Age :40
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Location: New York City
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new one = ripped
Commentary  /  1 Oct 2009, 15:06
Why don't we quit?
Quake is dead. X is dead. We've all heard these type of sentiments, for pretty much everything. Insert anything in place of "X" and I'm sure you have heard it said, no matter how popular X is. Anyways, back to quake, it is probably a little more dead than other things, but I believe there is an alternative to quitting quake cold turkey, as some have done. First, we have to face some facts:
The main fact is that the amount of active players and their active longevity in a particular activity is directly proportional to the community size of that activity. What I'm trying to say is that in quakeworld, as long as we stay small we shouldn't expect our player base to grow beyond seasonal fluctuations. What we should expect, however, is for old players to cycle out and new players to come in, as long as there is fun and competition to be had. Another fact is that some people will just lurk around forever. I'm not going to name any names, but some people (like myself) have OCD or hoarder syndrome or whatever, and just can't say "no"

But the "quake is dead" phenomenon exists and it is worth talking about. Let's share our feelings brothers and sisters.

I've had a double dose taste of this phenomenon recently. I have been running small-scale duel tournament for a while that have been quite successful, and for the longest time I wanted to go back to the roots and do a "TB3" tournament. So I did, and some of you may have heard about "Old school tournament" (I'll write a summary about that later) and I think it had a potential to be a great tourney. But, most of the top seeds disappeared, either due to not wanting to play anymore, or just being unable to due to hardware problems or real life commitments. So it became a disaster. LocKtar and Bulat have yet to play their grand finals, and I hope they do as it would still be cool to see, but the champion simply will not have the amount of satisfaction as he would if all the seeds were there. But I just let the whole tournament slide after some point, and I'm just going to let it sit there and let the players decide its fate. As I mentioned before, this is a seasonal variation, as now we see ownage #2 gearing up and the activity seems to be swelling back. The second dose was personal, in the last half year since I got back from the last dreamhack, I have literally played Quake one day per thirty. I'm still looking forward to watching the div1 demos, and following the scene, and I'm also hoping to run an old school invitational, with only the top 16 seeds from the last one that just weren't able to duke it out. We'll see how that goes.

So the take home message is: shit happens. Now and then something will not go your way. But there is no point in playing the victim, claiming it was "the last straw", etc., or any other exaggerations. If you don't want to play quake, then don't play quake. But what's the point of announcing that you are going to delete it from your hard drive? It's only a couple megs anyway. So let it sit there, because eventually you will double click on that helmet face and hear the familiar sounds and gibs, and it will be all right again
Comments
2009-10-01, 16:07
That game is weird, i played it EVERY SINGLE DAY literally since i started playing it, around December last year. QuakeWorld will never die!
2009-10-01, 17:21
little helmet man is now a meme!!
also if people didn't stop playing quake by now... i'd lke to hear their excuse for quitting now.
2009-10-01, 17:22
so yea, good read.
2009-10-01, 20:41
N1, I've deleted q1 twice before, but I did comeback everytime.
I will never be fully active again, but I do compete in the tournaments as I still like it and I like the competition, but playing every day will never happen again and that's just fine.
Last time I stopped playing qw I didn't even delete it anymore as I was aware I were gonna play it again. I just let it sit right there where it's supposed to be
2009-10-01, 23:30
We need more players and clans in div1! Just stop playing your usual playstyle (which you could do in your sleep, or while your having sex with gf or whatever..) and do something different. Perhaps watch a demo of yourself playing and be hard with the self-criticism. Then do something about it! (or watch Milton and try to imitate..)

Feels like a lot of players and clans are just playing the saaaaame old clans they always play, never want to face a better enemy cause it's boring to lose (and no I dont mean a rookie clan should go play vs tVS).

Just stop thinking you have "reached your max skill level", that's such bullshit!
2009-10-01, 23:54
"Feels like a lot of players and clans are just playing the saaaaame old clans they always play, never want to face a better enemy cause it's boring to lose."

This is why I say we need new maps in the 4on4 pool to shake things up.
2009-10-02, 21:35
One day it will just be you and me Phil, and even then - you'll still have to play in eu
2009-10-03, 09:12
i predict you both will ping less than 39 to Iceland by then.
2009-10-03, 13:18
quakeworld will die with me 8)
2009-10-08, 01:38
Quakeworld is not dead; what is dead is my wallet and my computer. Ill be back to kick some asses if there are some asses available.
2009-10-08, 23:37
2009-10-11, 00:25
qw cant be dead if it still brings newcomers like myself
2009-10-12, 16:26
I want to start playing again but my kids dont let me but they are growing... soon enought will be more 3 players ( me and kids)

hehe

big hug all miss u all
2009-10-14, 07:10
haha nice Trinca, this breeding is what our community needs! long time no see, welcome back when the time is right.. <3
2009-10-18, 23:06
No one wants to quit but shit there is a point where it isn't possible to play anymore so you have all but quit. North America seems to have about zero players. I always loved TDM/CTF/FFA but not so much duel. The last few years unless you liked duel a lot it was hard to find serious games in anything else. Then eventually after you stop playing you get so out of practice and find other things you fill your time with.

The American community always sucks unless it is very large. I've seen the same problems in multiple scenes over and over. The top players are just concerned about winning and keeping their clan as the best regardless of community health. Many of the top players are immature jackasses especially if they are younger.

Look at this QL CTF tourney - http://www.bibsql.com/?p=signups 17 teams, that puts QL in a much better position than any Quake scene here for a long time but 17 teams still sucks. There will be a few competitive teams and probably 1-2 who dominate. It makes it boring, why even bother to play when the biggest competitive factor is politics of making teams? Quake needs more draft leagues. The goal of a community should be to make it fun for everyone(goal .500 record for all teams). There is a reason pro sports work like they do. ;-)
2009-10-20, 06:53
pg: We've seen the same thing in europe. Top teams wanting to play a small map pool in challenge smackdown-style tournaments. Ignoring where it was going in the long run.

The fact that the division system was brought into 4on4-leagues (nqr) before it was to late (scene to small), made sure that many lesser skilled clans managed to stay alive for a lot longer.
2009-10-20, 06:57
maybe it was wrong of me to say "same thing", but with "same thing" i mean that many top teams over the years has ignored in what direction they were going with the game. Resulting in that they rather were knocked down from the throne because they would not find an opponent willing to play, then someone actually winning a game versus them.
2009-10-20, 08:45
"(goal .500 record for all teams)"

What is this goal record and how does it work?
2009-10-20, 15:45
I think pg meant to say that teams/players should strive to have a chance of winning at least some official games, especially if they are near the bottom of the ladder. When you have only a few players left and they are all light years ahead of everyone else, there is a "which newbie will sign up first for the inevitable facerape" effect before enough newbies sign up to guarantee some even games between themselves, and not a series lopsided losses one after another.
2009-10-23, 07:30
50% wins and 50% losses?
2009-10-26, 04:41
The whole point of a draft league is you conduct some kind of fair division of skill among teams. So there are no clans, each team is made up of for instance a captain then they take turns picking players or whatever. Instead of divisions you'd end up with a team made up of differently skilled players from div1, div2, and div3 for instance. I like this system myself because I've played with it before. It leads to mixing up of the elites and newest of the new players. The division system works well too but at a certain point once the population drops it won't support itself anymore. America never had enough teams for a division system to even work at all and the best players refused to even try a draft league. Instead TDM just died here.

Draft leagues goal should be .500 records for everyone since that would mean player skill is distributed evenly across teams. Isn't that the ultimate in competition, you are always challenged! Don't get me wrong clans are awesome but I'll never believe they are best for a game unless the population is large. Europe still has a pretty large population of players so I expect things will work out in the short term. I do have a hard on for draft leagues ever since I saw how well it worked for the IDL - http://www.intldoomleague.org/ which has a minuscule player base(about 50) in comparison to the EU QW scene.
2009-10-26, 12:28
funny thing is I called BT (british telecom) the other day to order a connection from home, well the conversation with the sales guy went like this, " i want the cheapest internet connection you have, as I just want to check email and stuff. So 3 meg is 15.99 a month?" Actually whats the best speed my line can take? 20 megs eh and thats £22 pounds, sure whats the point with the 3 meg??, exactly so lets get unlimited 20 meg then".. Few days later at a car boot sale "oh look a 21inch CRT monitor, how much you want for that then? £10 quid? I'll give you a fiver" done deal. And Im sitting here today reading quakeworld.nu and I keep telling myself Im not going to start playing quakeworld again `connect qw.
2009-10-26, 13:31
welcome back johnie 8)
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