What a day for e-mail. I've never had a day that I've received more mail than I did today. There were three reasons for all the mail.

1. Zoid. Yeah, the umm large guy in the picture. Approx. 10 people guessed the right name. Many people guessed the wrong name. Some were serious, lots weren't. Some were quite funny.
2. The Quake's Best Players list. Always a point of conversation, this time was no exception. The only note of interest this time is that most of the mail was from Americans. Prior to this, most were from the UK or Euro countries.
3. Last but certainly not least. Mistress Morticia. This sexy woman was the topic of many, many of the e-mails today.

The comments I have on the e-mails are simple.

• Zoid, thanks for being a good sport.
• Best Players list, I'll take everything into consideration for the next update.
• Bigfoot, nice legs man.
• Morticia, I LOVE YOU! :)

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There's a patch coming out for the demo version of Sin. Am I missing something here? It's a demo for christ sake. Leave it alone and don't waste your time writing a bug fix patch for something that should be gone in 2 weeks. Keep note of the bugs and fix them for the real game when it's released.

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Okay, Hoony started it so I'll continue. Since I can't go to Sweden, I want to go to Australia for the Challenge.AU comp tourney. The problem is once again, sponsorship money. If you want to sponsor me to go to Australia, you know where to reach me.

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I spoke to Morticia for a while last night. She's a very cool woman and a pretty good Quake player. The fact that I want to have her baby means nothing as I am a complete professional when discussing things with her. Oh, did I mention VAVOOM?  :)

Needless to say, I'm very disappointed that I'm not heading to Sweden for the big tourney. I wanted to go in the worst way. No, I won't be jumping off the nearest bridge but, I may take an overdose of pizza and beer on my next night out.

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I downloaded the "SIN" demo, I haven't tried it yet but from most reports, it's the next hot ticket in the 3D gaming world. I'll say one thing, they couldn't have had better or more lucky timing with this release. With people talking about Quake dying, Quake 2 still being crap, Unreal not getting their Internet act together and no other "big" 3D shooter in the near future, they have everything going for them.

On the other side of the coin, releasing the demo on a day that was well publicized for the release of a Windows 95/98 virus was a stupid move. Sinday, Bloody Sinday indeed.

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I did get to play "Grim Fandango" after downloading all 58 megs of the demo. I don't know what it is but, LucasArts really know how to make great adventure games. Fresh off "The Curse Of Monkey Island", they should have another winner in Grim Fandango. Although it does remind me more of LucasArts Full Throttle than other titles they've done.

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Can it be true? The PGL not having any Quake 1on1 finals this year? I noticed on "The Spookie Side" that the sponsors of the PGL (AMD) have decided not to have Quake 1on1 matches and stick to Quake 2 matches and Quake 1 clan matches. Now, I'm certainly not Einstein but, when you have a major draw like Thresh, why would you do something so stupid? Is the PGL admitting that Quake (in their eyes) is dead? If I had a contest where what many consider the best resource in the world will be featured, I would make sure that resource is put to good use.

Hmm, would you take Pele and put him in a rugby tourney instead of football (soccer)? How about Ali as a wrestler? Maybe Kasparov playing checkers? Michael Jordan playing baseball? Wayne Gretzky playing field hockey? Well, you get the picture. Having the means to have a Quake 1on1 tourney with Thresh and not doing it makes me shake my head in disbelief.

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Just to be on the safe side, I installed Norton Anti-Virus 4.0 on Saturday. With the Win95.CIH virus looming plus another biggie this coming Sunday, you can never be too careful these days. If you haven't read all about the Win95.CIH virus, you can go to http://www.avp.com/about/press/062798/body_062798.html and find out exactly what this virus does.

After getting more e-mail than I bothered to read, I was wrong in saying that the UK Vs Thresh match was in Quake. It's not, it's Quake 2 and in my humble opinion, that sucks. I was starting to have dreams of seeing a few of the great UK 1on1 players getting psyched to player again one of the best.

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I enjoyed chatting with Entropy9. Tom, you're a nice guy. Thanks for stopping by each day and the comments mentioned in today's news update.

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I spoke with Adze today and told to him that I had mentioned him on the page a few days ago in the article about Ettu and the sequential spawns. Since I'm sure he reads Methos Quake every single day and just happened to miss that article (yeah sure), I pointed him towards the page. He was very impressed to see the posting and I'm sure it brought back some fond memories for him. His reply to the whole thing was...

woohoo I'm famous! :)  ta, cool story, at last people know I was involved :)

Adze, you were very much involved. You and Ettu showed a lot of sportsmanship that night.

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I'm still getting mail regarding the night John Cash from id Software (Hellrot.311) decided that changes were needed to the sequential spawn points. I guess there's a lot of nostalgic players who are having trouble relating to the "new breed" of players.

The world has gotten a lot smaller lately. Even as short as a year ago, you rarely ever heard when players lost matches unless you saw a demo or saw a mention of the really big matches on a major sites like Bluesnews. I remember seeing a couple of posts regarding Thresh and of course the Sujoy / Fragga matches. What people didn't hear is that Sujoy and Fragga played more times but not a word was mentioned.

When we started seeing demos 1 1/2 years ago of people like Thresh, sCary, Romero, Killcreek, Paradox, Sujoy, Danold, Ettu and many more, people were amazed. I remember the first time I saw an RL jump, I was shocked and thought, "you can do that?". Same with Sujoy's lavajump.

There were a LOT of nice people in Quake. I already mentioned Ettu and Adze but people like Randemarr, Carnage, sCary, Spookie, John Cash, Danold and many more are VERY cool guys. I hope that the new breed of players can live up to the class acts that these people always seem to put forth.

It's lots of fun restoring after a system crash. I ran Windows 95 from the day it was released and I never had a system crash. I've run Windows 98 for about a month, and had a complete wipe-out. Thank goodness I setup a mirror drive.

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I received nearly 200 e-mails about the last posting on this page. Now, that's not very unusual but, this time they were all positive in their content. It seems that nearly everybody found the story about Ettu being responsible for the random spawns in Quake to be very nostalgic. I had people from all over the world sending me messages saying it was a) wonderful, b) tear jerking, c) COOL!, d) a great memory plus many other nice comments.

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Now there's two tournaments for me to look forward to. The matches with DeathRow and [9] plus, the UK tourney winner against Thresh. The next few months are going to be great.

My comments for the DR Vs 9 matches are still in force for the UK winner Vs Thresh match. If it's done right, it will be great. Let's hope the organizers can "do the right thing".

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Speaking of the DR Vs 9 matches. I find it interesting that nobody from the Nine Studios has even asked me to post a banner, link or ad for the upcoming tourney.

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For some reason, yesterday was the busiest day on Methos Quake this month. What is interesting about that is the fact that I hadn't updated in 2 days and that I couldn't even connect to the internet because of my system crash. I guess sometimes old news IS good news.

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Still haven't heard whether or not I'm going to Sweden. I should hear pretty soon. My fingers and toes are crossed.

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Work has been a bitch the last few days. I'm managing a team of 18 guys while their manager is on holidays. My first day managing them, I had to fire two people and take disciplinary against 3 others. I'll be happy when their manager gets back from vacation and I'm sure his team will be happy to see me go back to my own job. (I'm a professional loafer)

Sit back kids and enjoy some Quake folklore. Once upon a time....

Quake memories are a good thing to have. Last year, on May 27th (1997) I was chatting on-line with a few of the guys from Clan 311. Walter.311 lives about 5 miles away from me and he knew that I was a big fan of some of the well known UK Quake players.

During the conversation, I told him I would go to a UK server and see if I could get a player or two to come over and play on 311's server. I went to one of the Crystal servers in the UK and found Ettu (from Clan QL) and Adze from QPD (Adze ran the servers). They were practicing the GL/RL jump to the rafters on E1M7.

I had seen Ettu in some demos previously but I had never spoken with him before. I asked them if they would "come out to play" and they both agreed. On the US server, both of them had pings around 130-150.

Although none of the 311 lpb's were on the server, there was some decent competition in Walter and a few others. Needless to say, both UK players played well but, Ettu put on a show that would change QuakeWorld forever (literally). On DM4, Adze played 2 1on1 matches which he won and Ettu played 3 1on1 matches which he also won easily. There was also a 2on2 DM6 match which wasn't even close.

In one of Ettu's 1on1 DM4 matches, he stood at the bottom of the steps near the quad and with the help of sequential spawns, proceeded to get about 10 frags without moving from that spot. One of the spectators that evening was id's John Cash who is a member of Clan 311. Needless to say, Cash was very impressed with Ettu's talent. More than that, he had never seen the sequential spawns be used (abused?) in that kind of fashion.

Two days later (May 29th, 1997), Cash updated his .plan file with the following.

"I observed a game with a guy from the UK who plays as Ettu the other night. That guy was evil. Don't know how he is in a FFA, but he was damn good in a 1v1 and a 2v2. Those sequenced respawn points have *got* to go. Disruptor, Tokay, and I came up with a few ideas we'll probably test out on Underworld."

Soon after that, id released a new version of QW and a patch for Quake servers to enable random spawns. Ettu (the Evil one), who was pretty damn good at that time, went on to become one of the best Quake players in the world. Adze continued to run the most popular duel Quake servers in the UK.

Ettu and I became fairly close "Quake friends" for quite a while after this. He has since gotten married and retired from Quake. He was busy playing Ultima On-line for a while but I haven't talked to him in ages. If you see Doug, tell him I said "Hi" and to give me a shout. I still see Adze from time to time, he's still a pretty nice guy.

The nicest thing about this "meeting" of international players was that everybody was cool about it. Ettu and Adze didn't have the "kick some yankee ass" attitude and the 311 guys didn't have the "go home to your own country" type attitude. Walter and Ettu played quite a few times after that but his modem connection always restricted him. By the time he got his lpb status, Ettu had retired. Even with that, it was still a good day for the "Quake World".

...And they all lived happily ever after.

Okay kids, that's the end of the story, now finish your milk and get to bed. :)

More servers problems since the last update. Yes, this is getting tiring but I promise it will end very soon (trust me). Then I was sick and didn't even turn on my computer for 36 hours. (damn, I must've been really sick) I'll try to keep up with all the updates a bit quicker from now on.

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As an update. Just to let you know that DBs' wife Penny is now out of hospital and seems to be doing much better. DBs send his thanks for all that sent him the get well wishes.

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I'm not sure whether this is good or bad. I got a phone call from Randemarr on his wedding night at 1:15 a.m. his time. While it was great to hear from him, I told him there were other things he could be doing on his wedding night. Some of them even involved his new wife. :)

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I find it interesting that places like Bluesnews and sCary's site are now announcing the [9] Vs DR matches and saying that they're finally going to happen. Then they post links to Challenge.AU for more info. I'm not trying to blow my own horn (okay, maybe I am) but, I was the first one to announce this and I've been talking about it ever since. This isn't a knock against Challenge.AU as he's been doing an incredible job of covering that event and deserves the publicity. All I'm saying is that people should give credit where credit is due. (/soapbox)

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Speaking of sCary. I notice he posted a disclaimer on his demos page about the [9] matches being "friendly matches" because people were getting their panties in a bunch over saying that R3V and/or [9] lost in the matches. Heh, do people other than the clan members really care whether anybody lost a match?

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I received an e-mail from a player in Sweden that mentioned to me that I called the Clan [9] players "assholes" on my site. If anybody thinks this, they are dead wrong. I have never said any derogatory remarks about the players in Clan 9 or any other clan. The only comment I made was about some clans (not only 9) saying that they've never lost a match because it was a "friendly" match.

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Aimbots anybody? I was very surprised to see the reaction to the "Cheating in QW" article I posted a few days back. I have received about 10 demos showing players using aimbots or cheatbots. The players using them (in the demos) are from Sweden, Norway, Finland, UK, Germany and Brazil.

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List of the top 5 things overheard at the Shoot n Surf Quake All-Nighter.

5) Where can I guy find a drink around this place? (Aerotus who is under age)
4) No, it's not a dish cloth, it's a fashion statement. (Coerj)
3) Cunt, cunt, cunt, cunt, cunt, cunt.... (Rawmeat)
2) I wonder where the bathroom is, oh nevermind, here will be fine. (Ceno)
1) I said "Men In Black" dammit, not "Men In White"! (DBs talking to Ted)

Congrats to Dierk (Randemarr) and Kety on their wedding day. I've joked about them becoming Mr. and Mrs. Randemarr before but if you ever saw Dierk's last name, you wouldn't find the Randemarr comments funny. It's almost twice as long as Randemarr (honest).

The marriage won't change Dierk at all as Kety already wears the pants in their family :) It also won't change the friendship that he and I have. Randemarr still needs me to teach him proper English (although he already knows all the swear words) and to w00p his ass on dm4 (yes, I have a demo of this). Congrats again Dierk and Kety, make sure I get the pictures from the honeymoon night. :-)

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For those of you that know Tony (DBs) who is the head admin guy from the mega-server host Barrysworld. You'll be saddened to know that his wife Penny has taken ill and is now in a hospital southwest of London awaiting tests and possible surgery. I'm sure everybody wishes Penny a hardy "get well soon".

If you happen to see DBs either in person or on-line, give him a tip of the hat to let him know that you're hoping the best for Penny to have a speedy recovery. Hurry back Penny, we need somebody to keep Tony out of trouble.

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I watched the demo that Coerj had with the QW 2.2+ player using an aimbot. (link on the news page) I almost got sick to my stomach. Just when you think that crap like this isn't going to happen again, it jumps up and kicks you in the teeth. People just don't realize how much this bothers some people (like me). If I was to ever see somebody doing this in a lan tournament, I would be dragging him by the hair and throwing him out the door.

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I don't want to harp on the Llamanet problems the last few days but, I'm sure you know how much they piss me off. I know that what happened wasn't done on purpose but, it's really annoying.

I'm not blaming anybody from Llamanet but, the last host site I had, I never talked to the admin there once in over a year and the server was never down. I hope the problems end soon.

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I still want to go to Sweden to report on the upcoming DR Vs 9 matches. I know this is starting to get old but, if you know anybody / company that would sponsor me going to Sweden, please let me know.

I'm sure Danold is drinking some fine wine in Paris tonight. Congratulations to France on winning the Worldcup. They beat some very tough teams along the road to the finals and played superb against Brazil. I don't know if I've ever seen a Worldcup game where the referee was better than in the final match. He let the players decide the game and wasn't "taken in" by the dives that seemed so prevalent all throughout the tourney.

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Still haven't heard from anybody involved with the Clan 9 - DR matches coming up in August. As I mentioned before, if you're running the tourney or you know who is, please contact me via e-mail.

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Heard word from iAgo that he will be running the second Gibfest in August. If everything goes according to plan, I may have a prize to give away at the tourney. I may even show up and kick some butt.  :-)

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I went to look at some of the pictures that DBs posted from the SnS alnighter. Ya know, drunk Quake players look about the same as anybody else that's drunk. :)

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Randemarr countdown is now at 2 days. His life as he knows it will end forever.

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I don't know what to do with the colors on the Quake demos page. Lots of people complained that they a) didn't like the re / maroon color, b) the maroon color was too bright. I darkened the red color a bit and not I'm getting complaints that it looked better the other way. Oh well, I'm leaving it for now. :)

I want to go to Sweden!!! If invited, I would love to attend and report on the DeathRow Vs Clan [9] tournament. If anybody has spare tickets kicking around, let me know. Since following these two clans from the beginning, it would be a pleasure to see and interview these great players.

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I've had a few comments on the "new look" Quake demos page. The most common one was that the demo titles were too small. I have changed all the titles to a larger font and that seems to have done the trick. There were some other various concerns that I will take into consideration. If you have comments on the demos page, please let me hear them.

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Great, more fan mail. Received mail yesterday from "a fan" who said "people like you are corrupting the minds of all young kids that visit your site" and "Why don't you put up a web site that shows kids that people have morals". (morals in Quake?)

Flattery will get you nowhere. If the guy wanted my autograph, why didn't he just ask. :)

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At the time I post this, the Shoot and Surf Allnighter should be just getting underway. Hmm, is spending the night with 70+ drunken quakers a good thing? I'm sure we'll hear all about it. :)

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Finally got rid of the llamanet hit counter. It didn't work properly and was just a waste of space. I had a bitch of a time getting the active channels working again. As with all Microsoft products, when in doubt, just trash the thing and start over. :)

After it was announced on this site over 2 months ago by Reptile, we're now hearing the confirmation of plans for DeathRow to visit Sweden to play some Clan, 1on1 and possibly 2on2 matches against Clan [9]. The confirmation of this is great news and will be very exciting for all gaming fans to watch.

Now the hard part. Will it be done right? This will certainly be the biggest clan match ever and nearly all quakers will be watching intently to see the results. Nearly every tournament I've seen has had something that could've been done much better. Let's hope that this one covers all the bases and does things the right way. Here's a few of the things they can do to make sure it runs well.

1. Make sure it's run on a closed network with access for 1 single internet feed. This will enable the use of QuakeTV (or similar) and protect against ping floods etc.
2. As mentioned in #1, QuakeTV. With matches as important as these, the whole gaming world will want to watch the live feed.
3. All players use "exactly" the same systems. This includes Quake & all models, maps, network connection software and even network cards.
4. Live web updates (in multiple languages) to be done as it happens. The same way up to the minute updates are done for live sporting events like the Worldcup.
5. All players record demos for every game. Not just for my page :) but all the people that will watch these matches for months to come.

This is the first time that "real" (lan) matches between international Clans will be played. Many people have said that these 2 clan are arguably the best in the world, I hope we all get to find out. This tournament (if we can call it that) could be the perfect vehicle to carry on-line gaming to the next level. Let's hope (fingers crossed) that everything goes better than anybody could've dreamt it would.

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Questions and more questions. I'm still getting many of the same general questions in my mail that I've gotten all along. I posted this 2 months ago but I guess now is as good a time as any to re-post it. Here again are the popular questions and answers I seem to get everyday. A few of the answers have been updated slightly.

1) Where does the name Methos come from?

Methos (pronounced ME-thoss) is from the TV show version (and upcoming 4th movie version) of The Highlander. The character Methos is the oldest and wisest of all the immortals. I have little in common with the character. I'm not immortal, it's debatable as to how wise I am but, I am old. :)  The name has nothing to do with some American candy.

2) Who's your favorite Quake player?

My personal favorite Quake player for the past year or so has been DC_Danold. It doesn't mean I think he's the best or worst in the world. Kind of like your favorite football team. For whatever reasons, you like them. Dan is a superb player and a very nice guy.

3) Where do you get all those great demos?

All over the place. Most are submitted by way of url, some I find while visiting sites (which I rarely do) and the older ones I happened to have sitting around on my hard drive.

4) Do you ever play Quake yourself?

Yes, I play Quake everyday. I used to be in a QW clan called [Co.] (The Company) until they folded. I have been asked to be in a few other clans but I don't have the time. Once in a while, I get a decent ping to a server and I'll play on that server for a while.

5) Are you any good at Quake?

I'm an average Quake player. I wish I could be as good as half of the players on the demos page but I don't think it's going to happen. I have a lot of respect for very talented players.

6) Do you think you're some kind of expert on Quake players?

No, I don't think I'm an expert on Quake players. I know what makes a good player and most people can certainly tell what mistakes a bad player makes or what players do wrong in matches. I consider myself to be a smart player but my motto has always been "I know what to do, I just can't do it".  :)

7) What (in your opinion) makes a great Quake player?

Tough question. Let's see what I can come up with. I tend to like smart players. Players can do as many rocket jumps and other fancy moves as they want but most don't impress me.

• Having great player prediction is a must. You need to know where your opponent is at all times during the match. A player (even when losing) must have control over his own game and not get surprised from behind or do other stupid things.
• Being calm under pressure is important.
• Great aim!
• Knowing the level and all the tricks to the level. Even great players still learn new tricks on levels they've played a thousand times.
• Great sportsmanship

Although it doesn't affect gameplay, a player must be cool. Either playing or chatting, if the player doesn't have respect for other people, other people will have no use for him. The last thing we need in Quake is more egos and assholes.

8) How come so-an-so (insert favorite player here) isn't in your Best Players list?

Because he sucks! Just kidding :)  Probably because there's somebody better. Possibly because I haven't heard of him. Possibly because whenever I saw him, he lost. No, the best players list isn't perfect at all and there's no scientific solution to getting on the list (bribes are nice though) but, if somebody regularly beats a person who is on the list, they'll probably make it to the list sooner or later.

Unfortunately, ever since Thresh lost to Reptile, nobody is unbeatable. When I started the Best Players list about a year ago, the choices were a LOT easier. Players like Thresh, Sujoy, Danold, Randemarr, LittleDragon, MikeJ, Fragga and of course, Ettu rarely lost and were easy choices for the list. Now days, it's seems like there's a new Quake "stud" being touted every week. Now, even though nearly all the players I just mentioned (except Fragga & Ettu) the new breed are showing up in what I call the third wave of great players. Players like Timber, Sniket, Therion, Kane, DOOMer and many others are leaving their mark on the Quake scene. All these players make the choices that much harder.

9) I sent you 500 demos. How come you didn't post them on your Quake Demos page?

There are quite a few answers to this question. I'll try to cover them all.

• If I get 10 different matches of player X against player Y, Assuming they're all good, I'll probably only post 1 or 2 demos and usually only if they're on different maps. Most people don't want to see 10 demos of player X destroying the other guy on dm4.
• Modem demos, even if they're great games, the lag takes it's toll and makes it a poor demo to watch. QW demos tend to look "jerky" at the best of times, on modem, they're even worse.
• Since I have all demos locally, I only want the best demos available for people to download. A lot of other sites have links to where the demos are so they can post any demos they want. A good example is the excellent Challenge.AU site. Richard (Hoony), who runs the site will normally put up a link to the latest demo somebody has mailed him info on. That's okay for him because he doesn't keep the demos on his local site.
• There was nothing new or exciting in the demo. unlike Demoland, I don't post every demo I get sent to me. They have to have something the other demos don't have.
• The demo didn't have any appeal to me. A good example of this is a demo I downloaded from Challenge.AU a couple of days ago. It was a dm6 match between Knight & Wolph. The match was an ra campfest throughout the game. In the 20 minute match, Knight didn't go into the 100 health room until there was 9 minutes left. This wasn't a comment on the talent of the players, just on the match itself. Now, having said that, this demo had a lot of appeal to the Quake fans in Australia and New Zealand and rightfully deserved to be featured on the Challenge.AU site. The same as a demo from a rarely seen USA player would have appeal in the western world.
• The demo just plain sucked. I don't mean to put anybody down but, if you make a demo against your next door neighbor or you get 20 frags in an ffa match, it rarely makes for a great demo.
• There are better demos already on the demos page. If there's a dm4 demo of Timber Vs Thresh already on the site, people don't want to see a dm4 demo of Bob and Ed unless they happen to be very good.

10) What are the best and worst things about being involved in Quake?

The Best: The people. I've met so many cool people while playing Quake and chatting on IRC and ICQ. Talking to really nice people like John Cash, John Romero, Ettu, Danold, Randemarr and a whole bunch of others is worth more than I could ever say. Having fun playing with cool people is a rush. Winning a tough match is very fulfilling.

The Worst: The people. Some are real assholes. Many have opinions and just won't listen to anything anybody else says. The people who don't accept Quake as friendly competition bother me. Hating players because they live in other countries or because they get a lot of publicity is very childish.

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Now that the 5 Nations tourney is over, I'd like to send my thanks to Nightwing for his Captain's Log on the 5 Nations page. There weren't as many updates as I thought there would be but, It was great to get some of the inside scoop and Nightwing's thoughts on the tourney itself. Jon is off to Scotland to work for the summer with a gaming company. I wish him good luck with it and hopefully he'll be back playing soon. Thanks again Jon, great job with the updates.

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France and Brazil in the Worldcup finals. It should be a great game.

Well, on July 4th, Methos Quake was another month older. I had 5500 more hits in June than I did in May. It's not where I want it but it's climbing.

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I uploaded a couple of Lakerman demos to the Quake demos page. The demos were pretty good but I noticed a couple of other things too. Out of the 4 demos I had (2 not posted), there were about 10 people who joined the server they were playing on that had altered player/eyes model files. They were then kicked by the server. That's a lot of people in such a short time period.

The other thing I noticed was that Owl (clan IOP) joined and watched the matches. For those of you that don't know, Owl (Ponnu) runs the Demolition Quake demos site where I used to do reviews on his demos before I started doing them here. The same day I watched the Lakerman demos, Ponnu and I chatted on ICQ (he paged me out of the blue). It was nice to hear from my old bud. Visit his excellent demo site when you get a chance. (www.demolition.org)

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I saw that sCary was whining about .plan files and why sites (including his) have psuedo plan files when they're not meant for personal sites. Well Steve, I guess people just call them plan files because that's the common name. Some people call them .plan, editorials, rants, opinion files etc... It just gives a person some kind of vehicle to say what's on their mind.

Americans, you gotta luv em. They represent the best and worst of everything we know. Being naive is sometimes a good thing, especially when living in the USA. Now, don't get me wrong. I like the USA and every country has it's good and bad. It just seems (to me) that Americans don't seem to know that they have the "bad". If they do, most of them won't admit it. Lets look at a few examples...

• American spies and govt. organizations assassinate more people than all so-called terrorist countries. You never see this on CNN.
• Ebonics - people can't speak properly? Lets teach them how not speak properly.
• Metric system - 96% of all countries in the world use it, USA says it would be too hard to teach this to everybody in the country.
• Nation Anthem - 44% of Americans don't know what their National Anthem is. A USA Today poll found that only 56% knew what it was and 40% thought it was God Bless America.
• USA Geography - 92% of Americans (according to CNN) can not correctly name more than 10 state capital cities. We won't get started on how much they know about other countries.

Politically correct? While at work the other day, I spoke with a lady from Ohio (around 40 years old) whose last name was Cochran. The only other time I've seen this spelling of the name was with Johnny Cochran (O.J.'s lawyer). I asked the lady, "are you related to Johnny Cochran?". She paused for a few seconds and then stammered out.. "Umm, no... he's a nigger".

It will be interesting to see any reactions to these comments. None can be denied but I'm sure I'll hear excuses about them. Like I said, I like the USA and the good far outweighs the bad. This was just poking some fun at the "bad".

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Speaking of work. Yesterday, I sent a pop message to one of the female managers. This manager is very pretty and has umm nice features. The message was suppose to say "Are you busy?". Well, with my large hands and lame typing, I managed to hit 2 keys at once and the message she received was "Are you busty?".   Oops!

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I uploaded a demo of Randemarr and Entropy on dm6 to the demos page. It was a very exciting demo to watch. I spoke with Randemarr after the match and he told me that he was VERY nervous during the match and after the match he had to leave the room to get some air. He then made the comment that the "excitement of the game was better than sex". Hmm, Randemarr gets married in 11 days. I wonder what his fiancée would think of that comment? :)

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Interesting response to my lethargic attitude towards the latest Q2 update. Most people agreed with my comments which is sad that so many people feel this way about the game.

One more note on the Q2 update, they changed the physics so that you can't control your movement in mid-air. This sucks. On the other hand, the god-like walking on water is cool.

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I spoke with ousted Llamanet admin Suami today about what happened with the pirated software being found on the Llamanet server. He seemed fairly honest and straight forward about what happened. I will post some of his remarks after I speak with DBs about them. Apparently, it's a good idea to get both sides of the story. :)

Quake 2 v3.17 was released this morning. I haven't tried it yet so I can't tell you how good / bad it is. The concern here is that I don't really care. I remember not too long ago, all the hoopla that came with an id Software release. Now, there's not much fanfare at all. I suppose it's because "most" people (especially hardcore Quakers like me) were disappointed when Quake 2 was released and then even more disappointed when the infamous "point release" came out.

I don't know what causes this lethargic feeling towards Q2. It could be the "feel" of the game, it could be the lack of a dominant weapon. Maybe it's because the game was released too early. I think it boils down to the fact that Quake 2 wasn't what any of the true Quakers expected.

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I was going to rant about cheating today but, I didn't get the screen shots I was waiting for. For those of you that think there isn't any cheating going on, you're very wrong.

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Earth calling Nightwing! I've been trying to get a hold my 5 Nations buddy for his update but I've checked in all the scummy pubs and he isn't there. :)

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I noticed this morning on the Barrysworld server that one of the Llamanet admins named Suami was caught with pirated software on the llamanet server. I'll assume by the posting that he's not involved with Llamanet or BW any longer. The main concern by BW head admin DBs was that he was trusted with root access to the server. Having the pirated software on the server could've resulted in legal action being taken against Barrysworld if certain people would have seen it before DBs.

I'm sure that Suami has deleted the software in question (4 or 5 games) because if you remember, he was the guy that copied all my Quake demos to his ftp space in case the clamp-down came from BW. Hey! Are those really Quake demos or is that.....?

I had a great response to yesterday's update as far as support for the Quake demos. DBs is working on a plan so that I won't have delete any of the demos. Thanks goes out to everybody that offered their help. Stick around, I may need you someday.

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A ghost from the past has arisen. I spoke with TC-Reaper yesterday (yeah, the guy who was doing my site graphics). He apologized for not contacting me sooner and said that work was piled up to the ceiling. He mentioned that as soon as the work settles down a bit, he would finish what he started.

Reaper also told me that next time I see Dave "iAgo" Wakeman (the guy who runs GibFest) to ask him about "whipping it out". Apparently, they had some funny moments while camping a week or so ago. Speaking of camping, I was suppose to go with them but I never heard back from Reaper. Chris, next time you're going camping, make sure you let me know. :)

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There's been a lot of talk lately about gaming sites that are considered "rumor" sites. Places such as BitchX are getting under peoples skin for posting untruths and general mis-information. Then there are some anti-quake sites that cause a disturbance whenever they appear.

Just for the record, Methos Quake has never been a rumor site and never will be. It's strange because just the other night, I was talking about this with my girlfriend, Pamela Anderson but, that's a whole different story. :)

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I noticed on the Clan [9] site (sorry, I don't remember the addy) that they have a page talking about how they are undefeated when playing Clan matches. This puts a lot more light on why they attacked me so bitterly after I said that Clan 9 lost a match to EG.

For those that don't remember, 9 claimed it wasn't an official clan match because one of the guys (Doomer) wasn't from Clan 9. Well, less than a week after that, Doomer became an official member of Clan 9. While I was watching the R3V / 9 matches last week, a guy from R3V said to me "good thing this is just a practice match as R3V has never lost an official match". wtf?

Okay, where do we draw the line? No more beating around the bush. Clan 9 lost to EG and they also lost to R3V the other day. R3V has lost 5 matches to Clan 9. Okay, I've said it. No clan is undefeated. If you want to make it official, then post something that says "we've never lost in tournament matches". That's what Thresh did as he had lost a few matches along the way. nuff said, let's move on.

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For those that haven't noticed, I've stopped putting clan names in the titles of the demos on the Quake demos page. this was done for a few reasons but the most important was for searching purposes.

Let's say you were looking for a demo of Randemarr Vs whomever from a few months ago. Since the files are sorted by the player pov, you would have to look in a few places. You wouldn't know which clan Randemarr was in at the time. So, do you look under R for Randemarr, O for OCR-Randemarr, Q for QL-Panther (Randemarr) or B for BC-Randemarr. (damn, this guy gets around :)

I've also been told on more than a few occasions that a 1on1 demo doesn't represent the clan. Then others have said they want it there because they're part of a strong clan.

Anyway, I'm sure you get the picture. Hopefully, this should make it a bit easier in the future.

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Tomorrow: Cheating! Be sure to read this one :)