Reading a recent journal on Crossfire I was delighted to see that sweRTCW s vibrant demo and movie catalogue was still in action. Browsing through the various demos I was thrilled to see an old classic that I used to love watch, one of the demos that got me into Enemy Territory - the inaugural Atlantic Battle. This I believe is the second incarnation of the event though due to the many Crossfire crashes all memory of this appears to be lost. Converting the demos from dm83 to dm84 was enough to get the juices flowing and booted up the demo just pushed me towards orgasm. Trillian, kee_ring and TosspoT all on one server!
The memories came flooding back - from Trillian's excited tones immortalised in 'Welcome to ET' to TosspoT's 'ET Phone Home' (said in funny voice eeeeeetttt phooone hooome"). Who can forget the weekly radio show dedicated to all the awesome geekiness that is competitive Enemy Territory scene. Everyone who was anyone featured on the show including the man himself Bani - this an outlet for TosspoT to berate those around him, to dig deep into the latest scandal and to provoke discussion and debate amongst the masses. For me personally this was a time of high activity in the ET community where I regularly contributed to both this very website and the then active wArning! site marshaled by Winghaven.
This was a time where ETTV.org was in its infancy and ETTV was reserved for the crème de la crème. Once a week we'd experience the 'Bloody Sunday' where shoutcast and ETTV would combine to create a spectacle of epic proportions. The hype would begin early on in the week - be it Adacore or Cash posting the newspost, following up with interviews and predictions. GBooky was but an aspiration in Arni's eyes and the hoards flooded to CBooky to place their bets. This was a time of celebrity - where we were all new enough to the game to look up to the top players. People such as Potter, Mystic, feruS et al were the untouchables - those you couldn't approach on IRC and chat with, they were a level above. A time where hacking was believed to be a rarity and LAN events a distant dream.
The demos itself are a joy to watch. The naivety of the inner Oasis defence during the first map. Watching the American team push into the castle as the Europeans rely on sengo and Mystic respectively defending the guns, with a medic protecting the CP and a reliance on mines to prevent the advancing Yanks. It brings back the great games of the past and the gradual evolution of the game as teams gradually adapted to the 'u96d' defence, spearheaded by the insatiable r3vers and the move towards an aggressive outer protection - eventually making the map unplayable and leading to many hours spent with Cash on sw_oasis_te. Instead players focused on protecting the objectives themselves and merged a combination of Field Op spam with the aim heavy and revive focused game mode. This was a more innocent time where people were still beginning to understand the true nature of the game.
The match itself? The demo was near unwatchable and the game a wipeout - the Yanks destroyed across two maps. But that's how things were back thing. A better time? Probably not...
*I appreciate the timeline for this column aint exactly linear!
The memories came flooding back - from Trillian's excited tones immortalised in 'Welcome to ET' to TosspoT's 'ET Phone Home' (said in funny voice eeeeeetttt phooone hooome"). Who can forget the weekly radio show dedicated to all the awesome geekiness that is competitive Enemy Territory scene. Everyone who was anyone featured on the show including the man himself Bani - this an outlet for TosspoT to berate those around him, to dig deep into the latest scandal and to provoke discussion and debate amongst the masses. For me personally this was a time of high activity in the ET community where I regularly contributed to both this very website and the then active wArning! site marshaled by Winghaven.
This was a time where ETTV.org was in its infancy and ETTV was reserved for the crème de la crème. Once a week we'd experience the 'Bloody Sunday' where shoutcast and ETTV would combine to create a spectacle of epic proportions. The hype would begin early on in the week - be it Adacore or Cash posting the newspost, following up with interviews and predictions. GBooky was but an aspiration in Arni's eyes and the hoards flooded to CBooky to place their bets. This was a time of celebrity - where we were all new enough to the game to look up to the top players. People such as Potter, Mystic, feruS et al were the untouchables - those you couldn't approach on IRC and chat with, they were a level above. A time where hacking was believed to be a rarity and LAN events a distant dream.
The demos itself are a joy to watch. The naivety of the inner Oasis defence during the first map. Watching the American team push into the castle as the Europeans rely on sengo and Mystic respectively defending the guns, with a medic protecting the CP and a reliance on mines to prevent the advancing Yanks. It brings back the great games of the past and the gradual evolution of the game as teams gradually adapted to the 'u96d' defence, spearheaded by the insatiable r3vers and the move towards an aggressive outer protection - eventually making the map unplayable and leading to many hours spent with Cash on sw_oasis_te. Instead players focused on protecting the objectives themselves and merged a combination of Field Op spam with the aim heavy and revive focused game mode. This was a more innocent time where people were still beginning to understand the true nature of the game.
The match itself? The demo was near unwatchable and the game a wipeout - the Yanks destroyed across two maps. But that's how things were back thing. A better time? Probably not...
*I appreciate the timeline for this column aint exactly linear!
NP: ET_Phone_In,_Episode_6
Nellie does however ask a question at the end, which could be done to motivate a discussion.
I now started to wonder - did this small addition of randomization due to higher spam and generally more action-paced game was making game more exciting?
I really miss sweRTCW and playing 3v3s all night with mori. Phoning in to TosspoT's weird show for the Karaoke Contest and singing "Holding out for a hero". When you had to connect to the ettv-servers like two hours beforehand because there were only 100 spots and then spend the first minutes of the game synching up to the winamp shoutcast.
Good times.
It was very spontaneous/unplanned and people still seemed to enjoy it so I think it could work, though it's still much in the brainstorming stages as ET doesn't share the same activity it once did.
best fragmovie ever created!
Hell, I even remember the first time hitsounds were introduced and I managed to get on a server with a few iNfensus guys testing it out, what a feeling back then!
After LANs were introduced (atleast on a larger scale, CPC3 and the following) online gaming became pretty useless or atleast not interesting enough anymore to have the top guns caring about it that much. They just play it for the sake of it, a little bit of practise here and then.
The magic is gone and I can't see it coming back!
I was so fucking excited when I played my first shoutcasted matches at team helix. It was awesome back then.
I also remember the introduction of hitsounds. Suddenly, everything felt much more comfortable. I couldn't even imagine a life without anymore.
I can't say that I have ever made any sort of impact to this game myself, but I've been around long enough to think that the first lan was actually part of this "newschool" thing :p Was it also 5 years ago when you played with zenith red, we competed against several times back then. And all this nonsense just to back my point, time flies too fast!
CPC 1 was 2-3 september 2006.
wow no supply, awesome
zenith red was 2005/2006, so yeah, long time ago as well. Were you part of ^o^? If so, I liked playing against you. Same mediocre skill level that I was on ;-)
so atleast for me it was the only LAN where the main focus was actually on playing the games and not just having a great time :D
heh, I wish ;) was my best LAN, but you're exaggerating quite a lot there
guess I could try doing one more LAN in the future not getting as wasted as usually tho! just need to find a decent team :)
Ty for reminding that :')
good memories for me include watching raziel's 'mamarosa' for the first time (having never seen a top player perform) and truly believing he cheated until i was assured players with such talent actually existed
First match I ever saw on ETTV was zP vs d. started to follow the competetive scene much later, didn't even know where to find it back then :S
ftp://ftp.ludd.luth.se/pub/misc/swertcw/pics/sommar_bilden.jpg
ftp://ftp.ludd.luth.se/pub/misc/swertcw/pics/3.jpg
Glad the movie directory is finally open. Was locked for a long time.
how fucking cool am I
how cool am I?
Panzer/support fire/mg spam/huge rifles made the game great and it was more challangeing.I remember bremen(6on6) enemy team set up mg near key card and it was pretty much locked up,taking him down was really hard,this made everyone whine their ass off but I enjoyed the challange.Also aldernest last defence is fed up thnx to 5on5.
In 5on5 having solly or sniper makes your team loose lot of firepower it just sucks.
That is why I prefer 6on6>5on5<3on3
ftp://ftp.ludd.luth.se/pub/misc/swertcw/demos/atlantic-battle.rar
Depends on perspective :) 2000-2003.. those were the days!