The Gameriot Quakecon Interviews

In the week leading up to QuakeCon Gameriot are doing a series of interviews with the five big teams expected to do well in the Quake Wars tournament. In the first of the series they've interviewed CerberuS, TKQ, XMorTus, dBs, digital and Sage from one of the two CheckSix teams that will be competing.

Gameriot: Europeans have usually dominated similar games like Enemy Territory & the Battlefield series; do you think Americans can make a decent stand in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars?

dBs: Like I said in the last question, it will come down to whatever teams put in the most time. I think much of the advantages of Europe is simply the sheer density of teams there are in the area that take the games seriously and scrim consistently. When it comes to North America it's just not taken as seriously and the teams are spread out over far more time zones which makes practising alone difficult. We will see what happens though since I think it'll go to the teams that are most hungry.

Read the rest of the interview at Gameriot.

Next up it was the turn of Radea from 20ID - famous for his second place finish in 2005 at Quakecon with his then team United5.ET.

Gameriot: What do you think of the game so far? As we all know, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is currently in beta, so are there any things that you would like to see changed?

I'll get straight to the point here -- I don't think it's ready for competition. The game in its current state is balanced for 12v12 publics, not 6v6 stopwatch competition. Vehicle counts, as well as player and vehicle spawn times all need to be fixed, and many of the maps are looking to be too big, thus producing many tie rounds due to neither team's offense completing the objectives. The solution is to significantly reduce spam, and make the game look more like Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory -- lots of hitscan aiming and coordination. The problem with spam is that most of it is position based and easy to learn -- to be an effective spammer you just have to learn good turret spots, vehicle spots, mine spots, and learn when to press fire..."

Read the rest of that interview on Gameriot.

The interviews came thick and fast and Tuesday saw the second Checksix.ETQW team attending Quakecon this year in the spotlight. Team captain FatBack took the questions.

Gameriot: How do you feel about the current size of this game's scene, knowing the game is in beta stage? Do you think it can become a healthy, competitive game? Are people excited or is the enthusiasm for competition lacking?

When the open beta hit file planet the scrim channels were flooding. I think that this game has tons of potential, and once they lock down the balancing issues it will be great for competition. I think there is a lot of enthusiasm. Everyone's been waiting for a new game, most of us have been playing the battlefield franchise since its birth, or CSS since season 1, or Quake 4 for so long, that we look forward to having something new to play.

The second Checksix interview can be found here.

Wednesday sees the penultimate interview of the series, as Team Dignitas take the probing questions. But you won't want to read that, as Crossfire already has the inside track - Dignitas Before Quakecon.