Day 1: The Road/Beginning of the Fail

My brother and I woke up Wednesday morning at 6:00am so that we could leave by 7:00-8:00. We got to the car rental place and get a car and this took a bit longer than expected and i think we finally hit the road to Texas by about 10:00. The drive was super boring because it was pretty much one road the entire way. We stopped off in Louisiana around 7:00pm to see a long-time friend  and clan-mate of mine, samer. We finally arrived in Dallas around (can’t remember because I was so tired) 2:30/3:00am CDT (we got delayed big time. Long story, don’t ask..) and immediately went to bed when I got in the hotel because, for some reason, I can’t sleep in a car and it was a 12 hour drive (fml). We had to wake up around 8:00am so that we could have time to eat breakfast, take showers, and drive to the venue since our hotel was about 10/15 minutes away. We arrived at the venue on Day 1 with cfebns and we had absolutely NO idea where to go because the Hilton Anatole was FUCKING HUGE. I’m talking like the size of a small city. It didn’t seem like much from the outside, but once we got inside we were instantly lost. after a 15 minute walk across the hotel we finally found where we were supposed to be. The line was stretching from inside the venue (obviously) all the way back to the hotel (you had to go outside to go to the venue) which was probably, ohh…100 yards? Basically, the line was long…Luckily we spotted RottenRose and she got us into the QdQ (QuakeCon done Quick) Registration line. After waiting for about 30 minutes we finally got to the front of the line, but one of the Volunteer guys asked us if we had pre-registered to be in the QdQ line (they basically paid $20 to be able to register faster, and now that i think about it, that wouldn’t have been a bad idea…) and obviously we didn’t. Luckily he took us to the front of the regular registration line and told us we had to do it there (he basically helped us cut everyone already in line LOL- SORRY EVERYONE!). So we registered all of our stuff and got out badges and we thought we were good to go…wrong. We then had to get our items checked in since we were playing in the tournament. They put bar-codes on our headsets, mice, keyboards, and laptops and scanned it all in. So…FINALLY we were in the BYOC and ready to get things started. After roaming the around and checking out the other booths for a minute, I found my way to the QL.tv booth and met all the staff. I then had to immediately go to the Tournament Area to meet up with my team and get ready to play (already…?) We had our team picture taken and we registered our team so that we could be placed on the bracket and to let the people know that we were actually competing after signing up online. We got sent to our section of the Tournament Area and started setting up our equipment on the computers.

Let me take a second to just thank all of the sponsors of QuakeCon, but specifically Alienware. The computers and peripherals they provided us with were absolutely amazing (even though I didn’t use their keyboard/mouse because I brought my own). The monitors were 21.5″ flat screen LCDs and the computers were Auroras and Aurora ALXs. These machines were absolutely beast and the monitors were very crisp, responsive, and clear.

Anyways, we got all of our stuff setup and we were ready to get in-game and start jumping around/shooting around so that we could tweak our configs if needed and so that we could get used to the LAN feeling. Needless to say, it’s is hard to do so when there’s an electrical fire and the network goes down. So we sat there for hours hitting refresh on quakelive.com in desperation thinking that it would be up any moment…what a great utilization of time, right? I thought so too, but that’s when I looked over to my left and cfebns is trying to stack 2 chairs on top of each other so that he could sit up higher because he didn’t like the height of the tables and n1k0n is making the outside color of his computer blink like a strobe light and playing with the other colors that you were able to customize on the desktops. It was about that time I realized (GONNA BE ABOUT TREE FITTY NAH!) I was wicked hungry because the “breakfast” at my hotel was beyond uber-fail so I went to the QL.tv booth and dominated a family size box of cheezits and sat there for a while and checked out some more displays and such. Around 6:30ish Stevo let us know that the tournament had been called off for the day due to network issues and we were to come back the next day at 11:00am to start the CTF tournament. So the rest of the day was dedicated to t-shirts. Lets just say I left Texas with 6 new shirts without buying one and my brother got 13, once again, not buying any (what a bastard). We went back to the hotel that night to meet up with Avenged because he got there that night around 9:00pm and hung out with him for a bit until going to bed so that we could get some sleep before the next day because we both knew it would be pretty hectic.

Day 2: Bare Naked….Men…?

Seeing as how my brother and I aren’t insane, we bypassed the pathetic excuse for breakfast at our hotel because we learned from the previous morning and just went straight to the venue without eating (not the best of ideas). We arrive and show Avenged around a bit and get him all checked in and we check in ourselves and report to the Tournament Area ASAP. We meet up with cpy_/N1k0n/cfebns and get setup on the computers again and, thank you God, the network is finally working and we are able to play! We get in our server to get ready for our match with .403. and jump around and make any changes to our configs necessary. By about 12:00 we start our match and it is also shoutcasted as the first CTF match. We played very well and won the first map, Japanese Castles, 8-1. The next map was our pick: Ironworks. With confidence from the last map we went all out and took the map in about 10 minutes. I told everyone on my team to play defense to make sure they didn’t cap and I ran offense by myself for those 10 minutes and collected all 8 caps with much needed and appreciated cover in mid from my team. So match 1 gets completed and it was quick and painless for us and we are feeling pretty good afterward even though our next match was against the #1 European CTF team and possible favorite to beat EG: Fnatic. But, that match was to be played at 2:30 and it was around 12:30 the the time so we had a little downtime to go and eat/watch the masters duel which is what I did. I went back to the QL.tv booth for my beloved cheezits and hurried back to the main stage to watch sparks vs prozac. For those of you who haven’t met prozac…the dude’s nucking futs. Like, for real…He was perma-fucked up on something, I’m not sure what, but he was absolutely crazy (or maybe that’s just how he is). I told you that to tell you this. After his match with sparks (he lost 2 maps to 1 I believe), he was cool about it and went back to the tourney area and apparently got naked. Now, he claimed to be changing his shorts but that would mean he was going commando all day, not surprising really. But still, it was awkward, weird, unexpected, (anything else I missed?) and he eventually got thrown out of qcon because of it.

As 2:30 rolls around my team and I get all ready to play against Fnatic. We go over strategies, positions, and what maps we we want to do. We get in the server and we’re all ready to go, but Fnatic is telling the CTF tournament director that they wanted to play their duel matches first for some reason. So of course they get to play their duel matches first and we have to wait for another 5 hours before we can play. as 7:30 comes around we are once again in a server and ready to play. We are all warmed up and feeling good about playing, but that’s when the fail started happening again. Every 2 or 3 minutes there would be about 1 minute of complete lag out (on LAN, wtf?!). Don’t ask me because I don’t know how it’s possible, but thats what happened. So we wait around for 30 minutes being told not to ready up and finally they call off the match and tell us to come back at 9:00am to play our match. Awesome…

Day 3: STFU dude I’m trying to sleep…

My brother and I wake up a bit earlier so that we could get to the venue a little early so that I could have time to warm up and and wake up. Avenged and I are the only ones from our team that actually show up though…and it’s 9:20…So I call cpy_ about 5 times as well as cfebns around the same amount. No answer. So i texted both of them and then called cpy_ 1 last time. Finally he answered and he sounded really tired. “Whats up?” “Well…we were supposed to play at 9:00am and you guys aren’t here…” “Really? I thought we played at 10:00.” *Faceplam* “Nah man, you guys need to get down here right now because they might FF us if you’re not here in the next 5 minutes.” “Aight be right there.” And right as I hung up the phone I get a text from cfebns (him/N1k0n/cpy_ were staying in the same room btw) saying, “STFU man I’m trying to sleep.” LOL!

Anyways, cfebns and N1k0n show up within the next 5-10 minutes and they look like freaking zombies. Cfebns sits down at his computer and just sits there staring at the screen not moving. N1k0n looked like he was still asleep but at least he was moving and trying to get ready. We all get on vent and the first thing we hear is cfebns say, and I quote, “I just woke up in a pile of my own puke…” Man, this is just getting better and better. Apparently the night before, cpy_/N1k0n/cfebns had been drinking, but N1k0n didn’t drink as much, he was simply tired from going to bed so late and waking up so early. But cfebns got mega-plastered and, as he said, woke up in his own pile of puke. Not to mention he punched the flat screen TV in their room because he is apparently and angry drunk (expensive repair bills by the way). So we get in the server and extend the warm up as long as we can to give cfebns and N1k0n every chance to wake up and get their shit together. After making Fnatic wait as much as possible (even though they made us wait 5 hours the night before and we still didn’t play) we didn’t have any other choice but to F3 and cross our fingers. So the first map was Siberia (ctf8) and we had N1k0n on defense, cfebns on RA/High D, and I was kind of just a roamer, helping wherever and whenever I could. We were doing pretty well for the first 10 minutes, surprisingly; they were only up 1-0 and we hadn’t gotten a single quad. So we were feeling good, but that’s when the chain-caps started rolling in for Fnatic. Needless to say we ended up losing 6-0. Next up was their map pick, Japanese Castles. Talk about a cluster fuck. Absolutely nothing went right for us and we had no idea what we were doing. 8-0 them in like 13 minutes. So the tournament is over for us but QuakeCon wasn’t.

The rest of the time I was there I was attempting to win raffles, watching matches and, most of all, waiting for the finals. The semi-finals were awesome matches to watch. EG vs QUAD and Fnatic vs Loaded. EG handily took care of QUAD but Fnatic seemed to have a bit of trouble with Loaded only beating them 2 maps to 1 with all 3 games being very close. So QUAD was set ot play Loaded for the 3rd place match. I have to say, a lot of people were expecting Loaded to take care of QUAD rather easily but they didn’t, at all. QUAD came out balls to the wall and took out Loaded in just 2 maps to capture 3rd place . Congrats to them for their achievement. So the finals roll around and guess who it is? Yes, a rematch of last year’s semi-final between EG and Fnatic. what more could you ask for for a QuakeCon CTF Grand Final? It’s all or nothing. USA versus Europe. Steelseries versus Steelseries. Sexy hair versus buzz-cuts. A team of impeccable consistency in winning versus a rather premature CTF squad that has only been together exactly a year at the time. I’m sure most of you guys watched it live, and for those who didn’t, remind me to slap you. It. Was. EPIC. Everything a final should be; all 3 maps, close as it could be, and remarkable comebacks on just about every map. It certainly was a treat to watch along with the Duel final between Cypher and cooller. Once again, another epic set of matches between 2 duel masters. Just as the CTF finals went, all 5 maps, insane comebacks, and another amazing win for Cypher due to his clutch performance and  keen ability to keep his nerves in-check.

Day 4: Back on the Road…

My brother and I didn’t attend the after party since we had to leave early the next morning and we were already really tired from being up so early and having the tournament end around 11:30. With Sunday being nothing but the tear-down day for Qcon, and Saturday’s epic matches being the conclusion of the tournament, it was time to go home. I had classes starting the next day (Monday) and the drive home was 12 hours (I guess it was really 13 since we gained an hour coming back to the east coast). Needless to say the drive was just as boring on the way back. We stopped at Cracker Barrel for “breakfast” (it was like 12:00pm lol) in Dallas and hit the road for good around 12:30. The only other time we stopped for food was at a McDonald’s in Mississippi around 7:00pm. We didn’t get home until around 2:30am and we had to unload the car and get all settled in again. I don’t think I went to bed until around 4am which gave me about 6 hours to sleep before my first day of classes. Next year I am, without a doubt, flying because that drive was so long and so boring. For those of you who drove from further away than Georgia, I’m sorry. But I think we can all agree that it was worth it. ;D

There was no better way to end my first QuakeCon than with those amazing matches. I met a lot of friends and had a great time with each and every one of you. I had such an amazing time and I can’t wait for next year (hopefully I won’t have anymore drunk teammates to worry about)!

I had pretty much gone unprepared because a couple of days before, I had had to make a pretty big decision on whether or not I wanted to take my PC or a laptop with me to Quakecon. I ultimately decided that I would bring a laptop with me so that I wouldn’t be tempted to play any video games while I was there, that I would strictly work. I am comfortable saying that we all busted our asses to make the falling pieces stay together at Quakecon, and that I, particularly, learned a lot of things that will help me with events in the future. And while my laptop wasn’t as well equipped for working on videos and overlays, it was much easier to have on hand than a wired PC and still functioned well.

Thursday night was probably the most enjoyable night I had with the Quake-Live.tv crew: we were invited to a VIP party which started around 8 PM and ended at 12 AM, although we ended up leaving the event area at about 9:30 PM and catching the last bus ride back to the hotel at 11:45PM. Immediately after we got back from the VIP event, some of the staff went straight to work with others that had not attended the event in order to continue working. As this was only the first night of three, things weren’t quite as hectic as they would become, but we were still busy. I also made so many new friends and developed a better bond with the staff members of Quake-Live.tv that it was hard to tell I was beginning to pull 12 hour workdays.

Now, in response to why Mattcom and I made an “after hours” video around 1 am one late, Friday night (while working), Mattcom and I spent about 6 hours trying to transfer videos off his computer onto my laptop to start rendering them, but unfortunately, his laptop kept memory dumping on us. We eventually gave up and went to help out with other tasks that still needed to be completed, but once we were finally able to transfer the video content on to an FTP server for me to download onto my laptop, I started to work right away on overlays and editing videos. It took about ten minutes to get a video off the FTP onto my laptop, then about another 30 minutes to mess with the audio and cut up the video. (Keep in mind that this was for videos that were anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes long.) After that, I finally got to render the videos, but what was I supposed to do when it rendered a 6 minute video in a whopping 30 minutes? After waking up at 7:30 AM everyday and working untill about 12 AM every morning (with little breaks in-between the work), we decided to just mess around with the BYOC setup we had in our booth. It was a nice setup going nearly to waste and did in fact need experimenting with to ensure solid streams, so we went ahead and multitasked on it while waiting for our videos.

Later in the event, we had four different locations in the Hotel: Grand Ballroom, Mainstage, QL.TV booth, and BYOC. The latter’s setup was moved inside of the BYOC’s NOC from our booth. Some of the staff had to move the BYOC streaming setup we had at our booth (located inside of the vendor area) to the BYOC’s network area. Moving and setting up the equipment required three people to get it done quickly and precisely. Also, at about 2:30 PM on Saturday, they told us we needed to set up three computers for streaming in the Grand Ballroom, which was where the re-stream of the Mainstage would be taking place. Now, if you’ve been to the Hilton Anatole venue before, you know that that’s not the shortest distance between the two, but we got our part done in less than an hour and the rest of the delay was due to not being able to get any internet inside of the Grand Ballroom. With all these setbacks happening in such a short amount of time, we started scrambling to keep shit organized, but the distance between our staff members and the inability to communicate with each other apart from text messaging was tough. Despite all of the shit that went down, we were still all having such an amazing time at the event, and so was everyone else attending the finals – and what an incredible finals those were!

But, after all is said and done, I believe that we’ve all taken away a lot of knowledge and wisdom from this event and that we’ve learned how much effort it takes to keep the event going, even when staring down a one way tunnel and going the wrong way. You’ll only see improvement in the years to come, so be sure to stay tuned and keep supporting Quake-Live.tv’s coverage of other events. We all do this out of the love for the game and the community!

Be sure to follow us on twitter: @QuakeLive_TV, @fishstix, @greasedscotsman, @mattc0m, @jehar, @TC_RottenRose, @stlava
and @kaneslaughter

http://quakecon.quake-live.tv/gallery/quakecon-2010/

The first morning of QuakeCon itself was comical. My initial (somewhat joking) suggestion for an interview couch came through. We actually had a couch rented, paid for, and delivered! From then on out pretty much everything went wrong. We lost internet periodically, didn’t have access to tourney or BYOC (Bring Your Own Computer network) from the booth, the BYOC was having network issues, we lacked proper communication between the stage and the booth, etc… We basically ended up running around like chickens with our heads cut off looking for our food pans. In between work, though, I had chances to meet some names that I had only dreamt of meeting in person. These people are not the pro players as some would think, but rather personal heros such as the TastySpleen community members. I actually became considerably apathetic toward being adjacent to professional players, moreso than I would have ever expected.

The majority of my time at the event was spent doing odd work. Sometimes I would monitor IRC, but often this was interrupted to do something more important. I moved, set up, tore down, and tested equipment, crimped cables, and at one point even fed Scimech as he was too busy to take the pop tart to eat by himself. I also spent a lot of time coordinating BYOC to try and make sure it was covered, relayed information from all over, and took on most any random task that was available and needed to be done. The best work was always interfacing with new people in all areas of the event, as was the case for acquiring our own crimping equipment and finding spare rigs. Most of what I did involved handfuls and handfuls of small but important tasks, and it turns out there are enough of these to fill up an entire QuakeCon.

When the BYOC casting was available, I jumped on it. After much running and deliberation with many people, Stlava and I pulled together a casting setup in the NOC (big restricted network admin center in the BYOC area). Jehar and I casted a tiny piece of Warsow on the first day of BYOC tourney, but network issues came to slow us down. Delay after delay happened which led to nearly all of the players going to bed. This is probably the saddest moment for myself as I was looking forward to getting Warsow some spotlight. The second day of BYOC casting was more fruitful as Jehar was able to catch the Quake 2 Team Deathmatch with myself showing up at the tail end of the last match. We then caught the finals of the QuakeWorld tournament which was happening at the same time. The QuakeWorld match turned out to be pretty silly, but it worked out by giving Jehar and I  time essentially video-logging our experience up to that point.

Quake Live TV is an incredibly dedicated, hard-working, and underpaid (zero dollars) bunch. Seeing everything come together as well as it did was extremely rewarding in a way that money could never be. I had been doing so much random work and helping out at all available moments that I neglected to take a look at the booths or pay attention to the matches being played. That said, I wouldn’t trade the experience for a signed copy of Rage and a brand new rig to play it on. Meeting big names is always cool, but to be honest meeting and strengthening relationships is so much more satisfying. My only hope is that I continue to provide for Quake Live TV in the future like I was able to do at QuakeCon, and I’m certainly looking forward to QuakeCon 2011.

Alright Folks,

Pre-Con set up and Experience
So there were ups and downs at QuakeCon as there are with any event. I’m not going to get into that topic much. Rather I’m going to talk about one of the positives of QuakeCon and how despite anything that happens the veteran players and tourney staff make it a fun atmosphere. So without any further backstory here’s a look at what I was honored to see and partake in backstage and throughout the tournament.

I arrived Wednesday. I had a lay over in Vegas where I had some lovely scrambled eggs. Pro-tip, don’t eat in Vegas I got in to the convention center around 3:30pm on Wednesday. The day seemed to go smooth, exhibitors like Razer, Nvidia, Bethesda Software were setting up. Occasionally saw SyncError and some id suits roaming the floor. The two Mustang Shelby 500′s sat right in front of our booth. While I worked I was consistently reminded I drive a car from 1989, which to be honest I love.

NOC (Network Operations Center) staff came by the booth around 10 times to check the MAC Address on every single machine. The staff decided to manually enter every single hardware address into the routing tables.. Our allocated bandwidth was fixed 6mb/s. We set 5mb/s for the streaming and studio machines. The rest of our work computers had 1mb/s.

That’s about all I will say about our booth and the pre-setup. There’s an article about the exhibitors and the feel of the convention center. The rest of this article is about the pro tourney area.
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Pre-tournament
I approached the area where the pros were playing behind the main stage in the exhibition hall. On Wednesday the mood was calm and some of the usual faces were there: Stermy, Spart1e, Cooller, Cypher and Rapha among others. However, for the pros Wednesday was more about relaxing and hanging out. There was an attempt to get practice in but network issues prevented any meaningful scrimmages. A few players scrambled to touch up their configs in QuakeLive practice mode and a number were playing bots for an hour or so. Most everyone was calm.

Tournament Day
Arrived around 9am on Thursday, the date and time competition was supposed to begin. All play was delayed at first for a “few hours” which turned into the entire day. The players had to wait most of the day in case things started. NOC staff scrambled around to fix DNS routing issues and the core LAN network problems so competitive play could begin. At this time it was impossible to run QuakeLive on the Lan or any computer at the event, even BYOC machines. Now there’s no person or particular reason I can say caused this, but issues for players persisted throughout the event

Admins
Stevo, the master of the tournament area, never stopped running. I think he probably walked the most of anyone at QuakeCon. He rocked a decent mohawk and a Johnny Depp gotee similar to Pirates of the Caribbean. Stevo is amazing, and a no non-sense kind of guy. He knows every player personally, takes care of their needs and pushes hard to get everything running smooth. He wasn’t in control of the overall network issues but if you ask a pro who really ran things Stevo was the guy. He’s also the life of the party so if you are looking for the after party or just want someone to hang with he’s your man. Being a former pro he has respect from most everyone. Also, Psyn was another main tech in the tourney area. He was very easy to work with and provided players with some amazing AlienWare computers. I appreciate how hands on he was with set-up and his willingness to help when free. If network issues weren’t a problem Psyn and Stevo would have held a very smooth tournament. Hats off to Stevo and Psyn in particular for navigating the issues which arose.

Cypher
Cypher, the eventual winner of the tournament sat in his chair at the end of one of the rows. He was a little smaller than I had imagined about 5’8″ and skinny. I suppose that’s average size. Cypher was quiet, not shy but comfortable in saying only a few words. With his thick accent he spent most of his time speaking Russian with Cooller and Cooller’s “manager”. At one point Rapha leaned over Cypher’s shoulder and grabbed hold of the keyboard/mouse and proceeded to help configure his video settings. They laughed and smiled at each other while Rapha fixed his set up. It turns out Rapha and Cypher flew together to Gamescon immediately following the event. Cypher was set up with his Razer mouse, keyboard, and mouse pad as usual. He wore a Razer jersey with Cypher on his back. Cypher’s shots are amazing, always. He is consistent. This event meant a lot to him and he was tearing up when he won. I have a lot of respect for this player and his professional work ethic and training regiment. It was funny to stand behind him as he played stone keep. Many players did not know this map well so he was asking where is RA where is Mega or whatever. Funny thing is even without knowing the map I think he still played amazing and won. He did have some help from the others on the EURO pickup ctf team.

Rapha
Rapha was smug and also a man of few words. He played in a far corner of the tourney computer area. Rapha was actually quite pleasant to interact with but his personality is one of very focused mental energy. Most all of his time was spent practicing duel and with quad gaming ctf. He also hung out with Cypher and the Euro’s quite a bit. He used his SK qck pad, and what looked to be a special version of a microsoft intelli-mouse however Rapha specifically did not want to talk about his mouse. So, I honestly did not try to take a close look at his set up, he could be using something completely different. As far as these claims that he carries a bible everywhere, there was none to be seen. He never brought up the subject and although I’m sure he is a religious person he wasn’t this fanatic that some people try to portray. Very easy going type of person.

Cooller
Now on to my favorite player to watch of the tournament, the one, the only… Cooller!!!. He is literally one of the most focused and intense people I have ever met. People wonder how he is so consistently good. He logged easily 3 hours more practice than any other player. On Thursday night around 11:30pm QuakeLive came up. Cooller was the first player to have the game up and immediately began scrimmaging anyone and everyone. I stood behind him a couple times. At one point he was playing Draven who seemed to be a close friend. Cooller was up by 5 frags or so and draven landed a rocket rail combo for a frag. Even with this huge lead Cooller re-spawns and yells in his thick accent, “NO!! WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?! WHY WOULD YOU BE THERE.” This was pretty consistent throughout. Cooller take this game so seriously every second every play he re-analyzes, and he lives up to the title of “quake mastermind”. The out bursts were more about him reminding himself of what mistake he made so he could correct it. He played on an Artisan mousepad he bought on the fly in the exhibitor area. He sat sideways taking up the room of two stations and could literally be found practicing and playing 10 hours a day there. I spoke to him, and got to do an interview which I hope is posted soon. He’s a real cool guy, mellow and no bs kind of personality. At first, he was not too keen on an interview but after our quick session he said “Good job, You stuck to your time.” I interacted with his manager after and they were always very respectful but you could see Cooller needed his space to do his work. During the finals vs. Cypher I was near the stage and his manager shouted at a stage tech “EXCUSE ME. I need you to…” the tech walked off. I came up and said “What’s the problem.” He said, “I don’t know if you can help.” I said, “I don’t care you tell me what you need, I’ll do it.” The manager said, “These lights they are shinning in Cooller’s eyes and flashing we need them off.” I nodded and had the light tech turn them off. His manager nodded thank you, and Cooller’s eyes never left his screen. Cypher was across the stage seeming calm and relaxed jumping around a few maps, and positioning his body for the finals.

Stermy
Stermy was quite laid back, with his perfect hair, and intense blue eyes. I got to talk to him a couple times. He is quite smart and has strong opinions about maps and the future of quake. He was obviously frustrated at times with the amount of times staff asked players to just wait around. Thursday players waited 5+ hours for things to resume and as Stermy said calmly, “It’s not a big deal, there are always issues. It’s just with the time difference I am tired and would like some sleep.” Later in the tournament he attempted to take naps between matches because Friday and Saturday were marathon sessions. Most every pro played duel and ctf so not only were they constantly in duel matches they had to switch to ctf during almost all of their breaks. Despite all the bs about Stermy this guy is an intense and focused player. When it comes to practice and gaming he works harder then almost everyone, except maybe Cooller . I never saw him party or mess around. His videographer was there though, capturing footage for Life of a Pro-Gamer Stermy. I commend all the players for being sober and on-time and I was disappointed with the delays they encountered.

Spart1e
Spart1e was relaxed and of course a man of few words. One of my best friends is from Sweden, and he did have a similar personality. A very nice guy, and as Stermy said in our interview, “… Spart1e is the one with the better hair.” He’s definitely a confident guy, and keeps things professional. Some might take his personality as off putting but it’s mainly a cultural thing. In Sweden, from what I have learned, the language is to the point and you can be forward about your opinions. So, although he seems very opinionated he’s quite respectful. Like the rest of his pros he just needed his corner with the computer and to be left alone. Fnatic hung out all together in one corner. Cypher, Cooller, Draven and some other hung out across the tourney section

fnatic
Deus from fnatic, who is also their CTF captain was a real pleasure to meet. I didn’t know much about this player but he was one of the CTF stars of the tournament. Even though fnatic finished second they were extremely close to first. At the end I didn’t know who to root for. fnatic guys were so cool to meet and such fun guys I felt I was torn between EG and fnatic at the end. Either could have won and I would have been happy. EG’s win though was epic and cemented their position as one of the best CTF teams in the world. If YYT and LLL* were there I could easily say they are the best, but unfortunately those two strong Euro teams couldn’t make it. During some of the CTF matches players got connection interrupted about ever 2 minutes. It was pretty bad and I saw fnatic and other teams just hang their heads.

EG
Dahang was pretty mellow, not over excited. He’s a very relaxed guy it seems 24/7 even during games. He does get animated in CTF but I think one of the main reason he is so good, is his patience. He’s patient in life like he is in game from what I can tell. I also spoke to Viju and ClampOK. I did see Chance but he was not very much of a talker. Viju was real cool to meet, a business man now with a high-powered investment firm. Unfortunately he has almost no time to practice anymore and said after QuakeCon he might take 2-3 months to focus on his regular job. ClampOK always had ear buds around his neck, was texting and always chill. He liked to hang outside joke around, and have a few cigarettes. I didn’t see the Euros outside smoking as much as I’ve heard. I’d say it was pretty common among players to smoke cigarettes.

QUAD
Jones, Br1ck, sdahaghi and the rest of the QUAD gaming ctf team were interesting. It’s unfortunate they didn’t get a top 2 finished but put up a strong showing. Jones and Br1ck rocked green player jersey’s with their gamer tags on them. One guy mentioned, “do you think we have room for sponsors on here??”. Although they are sponsored by the QUAD gaming website they’re still looking for main sponsors. Jones was tall so I think he was uncomfortable with the desk size. Rapha brought a cool and calm energy to their team, and their area was relatively quiet on the far side of the tourney area.

Loaded
kgb and the Load team sat in the middle area of the computers. There was a lot of drama surrounding the Load team before they showed up, as kgb has gained a negative following online. Rapha and other players sat behind kgb for much of their matches just observing his skills, and trying to check if he is legit. Whatever anyone says, kgb played well on lan, and wasn’t the reason for their loss, although there were a few infamous mistakes he made which were costly. Sparks, whaz, flysher were fun to watch but Load fell flat in the end of the tournament. You could hear kgb yelling out commands, and complaints. He said things like, “QUAD!!! QUAD!!! Get the f’ing QUAD!!! C’mon!!” When he wasn’t playing he kind of disappeared and didn’t ever say much to anyone. He didn’t seem angry just focused on the game. He played damn good as well. Sparks was explosive, flysher solid and well rounded and whaz brought some veteran skill and knowledge to round out their team. If they stick together and practice hard I think Load may dominate online competition like DFM did.

dkt
dkt was tall and looked buff. You could easily spot him standing and talking with the other gamers. He has a physique similar to a pro athlete. He was polite and calm, contrary to all the online rage which I’ve heard about and seen. Honestly he just cares more about this game then anyone else and can’t handle to make mistakes. I don’t think he has issues with rage, he just likes to mess with people online because he’s played for so many years and gets annoyed. When he lost to DanDaking from Australia though he raged for a bit and yelled something like “I OUTPLAYED HIM, AND HE STILL WON!! ARGHH” After a little while he spoke to Dan and everything was good. dkt’s very serious about his game.

DanDaking
So the suprise of the tournament Austrailian player DanDaking. He won an online tourney sponsored by Archaic-MSI and got a trip paid in full to QuakeCon. I heard from a pro player I won’t name, that he would finish 16th or so. This was a fair assessment as Dan is new to competition and has not competed against the top players before. Never the less he beat Draven, Vamp1re and dkt. WOW!! I was stunned. I thought he might go further but he was pleased with the dkt victory. I must say, mick05, from 4seasonsgaming, and DanDaking were a pleasure to meet and kept things calm Aussie style throughout the tournament. As fatigue set in though Dan crashed and went to sleep on 3 chairs.

Finals
The epic climax of the tournament was Cooller vs. Cypher two seemingly close friends. The game came down to the wire and you should watch vods when they are available. Cypher sat in his chair at the end stunned. Cooller had let him through his fingers. His eyes teared up and I think he felt he no longer had to stand in Avek’s shadow. He has been wildly popular but tournaments have been his Achilles Heel. This tournament meant a lot to him. The CTF tournament was close, and the players were quiet but focused. Looking over the two teams you could occasionally hear a few words shouted about a power up. It was too close for comfort but EG pulled it out. The EG guys were excited but more relaxed to get this burden off their shoulders as I think sponsors and management demanded a victory. fnatic was visibly disappointed but they didn’t take it too seriously. Honestly, 2nd place was still a great finish. The team looked frustrated but also happy that they could relax and maybe enjoy some adult beverages.

The Craziness
To my surprise many of the pro players were happy with delays because it gave extra time to hang out, test equipment and indulge. However, almost every single player stayed sober during the tournament and had an intense focus. That is except for Prozac. Now, I don’t know what Prozac consumed if anything. Many people assured me this was his normal personality. Well things got progressively worse. Thursday and Friday he was aggravated and appeared intoxicated, which ultimately resulted in him being ejected… Why? Well he changed his shorts in the back of the convention and someone saw him exposed. Honestly, in his country it probably wasn’t as big of a deal, and I guess whoever saw it was extremely offended. Prozac is Prozac many said. He’s a cool guy, refreshing and funny. He makes things exciting and ridiculous. I think many of the players loved his company because he made countless events seem interesting again. I got a few chances to talk to him one on one and although he’s not always coherent he’s an amazingly funny and creative person. I sincerely hope I get to meet him again. It’s unfortunate he got ejected but from what I heard he got to chill out near the pool and slam back some adult beverages. Big props to Prozac!!!! I wanted to duck the stress a few times too.

Post Tourney
By the end of the tourney players were exhausted and stress levels were high. Most everyone went either to get wasted or relax in their rooms. Things went on throughout Saturday night, checks were handed out, cars were given out. As I walked through the BYOC I saw rapha and cypher walking and talking together. They carried their accessories on large QuakeCon posters as they headed off to their next tourney. For the newer players it was time to go home, and relax. For the veterans, off to the next thing, and over and over and over. Always chasing the next check.

QUAD’s roster for the tourney was as follows:

QUAD Gaming: rapha, br1ck, jones, sdahaghi

The first map was on the new map (or old, Quake 2 represent) Japan Castles and took awhile to get started but once Quad Gaming was able to break the defence of complexity the caps started rolling in.  coL.relic was able to knock down a quad run or two from QUAD’s jones but eventually the defence broke when jones was able to frag relic while both players had quad to execute a forty plus second quad run which saw him able to cover his flag carrier QUAD.sdahaghi shotgun boosting him to the base for the opening cap.  The second cap also saw jones propel  sdahaghi with a quad shotgun blast into the base.

Complexity had a glimmer of hope just past the eight minute mark when a lot of confusion in the blue courtyard allowed them to get past Quad Gaming’s defence and score bringing the match to 2-1 in favour of QUAD.  The next few minutes of play saw a flag standoff between the two teams with Br1ck, QUADS main base D, being tapped to hold the flag and relic holding the flag on the complexity side.  Eventually QUAD was able to secure the cap boosting their lead to 3-1.  It was the turnaround cap that served as the nail in the coffin in an exchange that saw jones best carnage by only 11 hp to secure the 4-1 cap.

The great play continued for QUAD onto the second map Troubled Waters.  The flag running from QUAD’s flag carrier sdahaghi continued to impress and was reminiscent of the quality flag running seen from fnatic’s link1n in 2009.  His ability to smoothly transition from the flag stand out of the base shined through along with rapha’s rock solid mid fielding en route to a 6-0 victory.  QUAD jones was almost able to out aim the prodigious aim master carnage, who shot a 54% with his rail, but fell just short only being able to come up with a 50% on the match.

The team then faced EG and came up short but that is nothing to be ashamed of as any CTF fan knows EG’s dominance in CTF is unquestionable.  After being bumped from the big show the targets were set on LOADED and in a great match they were able to best “team kgb” using amazing teamwork and communication.

It was quite a thing to watch the team once they got going with rapha calling items and jones giving position reports the team was able to come together and pull off the third place victory. 

A great success story for Quake in general it is nice to see the team formed by long time community standouts Stephen “stevo” Cano and Adam “ice” Modesto getting a little love from the big dogs.  Hopefully this will mean nothing but great things for the Quad Gaming team and Quad Gaming tournaments many in the North American community have come to love in the future.

Crowds gather to watch the Intel Masters Finals in the Grand Ballroom.

QuakeCon 2010 was one hell of an event, I will tell you that much. I’m probably going to curl into a ball and seclude myself from the outside world when I get back to San Francisco tonight. I can honestly say that, in my 22 years on this planet, I have never worked so intensely, slept so little, and partied so hard all at once.

It was an incredible experience meeting so many new people, reconvening with all my old friends, and just getting shit accomplished  on a massive scale — but it wasn’t perfect by any means. If you were attempting to follow the action all weekend, you don’t need to be reminded of the technical issues that plagued QuakeCon’s internal network, or the spinning logo of doom. The bottom line for myself as well as Quake Live TV as an organization, is that this year’s event was a HUGE learning experience filled with ups and downs, drama and intrigue, and a whole lot of fragging in between. I believe that, in the end analysis, we put on an excellent show and had the opportunity… no, we had the privilege to showcase some of the best Quake action in the known universe.

So it was an event of mixed feelings. Even though it was a ridiculously sweet opportunity to be able to act as the main broadcasters at QuakeCon, I, for one, would have loved to work with Lo3 and QuadV again this year – it’s been bitter-sweet from the very beginning. On one hand, we got to broadcast the best CTF and Duel matches I have seen [maybe ever]; on the other, we weren’t able put out nearly as much content as we had hoped and thus got trolled to a dizzying extent. With only two weeks of notice to prepare, the last 12 days or so have been a literal cluster-fuck for many individuals from QLTV.

Enough negativity though, let’s talk about the positives! A very special aspect of this year’s event was the splash that our content made. When I’ve talked to djWHEAT or Slasher about the eSports industry in general, the topic of ‘what’s the the best and most immediate ways for eSports to grow’ is frequent. I believe that the holy grail for eSports is to get main-stream gaming sites (such as IGN, 1UP, Kotaku, Destructoid, or Gamespot) to get on board with coverage of the major pro-gaming events. This has already happened with the fighting game community (see: G4tv’s coverage of EVO2010), but the major North American FPS and RTS communities have g0tten no such love — which is why I can’t express how ecstatic I am that our content was syndicated on both QuakeLive.com AND Gamespot.com for the majority of the tournament! Not only that, but the lovely Bethesda PR team helped us get news stories out to major gaming blogs across the intertubes.  Gamespot was nothing but a pleasure to work with, and I hope they continue to feature eSports content in the future. For the first time in my short career as an eSports promoter, I have worked on a meaningful project which has reached outside of the hardcore community and grabbed the attention of Joe “Average” Gamer. FUCK.YES.

Even with notable players such as Av3k, noctis, fazz, griffin, k1llsen, and additionally many of the EU CTF teams absent, the competition was insanely fierce. From rapha‘s dethroning by the underdog stermy, to whaz‘s game-saving rail on Troubled Waters (see: HOLY… Poop nuggets, FFFUUU) and kgb‘s game loosing medkit fail, to DanDaKing‘s rise to fame, to Cypher‘s brilliant aim giving him the edge on the ‘brain-heavy’ Cooller, we couldn’t have asked for a better tournament.

Seriously. It couldn’t have been any better.

Quake Live TV has already grown so much from this event… I only wish that the network was more stable and that we had delivered an even better show to the spectators, free of spinning logo purgatory and full of frags. You’d best bet that next time we will come with an even better set up, a more experienced team, and a clearer game plan.

I also gotta shout out to all of the Quake community – you guys rock. It’s so interesting to see so many individuals, who are all united by a common interest yet only see each other for a few weeks a year, come together quite seamlessly. I loved getting to know and partying with you all.

Over the course of the next few days we will hopefully catch up with all the content we were able to produce. There are plenty of pictures, videos, and articles that are working their way through the pipeline, so please stay tuned as we release additional coverage.

So in the end what can I say other than THANKS id/Bethesda/Zenimax for making such a great game and corresponding event, THANKS to the Quake Live TV staff for working their asses off, THANKS to all of the players for all the great games, and to all who watched live… you are the reason we do what we do. Keep on supporting eSports and Quake — I know I’ll be here for the long haul, I hope you will be too.

And you wanna know the best part of the whole event? I gained 60 followers in 3 days!!!

“Keep it sexy, stay frosty.” © proZaC

FishStix, out.