Clan Kapitol, Barons of Hell and Abuse 14-8-2002
We had a quick chat with three players attending Quakecon this week. Abuse, the Barons of Hell as well as Clan Kapitol have a good shot at winning the title this Saturday. 25 000$ is on the line for the Champions, so let´s see what they have to say about the tournament.
DZM: How did you prepare yourselves for QuakeCon? cK-Shaftian: We are doing some last minute scrimming. About a week before Quakecon we are putting in seven to eight hours a day of scrimmages to help us get going. Other than that, we really have not prepared for it (other than buying our plane tickets).
BoH.eFFe: We quit all ladders and concentrated only on praccs. We took a little break 2 weeks ago and flew to Mallorca to relax a bit. After that we pracced with iN & mTw online over the past week. This weekend we had a LAN-practice with mTw, it was our last preparation for Qcon.
a|Citizen:We have mostly just talked alot about the maps and examined our strategies on them. We have lanned a couple of times in the past few months, but this weekend we were not able to prepare. We did have tons of practice though. We played several scrims with both EU and NA teams yesterday, and we'll play a couple each night until we leave for Dallas. Except for mTw, we have scrimmed all European teams.
DZM: Which 6 members of your clan will be going to Texas? How was that decided?
cK-Shaftian: Valdez, Shaftian (me), Shogun, czm, Bloodshot, Leethal and inmojo as the backup. We only have 7 seven rtcw members including the best bench warmer in the world (inmojo) so there wasn't much to decide.
BoH.eFFe: Bully, H8red, Hawok, eFFe, Reptile and Tele will attend Qcon for BoH. Those 6 were picked, 'cause they're our top team in RTCW and always play together.
a|Citizen: 9 members of Team Abuse will actually be at the event. We will have our 6 starters (myself, lantern, cujo, qancer, method, and r1msh0t), our alternate (code red), and then rhea will be there running the Q3 tournament (ZoneStats) while wiseguy will be there shoutcasting for TSN. :)
DZM: If God would come to you, asking who would win QuakeCon, what would you answer?
cK-Shaftian: Well God doesn't need to ask me? He is God after all!
BoH.eFFe: First I have to say that I hate predictions. Actually I can't choose a particular clan, but I guess the Euro teams have the best chances to win Qcon. Most likely iN, mTw or us. ; ] a|Citizen: Heh... it all depends on the maps. The grand final is on Ice, but if the loser's bracket winner wins that map, then they have to win again on another map. Maps will play a big part in it. We are going to the event with the intent to win, so I have to say Abuse.
DZM: What's your stance towards the decision they made regarding the cvar limitations?
cK-Shaftian: At first when Wolfenstein started getting competitive it was pretty understandable what CAL had done to limit it. They had pretty much limited it to the extremes without cheating. For example, picmip has to be 5 or less so you can't see through trees. The limits CAL had placed I felt was reasonable and very well put together. Then the Quakecon limitations I thought was just a little too much towards the high end side. The only plus of having to spend 8 hours a day staring at pretty graphics, particles, gun flashes, blood flashes, explosions, gunfire and high quality textures is that you don't notice your back hurting so much from playing that many hours since your eyes are bleeding =( Too much is too much! The other problem is there are CAL clans and Quakecon clans, the only difference are what config restrictions they follow. When we're playing teams with our Quakecon configs and they are using CAL configs picking us off from across the map and there isn't a damn thing we can do about it but play with it, it's pretty weak.
BoH.eFFe: We think it's crap to limit the players gameplay with such ridiculous settings, but I guess we have no chance to do anything about it. We tried to get used to them and I guess we managed that quite well.
a|Citizen: The only setting I don't agree at all with is cg_drawgun 1. But overall since every team has to play with the same restrictions it is fair. I do however disagree heavily with how they waited until only two weeks before the event to accounce the settings.
DZM: So, did you have to adapt your playing style and strategies, because of those limitations?
cK-Shaftian: Well, we can now hide black trenchcoat wearing axis players in dark places and use covert tactics to down the enemy. Very very sneaky... Honk Honk!
BoH.eFFe: We haven't changed anything at all, our tactics are mostly the same. It's just that aiming precisely has gotten harder (mostly due to the darker visuals and cg_drawgun 1, muzzle flashes etc.).
a|Citizen: Not really. Like I said, as long as the other team is using the same settings, the game does not change too much. People just can't aim quite as well (especially at a distance).As long as all the top teams have practiced the past two weeks with the settings, then the best team should still win the event.
DZM: How will your clan proceed after QuakeCon (RTCW)?
cK-Shaftian: Not sure, I'll let you know. We have an exhibition match vs the Doctors late August that will be on TSN and WTV for some grand ol' fun (and prizes). We are also in RITD and CAL-I so there will definitely be an endless supply of matches and games. I'm thinking we will need to recruit one or two more players to combat college bound team members.
BoH.eFFe: BoH will quit RTCW after Qcon. Many of our players are going to concentrate more or completely on real life (study, job, girlfriends...etc :P ). In that case Qcon will be the best time to quit playin...we think it's gonna be the climax of RTCW. We can't say what games BoH will play in the future.
a|Citizen: Good question. We don't know for sure. We will continue to play our matches in the leagues we are in. But unless another big tournament shows up in the next few months, we might venture into another game. Our favorite part of this hobby is LAN gaming competitions, so we like to play a game that has something on the horizon. We hope that something will happen for RTCW. Even another big online tournament like BoB2 would be enough for us.
DZM: Well, that´s that. Thanks for yor time, hf, gl at Quakecon! Oh, what will you be doing with the Qcon prize money ?
ck-Shaftian: Take a vacation, get a body kit for my bimmer =)!
BoH.eFFe: In case we'll win, we gonna split the prize money on our team which will play at Qcon.The main goal is to finance the flight & hotel that we paid completly for ourselves. As everybody knows, BoH is the world's richest clan...so maybe we'll donate some money to poor clans or the thrid world. ;)
a|Citizen: I'll put my portion into savings. And I'll put the Radeon 9700 into my machine as soon as I get home. :) We usually use our prize winnings to pay for our hardware upgrades.
BoH.eFFe: Greetings to iN, we're happy they finally made it! Maniacs mother! mTw.aTn-Wirsi's dentist and hair-stylist! j/k, you know we love you! ; ]
