Thoughts of an oldie

The past year is one that should go into the books as one of the best in the history of our twelve year old game. Ever since Quakeworld.nu went down and World of Warcraft came out during NQR8 the scene has had a lot of up and downs considering the activity and amount of players and clans. NQR used to have 80 to 100 clans signed up, ever since we are still blessed with 50 to 60 clans every season but it’s a lot less. Another very important reason is of course that all of us are older than when we started playing this game. Every now and then when I’m in a conversation with old quakeworld friends we get to a point where you actually realize how long it has been since this game came out. In just a few days, on the 24th, Qtest came out exactly twelve years ago, think about that, what your life looked like back then.

Even though there is still the occasional drama, of which I have to say that I personally miss at times, the far majority of the the people have matured a lot. Many of us should remember the legendary Lame-ever updates by Link which date back to the days of Villains. Controversial games like FF-tVS in Smackdown 2 where FF wanted to play with Dag while tVS wanted to play on LAN which was impossible to schedule or what about SR-tVS in Smackdown 3 with the back office chosen decider. So many things happened that caused mayor upsets, can’t forget ParadokS banning Mrlame and stepping down from NQR crew drama or Riker getting banned for faking.

Everybody is older now, people have more things that are higher on their priority list than quake, like a full time job, study and of course women. It’s been like that for a while now but especially in the last few seasons it struck me. From the moment EQL started their first season there have been problems surrounding division 1, as you all know there simply weren’t too many teams that were able to compete for the victory which made the seasons not too interesting. During the last months several people told me again how important it is for the scene that division 1 is active because there many of you, including me, who just like to watch good teams play. NQR11 has a great lineup in, not only, the gold cup, looks like it’s going to be a great tournament. One fantastic thing is that clans like No Pasaran! and Dies Ater are playing in Gold Cup, I say it takes a lot of guts and nerves to do that and for me it’s another example of how the scene matured.

I wrote a whole paragraph but didn’t get to my point which is that most people, unlike Skillah, play a lot less these days. Last EQL had a great division 1 when looking at what teams signed up, before the season started and in the first month everybody was still active and playing. Though most people, and so do I, take quake a little more relaxed these days. Personally I play because it’s fun, not playing 20 hours a week and wanting to win everything that bad makes the game a lot more enjoyable. It looked like more people thought about quake that way and I can’t say that is a bad thing since the attitude is very nice and relaxed if you ask me. A bad thing was that last EQL the activity died, then the site went down and nothing was said about what would happen concerning playoffs, which were announced to be played on QhLan. In the end Itsinen made the best out of it, he had to do about everything alone and it’s great that we finally got playoffs but it was disappointing too since almost every team had been inactive for a few months.

Now you think that was a lot of melodramatic crap and some negative stuff, why was last year one of the best? It is because after a very long time of people spending time writing on the qw.nu forum how to “save” quake finally something has been done and new people stand up. There were two seasons of ignition, 4on4 leagues have a rookie division, even though duelmania went down people took up the responsibility and started ownage, a nice quake (ez) tv system is being worked on a lot now. This year is looking to be just as good tournament wise, it’s great what people are doing for the scene. LGC is still running and now Phil came with a 1on1 ladder, there are plans being made for a 1on1 and a 4on4 kenya tournament, NQR is up and running again, partially thanks to mli who now hosts a CTF ladder too. He and Mushi are working hard on getting some CTF action again which is really great and last but not least Sassa is organizing his not.nqr11 silver tournament.

One thing that might be a bit of a deception for all tournaments is that people play less these days. I remember the days around NQR6 and NQR7 when it was possible to have several active tournaments and leagues at the same time, CMT, CTF, duel, custom duel and more. I’m afraid that these days everything will be less active with a lot of competitions, the only thing we can hope for is that things won’t die out like last fall. Molgrum has been working to get a custom 4on4 tournament running in the past months with which I’ve helped a bit but the main reason that it didn’t start yet is that we’re afraid that nobody will sign up. For now the plan is to start it when NQR is a little bit further on the way or maybe even during or after the playoffs. Besides that there have been several discussions in our crew about running a duel tournament. We all agree that the scene can use one so sit tight, it’s being worked on.

The Quake Nations Cup is still running too even though I don’t have the slightest clue what is going to happen there. Can’t say the structure is very clear but my hopes are still up, the idea behind this is great. Really looking forward to the playoffs, there are quite some interesting matches possible, the national team games always have something special surrounding it. The only thing I’m missing is some good old commentary like HangTime, Gaz, Blitz and many others used to do. I personally enjoyed the commentary by Phil on the two lans there were last year very much, it would be great to have more of that for big games. Some good time to put quake on tv, get a beer, food, hang on the couch and just relax!