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· Demise places 4th at Quakecon 2007, wins $4,000 · Roster and Tournament Updates On another note, the Quake IV hype has started within the community, and hasn't spared us: we currently have several members who recently upgraded their PC's, or are planning to, in order to be able to play Quake IV. Looks like dz might have a new game to compete in fairly soon. (The game's coming out in Mid-October!) · Doze places 2nd at Quakecon 2005, wins $7,000 Rather than post tidbits of information on various forums, I thought I would post a recap of the Quake 2 tournament (from my perspective) here on our website. I'll start by saying that I'm still surprised that we saw a large Quake 2 tournament in 2005. Quake 2 is really old, and the competitive scene has been pretty quiet for the past several years in the U.S. (although it has remained more active in Europe.) Overall, I'm very happy with how I played at the tournament - especially given my lack of preparation. I had a busy summer that was overrun with responsibilities, and before I knew it Quakecon was just a few days away. At 27 with new house, career, and a loving wife, I suspect my days of care-free gaming are probably over :) People informed me that some of the American Q2 players had been practicing hardcore for the event - especially Sinurgy (RedEye) and Mik3d. I knew that it was impossible to squeeze months of practice into 3 days. I would just have to jump in to the game with my relatively 'oldschool' Quake 2 playing style, rely on my LAN experience from other events, and hope for the best. My friend Purri flew in from Sweden a few days before the event to bootcamp at my place. He was the overwhelming favorite to win the event, and for good reason. But I figured we could help each other out. Without him, I wouldn't get any practice (which I needed desperately). Without me, he would be jetlagged at Quakecon, wouldn't have anywhere to stay, and wouldn't have any computer for the BYOC (I loaned him one.) Bootcamping with Purri was a humbling experience. After only a couple of hours, it became obvious to me that Quakecon was a competition for 2nd place. His style of play, movement, and aim were on a different level. Especially on DM1 (where playing style had evolved dramatically since I had last played) and match1 (where I had never played before), there was a huge gap between us. As my luck would have it, these were the two maps that we eventually dice-rolled when playing each other at Quakecon. :) We didn't play that many games at bootcamp - maybe 30'ish - but by the end, I was starting to get a little bit frustrated, even if I was improving. I knew that Purri was much better prepared and had top-tier talent, but I still wanted to maintain my confidence heading into the event. I had played a few sporadic online games against top newschool American players like naymlis, kris, riggs, sinurgy, dahang, etc. My style of play was outdated and my Quake 2 aim was still a bit loose, but I could tell I wasn't too far off par. Fortunately, after we arrived at Quakecon, a few hours in the BYOC confirmed my suspicions. I could beat anyone if I played my game, but nobody (including me) would beat Purri. Purri hadn't lost a game on LAN in 4 years, and Quakecon wasn't going to change that. It was indeed a competition for 2nd! As is typical at Quakecon, the tournament scheduling was a mess at the start, and everyone spent a fair amount of time waiting around. The lack of organization (and communication) led to a lot of early forfeits and no shows, but eventually they worked their way through some free-for-alls and posted the brackets. I didn't like what I saw, but had to admit that the QCON admins had done a fair job with seeds considering the minimal information available to them. Myself, Purri, and Mik3d were in one bracket. Riggs, Sinurgy, Kaitech, and Manipulator were in the other. Whoever got stuck with Purri in their bracket was obviously at a disadvantage, but he had to go somewhere, and it would have been equally unlucky for the other bracket. In hindsight, I'm happy the brackets worked out the way they did. I had to beat the other top 5 competitors in consecutive order to earn a seat in the finals. Nobody can look back and say I got a "lucky bracket." :) Some of the Q2 players expressed a bit of concern about the placement of the top Q3 players that had entered the tournament - guys like Daler, LosT Cause (Hi Rafik!), and Carnage (Hi Daniel!), etc. As I expected, none of them were especially dangerous or close to placing into the top 8. Carnage was the closest, losing 43-0 to Kaitech (who placed 7th/8th.) There's no doubt that a player like Daler has extraordinary natural talent, but talent can only carry you so far. I expect we would have seen similar scores if really oldschool q2 players like Thresh, Immortal, Shub, etc. had joined the fray. (Although it would have made for quite an interesting tournament!) My first decent competitor on LAN was LordLiquid. LL is a surprisingly strong player on LAN, but I built up a quick lead against him on ztn2dm3 (Rage) and never looked back. I could have played aggressively and made it into a more interesting game, but to Liquid's despair, I was content to take my lead and spend the second half of our match running away. Hey, this was for money, and I didn't want to do anything I'd regret. Next up was Purri. I figured it was time to head down to the loser's bracket, but figured I would give it my best shot. We couldn't agree on a map (I wanted ztn2 or ztn3, he didn't), so it went to a dice roll. DM1. Damnit! Within the first 35 seconds of the game, Mikael had 200/100, chaingun, and railgun. I knew from our bootcamp that I hadn't developed an effective strategy for taking control from him in this position (or on DM1 in general), and our match wasn't any different. Surprisingly, this game was the closest that anyone gave Purri at the event, which is a tribute to just how much he deserved 1st place. To be honest, even if I hard practiced painstakingly hard for this event for 6 months, I still wouldn't have beaten Purri on this map. There just aren't any "Purri equivalent" players to practice against in the U.S., and you're only as good as your best competition. Mik3d was going to be my first really tough game at Quakecon. Because we were both in the bracket with Purri, we knew from the start that our loser's bracket game would be decisive. Which one of us would get to play the money games? Rather than dice-roll for the map, we decided to take turns tossing out maps. I won the coin flip, and so Mike tossed first: ztn2dm2. I tossed out dm3. (He had practiced that map heavily.) He tossed out ztn2dm3. Now it was my choice - dm1 or match1? I didn't like my choices - I really wanted one of the ztn maps. I thought hard about dm1 and match1 for a minute. I knew my playing style on DM1 was outdated, and that he would probably have an advantage against me on that map. I had far less experience on match1...but so did he, I reasoned. The important thing wasnt my skill, but my skill relative to his. I picked match1. (Gulp). It was hard to pick my worst map for such a big game, but I had to do it. If someone was going to knock me out of Quakecon, they would have to earn it on something other than DM1. My heart was in my throat this whole game. I managed to build a 3-0 around by the midpoint of the game, before mik3d made a nice move where we both died and the score went to 4-1. He gained control, and quickly followed it up with another clutch kill to make it 4-2. I decided to wait it out and hope that he would make a mistake with the clock ticking away. I still had the lead, after all. Eventually he made an aggressive attack with railgun to try and take the score to 4-3. I was able to escape from the Mega room, steal the Red Armor, and regain control of the map. I got the break I needed. A few kills put the game away in the later minutes, and I went on to win 8-1. Whew. Next up was Sinurgy. Other than his first game against Rigg5, I felt that he hadn't played anyone tough. I lost the coin flip. I stuck to my philosophy and threw out DM1. He'd have to beat me somewhere else. He tossed out match1, figuring I had just beaten his clanmate there. I tossed out DM3 - forcing him to pick one of the ZTN maps - which is exactly what I wanted. I was confident on both ZTN2 and ZTN3, and was happy to play either. Eric tossed ZTN3, so off we went to play Killing Machine. This was an intense game. Eric got a quick spawn kill to start the game, and took both the Red Armor and Mega. I played conservative for several minutes after this; I wanted to avoid getting down by too much in such a key game. This was for 3rd place. 3rd gets $3000. 4th gets $0. I was putting a lot of pressure on myself, and my aim was shaky the whole game. My rail was off. But I was focused; I was stealing most of the Red Armors and I wasn't committing to any fight that I wasn't sure I could win. It was my style of game. When I eventually moved in and got a kill, I already had timing on most of the map and kept it pretty much locked down. My aim remained shaky, but my strat pulled me through and I went on to win 8-2. Eric was a tough competitor, and I hope he uses his LAN experience at Quakecon to try his hand at future events (Quake 4?) Ok, so time for Rigg5. Chad is something of an anomaly in Quake 2 - his playing style is completely unique. When you're playing against him, you can't help but wonder "is this guy a moron or a genius?" First he's facing sideways and running backwards. Then he's facing backwards, running sideways, and tossing grenades. He's very awkward to play against, and combined with his strong LAN aim and decent map control, it works. Having just won third place in my game against Sinurgy, I was much more comfortable going in against Rigg5. I was warmed up, the pressure was turned down, and I felt like I could take him on any map. There was still a lot on the line ($7,000 vs $3,000), but it didn't feel the same as $3,000 vs $0. I lost the coin flip again. Goodbye DM1. He threw out match1. This time I decided to toss out ZTN3, even though it was one of my best. Rigg5 is an aim dependent player, and I wanted to him to play me on a more strategic map. DM3 and ZTN2 would both fit that bill nicely. You can't aim your way through either of those maps like you can with ZTN3. You have to know what you're doing. Rigg5 picked ZTN2 (Killing Machine), and off we went. This was my strongest game of the tournament. Rigg5 made some educated shots and had a nice rail kill to earn the first frag and control. I decided to play it the same way as the Sinurgy game. No sense getting aggressive and giving him a big lead. I played conservative and spent 5 minutes stealing Red Armors, taking deliberate shots, and generally avoiding battles that would put me at a disadvantage. It was only 0-1. Eventually I made an attack on him at Mega Health and railed him as he tried to escape. I wasn't nearly as shaky this game, and I could tell my rail was back to normal...a huge benefit. I locked down the Red Armor, and spent the rest of the game pressuring him with rockets, rail, and chain. He never really regained control, and my strong rail (43%) was enough to keep him pinned down and frustrated. After a few spawn kills as the game wore down, the score ran up to 16-0 and I was on my way to play Purri (again) in the final. Again, Purri and I couldn't agree on a map. I wanted one of the ZTN maps and he didn't. We dice rolled. I figured I had a 40% chance of getting a map that I wanted (ztn2 or ztn3), and a 60% chance of getting something that I was willing to play (ztn2, ztn3, dm3.) It came up match1. Damnit! :) The truth is that it would have been seriously tough to beat Purri on any map, but at least I wanted to make a game of it in the finals up on the big stage. But it wasn't meant to be. Match1 it was. The game went as predicted, with Purri doing his thing. I played the game relatively carefree, just happy to be up on stage, listening to the crowd, with $7,000 in my pocket. There's nothing quite like sitting up on that Quakecon stage for a finals match. The picture just doesn't do it justice. It's a really awesome setup, and an experience that I'll never forget. The noise is the hardest thing to explain. It's sooooo loud - you hear everything your opponent is doing (speakers), everything you are doing (headphones), and an echo of everything you are doing (speakers)! The whole stage literally shakes every time a weapon is fired. I've been told that they provide high end noise-canceling headsets to the competitors at ESWC competitions - and now I understand why. Playing under those condition is outlandish. But it's good for the spectators, and it's still great fun. :) One of the highlights of my trip was speaking with Todd Hollenshead (CEO of iD software.) Even at events such as Quakecon, it's hard to get time with people like that - they have too many people demanding their time. Placing 2nd gave me an opportunity to talk to him for a few minutes prior to the awards ceremony. Then in the hallway afterwards, he came over to talk some more about the finals and about Quakecon. With everything he had going on, I really appreciated that he took the time to stop over and have a conversation. It was great meeting everyone who attended the event! Props to Purri, Sinurgy, Rigg5, Kaitech, Mik3d, Manipulator, LordLiquid, Lunatic, Sarge P Doom, and everyone else I'm forgetting. We had a good time, and contrary to online predictions, everyone seemed to get along just fine! I noticed that a couple of the "controversial" q2 players showed up briefly at the event - Krez and AcidRainn. Not sure why they didn't compete in the tournament, but everyone still seemed pretty laid back and there wasn't any trouble. :) I have a few final words while I'm on the topic of troublemakers :) I was disappointed to see a few members of the online community criticizing the play of Quakecon attendees. I suppose I should expect this kind of behavior by now - it happens with every major tournament, irrespective of the game. For the record, I have little respect for those people. It's really easy to sit on your ass, from the comfort of your home, criticizing the play of others and speculating about how you (or Joe Schmoe competitor that didn't show up) would have done at a tournament . Its levels of magnitude tougher to put your money where your mouth is, travel across the country, and play on unfamiliar tournament PCs with thousands of dollars on the line.
· Quakecon 2005 Announces Quake 2 1v1 Tournament
· Waiting for our next game
· Demise returns to Halo! We look forward to spending the next few weeks working out our Halo rustyness and competing again within the community. Feel free to msg us in #dz on irc.enterthegame.com for scrims! We would like to thank our new sponsor, Xeno-Technologies, for providing us with a very fast central Halo server - check it out at dfw.teamdemise.com.
·CPL Announces $50,000 UT2004 TDM Tournament The Cyberathlete Professional League announced last week they would be holding a $50,000 Unreal 2004 TDM Tournament at their upcoming Summer Event! Actually, it wasn't quite that straightforward. CPL first announced a $50,000 UT2004 Onslaught Tournament, with registrations scheduled to start the following morning. However within less than 12 hours of opening the registrations, they cancelled the Onslaught tournament in favor of Team Deathmatch. Since we've been exclusively practicing Onslaught over the past several months (i.e. completely ignoring TDM), we were a bit unhappy with the change. There were a variety of complaints about Onslaught that led to the change - primarily from European teams where team deathmatch is more active, but also from American teams that insisted Demise and Kaizen had too great of an advantage over the rest of the competition. We believe that Onslaught has more long-term potential than TDM, and that switching the tournament was the wrong move for CPL and the UT community. As far as our preparation goes, ultimately we were responsible for our decision to exclusively practice Onslaught and ignore TDM. We guessed that if a major UT2004 tournament were to happen, that it would be Onslaught. We guessed wrong. It happens. Now on to the good news! Despite the change to team deathmatch, Team Demise is still grateful that CPL has decided to use UT2004 at their summer event, and we are registered to attend! We are currently ironing out our roster issues, and we've started playing some TDM. We expect to catch up to the rest of the American TDM teams fairly quickly by relying on our prior TDM experience with Unreal 2003. Earlier today the CPL announced the official rules for the UT Tournament. We were surprised to see that CPL has decided to use the outstanding UTComp professional competition mutator, programmed by our very own dz.Lotus. UTComp is available at: http://www.teamdemise.com/utcomp/
· Unreal Tournament 2004 Comments Unreal Tournament 2004 was released a few weeks ago. Since then, Team Demise has been playing the game casually by competing in a few (somewhat newbified) online leagues and ladders, and scrimming once in a while. The attention we've given the game so far has been mostly focused on Onslaught (which is by far the most popular mod according to Gamespy Stats.) Overall we have positive opinions of the game, although most of us feel that it could use a couple of tweaks: * Vehicles can be destroyed by friendly fire even when FF=off Friendlyfire=off settings are widespread on Internet primarily due to public servers where teamkilling runs rampant otherwise, and from uneducated teams that dislike the 'random' vehicle teamkills. At any rate, FF=off in Onslaught makes it far too risky for a player to abandon his own vehicle. An ability for that player to destroy his own vehicle would allow players to more actively engage in ground fights without the risk of permanent vehicle loss. The latter tweak is the more important of the two. In a match between two experienced teams, the outcome of an Onslaught game is generally decided within the first 90 seconds. However, most leagues are using goalscore=1 and timelimit=20. Obviously this configuration promotes less exciting rounds than are possible. Given that games are decided within the first couple of minutes, it makes sense to drop the timelimit of each round to an appropriate level (5 or 10 minutes), and then increase the number of rounds. That aside, I've got to say publicly that we are very dissapointed with the state of the "organized" Unreal community. In most communities, teams are encouraged and excited to play against better opponents. They use the opportunity to analyze their weaknesses, improve their game, and hang out with talented players. But not the UT community. I can't help but laugh and scowl when a half dozen teams are spamming for Onslaught scrims, and none of them will play us. Goddamn people, grow some balls already. In other news, CombatCarl has decided to part ways with us to join up with our friends and rivals in Team Kaizen. Kaizen has a diverse team that plays CTF and TDM in addition on ONS, and we hope that Sean enjoys playing for them in the additional mods he was looking for. NOTE: while this move brings our roster down to only 7 semi-active players, we are not recruiting at this time. Contrary to popular opinion, Sean leaving did not "free up a spot." :)
· Unreal Tournament 2004 Demo Impressions Unreal Tournament 2004 Demo was released last week to a swarm of anxious FPS fans. Demise was among the teams who were downloading the moment it was released, and helped knock the mightly FileShack offline by the heavy bandwidth demands. Our first impressions of UT2004 (especially the new Onslaught mode) are very positive! Excellent implementation of vehicles, well balanced, fun gameplay, solid netcode, good performance. And it's only a beta! Very impressive release - we can't wait for the full game and some new Onslaught maps! There is already a push from the competitive community for the CPL to include UT2004 in their Summer CPL Event, with forum threads on the topic here and another started by CPL President Angel Munoz himself here. The CPL had officially announced a $50,000 UT2004 Tournament earlier in the year here, but then later announced new Call of Duty and BF1942 tournaments excluding UT2004 here. Let's cross our fingers and hope they come through. Additionally, Team Demise is signed up to compete in the upcoming IGL League UT2004 Onslaught tournament. 32 teams have registered for this single elimination tournament, including notables such as Demise, Kaizen, HEL, Horizon, Xeno, Clan |9|, DarkSide, and *69, among others. The winning team receives a free hosted ILAN UT2004 server. Best of luck to everyone involved, and thanks to IGL for stepping up so early and running the first official Onslaught tournament!
· Lotus Places 2nd at CXG, CPL Video Released Congratulations to dz.Lotus for placing 2nd and winning a cool $5,000 at CyberXGames in Las Vegas in the 1v1 UT2K3 Tournament. Aaron tore through the Winner Bracket of the competition before ultimately losing twice in the Championship Finals to the Dutch powerhouse Lauke. In other news, a professional video has been released of the Halo Championship Finals match between Team Demise and clan [xeno] from the recent Winter CPL 2003 event. Feel free to download and enjoy!
· Minor Webpage Updates Results from our CAL and CPL Halo PC matches were added to the Tourneys Page, as well as the respective accomplishments sections in the roster page for the players involved. We've also recently registered a IRC channel on the Gamesnet IRC network, to complement our main EnterTheGame channel. Both channels are #dz on their respective networks.
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Demise Places 2nd at Winter CPL 2003 Team Demise finished in 2nd Place at the recent Winter CPL 2003 Event in Dallas! You can click here to see our team holding an oversized check, or here to see various pictures taken at the event. Our team had a great time together at the Winter CPL Event; It was fun meeting (and competing against) the best Halo teams in the world, and we made many new friends while we were there. (A big hello to TAU, Wat, [xeno], and d|c!) After Demise knocked team [xeno] into the losers bracket in their semi final matchup, [xeno] fought their way back through a difficult string of teams and ultimately took us down in the championship finals on their strongest map: Blood Gulch. Ironically, if someone would have asked us before the tournament of the single match we'd least want to play at the event - we probably would have responded "We don't want to play team [xeno] on Blood Gulch." Funny how things work out :) In the end, Halo was a fun experiment for our team and we did a reasonably good job competing in a game that didn't fit our style. (Hardcore TDM players driving vehicles and hiding behind rocks - who would have thought it was possible?!?) We're now impatiently awaiting the release of UT2K4, and you can expect to see us again at Summer CPL 2004 competing in a game we inherently love to play! (Let's just hope CPL chooses a UT2K4 teamplay mode!) Thanks again to all the players and teams that supported us at Winter CPL, and best of luck to all of the Halo teams that continue competing in the game.
· November
Demise Updates A few updates this month. We're continuing our path to Winter
CPL, practicing regularly and winning our CAL
matches to bring our current record to 6-0. We were happy to
discover that the CPL-Assault mod would not be completed in time
for the event, since our team (and
the community as a whole) agree that it will ruin Assault. On the flip side, Carnage has left Demise to pursue opportunities
with team Wat. Daniel is a talented player, and we wish him the
best of luck!
· October
Demise Updates In the most exciting news of the month, dnx3 kicked ass at WCG
in Korea, finishing out in the
Top 8! In the process, he took out the american smack-talker
k|infinite (dz > k), while his single elimination loss came at
the hands of ForresT, who went on to win the competition. Nice work
Joel!
· dnx3
wins WCG Canada! Joel aka dnx3 took the #1 spot at the WCG Canadian UT2K3 1v1 qualifier
last week, earning himself an expense paid trip to compete against
the world's best in Korea this month! Hell yeah! Drop by #dz on
irc.enterthegame.com to
wish him congratulations and good luck at WCG
Korea!
· Demise
Updates We have a flurry of exciting Demise news to report this week! First
off, we'd like to extend a warm welcome to our newest member, Aaron
aka "Lotus." Lotus is an extremely talented and well known
player in the UT2K3 community, especially resulting from his illustrious
1v1 career. He will now change gears and contribute to our upcoming
Halo CTF
squad (although you might see him slip into the future UT2K4
squad as well... :) Drop by #dz on IRC and give dz.Lotus a warm
welcome :)
· Leaked
Halo Beta Many people have noticed that there is a leaked copy of Halo (beta
1.5) floating around the Internet. People have already figured out
that they can play the multiplayer portion online (halo.exe -connect
x.x.x.x). Pickup games are already being found in #haloctfpickup
on ETG.
· WCG
and Halo News Here's a few obligatory lines of information to keep our website updated with dz news. Most recently, Demise members Vai and CombatCarl fought their way to spots at the U.S. WCG Qualifiers held in LA. They both played very well, respectively finishing 3rd and 5th amongst a very tough field of competition! Way to represent dz guys! This upcoming month we'll see Canadian Demise members dnx3 and unity compete at the WCG Canada Qualifier for spots in Korea. Everyone wish them the best of luck! Lastly, team Demise is eagerly anticipating the arrival of Halo
PC, and is making arrangements to compete at CPL Winter 2003.
· New Website Design As you can see we have a beautiful new website design! This site is the result of efforts from a variety of people including myself, cK-Shaftian (graphics), vashavoc[Mage] (html), and Crotius (backend coding). Any comments, drop by on IRC and let us know what you think!
· dz.Vai receives haircut We are pleased to annouce that our very own dz.Vai has received his first ever HAIRCUT. We're all proud of you bro - we knew you could do it!!!
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