My multi-faceted interview! › chaoz (<3)!

[img|right]http://www.pedobear.co.uk/files/images/chaoZ.jpg[/img] For a Long time, chaoz was involved in the upper end of the ET hierarchy, playing along side some highly skilled European household names. Having competed with the likes of id.no and shuuk, chaoz has racked up more than his fair share of hours on the spam filled fields of the ET clan scene and has recently made a successful jump across to the world of hogs and violators in Quake Wars!

I caught up with chaoz to find out how life on the "other side" was treating him.

You're well known in the community for already being a part of a successful Quake Wars side, bursting with talent and prospects. Playing for the massive name of SPEED-LINK, it's pretty safe to say that you yourself have moved on from ET. What was it about Quake Wars that made you think "this is the next step for me" in terms of competitive game play? What features/aspects of Quake Wars would make you choose it over a competing game like CoD4 when it arrives?

I just wanted to try out something new and I was curious as to what it would be like to finally play a game with real events online and at a lan level, unlike ET which had all the same events over years (Quakecon, EC and one random event a year)
and sure I was excited about the new teams, the mix of et players and battlefielders etc. I just didn't know anything about that game when I was asked to play with the team I'm still playing with, so I had almost no expectations back then in the first beta.

There are not too many aspects of quakewars that are already established and could be taken to another level. The community, first of all the higher skilled teams are still looking forward to some promod or competition mod because it sometimes gets really annoying with new rules etc. At first, I was a big hater of the whole vehicle stuff but then I found something that I liked, so I'm playing the hog now in team SPEED-LINK and its kinda funny but I still hate the whole heavy vehicle stuff, its just not fair if you're standing there as a small GDF boy and the big cyclops is gonna crush you just so easy.

Must be still some ET attitude in me :D

I just hope the heavy vehicle stuff will be reduced a bit more so the infantry is more in the foreground.

You mentioned playing along side Battlefield players and you also mentioned the new rule set that have been introduced to Quake Wars. What are your feelings about those new rules considering Quake Wars is made up of so many different communities?

Mhhh the rules are getting better but its just the first step. Removing the radar was a good idea because some teams used it very intense, it was like playing a clanwar and both teams are sponsored by nexus.

There are still many things to be done, for example to add a rule that vehicles are not allowed in buildings, thats a thing that really annoys me and sometimes I'm almost about to destroy something on my desk when I'm standing for example in the area22 hall at the end and those god damn jetpacks are flying all around. It's not that they're dangerous but they are just annoying... flying all around all the time. I'd compare it to some mosquito but just faster and harder to kill :D

Like I said, its getting better but theres still much to do. My personal fear is that the rules are getting too much battlefield style. That's my biggest concern.

There has been a lot of comments recently about how the majority of the Quake Wars community is comprised of mainly Battlefield type players and there has been much said about how Quake Wars "needs" a bigger insurgence of ET players. As an ex-ET player yourself, what's it like playing Quake Wars in that respect? Do you worry that Quake Wars may be changed by the majority, ie the ex-Battlefield players?

Since 60% of the ET players are retards anyway I wouldn't cry about them.theres a big hate campaign going on at on crossfire , ET players are mostly narrow minded idiots, they are completely against every change even if its good for them. Some examples: removing lvl up's (xp) , 5on5 , removing mortar.

Whenever some big change happens, they are crying for months even if it would improve many things. Now most of them are scarred that their game is gonna die when qw gets too big, so they start flaming the game without even have given it a try.

Would be much easier if more et players would switch but at the moment I don't see any chance its like asking someone to switch from ET to Battlefield. They just have to discover the game for themselves so they'll know its not that bad :D It's not like battlefield at all, thats just a stereotype. Played battlefield two summers ago and I have to say quakewars is really different.

ET is dead and they will have to switch some time, I'd even say the current EuroCup will be the last one.

I personally think the main problem with ET players like you said, is that they are afraid of change. But eventually they will have to move on form the fact nothing may be like ET again. ET players are looking for aspects of Quake that are similar to ET and then move on from there, when they find none, they decide not to play it. Did you have the same plan (Play Quake Wars and compare it to things I loved in ET) or did you take Quake Wars on it's own merits?

That was the exact problem I had in my first weeks in quakewars. I was just running around and didn't even know what I'm doing (clanwar not public :D) but when you recognize that its just NOT ET, its quakewars. You will find out new things and forget about ET. Trust me, you will like it maybe some people still think quakewars tries to be something like ET2, just because it's called ET:QW. Just accept it as a different game.

So eventually your stereotypes where "shrugged" off and you got into the full swing of Quake Wars, embracing the game and enjoying new elements instead of comparing it to ET. When you look at the Quake Wars clan scene, there seems to be a huge void between the top teams and the lower teams. From someone that isn't a high skill player, that seems very intimidating to me. What's it like playing in the scene with such a void present?

Of course its a sad thing but you hardly recognize it since team-skills are changing so fast at the moment. Teams you totally humiliated in the last week can be a real challenge some time later. The maps are still new and tactics are still changing, people are trying things out, you constantly need to adjust and improve. It's unlike ET, where every team plays the same tactics and stands on the same positions.

I think 4 or 5 weeks have passed since the release so the skill level is still changing.

My main point of this piece was to get an insight about what people hoped for the future of their competitive gaming careers and what they would like to see in the upcoming months. Would you like to see any other major changes in Quake Wars that you haven't stated or do you even see yourself moving onto a different game in the near future?

CoD4 of course would be interesting and I surely will buy it. Can't tell you now if I would change, depends on how ET:QW will develop in the upcoming 3-4 months. But rather unlikely, would be like starting to play Quake4. I wouldn't stand a chance against the guys that are playing since CoD and I don't have the time anymore to play all day :/

For the future of quakewars, I just want a good competition mod, weaker heavy vehicles and maybe some goodies like being able to pause the game. I don't have too much to say about CoD4 but maybe they should stop releasing thousands of parts and just one expansion pack after another. It has a huge potential since many players from CoD and CoD2 are switching. Even some counter strikers are giving it a chance even though they hated wars shooters in the past.

Time will tell but I'd rather like to see them switching to quakewars :D

It would be nice if the Quake Wars community was filled up with a bigger range of teams and skill and would probably make the game seem more appealing to more ET players. Thanks very much for answering my questions, it's very interesting to see what an ex-ET player makes of Quake Wars.

No problem :>

I wasn't going to let sol say hello to anything, so he didn't as he's such an emo-child. Would you like to say hello to anyone? I hate shout outs but I fear for my life if i mess with interview traditions.

My shout outs fly out to team SPEED-LINK, the infamous sTREETFIGHTERS and the corpsegrinder!

The corpsegrinder? Dear god, that sounds scary.

That's a singer. :D