you were good enough, you can try stay in esports as a caster/manager etc. Surely it's risky as fuck but people do this since few years already.

1) I think the numbers have been better than that for some quake only streams but I could be wrong. Also, from the last I saw SC2 has maybe 30-40k viewers maybe more for western tournaments, no one is saying that quake is as big as SC2 or that it needs to be, so I think in comparison quake is doing pretty ok.
I guess if you'd sum up the numbers of different language streams you'd be well over 10k for quake games.

again I'm not sure about the numbers but I think if quake draws 10k viewers its enough to justify a continuation in the IEM.

2) IMO CS is pretty spectator unfriendly since if you're in some players POV you miss a lot of stuff thats going on around the map but the overview thing looks like shit.
never played WoW, never watched WoW, can't really comment on that.
I'm not too informed about CS tournaments but after the discontinuation of arbalets all I can think of is IEM, WCG, ESWC, DH and a few smaller lans here and there, please do correct me if I'm wrong here but compared to that quake hast just about as many big tournaments as CS. another big point though is that there are many smaller tournaments for CS on a national basis though, but I will get to that later.

3) like i said I don't think any players should take quake or gaming in general too serious. If you have a competive nature you will have motivation regardless of how serious you are about the game the problem I see is that there is no place for new players to compete in because all that tournament organizers do is cater towards the best players in the world, of course their hand is kinda forced because ID won't give us LAN servers. when I think back to the old days of Q3/Q4 I think about ESWC, you basically had to either get a spot for the national qualifier online or you could win a spot at some small local lans. this system provided competition for multiple levels of skill, the better local's, the best national players, and the best players in the world. How long has it been since there was an open LAN tournament in quake, must be somewhere around the time of the last CPL event (except for quakecon of course, but thats only once a year and not really an option for some recreational european competitors).

so my question is: how do you expect to grow a playerbase of a game that drives on competition if all you can offer the lower tier players are some online cups where the best players of the world will also compete in?

I doubt even the best players in the west, or even western players in korea can really build a future in pro-gaming. If you're really good you make like what? $50k a year? I'm sorry but thats laughable especially if you have to pay taxes on that, or get some insurance. say you can play like 8 years on the highest level, that's $400k - living expenses. you maybe get out with like $300k in savings. If you want to start a family how long do you think this money lasts, what do you think you can offer your kids, how do you think you will pay for your kids education. Also, what do you think will happen in a job interview after you retire and say you played professional starcraft for the last 8 years? youre basically stuck in the gaming/esports industry for the rest of your life and there probably arent that many great job opportunities.
So yes, you may be able to build your future on gaming if you're one of the best in the world and your earnings exceed $100k a year and you can keep it up at least 8-10 years and you are enough of an entertaining person to commentate or lucky enough to get a job as a manager in a stable organization in a highly fluctuating industry. good luck with that

edit: well the money probably lasts longer if you take it to thailand or so but forget trying to grow old on that kind of money if youre in the west.

2. CS is "dying" but the top teams (especially in the US) are changing quite often. I never even heard of Na'vi until about a year ago, yet they are often considered the top by some. However, the game is easy to watch but is very spectator unfriendly, especially if you don't understand the strategies.

WoW was never too easy to watch as a spectator game, and I more than likely would not understand it anymore and i played at a very high level (more than likely could have gone "pro", lol @ easy game) back in TBC. Even many of the people who played WoW would not understand what really good players would do.

Quake IS awesome to watch though, I won't deny that. Even if you don't know what the fuck is going on, you can at least see intense battles. or at least you could. QL is all +back and bores the shit out of me

socrates = oldsocks?