Name: Michal Blicharz
Location: Warsaw
Posts: 2542
'Quake III' is dead.' We have heard it so many times that it is getting boring. It is true that there is less and less high profile tournaments in the game but does that mean it is dead? A few weeks after a major event, after all the smoke dissipates and ash cools down in the Campgrounds, is a good moment for analysis.

So... I would agree that Quake III on its way to die, but is it dead already? The symptoms would be: no stars playing, no competitions, a decreace in the level of play. One would have to agree that there is less tournaments to play in (that is duelling events).

One would have to agree that some big names are out of the busines. Blue and LakermaN being the most spectacular examples. Does this mean that there is no quality among the players that are left? Are these players top because they progressed or because the real top ones have gone? Has the level of Quake duelling decreaced so much that there is one man who is untouchable and all the rest is just a background for him?

Yes, there's less oldskool names. But we have a generation of duelers who have progressed a ton. Has anyone taken the name LeXeR really seriously when Laker and Blue were tops in Europe? Look at Daler - a man who had started up QIII 1.5 years ago has made a huge leap in his E-Sportive prowess. And yes, we can compare these guys to the retired blokes because those retired blokes because the other quality players from their era are still around and on form.

We have seen the skill gap between the big uns and the theoretically *lesser* players narrow down. cha0ticz gave a really good performance at QuakeCon, kuku and Ni3 should really be happy about their performances, not to mention Daler. Now... is that because the big uns are getting old or because the newcomers are getting stronger? Isn't it an instance of low level of play if there is a man who comes and simply outclasses everyone else?

It could be argued if whether one man can't find a worthy rival means that QIII is dying. Even by looking at the small picture though (and QuakeCon itself, with its one-map-strange-seeding double elimination bracket might give us a fairly distorted picture) we can tell that one-man domination has always been natural for Quake (fatal1ty'2000, ZeRo4'2001). The big picture is, though, that LeXeR does have strong opposition in his own country and his monopoly for winning is not that certain.

Furthermore, fatal1ty practising for eight hours a day will be at least very close to the good old fatal1ty, so if there are players who are giving him huge trouble, it has to be a symptom of a rise in skills, not a decline. The general level of play has risen, ladies and gentlemen.

QIII is changing constantly. Some say that it is becoming more and more aim-based. I say that the level of aiming has risen, which results in us having more rail/shaft-based games, but does that mean that dueling is more aim-based? To an extent, yes, but considering that the general aim level has risen more or less proportionally and the aim percentages between the top players don't vary drastically, we could easily conclude that the games are still won with the heads instead of hands.

So is Quake III dead? No, not yet.