Quake Live 2012-2015 winnings EXCLUDING recent 7th world title (cited above) in 5 different games is $32,000
he is one of the most successful eSports players starting in 2001 and is currently active - in 2001 John 'Fatal1ty' Wendel added him to his close knit squad of Bootcampers to practice which is cited during WinD's 2013 loss that John shout cast in the best of 3 against 'The King' Pharaoh
Thresh appears to be the most successful player based on how successful he was at the time when the game was relevant in the 90's
IMO:
Best overall skilled Quaker of last 20 yrs = Tox.
Best Duel brain I seen = Rapha.
Rapha was too young to be relevant in quake 3 and quake 4.
If he was 5 yrs older I got zero doubt he would be up there next to tox, then its like splitting BMW/AUDI.
even without taking into account the huge stretch of time between then and now, and how many european events he didn't play in, thresh only ever played netquake. not quakeworld, so he can't be considered the best player ever in QW. even if we go back to 2000, lakerman and even czm would have been higher QW players than thresh.
for one thing the modern playstyle of what we envision to be quake 1 doesn't even exist in that version. the bunnyhopping doesn't work online, and the client itself is horrible to play on because of how ancient the netcode is. with quake 1 weapons and no ability to dodge splash damage, it becomes a very shitty game.
Thresh only played at the very beginning, for like 2 or 3 years, and quickly disappeared as soon as a competitive scene with real threats started to emerge. Many of his victories were also due to him having a t1 and insane ping advantage over people playing with 100 ping in tournaments.
Tox the most overall skilled? The living aimbot? He's the most skilled if you only count "aim" as skill. His dodging, map control, timing etc are significantly worse than all the other top pros.
And Rapha is kind of overrated.
He's not the genius he's made out to be. Simply because this is not a game for geniuses, Quake might be the most skill intensive afps, but it's still a fucking videogame. It's not chess, it's not calculus, it's a fps.
All the pros do pretty much what Rapha does, maybe a little better on some parts, a little worse on others. What Rapha (and Cypher) have over the others is consistency, reliability, resiliancy under stress.
When the other pros start getting nervous 5 games deep in a final, they start overthinking, getting maybe too cautious when it's time to execute, Rapha and Cypher will simply keep chugging on, be there when it matters, performing pretty much always the same, or simply less worse than others under tense times.
Basically it's mostly down to nerves and self confidence.
Take Rapha for example, his inspiration was Cooller, and Cooller times items and controls the map even better than Rapha- he's the purest expression of map control, dodging and not caring much for the opponent's hitbox overall. Agent too is arguably better than Rapha at that game.
Cooller just lacks a few intangibles that always held his back, it's even difficult to say what exactly, because skill wise, he was as good as one can be in quake.
He lacked a little in the aim department, and probably didn't handle pressure as well. Or maybe his style was a little too passive.
Rapha certainly isn't the god he's made out to be by some people. In fact, he's 50-50 in his matches against Cypher, who made him look completely human and beatable.
If we're talking about raw overall skillset, my pick is Cypher, but he failed to keep up in the last years and consolidate his spot at the top due to his degenerate lifestyle.
Tox won a quake quad damage title at quakecon in 2007 (wow time flies!) which used a culmination of older versions of quake, as well as modern.
He was basically unbeatable at quake 4 with a lot of top players in their prime going after him for 2 years with money on the line.
Cypher, Cooller, Fat even old school vets like Immortal and quake 2 kings like purri came out to play which provided a cool benchmark.
If you look at quake titles since 99. Quake 3, Quake 4, Quake Live, Quake Champs, and split the skill of a player into DUEL & TDM.
Its not that hard to put Toxic as the number 1 overall Quaker IMO.
Name the player that's demonstrated a higher level of duel and TDM skill over 4 different titles spanning 20 years?
rapha was asked that question (best quake player of all times, in itself ofc a questionable question) on stream not too long ago but he came up with 2 players:
tox and czm
I would agree with that and he was the other player on my mind, the only reason I did not mention CZM was he hasn't really been relevant at tournament level since 2005, maybe 2006 due to study and his career which he's obviously done really well at and I respect.
He hasn't really played Q4/QL/QC. So you can't give him that title because that's 60% of the versions .
CZM was arguably one of the best overall Quakers out of a tiny few when he had the time and could have easily carried that onto to other versions, but it would have been a waste of academic talent.
First of all, the 2 biggest candidates for most skilled quake players were FAR from prime in 2007 and during the whole (short lived) quake 4 era.
Rapha and Cypher were doing their first steps in the competitive scene in the quake 4 times, they were like 16 years old at the time, Rapha didn't even have reliable internet connection to practice online and relied mostly on analyzing downloaded demos.
Toxic was playing alone. And quake 4 suitied an aggressive, aim based style very well.
Rush rush, buttscooting everywhere, lg lg lg with some rail here and there and the occasional rockets, all 3 weapons much more powerful than in following quake iterations and thus making stacks and timing and dodging less important because you could just chow through opponents anyway.
The proof is that Toxic was a nobody in the previous and following quake duel titles. And its not like he didn't try! Toxic is the single person with probably the most hours of practice than anyone else on the planet. He really tried to be a beast in quake live duel too, everyone was expecting no less from him, but he just couldn't deliver- he couldn't just aimwhore opponents down.
The quake quad damage title is a cool one- and an important one, but as already said, he didn't have competition, quake 2 players coming out of retirement to half train for one event never worked out good. Inactive quakers in general.
But i'll agree that he's probably the best quake TDM player, by accomplishments alone. But considering he's only been strong at duel in the quake 4 version of it, i can't considering him the best overall, especially since most duel players never tried as hard- or at all- to be TDM players.
You're picking select elements and using it to form an overall opinion, its not Tox's fault XYZ did not go to Quakecon in 2007.
The contenders all knew about it. What they just stayed away from winning a shitload of cash?
If anything, a comp like that would have put the one sided quakers off.
I doubt many people could beat toxic in QL at duel, considering he beat rapha in the 1/4 final stage in 2014 at quakecon. You don't ever Rapha at duel in QL, unless you're really really good.
I'm pretty sure Tox took time off from gaming too, the scene was dead for quite some time from what I recall in a lot of the QL years.
The question is, which player over the last 20 years has been more successful than Tox at the 5 quake titles across the two main disciplines of Duel and TDM.
>The question is, which player over the last 20 years has been more successful than Tox at the 5 quake titles across the two main disciplines of Duel and TDM.
This is your question, yes. But the thread question is who's been the most skilled quake player.
And that title belongs to the best dueler.
Actually, not even that, the thread was who the best QW player is. In both cases, not Toxic.
By 2006 toxic had already won over 115k from quake games.
By 2006 rapha had won 750 dollars.
By 2006 cypher had won 15k.
Source: Esports Earnings
I think that proves where each player was in terms of quake ability at that time.
And like I said, he also won the quad damage tourney in 2007 which used multiple versions.
Not to mention Rapha himself said either tox or czm in relation to the best overall player, yet czm hasn't been relevant since 2005/2006 at a tourney level and missed quake 4, quake champs and came back for some sporadic quakelive, so it can't be him as much as it could have been if coulda woulda shoulda.
Yes, Rapha was green in 2006, he was moving his first baby steps in the pro scene. You do realize this is proof that Tox had weaker competition, that this is against your own argument?
You're literally spinning your own points against yourself.
Go ahead, keep going:
Rapha's earnings: 336,552.97dollars
Toxjic's earnings: 285,880.45 dollars
As you can see, Rapha is clearly the superior player, by your own standards.
Wait, what's that?
Clawz earnings: 291,455.49 dollars
Wow, even Clawz shits on Toxjq. Not a good look. so many players more skilled and successfull than him.
Rapha wasn't close toxic's earnings in 2006.
750 dollars vs over 100k.
Rapha wasn't anything in terms of pro status in 2006, in fact most people here had never heard of him.
Toxic was already obtaining a reputation as unbeatable at a time when all the pros like cooller, stermy, fox, killsen, av3k were young and gunning for him, he won them all. Even the great fatality was in his prime after a successful painkiller world tour. Nothing.
Money isn't everything, but its a pretty good indicator.
Rapha has 87 tournaments logged via game rankings.
Toxic has 48.
Toxic has a 4 year gap in his tourney attendance/earnings from 2007 to 2011 because the quake scene was shit and dead.
Not many people wanted to play a web based browser game of the one they had played to death until years a later, when it got half decent again with some new maps and the itch came back.
By which time, rapha and cypher had been playing hard for years and bridged the skill gap between the players who used to own them.
Rapha wasn't even a name most people on ESR heard about until 2007/2008 yet had been playing for many years prior.
If you think Rapha was a better Quaker than toxic across quake III and quake IV from the years of 1999- 2006 then really, I wish you all the best with that one :)
To be the best over a 20 yr history you need to have shown dominance in every version of quake, quake 4 was a very valid pro quake game, with a lot of money and tourneys and big names playing it. Tox had a rep as a tdm monster for a loooong time.
Many considered him and czm as the best two. Period,
No one on ESR thinks toxic of 99-2006 would lose to Rapha in quake 3 or quake 4. Not even close.
Like I said, rapha too young to be really good until the quake 3 and quake 4 era had gone, sorry, too much history in those games to ignore.
Q4 had one of the most stacked scenes as far as dueler talent goes in the history of all quakes and toxic still dominated. He is a legend and bringing up the game itself seems like a shitty way to take away what he accomplished during those times. Staying on top with some of the best quake players ever all gunning for you is a hell of a feat. And the dude still beasts today.
The most stacked duel scene was the early Quake Live years.
Toxjq only dominated for two years, 2006-2007, in a game that fit his aggressive aim based style to a t, and even then only because it lacked several top dueling talents.
He's been completely unable to replicate that success before or after, and outside of that title.
Nobody denies he's a good player. He's just simply and clearly not the best.
WTF is wrong with the people in this thread, I get it the ESR user base is mostly Q3-QL players, but most of the players mentioned in this thread were never QW players. Why is everyone comparing esports earnings for Quake players, when the title of the thread clearly states who was the best Quake World dueller! Skillwise at his peak.
Would have expected and liked to see the following names discussed instead of all the Q3 players that might have touched the game once, or played years ago before the meta was fully developed.
The best QW duellers -probably dag/griffin/milton- are the best quake duellers by far, since there is no other real quake game. The other pseudo-quakes are born out of noobification, they were purposely created to require less skill, so vets won't stomp... so what's the point of even starting to compare players?
The whole concept of quake being different in a skillful way, where besides the tactics things are decided by combat skills with incredible depth, died with the introduction of rail. From than on both tactics and combatskills are mostly reduced to a peek-a-boo. This is why dm13 matches are so slow, Q3 players don't really have much other skill than peek-a-boo-ing, so they have no idea what to do if there is no sniper gun.
Really interesting read. Many of the opinions are swayed by patriotic loyalty, there are arguments for multiple players, I don't think earnings are a great measure either.
From a purely observational view, after thousands of matches between the top pro's in tourneys and cups, I think we could narrow it down to a few.
Toxic - Because nobody else makes it look so easy and has dismantled top players in the same way when he is on point.
Rapha - Winrate. When behind, he finds a way to out IQ his opponent. He can maintain a lead vs the most agressive. Legend.
Cypher - Has to be mentioned. He forced everyone else to level up their game, smashed onto the scene beat the best still a contender.
Cooller - Mr consistency, just gets too angry sometimes!
I'd like to include CZM because of his massive improvement through sheer work rate and the pace at which he played, but he wasn't around (or at the top) for long enough. Nobody ever beat me in Q1 as hard as Sujoy did, but that was a long time ago. Fatal1ty was the original untouchable but quit as soon as other emergent threats started to affect his bottom line. Unkind, Lexer, Zero4, Fox etc.
The overall best ever would be Toxic. TDM dominance and damage ratios only add to his resume. Tox on point is the most scary thing in Quake. It's difficult to pick a winner. Easier for us Brits, we never had a dog in the race. Shout out to Bl0key thought, one of the best TDM players ever. Respeck.