It was just a week before CPC2 when I got an email inviting Crossfire to attend an Activision and Splash Damage held PR day for ET:Quakewars in Bromley, England. I quickly rethought my travel plans for CPC (yes that meant I was going to be late for my own lan) and headed to 'saaarfff' London.
Coverage of the event comes in four pieces, this is part one of a two part blog with part two coming on Sunday. On Wednesday I will review the gameplay and later next week I will look into my crystal ball to see what the future might hold for our beloved series. So on with the blog;
Having played Quakewars at E3 06, Quakecon 06 and being on the closed beta I was sceptical about what I could achieve heading to this event in terms of learning about the game. Fortunately I was very wrong, and here’s the pro-longed story about it, part 1, the blog.
On the Thursday afternoon I took a cab to Heathrow Airport were I was to be driven from North West London to just South of London itself. I'm sure people from Bromley would like to think they're in London, but...you're not! I was going to Heathrow because I was getting in the same ride as another journalist at the time. Who did that journalist just happen to be? None other than Fragland's Speed, one of Crossfire's founding partners! I wont lie, it wasn’t an easy opening 5 minutes as I realised who he was and that I was the person that ended 2 years of hosting with Fragland. Fortunately he was really cool and has actually helped me with something since. Taking the scenic route through central London, I learnt quite alot about Fragland. Previously it had to be said other than seeing their site when Crossfire went down I didn’t know a great deal!
We arrived at the hotel and it was here where I'd meet fellow Crossfire user
Globalwar. A cheerful chap, I'd seen him commenting on some of the previous Quakewars columns on Crossfire. The columns by Theophany were to prove an interesting insight on how I perceived Quakewars, but more on that later. The true geek I am, I rushed from the lobby, "gotta get online, gotta get online", this being the Wednesday before CPC there was still alot of Crossfire work to do and so I promptly geeked for a bit before going to an Activision held dinner.
Before we even got to the dinner, I was learning a great deal. Not about Gaming, but that Belgium actually has food?! I thought there was just Belgian chocolates, and the rest they just stole from France. But no, we were going to a Belgian restaurant for dinner!
By this time, I had just got over the shock of learning about Belgium and was beginning to meet the other journalists in attendance. Most were from small new sites who have only just setup specifically for Quakewars, they had Quakewars in their domain somewhere! However, out of nowhere arrived
Shorrty from ingame, and there were people from Hexus (Richard, The director behind the Quakecon Movie, for one) and other UK based gaming (read; console) sites.
As we got to dinner, I was getting to know the people from the other sites a bit better. Most of the Quakewars ones already knew who Crossfire was, so I felt kinda bad having not known about their sites, but they were all very enthusiastic never the less. I was interested to see how these people were planning on making their site a success (and by that I mean generating traffic). If I look over gaming communities from the past few years there has always been an oligopoly of sites for games. Wolfenstein is perhaps the easiest example to cite, but its applicable in Quake, CounterStrike and others. However they all had their ideas and a lot of passion which can only be a good thing for the game.
Whilst I wont bore you with the story of how nice my Salmon was (apparently fish is a Belgian dish!) we were then greeted by more employees from SplashDamage and Activision employees, most prominently, Owner of SplashDamage Locki. I had met him at the previous two Quakecons and I always remind him of his TV show that still airs in Asia. This TV Show is a Quake 3 CTF show filmed in about 2001, where they got clan leaders to phone in after the broadcasted matches, it was a relatively good idea actually, but Locki was the colour commentator for it and for whatever reason the director felt that meant he needed to be dressed like a monk when hosting the show.
Anyway, the longer the night went on the more people got to talk about their specific sites and every now and then one of the Splash Damage people would chime in with some input about the game and how it would work. As I started explaining that I was going to CPC2 tommorow and that we were running an ET lan, I was somewhat worried with Activision and Splash Damage at the table that someone might say we were violating some EULA and they would have to shut us down! (fortunately not the case!)
My heart sunk however as Locki turns and says, "Crossfire, I bloody ?.......? Crossfire"
Coming in part 2 of the blog;
What does Locki think of Crossfire?
What happened when the Journalists went back to Locki’s mansion
Which of TosspoT’s former clanmates schooled him at Quakewars just like he did at RTCW!?
Coverage of the event comes in four pieces, this is part one of a two part blog with part two coming on Sunday. On Wednesday I will review the gameplay and later next week I will look into my crystal ball to see what the future might hold for our beloved series. So on with the blog;
Having played Quakewars at E3 06, Quakecon 06 and being on the closed beta I was sceptical about what I could achieve heading to this event in terms of learning about the game. Fortunately I was very wrong, and here’s the pro-longed story about it, part 1, the blog.
On the Thursday afternoon I took a cab to Heathrow Airport were I was to be driven from North West London to just South of London itself. I'm sure people from Bromley would like to think they're in London, but...you're not! I was going to Heathrow because I was getting in the same ride as another journalist at the time. Who did that journalist just happen to be? None other than Fragland's Speed, one of Crossfire's founding partners! I wont lie, it wasn’t an easy opening 5 minutes as I realised who he was and that I was the person that ended 2 years of hosting with Fragland. Fortunately he was really cool and has actually helped me with something since. Taking the scenic route through central London, I learnt quite alot about Fragland. Previously it had to be said other than seeing their site when Crossfire went down I didn’t know a great deal!
We arrived at the hotel and it was here where I'd meet fellow Crossfire user
Globalwar. A cheerful chap, I'd seen him commenting on some of the previous Quakewars columns on Crossfire. The columns by Theophany were to prove an interesting insight on how I perceived Quakewars, but more on that later. The true geek I am, I rushed from the lobby, "gotta get online, gotta get online", this being the Wednesday before CPC there was still alot of Crossfire work to do and so I promptly geeked for a bit before going to an Activision held dinner. Before we even got to the dinner, I was learning a great deal. Not about Gaming, but that Belgium actually has food?! I thought there was just Belgian chocolates, and the rest they just stole from France. But no, we were going to a Belgian restaurant for dinner!
By this time, I had just got over the shock of learning about Belgium and was beginning to meet the other journalists in attendance. Most were from small new sites who have only just setup specifically for Quakewars, they had Quakewars in their domain somewhere! However, out of nowhere arrived
Shorrty from ingame, and there were people from Hexus (Richard, The director behind the Quakecon Movie, for one) and other UK based gaming (read; console) sites. As we got to dinner, I was getting to know the people from the other sites a bit better. Most of the Quakewars ones already knew who Crossfire was, so I felt kinda bad having not known about their sites, but they were all very enthusiastic never the less. I was interested to see how these people were planning on making their site a success (and by that I mean generating traffic). If I look over gaming communities from the past few years there has always been an oligopoly of sites for games. Wolfenstein is perhaps the easiest example to cite, but its applicable in Quake, CounterStrike and others. However they all had their ideas and a lot of passion which can only be a good thing for the game.
Whilst I wont bore you with the story of how nice my Salmon was (apparently fish is a Belgian dish!) we were then greeted by more employees from SplashDamage and Activision employees, most prominently, Owner of SplashDamage Locki. I had met him at the previous two Quakecons and I always remind him of his TV show that still airs in Asia. This TV Show is a Quake 3 CTF show filmed in about 2001, where they got clan leaders to phone in after the broadcasted matches, it was a relatively good idea actually, but Locki was the colour commentator for it and for whatever reason the director felt that meant he needed to be dressed like a monk when hosting the show.
Anyway, the longer the night went on the more people got to talk about their specific sites and every now and then one of the Splash Damage people would chime in with some input about the game and how it would work. As I started explaining that I was going to CPC2 tommorow and that we were running an ET lan, I was somewhat worried with Activision and Splash Damage at the table that someone might say we were violating some EULA and they would have to shut us down! (fortunately not the case!)
My heart sunk however as Locki turns and says, "Crossfire, I bloody ?.......? Crossfire"
Coming in part 2 of the blog;
What does Locki think of Crossfire?
What happened when the Journalists went back to Locki’s mansion
Which of TosspoT’s former clanmates schooled him at Quakewars just like he did at RTCW!?
WE WANT THE SAUCY STUFF!
i want quake wars facts :(
but nice read
"Crossfire, I bloody SPAM Crossfire"
noob bf2 style game or pro game?
this is nothing like ET.
*insert generic whine*
me: "have you played it"?
you: "no"
me: "then stfu please"
I can't believe you talk about Belgian "food" instead...
I didn't go! :P
the belgian kitchen is very good and one of the best in europe after the french, italian & spanish kitchen