Hello, I am d3sp and I play online Q3CTF for Clan Envy. I am pretty new to Quake3 community, because I started to seriously play Quake only in November 2000. For the start I joined friendly and great clan Gladiators of Death, where I got my valuable experience and started to understand what is this all about. The more I played the more addicted I became. And furthermore I started to have a strong wish to compete more seriously and play less for just pure fun.
Due to my old good P2-300 processing powah my performance wasn't impressive. Actually not at all. Nevertheless I was looking for players with a spirit like mine, to make a new clan and to compete on high levels. thanks to coda from Thievery Corporation clan (former UtI) who gave me this idea and helped to meet other people with the same wish. Early in February it happened and new Clan - Clan Envy - was born. Twelve people altogether started to have everyday praccies to elaborate tactics and proper teamplay. As the result we won Wireplay cup by the end of our first month, and proved that we can be a strong opponent in BarrysWorld CTF League Division 1.
By the end of May I upgraded my PC and OMG-ed (omg = oh my god). Now I truly opened for myself the World of Quake with its speed and smoothness (powered by AMD, lol). The screenshot made on public server on the second day I had my new PC is here.
By this time I already gave some interviews to NOW TV and got a column on QuakeNation.com (QN). It was a start of real integrating in Quake3 community.
A week later LanArena 6 took place in Paris, and I attended it to meet people and write report for QN. Terrific weekend of meeting Quake celebrities, online friends, playing some serious Quake, coaching International Quake Squad, taking pictures, having fun and talking to friendly organisers of Lan Arena 6 - World Cyber Games. All this gave me even stronger wish to do more for Quake3 and gaming community in general.
But enough of history. Let's move on.
Where does CTF now? As we all know, all previous big world Quake3 events (mainly organised by CPL) were all about Quake3 Team DeathMatch and 1vs1 Duelling. Quake stars like Fatality, Lakerman, Polosatiy and many more have appeared and brought more and more attention to Quake3. Some of them got bored with ungrateful Quake community and moved to Counter-Strike to play "just for fun", and it happened at the same time when CPL decided to cut Q3 events and move to CS. Coincidence, or how they say in France - bizarre. Oh well, I am not here to judge anyone. We all have our own reasons in gaming - fun, money, way to release aggression, abuse and so on.
So, until Lan Arena 6 there were no international LAN gaming events involving Q3CTF at all. I am sure there were some local happenings though. There were 7 French and 1 Belgian clans deciding who is the best. Due to organisation problems the final game was finished at half past six in the morning, IQS took the first place (due to my loud coaching, lol), DX took second. The admin of the game wasn't experienced in CTF enough, that was kind of amusing. And all demos were lost and never uploaded to any websites. What a shame :( .
And the prizes - it's a different story. firstly, it was never announced before LA6 what is going to be as a prize for CTF competition, and that was one of the factors that didn't let other international competitive clans to come. LA6 administration promised to send prizes by post mail to those who"d have to leave before the closing ceremony. But they were just given to me with the list of addresses where I should send them. Well played, gentlemen. Oh yes, the prizes were really disappointing - cheap graphics cards. As a coach I didn't get anything but the confusing explanation that LA6 don't have enough prizes.
Probably the most popular gaming website XSReality already started to pay some attention to CTF. As an example here is brilliant column made by oneg1n and some ineresting views on specific CTF aspects raised by Exodus. But in my opinion, this remarkable some time ago website has became average and doesn't reflect real Quake3 happenings properly. Too bad :( It was my favourite site not long time ago.
It may seem that interest to Quake3 is dying and moving to CounterStrike. There were columns, forum threads asking (but in my opinion, more stating) "Is Quake3 dead?!" I don't think it is dead. And I don't think that Quake in general is dead. Look, there are still people who are playing QuakeWorld, Quake2 online, they still enjoy their game, and their community is stronger than Q3 one (probably because it's smaller though).
Quake3 is not dead. And in my opinion, Capture The Flag is going to be one of the main reason for Quake staying alive. The interest to TDM/duelling is moving towards it. Top duelists/TDMers start to play this mod and they perform very well. Read this interview with UT-Buba (aka zero4) here. An old clan Warriors of the Realm (WR) is refreshed and ready to compete CTF at highest levels. Just look at the members list: contains (in alphabetical order): Aim, BoneCrusher, DOOMer, Ethereal, Juliet, Liech, Panicore & Whez!
Why Q3CTF and not CS? I personally never tried CounterStrike, but I doubt I will do it soon. I don't like the only fact that there are too many cheaters who play online. I can adopt and play CS on LANs with my friends. But! Only when I will lose my Quake3 addiction (oh well, will it ever happen?!) Talking about addiction to games, or should I say obsession? Here is very nice column written by Mr.E on XSR who shares his feelings about addiction to games. it'ss a "must-read" column for every gamer. I even printed it and gave to my colleagues who don't understand why do I spend my evenings playing online instead of going to pub.
NOW TV actually makes GREAT shows out of CTF matches of SplashDamage league and broadcasts them over the world via satellite. My clan takes part in this championship, and I enjoy giving online after-match interviews for these shows. These guys know what they are doing, and they do excellent job for entertainment and for Quake3 CTF community.
The BarrysWorld league is still considered as the main standard. If you see the question in IRC "what div are you in", it means "what division of BWCTFL is your clan in". EuroSavage is the first international league where different countries field their national teams to decide who is the best. That"s for European part.
In North America Challenge-US provides proper coverage of CAL(Cyberathlete Amateur League) Q3CTF championship. The main difference between European and American way of playing CTF is in forming teams - 4vs4 in NA and 5vs5 in Europe(rest of the world?). Having more players in team let Europeans rely more on teamplay than on personal skills. And yes, there"s also difference in map choice. It was a surprise that Americans play on q3ctf1 and q3ctf4. For majority of European CTFers these maps are more FFA-ish than CTF. But I think that"s just the matter of tastes.
OK, that wasn't a short read. To sum up, in my opinion Quake3 Capture The Flag is the way to go. It is fast, to win it requires decent teamplay in addition to personal skills. It is growing - more and more clans appear on Q3 CTF scene. Needless to say that CTF matches are more spectator friendly for people who never touched quake (please, check NOW TV shows). I hope that WorldCyberGames will continue and improve what they started at LA6 - bringing CTF to high level of competition (LAN competition with proper coverage and prizes). Who knows, maybe CPL will turn back to Quake and organise Q3CTF competitions as well.
