Day 1 is done and dusted and prior to some much needed sleep for yours truly its time to reflect on the opening day of the biggest competitive event in the Crossfire calendar.
Whilst it didn’t open to a fanfare or opening ceremony, the massive queues for the BYOC are something of a ceremony in their own right. The familiar faces, the crazy looking pc’s and the realisation that some people have been queuing here for a VERY long time just to get somewhere near the front, is all a welcome site in an event that can sometimes appear very distant.
John Carmack, Todd Hollenshead and Marty Stratton all patrol the event and there is a sense that they actually enjoy being surrounded by people who are very genuine in their respect for ID’s achievements. Carmack who on a side project is building rockets has decided to share that this Quakecon and whilst chatting with him earlier today he doesn’t come across at Quakecon the way he does at other events, his and ID Software’s guard is down for one weekend only.
Players register, big names show up and the early parts of day one are the same whether you’re at Quakecon or WCG. Its more of a formality of re-familiarising yourself with a crowd that you don’t see that often prior to the matches and socialising with the people at the event. However behind the scenes there was a small amount of panic going on about how to get the Quake tournament running efficiently.
Quakecon had developed some form of automated scoring system to pull the results from the different versions of Quake. This same software was built to do the brackets and poules, but it didn’t account for players not showing up and actually it didn’t pull the results either. Matches started on some poule system, I actually casted a map of Quake 4, Chance vs f0cus however that game was then abandoned and the whole tournament needed some manual input and fixing before it was ready.
Some people may look at that as a major problem or something to stress about, however with Quakecon its not the case. If such a thing happened at cpc, I’d very quickly lose all the hair I had, but here there some big differences. Firstly, Quakecon has experience with delays and recovering time, in 2004 a large part of Day 1 was lost in all the competitions. Secondly its a lot easier to recover time in 1on1 than it is in team games because of the volume of PC’s that 1on1 don’t need. Its pretty easy to find 2 PC’s and get a game going. So all in all, nobody is actually that stressed about the lost time however Saturday is going to be very busy for the Quakers.
As for the Quakewars tournament it is very much underway and without hiccup. The top seeds have all picked up the predicted wins so the tournament itself has very much been without drama or excitement. However that’s not to say it hasn’t been without some exciting individual skills and talents, there are some shining lights out there that have enjoyed their time in the limelight. Have we learnt anything about Quakewars as a competition game yet?
No, there hasn’t been anything different from previous years ET games between top seeds and bottom seeds. The games have, in a word, been boring to date. However that is to be expected, a beta game, on a new build has a pretty big margin for a gulf in class. I think a lot of people are looking at Quakecon to build an argument against heavy vehicle deployment and that is fine, I don’t disagree with that mentality. However I’m not approaching the tournament thinking its illegitimate because it has heavy vehicles, it is still a level playing field.
Sometimes choice isn’t a good thing. ET fans will remember the frost final map for CPC2 which had maybe 500 different suggestions put forward and in the end the final build just became more unpopular than the first (give or take some exaggerating) and Quakewars is a game where people are already exercising choice and making changes. For the development of the game as a competitive possibility that is undeniably important, however game developers (in particular ID) do know what they’re doing. In RTCW they took that choice away from the competitive community and I’m not complaining about that! I think people should attempt to enjoy Quakecon’s Quakewars tournament for what it is, rather than what they think it should be and then make changes after release.
However as Day 1 ends it has been somewhat uneventful. It’s a shame there is no livestream and that from what I can see, most of the eSports sites that have paid people to come here are actually delivering any quantifiable coverage from the event. However as Friday looms, the real Quakecon is about to stand up – the tournaments that have always wowed the crowds are about to begin in earnest!
Whilst it didn’t open to a fanfare or opening ceremony, the massive queues for the BYOC are something of a ceremony in their own right. The familiar faces, the crazy looking pc’s and the realisation that some people have been queuing here for a VERY long time just to get somewhere near the front, is all a welcome site in an event that can sometimes appear very distant.
John Carmack, Todd Hollenshead and Marty Stratton all patrol the event and there is a sense that they actually enjoy being surrounded by people who are very genuine in their respect for ID’s achievements. Carmack who on a side project is building rockets has decided to share that this Quakecon and whilst chatting with him earlier today he doesn’t come across at Quakecon the way he does at other events, his and ID Software’s guard is down for one weekend only.
Players register, big names show up and the early parts of day one are the same whether you’re at Quakecon or WCG. Its more of a formality of re-familiarising yourself with a crowd that you don’t see that often prior to the matches and socialising with the people at the event. However behind the scenes there was a small amount of panic going on about how to get the Quake tournament running efficiently.
Quakecon had developed some form of automated scoring system to pull the results from the different versions of Quake. This same software was built to do the brackets and poules, but it didn’t account for players not showing up and actually it didn’t pull the results either. Matches started on some poule system, I actually casted a map of Quake 4, Chance vs f0cus however that game was then abandoned and the whole tournament needed some manual input and fixing before it was ready.
Some people may look at that as a major problem or something to stress about, however with Quakecon its not the case. If such a thing happened at cpc, I’d very quickly lose all the hair I had, but here there some big differences. Firstly, Quakecon has experience with delays and recovering time, in 2004 a large part of Day 1 was lost in all the competitions. Secondly its a lot easier to recover time in 1on1 than it is in team games because of the volume of PC’s that 1on1 don’t need. Its pretty easy to find 2 PC’s and get a game going. So all in all, nobody is actually that stressed about the lost time however Saturday is going to be very busy for the Quakers.
As for the Quakewars tournament it is very much underway and without hiccup. The top seeds have all picked up the predicted wins so the tournament itself has very much been without drama or excitement. However that’s not to say it hasn’t been without some exciting individual skills and talents, there are some shining lights out there that have enjoyed their time in the limelight. Have we learnt anything about Quakewars as a competition game yet?
No, there hasn’t been anything different from previous years ET games between top seeds and bottom seeds. The games have, in a word, been boring to date. However that is to be expected, a beta game, on a new build has a pretty big margin for a gulf in class. I think a lot of people are looking at Quakecon to build an argument against heavy vehicle deployment and that is fine, I don’t disagree with that mentality. However I’m not approaching the tournament thinking its illegitimate because it has heavy vehicles, it is still a level playing field.
Sometimes choice isn’t a good thing. ET fans will remember the frost final map for CPC2 which had maybe 500 different suggestions put forward and in the end the final build just became more unpopular than the first (give or take some exaggerating) and Quakewars is a game where people are already exercising choice and making changes. For the development of the game as a competitive possibility that is undeniably important, however game developers (in particular ID) do know what they’re doing. In RTCW they took that choice away from the competitive community and I’m not complaining about that! I think people should attempt to enjoy Quakecon’s Quakewars tournament for what it is, rather than what they think it should be and then make changes after release.
However as Day 1 ends it has been somewhat uneventful. It’s a shame there is no livestream and that from what I can see, most of the eSports sites that have paid people to come here are actually delivering any quantifiable coverage from the event. However as Friday looms, the real Quakecon is about to stand up – the tournaments that have always wowed the crowds are about to begin in earnest!
Enjoy the tourney & keep on casting
rtcw2 is a consoleport, y0
Same fear goes for cod4, console-noobs-destroying-all-the-fun, y0 :(