You can view a quick preview of the upcomig games below:

To see who else ESL has recruited for commentating for the event:

For those of you who have been complaining about poor quality streams, ESL.tv will be broadcasting in HD, so make sure to get premium! Why didn’t they offer this when Joe went shirtless?! (haha )
If you can’t order premium, ESFI world are giving away 10 premium subscriptions! Click here for the details.

Hope to see you in Hannover! yey!!!

A few days ago he launched his own blog, CyrusMalekani.com, where you can read all about his adventures in Japan, where he is currently studying.

From the website:

PRO GAMER and GENTLEMAN EXTRAORDINAIRE at your service!

Cyrus ‘proZaC’ Malekani is now on the path of mastering his way and perfecting his quake.
Always moving forward with a never-say die attitude he approaches all his challenges with a calm samurai-like state of mind.

Follow him on his crazy adventures and you just might learn something

OSU!

Click here to check out the new site, or click here to follow proZaC on twitter.

Johan ‘tox’ or ‘toxjq’ Quick is one of the most revered Quake players of all time. He was kind enough to share some insight concerning Quake Live and his potential future as a competitive player. He also spoke of his feelings on being such a dominant champion of Quake 4, and what he must do if he is to continue to perform at such a high level.

nomadic: First, could you catch us up to speed on what you’ve been up to? Are you still into your fitness? Working / Studying? Do you still participate in Horse Race Betting?
tox: Gopher and I work for my father’s smaller business as sheet metal and ventilation technicians. And I still try to keep the fitness going, but nowadays I usually keep it to twice a week. On Saturday’s I do enjoy the major horse races that take place every Saturday in Sweden.

nomadic: Will we be seeing you come back and train Quake Live as hard as you did for Quake 4?
tox: I don’t think I will play as active as I did during Quake 4, since I was then sponsored and had more time for practicing and traveling. But things can change in the future with more events and so forth. I have vacation atm, so I have been playing some the last couple of weeks. Fazz came and asked me to participate against France in the TDM cup because Fox had holiday in Greece. I knew that they really wanted to go to the LAN finals, so I felt obligated to take part with them. I only practiced a bit before that game, and then I have just kept on playing for now.

nomadic: Speaking of TDM – It has become much more active in 2010. Do you or your brother have any interest in reviving a certain TDM clan?
tox: Gopher has been talking about starting to play a bit for fun, but he doesn’t have a proper monitor for Quake atm, so I think he might start to play some more for fun if he finally goes and buys a new monitor. But I don’t think we will play TDM for online purposes, it could happen that we would make a team again if there would be TDM lans as it were back in Quake 3 OSP. I rather prefer if there were more 2v2 events, maybe together with 1v1 so you had two types of a game at the same event. In my opinion it’s too much hassle to gather 4 people, and much easier to practice 2v2 then 4v4.

nomadic: But don’t you think 4v4 TDM is more fun than 2v2, both as a player and spectator?
tox: I would say that 4v4 is more fun when you travel to an event together with your team and play the serious matches with a lot of pressure. But in my opinion, 2v2 is more fun to play for practice purposes and also to watch online.

nomadic: In your September’09 Fragster interview you said, “I would like to decrease the hitboxes a lot”. How do you feel about the hitboxes now?
tox: I think they have been improved since they made the changes, but if you play an opponent that has a higher ping than you, there are many shots that go right through. It seems like it depends on what situation you’re in on the map, you really have to think about what height you are firing your shots from. But that’s probably more something that comes with experience.

nomadic: So for LAN play – do you think the hitboxes are perfect, or would you like to see further tweaking?
tox: I have yet to play Quake Live on lan, so I don’t know how the hitboxes work there, but most likely they will work better if both opponents have the same ping. I’m also interested to find out if there is the same amount of firing delay for the weapons on LAN. This is mostly what I feel could be corrected. If you look at plasma gun, for an example, it has a lot of delay while playing online. You cannot use the plasma gun in the same way as you used it in OSP and CPMA; like a close range weapon. It’s mostly for spamming corridors and just annoying your opponent now. In my opinion its way to risky to use plasma vs lightning gun in close range atm. So I would like to see some changes with plasma, so you had 1 more weapon you could use in the game.

nomadic: Would you favor plasma or shotgun at close range in Quake Live as it stands now?
tox: Online I would definitely prefer to have a shotgun instead of plasma atm. But it might work perfect on LAN, I really can’t have an opinion about that since I haven’t tried Quake Live on LAN.

nomadic: We haven’t really seen you play T7 or T9, what are your thoughts on those maps?
tox: I have been playing more and more of these new maps lately, and I think T7 is a balanced map so far. You can play the map very different if u want, both super aggressive and also very slow and safe as well. T9 I haven’t been playing as much as T7, but it feels like there can be so many spawn frags on that map. In my opinion, that’s a weakness, as I think luck should be involved as little as possible.

nomadic: Do you favor any maps over others?
tox: I would say that ztn, dm13, and T7 are good maps for competitive play. Dm6 doesn’t work as well in Quake Live than in Quake 3. As for T9, I can’t say there is much you can do on that map. You are kinda forced to play a certain way and it’s hard to find out a different way to play that map. Then again I haven’t been playing it as much as the others have. But I’d rather not see any Quake 3 maps in Quake Live map pools. I think we’ve had enough of that already, and it should only be new maps for competitive play.

nomadic: Would you be opposed to the addition of Hub?
tox: Yes, even dm6, phrantic, ztn, t4, hub, edge etc. I believe there has to be changes to get some new blood into the competitive scene, and since Quake Live is a new game, they should not use maps that have been played for years and years. There isn’t much to explore and it’s hard to come up with a new way of playing each map.

nomadic: Understandable, so in this way you favor T9 to be included in tournament map pools?
tox: Yeah so far I would. As long as they make new maps, it is important they are tested thoroughly. But you can’t announce new maps 1 week before an event like Quakecon, that’s really bad of them and unprofessional. There has to be some kind of organization that decides a map pool, and that map pool should be used for all the events of that year. If people wanna change maps, or add maps, it should be announced at least 6 months ahead of the tournament.

nomadic: What about other changes or additions you would like to see in Quake Live?
tox: I would like to see what happens if machine gun makes 6dmg instead of 5dmg. Its way too hard to defend yourself with machine gun atm, but then again I think 7dmg is way too much. And as I said earlier, I would like to see some changes with the plasma gun. Maybe it should fire a bit faster or the bullets should be a bit larger, because the hitboxes are smaller atm.

nomadic: I think it was obvious to everyone that Quake 4 suited your play style best. Do you feel your game can be adapted to suit Quake Live like it did in Quake 4?
tox: I think the key is to always find a new way of playing, and it’s all about making your opponent unable to play as he is used to, or how he has been practicing to. It doesn’t really matter if you play aggressive or defensive, just if you make your opponent off his game style and his “plan” he brought to the game.

Quake Live is mostly about timing and controlling the items like RA, MEGA, YA. But if you look at Quake 4, it was just as important to control the weapons of your opponent as it was to take armors and megas. Since the weapon respawn is 5 seconds in Quake Live, it’s impossible to keep your opponent from getting the weapons he wants after a period of time. You can be successful for a while, but in Quake 4 it could be better to give your opponent an RA if you could take the lightning gun or rail or rocket. Because then you would win the next fight without any trouble at all. But in Quake Live you are pretty much forced to take all the fights at all armors and megas. And since Quake Live doesn’t have as much dodging involved as Quake 4 did, you almost have to get more armor and health than your opponent if you wanna win the next fight. Sure you can win certain battles if you position yourself a bit better, but in general you pretty much have to be equal or have more to win a fight in Quake Live.

It’s just another way of playing a game, and you do what you have to do to get better at the game you are playing. But that’s kinda the guideline for Quake Live, only control armor and health and get the best position you can for the next fight.

nomadic: Does this guideline favor or hinder you?
tox: In the beginning it most likely would not suit me. I like when I have more options I can choose from, but I do miss that there isn’t as much weapon controlling with the fast respawn of the weapons. That way if you play someone with a strong rail, it could be better to control rail as opposed to taking all the YA’s on the map when you already are 200-200, but its just 2 different types of play.

nomadic: Let’s go back a few years to WSVG finals vs. Fatal1ty.
After you won, and silenced the “99% Bias Against Toxic” room, you said you felt like you had something to prove; that you were the best Quake 4 player. Do you still feel like you have anything to prove?
tox: No, I mean you can always look back on players as they’re talked about on the shoutcast, “Do you think this guy would beat this guy etc.” It’s just speculation and ultimately a waste of time. Everyone who wins tournament after tournament is already the best at that moment, and I guess these players have the potential to be one of the greatest.

But you cannot take a player from 10 years ago and compare him with someone today. I’m sure that player would have been as good as all the rest if he had his prime today. For myself, I already won a lot in Quake 3 TDM, and I think I placed 5th in almost all major Quake 3 events I attended. In Quake 4 I won a lot of 1v1 tournaments and the Quakecon Quad tournament as well as every 2v2 tournament with whomever I teamed with.

I think the difference between me and the other players is that I don’t talk about winning as much as they do. I don’t feel like its any surprise for me, and I’m always aware of every good player at a top level. It’s important never to feel like, “Yes I made it,” because that should be just an average day for you if you want to stay at the top for a long time.

nomadic: When you were dominating Quake 4, everyone was very curious about how you practiced. You said you didn’t like to train with other top players, but that you instead preferred players that were of a “mid tier” range of skill.
Can you tell us the advantages of this type of training regiment as opposed to training with your peers?
tox: I felt that I already knew how to play the map and opponent when I was attending a tournament, so I already knew how I was suppose to play my best game at that point. If you play someone that’s equal in skill as you are and make 1 mistake, you usually end up losing the game, or not getting any items or weapons for a long period of time during the game. In my opinion, you don’t get to practice all the situations as much then. If you play a medium skilled player, you can always get back control much easier then if you’re playing a top player.

So my thoughts were – if I play vs a medium skilled player I get to practice all the situations over and over, many more times during a game then I could if I played a top player. Of course now and then you can also play someone of your level, to improve your tactical game and also see if these things even work against someone at the same level as yourself.

nomadic: Is this your preference for Quake 4 alone, or would you apply it to Quake Live also?
tox: I definitely would use this in Quake Live also, but probably a bit more games vs equal skilled players to first find out how to play a serious game. When you get that right, you can go off and find out different ways to play a certain map or different ways to attack or play defensive etc.

nomadic: Are you planning to attend Quakecon or any other events in 2010?
tox: I’m not going to attend Quakecon this year, but I have been practicing with Stermy and Cypher before this event to help them get in shape. Cypher and I made a deal – if I helped him to improve his game and found out his weaknesses, and if I gave my view of his game to help him, he would give me advice and help me improve on ztn for an example. So Cypher and I have been playing a lot this past week. We had our warm up session; talking about positioning and some things I know about the opponents he is going to play and so on. Stermy and I have also done the same.

I don’t know if I’m going to attend any events in the future, I hope I will but I don’t know when it will happen. Atm I’m trying to get a feeling for the game, and I will see what tournaments come up. But I want to be sure of knowing all the maps before I attend a tournament.

nomadic: That’s a nice trade off, have you found anything on them yet?
tox: Yes, I think we both have learned from doing this. Maybe he got another view of things he hadn’t previously considered, and I have seen things that I hadn’t thought so deep about either. Anyway, since I’m good friends with both Stermy and Cypher, and if I’m not participating in a tournament, I’d like to see them go as far as possible.

nomadic: Last time I spoke with you, you were planning to buy an apartment. Where are you living now?
tox: I’m still living in the same city that I grew up in. There hasn’t been a good time for this kind of market since the crash.

nomadic: Is there a significant other in the life of The Toxinator or is he looking to acquire a target?
tox: Nope, not at this moment.

nomadic: Thank you very much, I really appreciate you taking the time. The final words are yours.
tox: You are welcome, it will be interesting to see if there are new maps being played at Quakecon and let’s cheer for Stermy and Cypher.

Thanks to Nomadic for the much-needed interview from one of the all-time Quake legends.

Disclaimer: All thoughts expressed are the opinions of the individuals and were said without reference to id software/Quake. The talk of maps which are not currently available are simply just speculation.

The funniest part about this is that it started with the roommate of Videl, who isn’t a gamer, but follows what Videl does. When we were walking home she all of a sudden said “lets play Quake” and started strafing down the street.

Vote here!

You might also like to see Bologna by scooter, since i’m here now for the Alienware Challenge:

Without further ado, here are the interviews.

Fazz:

Justin Wong:

Rapha:

Today, Draven is still studying at University and also working, “I was studying to become an accountant, but I already had some internships. I kinda found it boring so I might try something else”. Before being sucked into the gaming world, Draven was actually a martial arts champion in Taekwondo. I’m also not talking about local gym champion – Draven boasts an impressive amount of victories in both national and international Taekwondo tournaments. Just a small peek into his enormous trophy cabinet speaks for itself:

Despite being a top player in Quake who has travelled to many different tournaments, Taekwondo still has taken Draven to more places than video gaming. He attended World Championships in Korea, Greece and basically places all over Europe. However despite being the national champion, he didn’t manage to win the international tournaments, “I didn’t win, was too jetlagged and too nervous on those podiums as 15-16 year old kid”.

3 years ago (when he was 19) Draven stopped Taekwondo as he didn’t have a lot of free time. At the time he was in the Netherlands national team so they were training a lot, “Sometimes we trained 3 times a day in the weekend”. Since there wasn’t any prize money offered in these tournaments, “going pro” wasn’t really an option.

Gaming is something which Draven has always enjoyed, “My brother, my cousin and I were really gamers, we played a lot of Super Nintendo and Playstation 1. We could play for days and not get bored.” But of course in those kinds of environment there is always rivalry, “We all wanted to be the best. For example in Super Mario or Tekken we wanted to prove who is the best ”

Then he discovered Quake. “Around 2001, I found out about Quake2, in 2002-2003 I started to play Quake3 single player, after that I found about mods and stuff so I downloaded RA3 and I totally fell in love with RA3. Actually I didn’t like duel at all, I was more a team based player ra3&ctf.”

Like with a lot of gamers, Draven was introduced to Quake first by his brother, “My brother brought a cd with quake2, so he installed it and started to play, but he got bored of it so I started to play the single player, and later on found out about multiplayer and irc. He then found out that Quake 3 was already around, “my brother borrowed quake3 cd from a friend who didn’t play it anymore so we installed it and I never looked back to Q2 again.”

Preferring team games over duel, Draven currently plays for the Dutch national team in Quake Live for both CTF (blad3, solar, draven, sc00t, forever) and TDM (draven, forever, sc00t, silencep, and tua). He started to get into duel in the Quake 4 days (2005 / 2006), “When Xhep from Tek9 asked me to play Q4 TDM for Tek9 I was like ‘sure why not’, but my pc was to shit to play Q4 TDM so I started playing Q4 duels. After that I kept playing duels in Q4/Q3/QL.”

Draven considers himself as kind of a “new” player on the duel scene, as he didn’t really watch the oldschool players play; “I started following duel scene after I saw the hub3aeroq game at ESWC [2005] fox vs czm where fox won in the end classic and awesome match. I started following it then, but did not play. I wasn’t really into the pro gaming scene. I was training 5-7 days week (taekwondo)”.

Obviously since a young age Draven already had the competitive edge in him but is yet to take a podium finish at a big international LAN tournament. He believes that; “If I could stop working and school I think I could focus a lot more and I would be a lot better. I’m busy with school, work. When I was at taekwondo I was really young, I could focus a lot on it. School also wasn’t that hard and I didn’t really need a job back then”. For a lot of University students events also come at bad times such as during or after exam periods. This makes it a little more difficult for those who are studying to fully focus on the tournament.

Currently we have seen a lot of the European Quake stars participate in the Saturday / Sunday Zotac and G-Data online cups. However Draven has never been able to play in those as his schedule only permits him to play mid-week and after 16:00, making it too late to make the tournament on time. He basically feels that what he needs to catch up to the current top players is simply more time to be able to practice. But he also feels that practice can’t really get you everywhere, “for a lot of people yes [practice helps], but a lot of people are so talented. For example burned – he caught up with a lot of people in short amount of time, even though he’s very young. He has loads of time and no responsibilities”.

As time goes on we have seen the top players come and go and new talent has emerged on the scene. Draven believes that soon this generation of top players will also need to concede to the younger generation; “The older you get the more priorities you have, cause you cannot have this lifestyle when you wanna get married and have kids, maybe if its Korea or MLG. But simply the last years of quake you cannot keep this lifestyle when you’re old and fat ”.

Despite winning the first eSports Heaven Quake Live tournament, Draven still remains modest about his skill, “Not a lot of good player signed up for this cup, but if you look at the last QL tournaments (Dreamhack & IEM Europe) I had one of the toughest groups. Both events I was kinda disappointed. It didn’t give me confidence at all, when you play QL you need confidence to win. Even though I came out my group at Dreamhack I had to face av3k right in the first round what was really bad too”.

Rumor has it that MLG is very interested in picking up Quake Live for their competitive circuit. Like most other competitive Quake Live players, Draven would love it if MLG chose it as a game. He’d participate; “but it also depends on prize money and if it’s in Europe or America. If the prize purse is like a CPL world tour then I would go cause it would mean that I have to make free time from work and school what costs money”. Like other top players, Draven is sponsored by his team LowLandLions but even if sponsors do pay the trips, time off from work and school is still needed to go to these tournaments.

Draven is actively involved in the Benelux Quake community and has often been seen spamming messages on IRC trying to get people to participate in the ESL Benelux amateur series. The more participants means that the more likely it is that next season the game will be fully in the ESL Pro Series. He seems a little disappointed at the Benelux scene, but not because of its size, “There quite a lot of Benelux players but most of them just play CTF, but we simply cannot make a Benelux only CTF league cause there’s not enough teams, so we have to start with duel then maybe try 2v2 then TDM/CTF if there’s enough interest”.

That said; it is quite difficult to get people to try dueling for many reasons. Draven believes that “Simply a lot of people don’t even wanna try duel and improve in it, because they get so bashed by good players they just give up on it”. But Draven encourages those who perhaps are interested in trying to not give up, “I think EPS is a big step, I see a lot of people trying duel. By playing better players, and seeing what you’re doing wrong and keep improving your game you’ll enjoy duel. If you keep improving you cannot stop playing ”.

In closing, he submitted the following words:

Thanks for the interview, I’m also really happy LLL picked me up. They supported and believe in me 100%. I’d also like to thank all the sponsors: asus, sennheiser, puretrak, easport, hostbasket

Firstly for those of you who don’t play xbox live, i’ll quickly explain the rating system to you. Once you play against someone, you have the option to go into their profile and rate them. You can rate them on trash talking, inappropriate behaviour, ragequitting etc. If you have rated someone badly, you tend not to be matched up to games that they are playing in.

Anyway I was playing some clan arena last night and now I remember why I left the game uninstalled for several weeks (that’s actually part of another story). While some of us are playing Quake Live, others are playing Stats Live. While I love that all the game statistics are kept, i’m sure that many people don’t share that sentiment.

Stats Live differs from Quake Live where players are not playing the game of Quake but simply doing whatever they can in order to manipulate their Quake Live statistics to make it appear that they’re a good player. This can involve doing the following:
1. Cheating: Flat out cheating, not much explanation needed
2. Switching teams in order to be on the winning team
3. Quitting or going into spectator mode if they lose

Quake Live does have some systems put into place to try to prevent this, such as not being able to stack teams (if it’s 3v3 and you join, you will automatically be placed on the losing team). But of course these Stats Live players find a way around it. For example they will stay in spectator mode until someone else joins the losing team, thus enabling them to join the winning team.

Quake Live already has a very easy system where you can view your most recent opponents from your startpage. My idea for the rating system would be this:
All you’d have to do is click on your opponents profile and there you’ll be able to make an easy judgement through a checkbox system. Of course you don’t have to rate everyone you play against, I myself would probably use it just for the people who are being lame as fuck unsportsmanlike.

My ideas that I stole from Xbox Live for what the check-boxes could be:
Communication:
- Excessive flaming (don’t get me wrong, I love flamers but when they start telling me that i’d be better at Quake if I stopped sucking so much dick, it gets a little old)
- I’m mad because I got owned

In-game conduct:
- Stacking teams
- Ragequits
- I’m mad because I got owned

Skill:
- Too good
- Too bad
- Doesn’t even know how to fire a weapon
- I’m mad because I got owned

For duels as well, it would be cool if you could have an option to avoid certain players with the match finder.

Then some servers should have some kind of restriction (much like the skill level restriction) where people with shit ratings can’t enter. Then have open servers where all the shitty bad-attitude players can play with each other. Kind of like what the English colonial guys did with Australia.

Of course this idea isn’t perfect but it’s what it is; an idea. I know that a lot of high level players will receive low ratings from people they’re spanking just because they’re pissed about getting owned.

What do you think? Would a Quake Live rating system fly with you or is it just another thing that’s good in theory but shit in practice (like BDSM)? Let me know in the comments or tweet your thoughts @HelloLiefje

An oldie but a goodie. Move over spart1e strenx!!