image: qwIt 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 two of a two part blog. 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;

My heart sunk however as Locki turns and says, "Crossfire, I bloody hate Crossfire, those guys hate me for changing the clip from 32 bullets in RTCW to 30 in ET"....errrm?? What do I say here, possibly one of the most influential people in the future of Crossfire's community has just said he hates it! I retorted with, "Yes they're a funny bunch, but, amongst the flamers there are some great characters", I went on to remind him of the success of the Crossfire Quakecon initiative (I sent him the video) aswell as the CPC.

"Oh yeah, will you be doing the same for Quakecon this year?" - errrm, I don’t know will there be something for us to do at Quakecon this year?.... A quick change in pace at the thought of revealing something that the ever secretive Quakecon hadn’t made public yet whilst I was still desperate to think of a redeeming fact for Crossfire's firey persona. He did raise a rather valid point that people flamed ET when it came out in favour of RTCW, and now people have started flaming Quakewars before it comes out in favour of ET. All be it, I could argue the vast majority of the userbase has changed since the RTCW, ET transition.

On the CPC point, he said that he'd be happy to come along to the next CPC and you can bet I'll be keeping him to it!

At this point the lovely Belgian dinner was drawing to a close as I finishing off some Strawberry pastry. All of the journalists went back to the hotel prior to a 9AM start the next day. Or were we? After just falling asleep at about 12 I got a call, "errr Toss, wanna go to Locki's house for some beers?" The geek in me was like all for it, the realist, really wasn’t with CPC2 the very next day.

The geek won and off we went to Locki's mansion! Its safe to say this guy does know how to live. It was a very informal occasion, there were maybe 5 of us there but we learnt alot about the game and the life of SplashDamage.

Most importantly for me, I sorta gained perspective on where this game was coming from. Locki himself as I mentioned in part one was once a gaming commentator, but more than that he used to admin the old BarrysWorld servers for Quake aswell as doing weekly columns about matches. He told us about his clan and their rivals who they used to love playing in any format of the game. For me it was quite refreshing to see that "one of us" was making the game. I can relate greatly to the things he did whilst gaming, the fact that he is a Quake based FPS Clan Gamer says alot for what this game should be capable of.

He talked in length about the differences between Quake 1 and Quake 2 and how he took that learning experience into game development with him. Between Quake 1 and 2 there was a massive divide between the community about the speed of the game and the weapon balance that polarised the community greatly. Quake 3 was the uniting force here, but that divide and the split that it caused amongst the gamers is still remembered by him.

At this point I should note that it was very difficult at time to get a logical question formed to him, as there was some Polish journalist on both Speed and Viagra firing off the most crazy questions about some minor changes that had gone on the beta. It was all going in one ear and out the other at that point!

I was really curious from a Clan perspective how things were going to work and Locki went on to explain the thought process behind the development and the beta. SplashDamage sort of don’t want to 'force' the clan rules onto the community, they want the community to evolve and their game represent that. As ET proves, the clan scene changes the vanilla game SO much that they are trying to accommodate that already. By inviting clans into the beta, aswell as getting lots of games going on the beta they are trying to see the evolution already, so that they can at least see where the game be at in a couple months (Quakecon?).

He referenced one particular change they had made that simply wouldn’t have happened without a clanned player realising that this certain position could be exploited. This gave me alot of heart, he then went on to say that they've a team of ex clanplayers from RTCW, ET, BF1942 playing the game constantly just looking or these flaws. As they want to create a great multiplayer experience, which they believe will come in a 6 vs 6 format. His justification (and one I fully agree with) is that anything higher than 6on6 is nearly impossible to budget for lan travel, aswell as accommodate in a lan arena. I can tell you from CPC experience how hard even 6on6 is to deal with, in comparison to 5on5. If ET was played 7on7 for example, I don’t think CPC would happen, so it was great to hear that they are gunning for 6on6 once again.

We talked a little bit more about Crossfire and he justified his earlier statement. Referring to the fact that this was the hardcore community and that he used to be apart of it back in the day. No amount of flame seems to surprise him as he’s been there before. And I said, one thing you've got to do ASAP is get ETQW:TV going, as the impact it had in ET was phenomenal. He said that zinx from the ETPRO team had already been given the necessary access and that it was already in development, before the game had even been released!

When quizzed about vehicles and clan play in 6on6, he then retorted, "it wouldn’t surprise me if in a couple of months clans either disabled them or simply didn’t use them". The big complaint of the 'purists' here on crossfire may be null and void? I couldn’t believe it, to listen to this conversation it sounded like he was creating the perfect game, with every base covered. The one thing he had mentioned a few times, was the preconceptions people had about the game, was it ET was it BF what was it? This was something original that needed to be treated original, and that stuck in my mind greatly, I wont lie, having played at E3 & Quakecon aswell as on the beta I was...not quite so sure about QW, mainly because the beta and my laptop didn’t like eachother, and I suddenly felt guilty going to this event with my opinion already slightly formed.


At 4AM we finally turned in, and it was a very grumpy TosspoT that woke up at 8 the next morning. We headed to the Splash Damage offices which were well kitted out for the media with 2 rooms decked out in top of the range computers and littered in Quakewars art. It was just 1 room, but they managed to blow the circuit board the day before having drawn too much power! After some opening tutorials we were underway.

Here was where all my preconceptions from E3, Quakecon and the beta needed to go out the window so that I could actually take something away from this experience. Whether it was the redbull and donughts in me, or something else, I was able to get "inside the game" like I hadn’t before. I did however manage to break one of the PC's (no surprise considering I break every PC) and who came to fix it? 4k^zones or more importantly to me, Thundercats Zones with whom I played in my last RTCW clan. Its safe to say that he still has those madskills that got him into 4kings.

After playing a bit on both sides and in 2 different rooms I was Quakewars'd up, and the atmosphere was great. After that I did a short interview for Hexus.TV and went on my merry way to CPC2. I paid extra for a flight from Gatwick (near Bromley) which was kindly delayed by an hour...GG BA!

But what did I think of the game? Find out on Wednesday when I give a break down of the game, its features and its gameplay!

Related: - Part 1