Last Updated on May 18th, 2001

Send News     |    Current News

CPLasia Demos on Methos Quake
Angel from the CPL was kind enough to let me have first crack at the CPLasia demos. They will be posted on this page as soon as they come in. Have fun downloading. Since the ftp servers will be full, don't expect lightening fast speeds.

Get your CPLasia demos here, as soon as they arrive. 

The Politics Of Quake
The people who visit my page on a regular basis know that I'm a straight shooter and that I never sugarcoat anything. This is especially true when it comes to the integrity of the news that I post on my site. When I post an article, I will make sure that it is the absolute truth or I will make the appropriate correction. When I convey my opinion, I make sure that people are aware that it is my opinion and not fact. 

During the past seven days, there have been many postings and comments regarding the CPL review that I posted on May 5th. Subsequent to that posting and my follow-up posting on May 7th, I have had a lot of time to think about the statements that have been made by Angel Munoz from the CPL and Jeremy McKane of Gamerscast. Lets take a look at what they've posted since my last posting and I will try to correct any errors I may have made.

Angel Munoz: You say in quotation marks that the CPL gave an official response. You use of quotation marks as to signify that you are quoting from an original text, can you point out where you got that text from? My post was not marked as an official response of the CPL.

In my opinion, the President of the CPL making a posting on the CPL messageboard can be considered an official posting. If Angel makes public statements discussing the CPL, I'm not sure how much more official that can be.

Angel Munoz: Gamerscast does not work for the CPL or does "some work for the CPL", they acquired the rights to broadcast the events. There is a big difference.

In this case, Gamerscast was working "with" the CPL. If either company doesn't do their job properly, it reflects poorly on the other one. Did both companies do their jobs well?

Methos Original Response: The only real concern I had was the number of available client connections. (32)

Angel Munoz: Jeremy McKane has told me this is not correct and that you misinterpreted his statements to you. He also claims that when he asked for help he had over 1,500 connections.

Ahh, now we can start talking about the truth. The CEO from Gamerscast claimed to the President of the CPL that when he asked for help, he had over 1,500 connections. Now, you would expect that Jeremy McKane would be an honest person so, let's take a look at what he had to say.

Jeremy McKane: True there was ONE DSL line at the event. However the only thing connecting to that QTV server was our cluster of servers in Dallas sitting on 4 OC-3s. The public then accessed the QTV off of our systems that could hold 2200 users.

Is this information correct? Nobody knows for sure. Let's see, Jeremy says that their systems could hold 2,200 users. Since you would normally setup a QTV server with 64 connections each, that means that their "cluster of servers" must have over 34 computers. Only Gamerscast and the CPL know if this is true. As a side note, I spoke with Jeremy the day before he made the post mentioned above and he told me that there were 3 OC3 connections and not 4. I'm sure that he'll say one of them must have been a typo.

Back to what Jeremy told Angel. Jeremy claimed there were over 1,500 connections when Jeremy asked me to help him. This comments brings up a few obvious questions.

1. On Friday, there were only 400 people in the RazerCPL IRC channel, which was the only place that the QTV proxy addresses were being announced. Since this was the case, how could all of Gamerscast (so called) 1,500 connections be full?
2. If indeed there were 1,500 connections, why would he tell me that he had 1 QTV server hooked up with 32 connections? (yes, I have the log and 3 other people that were in the channel saw this)
3. Jeremy and Harold (both from Gamerscast) admitted to me that they didn't know how to use QTV properly. If this was the case, how did they do such a brilliant job getting it running on approx. 34 simultaneous connections (34 QTV servers)?
4. If Gamerscast had servers that could hold up to 2,200 connections, why weren't they used?

If Gamerscast had that many connections, there would have been no reason for him to ask for help. Nor would I (and others) have offered to help. With 2,200 connections, how would 200-300 extra connections (not including Barrysworld) help?

There you have it, the whole story. Does it seem that there is a difference of opinion still? If you said, yes, you'd be correct. I'm sure it doesn't take a genius to see that I have absolutely no reason to lie and I have corroborating accounts from the other guys that ran QTV servers. I even sent an e-mail to Angel during the tournament talking about the lack of connections by Gamerscast.

On the other hand, would the folks at Gamerscast have any reason to lie? Maybe to protect their contract with the CPL? Perhaps to cover up their shortcomings that were present at the RazerCPL? Perhaps to impress potential Pay Per View users to show that they can handle big events? These are questions that I can't answer. Does this mean that the Gamerscast lied? Does this mean that they misled people? You decide.

Pay Per View Quake [13 Comments]
The hottest news over the past week has been the talk that Gamerscast has confirmed the announcement by Angel Munoz that they will be charging for people to watch Internet Quake 3 via Pay Per View. I'll assume that for now, it will only be Q3 as I can't see any other games as a spectator sport that people would be able to view in any decent kind of venue.

I do have a few questions regarding the idea of Pay Per View....

1. How much would you pay (if anything) to see the two top rated Quake 3 players in a 15 minute match?
2. How much would you pay (if anything) to see the #20 vs. #21 ranked players play?
3. Since the target audience for PPV would have to be people 18+ and that have a credit card to use for the event. What percentage do you think would even be interested in PPV instead of watching the demos etc.
4. How does id Software feel about a 3rd party company trying to make a buck from their game? This is an assumption on my part that Q3 will be used in the PPV broadcasts.

I spoke with Jeremy McKane (remember him?) who is the CEO of Gamerscast and I asked him a few questions regarding the PPV.

Methos: Do you have an idea of how much you are "thinking" of charging to watch an event? $1? $2? $5? $10?
Jeremy: At this time we cannot answer that question.

Methos: Every reaction I've seen to the PPV announcement has been negative. How do you think you'll be able to win over the potential viewers so that they will pay to see an event?
Jeremy: Our goal is to provide quality programming and to incorporate the viewer into our shows. When the time is right we will issue a press release on the www.gamerscast.com website.

Methos: Do you foresee PPV happening in the year 2000?
Jeremy: I'm sorry no comment. All I can say about that is for everyone to check the website for updates.

Not surprisingly, Jeremy had little to say on the issue. I can understand this because he probably wants to make a big announcement on his site in the future. Matter of fact, I'm not sure that Jeremy wanted Angel to mention the PPV but, it's out of the bag now.

For the record, here is my opinion on Pay Per View Quake 3. It stinks. Why would anybody pay to watch a game when they can see demos shortly after? There have only been 2 times that I may have paid a (very) small fee to see games via proxy and that was the TGI tourney and the [9] Vs Deathrow matches. Of course, the proxies in use back then weren't as good as with Q3. All other times, I wouldn't have paid a penny to see any players play via the internet. How do you feel about this? You can let your feelings be known on the Methos Messageboard. (it's about time I updated that thing)

I have yet to see any posting on any messageboard from somebody that likes the idea and would be willing to pay to see it so, for those of you that feel the same as me and don't want tournaments to become capitalistic ventures, here are some of the things that we can do about it...

• Don't pay for it. Money talks, BS walks. If the people charging for the PPV don't get any viewers, it will certainly hinder their decision to keep doing it.
• Complain to the people running the event, Whether it's the CPL or another event, the people running the shows do not want the public upset with them or any part of their tournament.
• Boycott the event and go to one that doesn't charge. Although I thought that the RazerCPL was the biggest and richest tournament, I didn't think it was the best tournament nor the most exciting tournament. I thought that the TGi, 9vsDR and the XSI were all better for various reasons. None of these tourneys charged for proxy access.
• Contact the tournament sponsors. if a company like Pepsi was sponsoring a tournament and heard that people would boycott their products, they won't sponsor the tournament.

Of course, the easiest one on this list is the first one. If you don't feel comfortable giving away cash to see an event, don't do it. On the other hand, if you like the idea or feel that it's inevitable, go ahead and pay your money. Personally, I'd only pay if I heard that Thresh and Lakerman were going to play some Quake 1. :)

Angel also mentioned that "Gamerscast has partnered with a company that has proxy servers in every major city in the world". This company is apparently suppose to be helping with the PPV broadcasts. I asked Jeremy what this company was but, he couldn't tell me at that moment. Hmm, proxy server in every major city in the world. When you consider that AT&T is the largest company in the world and they only have access to approx. 26% of all countries. Considering that there are 221 countries in the world, the company that is partnering with Gamerscast must be some bigass Fortune 500 company or similar to have a server in "every major city in the world".

There you have it, my thoughts on Pay Per View Gaming. As mentioned before, you, the paying public will have the final say on whether or not this will be viable. Choose wisely, my son. :)

John Cash Leaves id Software
The other hot news has been the departure of John Cash from id Software. John has left to join Blizzard Entertainment in an as yet unspecified role. (Diablo2?) John had been a long time fixture at id and I can only say one thing about his departure. Mr. Carmack, how could you ever let him get away?

Methos Vs CPL Round 3 :)
Geez, I post once in three months and the fit hits the shan. :0  It seems that Angel Munoz, President and head hauncho over at the CPL was disturbed by some of the comments I mentioned regarding the CPL in my last update. He has gone as far as posting an "official reply" on the CPL messageboard. You can read his posting here.

Now, before I continue, I would like to make a few points very clear.

1. Angel Munoz and the CPL did a great job of running the RazerCPL tournament. I mentioned this in my last update. There were only certain things that I found could have been done better.
2. Angel Munoz and I have talked a few times and he has always gone out of his way to accommodate my requests. To me, he has been a very nice guy.
3. Jeremy from Gamerscast is one of the nicest guys I have met on-line. He was more than willing to do whatever it took to make the QTV better for the public.

Okay, I will post all of what Angel had to comment on (including all spelling errors) so that I can respond properly and give my thoughts

Methos Original Comment: The CPL released a memo saying that the broadcast portion of the event were the sole responsibility of Gamerscast. While this may be true from a contractual point of view, it's the CPL that is responsible to the public to make sure that the event runs perfectly "outside the box" also. Having a 32 client connection for QTV was a gross underestimate of what the public needs for international coverage. There was better coverage on many websites by people not involved with the tournament."

Angel: 1. The CPL is a sports league NOT a broadcast company. Our website is not for coverage of our events but primarily to post links to third-party coverage, to promote our upcoming events & star-players and to offer a comprehensive view of the league. Critizing the CPL because it does not cover its events is like critizing the NBA because they have no coverage of their own.

Methos Response: While the information Angel has given is true, from a public point of view, it's all part of the CPL. Anytime you have a 3rd party company working for you, their performance will reflect on your company. A good example is when you're dealing with a company like AT&T. Since they control the @home services, when you have a problem with your cable modem, you won't be saying, "oh, it's TCI fault that they have bad modems", you'll be blaming it on AT&T. That's just the way public perception is. In this case, Gamerscast was just the guys doing some work for the CPL.

Angel: 2. The CPL did NOT release a memo, "saying that the broadcast portion of the event were the sole responsibility of Gamerscast." The CEO of GamersCast released the memo and the CPL added it to its news section, like it does any other related news item. At GamerCast's request the CPL fowarded the memo to its press contacts.

Methos Response: This comment of Angel's is true. I went back and checked the e-mail and even though it was sent by the CPL, it was Gamerscast that wrote the memo. My apologies.

Angel: 3. GamersCast has licensed the rights to broadcast the CPL events live on the Internet. This includes video streaming and Quake TV. While the CPL obviously wants these broadcasts to be done flawlessly, it is GamersCast's responsibility to see this through. The CPL staff does work closely with the GamersCast staff to insure that their broadcasts continue to improve in quality.

Methos Response: I didn't dispute this point in my original comments.

Angel: 4. The assertion that GamersCast had only 32 connections on their QuakeTV servers does not seem to be correct. According to the CEO of GamersCast the intial number of available connections was 2,200. The problem was that these connections filled faster than anyone anticipated.

Methos Response: I'm not sure where Angel received this information from but, it was incorrect. Gamerscast did not have 2,200 available connections for the QTV, they weren't even close to it. I spoke with Jeremy, who is the CEO of Gamerscast on the Friday night and he told me that he had a QTV server with 32 available connections. This changed after myself and others helped out with additional servers.

Angel: 5. The assertion that GamersCast had only a DSL connection is not entirely correct. The connection from the local server at the event to the proxy server at the GamersCast collocation area, was in fact a DSL. The proxy server (that supported all the client connections) was on a 100mbps feed, straight to Verio's backbone.

Methos Response: The QTV was run off the DSL line. What connections were beyond that are a moot point. The DSL was the bottleneck for the QTV connection. In my original posting, I also mentioned that when the QTV was finally running properly, it was a fairly solid connection with relatively few problems. The only real concern I had was the number of available client connections.

Angel: 6. GamersCast has partnered with a company that has proxy servers in every major city in the world. The goal of GamersCast is to move their broadcast to a pay-per-view model and they want to make sure that the broadcast is perfect before they get to that point.

Methos Response: This comment has nothing to do with my posting so, I can't / won't comment on it. (Pay per view?)

Angel: 7. The CPL's responsibilty is totally "inside the box," (I hate that analogy but in keeping this coherent I am using it too). GamersCast has licensed the rights to handle broadcast, if they are incapable of providing top notch coverage they will loose their rights, plain and simple. There are three other large companies that would like to purchase those same rights. I know that GamersCast wants to make this work and I know that they CAN make it work. So let's all give them another chance. ok?

Methos Response: I agree with this comment. I mentioned that Jeremy and Gamerscast were willing to do anything that was needed to make things work properly. From what Jeremy told me, it was their first time using QTV and they needed some help. That help was provided in a big way by myself and others (especially Barrysworld) that wanted to help. I also mentioned in my posting... "Let's hope that the folks involved realize that not everything went perfect and they strive to make it better for the next major event". This means that myself and I assume everybody else wants things to get better in the future.

Angel: 8. "There was better coverage on many websites by people not involved with the tournament." And that is exactly how the CPL wants it. See number 1.

Methos Response: This, of course, is a decision of the CPL so, that's cool with me. I only stated my thoughts about the lack of news updates on the official CPL site.

There you have it. Like I've said previously, I thought that the event itself went great. Hopefully, we'll see even better events in the future. For the record, I think Angel and the CPL staff did a great job running the event.

Hopefully, there weren't too many ruffled feathers over this and we can get back to business and look towards the future. Events like the RazerCPL, XSi and TGi were all great events. The trick is to make them better. However, we can't make them better until we know what needs to be improved. If my comments are taken to heart, perhaps they will help in the long run.

And how was YOUR day?

OMG! He's Back!
Yes, I've returned from my part-time job of being a lazy SOB. I will try to update the site a lot more often than I had been. Thanks to all the people that have sent e-mail asking me to update and saying that they missed me. :)

Methos' CPL Review
From the "better late than never" category, here's my look at what happened on the RazerCPL weekend. If you want full reviews, please go to one of the many sites that have it. Some of them are listed here...

• Challenge Network (nearly all the sites have info on the tourney)
• Shugashack
• TrueGamers
• CPL Home Page
• SHOD
• Cached
• Quake-Arena.de (nice interviews)

I'm sure there are many more sites but, those will get you most of the information you need.

Okay, on with the review or more commonly know as "how I spent a boring weekend". In a nutshell, the RazerCPL was huge success. It was the largest international game tournament we have ever seen. Nearly all of  the best players in the world attended and most put on a great show. There were lots of upsets but, all involved the opponent playing great. The $100,000 in prize money didn't hurt either.

There were a few surprises. How about PowerK? Everybody expected him to play well on T4 and DM6 because of his Railgun aim but, nobody knew how well he would play on DM13. How about Deathstalker? All he did was beat Lakerman, Timber and Sector. How about Fatality? Showing that his XSi victory wasn't a fluke, Fatality went undefeated throughout the tourney to win the $40,000 U.S. How about Blue? Coming from the oppressed world of Quake2, he was able to finish his rehabilitation and perform at the highest level with regular players. :)

Of course, there was some bad news along the way. Pele from Russia was denied a Visa by the American Embassy in Russia due to the fact that he may defect. DC-Giant (from Germany), who I had picked to finish in the top 8 and possibly as high as 3rd , didn't attend because of problems with his sponsor. There hasn't been any word on whether or not Giant would've tried to defect. :)

Here is the list of winners. You will notice that there are ties past the first 8 players. The players that tied are listed in alphabetical order. So, even though Xenon is listed as 32nd, he actually tied for 17th place with 15 other players. Congrats to all the players in the tournament.

All the players in this list played very well and deserve our kudos. Congratulation to all on a well played tourney. Of note, of the top 32 players, exactly half (16) were from the United States. Considering that over 75 percent of all players in the tourney were American, that was a pretty good showing by the other 16 countries who had players in the RazerCPL.

Okay, on to my weekend. I was actually suppose to be in Dallas for the event. I had my plane fare paid, the room was booked and my entry fee had been paid. I had just gotten back from a trip the day before and I was sick as a dog. Thus, I decided not to attend. It's probably a good thing I didn't as I don't think I had the energy to do anything more than sit my fat arse™ (© Hakeem 1998) down in my bigass computer chair and vegetate for the weekend.

I had checked the Netgames site and looked at the results of the FFA matches and I liked what I saw. The auto-update feature for all the games was working well until it started getting busy. It was dead for quite a while after being hammered by people wanting updates. 

On the Friday, I decided to logon to the IRC channel and see how things were going in the tournament. The 1on1 matches had started so, I wanted to get on QTV so I could watch some of them. I couldn't find any QTV until Jeremy from Gamerscast told me the address. I tried to connect to QTV and got the "Qizmo is Full" message that we all love. Hmm, this will not do.

I messaged Jeremy and asked him what kind of setup he had for QTV. Now, for all of you that bitched about the QTV on Saturday and Sunday, this is what we had to deal with on Friday. Gamerscast was in-charge of broadcasting the games and GREATLY underestimated the interest from people outside Dallas.

Jeremy proceeded to tell me that he had 1 DSL line hooked to the server. On this line, he had a QTV servers setup with a connection for 32 clients! That's right, only 32 people from the rest of the world could connect. As if that wasn't bad enough, the DSL line for the QTV was being shared with the Shoutcast (streaming audio) which of course uses more bandwidth than QTV will.

Jeremy seemed like a nice guy and wanted to get the QTV working for more people and asked me to help out. I rounded up a few people that could help including Stealth who had the Fragline servers, Quinto who ran the Clanbase servers for a short time and Zeke who ran the Phuct.net servers. 

These servers would be okay but, more were needed. I contacted Barrysworld in the UK and then Fragzone in Sweden. Both of them were willing to help but, the Fragzone servers never came through. At Barrysworld, DrChris went into action. He was more than happy to help out in any way he could. He even mentioned that Barrysworld was waiting to help out but, neither the CPL or Gamerscast had contacted them. (was this a case of American naivety?)

Barrysworld helped out with 10 servers in a matter of moments and brought the QTV server numbers up to a respectable amount. Even though Jeremy mentioned Barrysworld on the shoutcast, I can NOT say enough about how much they helped. To DrChris, DBs and others at Barrysworld, please accept this HUGE thank you on behalf of the thousands of extra people that were able to view the QTV broadcasts.

Now, having achieved a decent amount of QTV servers helped immensely but, unfortunately, there were still many that couldn't watch. Either they weren't able to connect to some servers or (near the end), all servers were busy.

The RazerCPL IRC channel was nothing short of nuts. At one point, there were over 800 people in just the one channel, with hundreds more in the other cpl channels. ETG reported that it was the busiest their servers had ever been. The ETG IRC servers are well known for having connection problems but, they were very solid on that weekend. The people in charge of the RazerCPL channel decided to mute the channel when the games were on. I disagreed with this as they weren't really relaying the score the way they were relayed in the TGi tournament. Then again, it was hard to make an IRC announcement when messages were flying by at 100 miles per hour.

When the QTV was running, it was a beautiful thing to see. The main connection had relatively few problems and while the games were being shown, people were happy. One of the problems with QTV is that since it was designed for the TGi tourney, it doesn't have the capability of changing servers "on the fly". This meant that the server had to constantly stop and start in between matches.

I listened to quite a bit of the official shoutcast. Doing the play by play for each game was Wiseguy (from Clan Abuse) and he was excellent at it. He knew the levels and the strategies very well and wasn't condescending regarding the players style or effort. I hope to hear more of him at future events.

All in all, I think the event went well. I thought the CPL did a great job of running it and promoting it. As with most American tournaments, the concerns are raised when the people running the tournaments can't see the forest for the trees. While "inside the box", the event was fantastic, meanwhile, the rest of the world has to deal with less than perfect conditions.

The website updates were instant which is very good. The shoutcast was great for the games that were being played. Not once did the shoutcast guys mention scores from other games, give wrap-ups of the daily events or tell people when the next games were. The CPL released a memo saying that the broadcast portion of the event were the sole responsibility of Gamerscast. While this may be true from a contractual point of view, it's the CPL that is responsible to the public to make sure that the event runs perfectly "outside the box" also. Having a 32 client connection for QTV was a gross underestimate of what the public needs for international coverage. There was better coverage on many websites by people not involved with the tournament.

Here is how I rank the different parts of the tournament. (Score of 1 - 10)

• Official Website score updates:  9 - Fast! That's what people want.
• Official Website News Updates: 1 - They didn't post any updates for the entire weekend.
• Non-Offical Web Updates:  8 - Some sites were on top of everything. It was great.
• QTV Setup: 3 - You feel like you're outside a rock concert and they promised to show it on the big screen for you but, you keep waiting. It got a LOT better near the end but, could've been even better.
• Official Shoutcast:  7 - Wiseguy gets a 10, the rest of the broadcast brought it down.
• Official IRC Channel Announcements:  3 - Very few official announcements, no score bot available

There you have it. The event itself was a huge success and will be remembered as possibly the best so far. If not the best (TGI might still be the one), certainly the biggest and richest tourney so far. Let's hope that the folks involved realize that not everything went perfect and they strive to make it better for the next major event.

Methos Daikatana Review
I am working on a Daikatana review. I will post it when I do my next update. As you know, I always "tell it like it is" when it comes to new games and this offering from John Romero will be no exception. Stay tuned.

Methos Site Stuff
A big welcome to Challenge-DE on their first week in the Challenge Network. They will be covering German and International gaming. Good luck to you guys. 

I'm still spending way too much money on DVD's and other toys. There's a new DVD player I want to buy which is very cheap. It's made by a company called Apex and it's the only one I've seen that has a built in MP3 decoder so, you can throw in a disk full of MP3's and play them through your Digital receiver. Oh, and the fact that you can disable the Macrovision copy protection is a nice bonus too. :)

• Updated Methos .plan with some funny info you have to read.

XSi Demos Posted
Sujoy sent along word that all the demos from the XSI tournament have been posted on the Excess Reality site. I haven't watched any of them yet but, I'm sure there are some great matches in the bunch. Here's what Sujoy had to say about them.

"It took a whole week to find the lost Day 1 demos, but we've finally put them all together. A couple of hours with notepad and they're all linked! These 12 players really are the best in the World and the demos available here are your best tutorial for learning how to duel in Quake3."

What are you waiting for? Go get them!

Q3 Pro Mode, Do We Want It?
Over on Challenge-World, Hoony has been promoting what he and many others considers the "mod of choice" for Quake 3. In an effort to make Q3A a better, more exciting, more challenging and certainly a more competitive game, Hoony has been asking for people's ideas on what they would want to see in a Pro Mode.

Much like Quake 2 was, Quake 3 is boring to watch. It's a lot of fun for those that like to play but, only in rare cases is the game exciting from a spectator point of view. The cool thing about a Pro Mode is that since the game would be made more exciting, this can only help the watching of the game.

Since Hoony asked for my thoughts on what I would like to see in a Pro Mode type of mod, here is my list. I'll try to keep these in some relative kind of order so that you won't get confused. I will preface this by saying that I have not looked at anybody's suggestions for a pro mode. I haven't even read the article on Challenge-World so, you'll be seeing my unbiased thoughts on this.

Weapons

• Rocket Launcher - Should be made faster (1000 firing rate) and have more splash. Not sure why but, it just doesn't seem to do the same damage as previous versions even though the damage count is still the same.
• Lightning Gun - The last time I saw somebody get hit by lightning, they were tossed about 40 yards (meters) from where they were standing. In Q3A, you just hear the beep of hitting somebody and they don't move. Oh, and I miss being able to hold somebody in the air with the shaft.
• Grenade Launcher - The bounce is much higher than it was in Quake and thus, it makes it much harder to "place" a grenade where you would like it to be. On the other hand, real grenade launchers can't be controlled that way so, why should game grenades.
• Plasma Gun - So, if the Grenade Launcher is more realistic, what's the deal with this cartoonish weapon? Nothing but an FFA spam weapon, rarely used in 1on1 or clan matches unless the player doesn't have other weapons. It should be removed or made so that you need some talent to shoot with it.
• Super Shotgun - Somebody explain to me why you can't kill a player that has no armor with a Rocket Launcher but, two shots from a SSG will drop them dead? This is not my idea of a balanced weapon. This needs to be made weaker or at least weaken it from a closer distance. To explain, have the SSG do this much damage only when really close up.
• Weapons Switch - Needs to be faster (or instant) and you shouldn't be able to switch to an empty weapon.
• Weapon View - Is there a way to get the weapons viewable from the center and not off to the side? This would be very cool. For some reason, I can't get the aim of the weapons like other players can. Perhaps this is more to do with the lousy crosshairs which I always have a hard time seeing.
• Ammo - Every player I've seen play the game is always running out of ammo too fast. This was done on purpose by id Software to stop the dominance of one particular weapon. In my opinion, this stinks. Put more ammo (or backpacks) in the game, it will help game play and stops promoting camping of players always going for their favorite weapon.
• Dropping Weapons - One of the few features I liked in Q2 team games. This could be implemented for Q3A team games. I'm not sure how it would work with the ammo though. Would the pick-up player get 10 rockets or just 1?

Environment & Misc

• Air Movement - I would love to see this back in the game. Without it, the game plays like Quake2. Players are to the point where they just make a Rocket Jump script (pffft, pussies!) because you can't move in the air anyway, unless you're on a jump pad. Watching the XSI games and seeing players like Lakerman, Timber and all the other players that are known for their fancy moves was almost sad. All the players jump the same way and seem very robotic.
• Footsteps - I'm sure you know how I feel about these, dump them.
• Armor - Two things here. First, why does it seem that the armor doesn't protect you from anything? Second, what's with the armor countdown? The countdown has to go.
• Models - As much as I like the models in Q3A, there should be a default model and team color for team matches. Right now, another model would have to be chosen. Speaking of models, is there anyway to get rid of the death animation? After seeing it once, it's just a waste of time after that.
• Teleporters - Bring back Quake 1 teleporters. The double teleporter moves became an important part of Quake and QW duels. Having said that, there aren't any teleporters that are 2-way in Q3A.
• Maps - We all know (or you will now) that id Software and an unidentified company are working on a map pak addon for Q3A. Let's hope some of these are more conducive to 1on1 and clan matches. Having said that, they can't be much worse. Oh, but the skies are soooo pretty.
• Heads Up Display (HUD) - Two points here. Any reason we can't have a side display with all weapons and ammo? With people running the game at 1024 and higher, there's lots of room. Speaking of 1024 and higher, does anybody other than me have trouble reading the small text at that resolution? I would like to see the -conwidth 320 (or higher) command added into Q3A the same as it was in QW. What this means is that no matter what resolution you play the game in, it will show printed text at the same size as though it was at 320x240 (or whatever you set the conwidth to). This was a huge bonus for higher resolutions.
• Screen Messages - YOU KILLED THRESH (yeah, I know it would never happen). Couldn't they make that text a tad smaller? Also, what's the deal with the "Recording Demo" text? Both are pretty lame.
• Spectating - Add a "spectator only" mode for 1on1 mode. When you spectate a game, if you're the only other one on the server, you get thrown into the match after the game finishes and the loser gets kicked out. What if it was best of 3? What if you're just a proxycam? Dumb, dumb, dumb!
• Sounds and Music - Have different sound for different health, weapons and armor. On at least one map, I think it was The Grim Dungeons (Q3DM14), there are parts of the map where music plays. I checked and I had cd-audio shut off and music shut off. All of a sudden, I hear the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing when I went by certain walls. What is with that?

So, there you have it, my thoughts and suggestions for a Q3 Pro Mode. Does it sound like I want it to be like Quake? If it does, it's only because I mentioned the RL speed, Teleporters and Air Movement. Other than that, I think the changes would be accepted by "most" players.

The question we have to ask ourselves is, "Will the Q3 community want, need, use or even accept a Pro Mode"? Some people say that QW improved Quake and it became widely accepted. That may be true but, the Quakeworld mod was made by id Software so, it had a better chance from the start. There are very few Quake or Quake2 mods that have been widely accepted by the players when the mod wasn't made by id. This doesn't mean that a Pro Mode won't work but, it will have an uphill climb from the moment it's released. Everything that the Pro Mode changes will have to be user configurable. If a certain percentage of players don't like one particular aspect of the mod and they're not able to change it, they won't use the Pro Mode mod.

I wish Hoony and all the gang lots of luck with it.

Spookie Does Q3A
Spookie stopped by to update "The Spookie Side" with his views on whether or not Quake 3: Arena is any good. He gives his version of the Good and the Bad. Make sure you take a look.

Methos Site Stuff
Okay, I'm spending way too much money on DVD's. I bought another 5 DVD movies the other day. Hmm, I haven't seen "Adra^Loves^Methos" lately on IRC. Does this mean that "Adra^Doesn't^Love^Methos^Anymore"? :)

• Spookie updated "The Spookie Side" with his views on Quake 3: Arena
• I'm still working on a second demo page for Q3A demos 

Methos XSi Review
I've spent the last three days watching the games from the Excess Reality Invitational tournament via QTV. With the memories of the incredible TGI tourney still taunting us, I was wondering if the XSI would live up to the same intensity we saw almost nine months ago.

The simple answer for this is "no". The main reason for this is that Quake 3 Arena has no history. With the TGI, a lot of the players had reached almost legendary status years before in Quakeworld. Since Q3A was only released 43 days ago, no player in the Q3 community has had the chance to reach any kind of "star" status. Other than Hakeem and Diehard winning Q3test tournaments, there haven't been any major tournaments played.

Having said that, there were many good games at the XSI. With the exception of Immortal (I'll get to him later), all of the players who played in the XSI had a good shot at making the final four. None of the players in the tournament had risen above the rest in playing talent so, the groups were wide open. Of course, most of the players have excelled at either Quake, QuakeWorld or Quake 2.

Here's how the players finished in the tourney. Since there wasn't any proper rankings below 8th place, I marked all of the rest of the players as tied in ninth place.

Okay, lets get to the tournament.

The Players

• Fatality - He deserved to win. He was the best Q3A player at the tourney. He won every game he played and most were won handily.
• Nearly every player mentioned how cool the other players were and how much fun they were having. There was some trash talk but, nearly all was in good humor.
• Makaveli - I was quite surprised at the support shown by the USA crowd on IRC for Maka. Even to the point where the majority were hoping for him to beat Fatality in the finals.
• Timber - Great job in finishing 3rd. I didn't expect him to finish that high and he beat some pretty good players along the way including Lakerman.
• DOOMer - Has there been a more popular player in Sweden? With all the talented players over the years, the chant heard most in the Euro IRC channels has always been "Go DOOMer".
• Lakerman - Didn't do as well as he did in the TGI but, he was happy with his 5th place finish.
• Loudest players at the tourney were Makaveli, Timber and Vise
• Quietest player at the XSI was Wombat

QTV, IRC and Demos

• QTV Rocks! - I wish it would have been around for all the Quake, QW and Q2 tourneys in the past. I know that it's just a port for Q3 but, it was a pleasure to watch. At one point, there were 1,152 people watching through the proxies. Everybody had a first person POV of the game they were viewing with very little (if any) lag. Congrats to Perkele and the gang for designing the QTV program.
• IRC Channels - The xsreality channel was a busy place over the weekend. All the players stopped by there at one point or another. There was lots of trash talk going on but, for the most part, everybody was friendly. I was a bit disappointed at the nationalistic trash talk going on. Chants of USA, USA etc. I love my country but, I'm not going to yell it's name every time a player gets a frag or put down another country when my country's player wins a match. Other than that, everybody was pretty cool.
• Demos! - I haven't seen many. There were over 100 matches played but, the demos haven't been posted. For those that haven't seen any of the demos, you can find 40 demos posted here.

Miscellaneous 

• According to Sujoy, who was one of the folks running the tournament, nearly everything went without a hitch. Things were very hectic but, there were no major problems.
• Everybody got drunk (except DOOMer who doesn't drink) and managed to play all the games within a decent time.

As with most major tournaments, here is my version of "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly" in regards to the XSI Tourney.

The Good

• The players all seemed to have a lot of respect for each other. Lots of joking around.
• QTV - Again, this rocks. It was so nice to be able to watch a first person pov game along with 1,000 other people and no lag.
• Lots of close games, smart playing and nice frags.
• No players slept in and didn't make it to 9 studios in time for their match. :)

The Bad

• The Maps - Through no fault of the XSI, the maps played left a lot to be desired. The bad part is that Tourney 2, Tourney 4 and Q3DM13 are arguably the best three 1on1 maps in Q3A. It was almost to the point where I would've rather seen Q2DM1 or Q2DM3 played instead. As much as I thought the maps in Q2 sucked, those two maps might have been better than most of the Q3 maps. I still like Q3DM13, I was getting really tired of T4 and if I have to see another game played on Tourney 2, I'm gonna puke (not a pretty site).
• XSReality Web Site - Although I know how hard it is to run a lan tourney, there will always be little things missed. The web site was updated fairly regularly but was left for quite a few hours without an update to the previous day scores. Also, if anybody can tell me where the link is on the XS site to previous day news, I will be grateful. The demos still have yet to be posted from many of the early rounds and the finals.
• XSI IRC - Although I didn't have any problem with this, it would've been nice if an updated schedule for the games would have been posted or mentioned. Although Hakeem and Sujoy tried to keep up with this stuff, the two most common questions on IRC for the three days were, "When is the next game?" and "Where are the demos?". With 1,000+ people waiting to view the games, it was a mad rush to get to the proxies when a match was finally announced.
• QTV - Yes, I've already said that it rocks but, the one very annoying point was the pov of the players. There were many games where all 18 (later 24 proxies) were showing the same pov from the same game. For example, in the finals, all spectators were watching from Makaveli's pov and none from Fatality's pov. Only when people started screaming about it was it changed so that some people could watch Fatality. As I mention previously, this happened in many games.

The Ugly

• Immortal - Don't get me wrong, Immy was a great Q2 player but, he hasn't played Q3 in months (he's busy playing EQ). Immy was spanked hard in every match he played. Since he knew that he wasn't going to be in playing shape, I think he should've turned down the invitation and not gone just for the sake of a free trip. There are many very good Q3 players that deserved to be at the XSI (DC-Giant comes to mind). If the organizers knew that Immortal wasn't going to practice at all for the tourney, I'm sure they would've invited another player in his place. As I mentioned, this has nothing to do with Immy's talent. Just his amount of practice and the competition aspect of the tournament. 

In conclusion, I feel that the XSI was a great success that will boost Q3A and on-line play to new levels. The games were very good (some were great) and the intensity level was fairly high. The players were all close in skill and gave their best effort. Kudos to Hakeem, Sujoy, Xenon and all the others that made it a great event. Did the tourney have some downfalls? Yes it did. However, none of the downfalls obstructed the players from having their matches and presenting a great tourney for the world to watch. 

Do you have thoughts on the XSI? Do you agree or disagree with my thoughts? I have added the XSI as a topic on the Methos Quake MessageBoard. Make sure you post your XSI thought here.

Methos Site Stuff
Not much happened this past weekend other than watching the XSI on QTV. I went out and bought 7 DVD movies so, I'll have lots to do in my limited spare time. While on IRC on Saturday night, I was a bit surprised to see somebody named "Adra^Loves^Methos" in 8 different channels. All I can say to that is "Methos^Loves^Adra^Too". :)

• I've been working on a design for a Quake 3 Arena Demos page. Hopefully it'll be finished this week
• Archived the news page from August 99 to December 99
• I had done an interview with Makaveli during day 2 of the XSI but, I don't think I'll be posting it. It doesn't have a lot of information that people might find interesting.

Official Q3A Point Release
According to Robert Duffy from id Software, the "official" Win32 Quake 3: Arena Point Release is out. Not sure what "official" means these days but, when you read the FAQ file included with the point release, you see many occurrences of the following statements.

• This crash will be fixed in the first point release of the game.
• We will address this in later releases.
• We are fixing this in an upcoming release.
• This is a known issue that we are planning to address.

Matter of fact, the only thing in the FAQ that shows any changes from the past week (when they released the beta) is the following statement.

• Added known issues with A3d

Anyway, if you want the Win32 point release, you can download it here.

Packet Loss Lost [Shugashack]
Graeme Devine from id Software mentioned that there would probably be a PL indicator in the Q3A Point Release. This didn't happen so, Zoid was kind enough to explain why.

We are not planning on putting a packet loss indicator in. Packet loss is actually harder to messure in terms of impact in Quake3 because of the snapshot system. In QW a lost packet meant you lost a frame (stuff wouldn't appear) but in Quake3, it'll interpolate most stuff and you won't notice a loss that much.

Packet loss is reflected in the ping as well. If you are losing some of the snapshots, your ping will go up as well (since the average round trip time goes up during that lost packet).

Spookie Side Updated
With his usual flair, Spookie has updated "The Spookie Side" where he talks about Thresh bashing and gives his thoughts on some Quake to Quake 3 map conversions. Make sure you take a look.

Bill Gates No Longer MS CEO
Bill Gates has decided to give up his seat as CEO of Micro$oft. MS President Steve Ballmer will assume Gates' role as CEO. Bill will retain his position of Chairman of Software Development.

I feel sorry for Bill losing his CEO position as I'm sure you must also. If you want to help him out, send some money to me and I'll make sure he gets it. We wouldn't want to see him starve with the paltry salary he must be getting now. Remember, every little bit helps so, give with your heart to this worthwhile fund.

XSi Gears Up
With the Excess Reality Invitational coming on January 21st in Stockholm, Sweden, they have decided to post some player analysis of the players in the Q3A tourney. The first one they have posted is of UK player, Timber. Make sure you read all of them.

Cache Has Maps
For all you custom map freaks out there, Cache sends along the following news.

World Famous Mapper ZTN (Sten Uusvali) Speaks on Cached.net about the Ethics of converting his maps, and if he is going to convert them for q3. I think it's a good read even if you don't care about maps or Q3. Here is a cut:

 

"And to answer the numerous questions I receive daily: I WILL make Q3 versions of my old maps...totally rebuilt, tuned for Q3 gameplay. No bulk conversions. I can assure you, they will look and play much- much better than any of the 3rd party conversions. The maps I'm planning to convert, include: ztndm3- Blood Run, ztndm5 - Painkiller, ztndm6 - The Vomitorium, ztn2dm2 - The Killing machine, ztn2dm3 -The Rage. Blood Run is already shaping up, I'll post some screenshot's today."

Thanks Cache

Methos Site Stuff
For those that have been following along with my medical recovery, here's an update. I had my cast removed from my arm on Monday. My arm is very "tender" but, it feels great to have the cast off. I am still in a bit of pain when doing anything with the elbow, wrist or shoulder that stretches the tendons but, other than that, I can live with it. It should be all healed in 2-3 weeks.

On Tuesday, January 18th, 2000, it will be Spookie's 2nd anniversary of his first posting on Methos Quake. It's been nice having him on the site. Make sure you send him a congratulatory e-mail. :)

• Updated Methos .plan page with some interesting tidbits
• Spookie has updated "The Spookie Side" with quite a few things
• The Spookie Side page was getting quite big (176k) so, I archived it into years. I now have the current Spookie Side, along with his postings from 1999 and 1998.
• I have removed Gobo and Cataklysque from the editorial section of the java menu and added them to the archives along with Paul2.

Methos Interviewed
Caligirl temporarily lost her mind and decided to do an interview with that damn Methos d00d! There are a few tidbits of cool info in the interview, including Methos' list of the 10 players that had the biggest affect on Quake. Make sure you read the interview here.

Methos Q3A Map Review
I've received an incredible amount of response to my Quake 3 map review. I'll be adding to that review later with some very good 3rd party maps and a few conversion maps. If you still haven't seen it, you can read the Quake 3 Arena Map Review here.

Methos Site Stuff
I'll be doing a rather large update in a couple of days. The update will include my "State of the Union" address for the Quake world. It will have my thoughts on just about everything from the past to the future of Quaking.

• Caligirl posted her Methos Interview
• Carol is the sweetest girl I know
• Posted the Quake 3: Arena Map review, make sure you take a look.

[ /\/\ethos Quake News - May 01 to July 01 ] [ /\/\ethos Quake News - Jan 00 to May 01 ] [ /\/\ethos Quake News - August - December 99 ] [ /\/\ethos Quake News - July 1999 ] [ /\/\ethos Quake News - June 1999 ] [ /\/\ethos Quake News - May 1999 ] [ /\/\ethos Quake News - April 1999 ] [ Methos Quake News - March 1999 ] [ Methos Quake News - February 1999 ] [ Methos Quake News - January 1999 ] [ Methos Quake News - November & December 1998 ] [ Methos Quake News - October 1998 ] [ Methos Quake News - September 1998 ] [ Methos Quake News - August 1998 ] [ Quake News - July 1998 ] [ Quake News - June 1998 ] [ Quake News - May 98 ] [ Quake News (Jan 1 to April 29) 98 ] [ Quake News 1997 ]