<<< || Archive Menu || >>>

August 2002 Archive

17 August 2002 - Party Like It's 1999

Q2 History Part 2 : The Year 1999

The UKCCL had grown to such an extent, with such a huge number of lower divisions, that it could take a good team a long time to find its way to its rightful position in the league. This left the way open for a new league to be formed in January, the UKQ2A, which was run by [CFH]Comatosed, and which a good number of clans joined.

In April, the best Wireplay clan, HooD, finally went up against the best from the Net, Unreal, in the Season 5 UKCCL Free Cup Semi-Finals. This is possibly the most famous UK match ever and HooD managed to claw back a win from nothing to shock the entire Net community. They then went up against FED in the Final and were beaten. This particular Cup was probably the finest hour for both HooD and FED.

Unreal followed up on their impressive run of victories in 1998 by winning both the fifth and six seasons of the UKCCL before quitting Quake 2 to devote themselves to Quake 3 by October. Clan Stealth were a very strong clan throughout 1999 and by the end of the year they had reached Division 1 and taken the crown to win the seventh and final season of the year. Since Unreal had left, Clan Stealth never went up against them, nor did FED reach Division 1 to contest the title, their leader having been banned from the UKCCL before they could get there. So, sadly, the chance to see a great season with the three major contenders CS, FED and Unreal never came.

The world of Savage CTF got exciting in 1999 with the great bYc, Blooded Yautja Clan, dominating the scene for the first half of the year. With legendary players like Sandman, Che and Hive, they won seasons 5 and 6 in style, keeping NKVD and Unreal in the second and third spots. By the end of the year though their domination began to fade and a new clan had risen to the summit. HC, the Happy Campers, claimed the 7th title and then the 8th, which concluded in 2000. By the end of the year, bYc had folded and Unreal had retired to play Quake 3. The top clans now were HC, BBC and LE.

In Spring 1999 Rocket Arena 2 really took off as a popular mod and Voo formed a league on Barrysworld, later to be run long-term by GSi*The Fixer. Many clans were RA2 specific, such as RGS, GSi and 33, but several crossed over from other mods including FED, CoG, DOS, HooD and bYc. The early seasons were dominated by great RA2 clan RGS, Railgunsuckaz.

1999 was a brilliant year for international tournaments. In February, the UK got the chance to compete against the best Scandinavian clans in the Euroquake competition held at London's Playing Fields. Unreal, Clan9, 7th Chapter, Paw and Memento Mori took part and Unreal didn't embarrass themselves, even though the great Memento Mori won the tournament very easily in the end, defeating 7th in the final. Memento Mori was a collection of great individual players who had perfected the art of dominating The Edge. They would typically win with scorelines of 200 to 20 even against good clans. This was aided by having legends like Shub and Scion, probably the greatest ever railers, along with oWo and Dark. There was also a duel competition featuring players like [UNR]Luke, FED^Bl0key, [EED]Billox and icespirit, who was the eventual winner and got to play Shub^nigga in an exhibition match.

In July, the European Duel League finals were held in Stockholm, Sweden, in which [UNR]Luke represented the UK. Similar to Quakadelica, the prize was a match against great US dueller, Makaveli. Shub was the eventual tournament winner with Blue as runner-up.

Finally, in November there was a LAN Arena 3 competition in Paris between the UK and France. This was easily the most exciting time in UK Quake 2 and it came just before the game was to be decimated by the launch of Quake 3. The UK team had to be decided and the only fair way was by means of a number of teamplay trials. These were great matches to watch because all the best players of the day turned out. It was also helpful to have some pretty unbiased judges on the selection panel such as rauper and team coach, The Lurker. The eventual 10-man team was [EED]Billox, [UNR]Blokey, [SS]Drugz, [UNR]Luke, [CoG]Mist, [Rv]Nimrod, [CFH]Shigeru, [HooD]Stormkeep, [UNR]Tasan, [Rv]Vorvavoo. The players who actually got on the train to Paris were Blokey, Luke, Shigeru and Billox. The UK won the competition in impressive style, beating the French in all five matches.

In late 1999, Quake 3 was released and many clans made the immediate switch. These included CFH, NME, Unreal and HooD and several others. At the time it seemed like Quake 2 didn't have long left but there was life in the old dog yet because Quake 3 wasn't quite the perfect game everyone had expected and many players returned to Quake 2 in 2000, joining and reshaping many former middle division standard clans.

Another development in late 1999 was the creation of the OGL, the Online Gamers Association. This grew out of Quake and other gaming competitions beginning to offer large prizes to clans and players and the growing corporate interest in sponsoring such events. It was felt that an independent organisation was needed to help shape the development of the game as a professional sport, and to provide a forum for discussion and a worldwide database of players to try to reduce aliasing. Quake 3 certainly did become a profession for a select few who could earn tens of thousands of pounds, but the game never found the mainstream popularity anticipated by the OGL, and it eventually shut down.

Part 3 will cover the Year 2000.

Further Information :

Some superb coverage of the LAN Arena 3 competition was provided by Gestalt's Eurogamer site, which is still available.

For more information on the early CTF seasons check out GreyJackel's excellent Savage Archive, which has provided all the info for the first two updates.

Many of the Euroquake demos are already available on my site and others, but for the original page including interviews with MM and Clan 9, see the Planetquake Euroquake Archive.

4 August 2002 - Them were the days

For a while now I've been thinking of writing down everything I can remember and find out about the early days of UK Quake 2. Not because the early days were better but just because there's no longer any decent record of the exploits of some of the great early clans. The old UKCCL site has gone, along with many other old sites like quake2.co.uk. Most old clans have died and their sites have been removed. Those clans that still exist have replaced them. There are very few places to go for history. Hats off to Savage though, who have an amazingly detailed record of the early seasons. I would also like to record some history for myself because it's slipping away and, who knows, maybe I might want to look back one day.

So, the problem is, how do you go about writing the full early history of Quake 2 when there's practically nothing on the net to help you? With difficulty, and the only way I can do it is to just write from memory. There could well be some mistakes and if people want to correct me that's fine, I'll make the necessary changes as long as they aren't too pedantic ;). I'm going to write the pieces as column updates and then compile them into a larger document later on. I'll start by giving rundowns of the years 1998 to 2000 and then go on to talk about individual clans in future installments. It will be completely UK focused and mainly centre on the DM scene since I never participated in the Savage CTF league unfortunately. Here goes, and once again, if I make gross mistakes then tell me, because my memory's a bit rusty to be honest.

Q2 History Part 1 : The Year 1998

Quake 2 was launched in time for Christmas in December 1997. Many players had already been playing since the test was released and some, like Suicide Squad, were already formed into clans. Some Quakeworld players were also interested in the new game and made the crossover pretty early on. Quake 2 was a very different game to Quakeworld, though, and it was considered far too slow by many and so the majority of Quakeworlders shunned the game altogether. That meant that the majority of the early players were new to Quake and it was a pretty even playing field.

It didn't take long for the first organised league to spring up once the game was finally released to the public. The first league was the UKCCL (UK Clan Carnage League), which was launched and run by Alexander Storch, aka {AbFab}Vincent, with the help of several dedicated admins.

Initially, there were only two divisions but the league quickly grew to become the largest league in the world with over 100 competing clans. Early clans included Unreal (UNR), The Enemy (NME), Absolutely Fabulous (AbFab), The Justice Department (TJD), Sanguinous (sAn), The Suicide Squad (SS), Cowboys from Hell (CFH), and many others. The very first season featured UNR, QUTA, SK, SS,TJD, LL, UKF and QTB and was won by Unreal. Unreal went on to dominate the early seasons of the league and won the first three seasons in a row. NME managed to beat Unreal in the fourth season, and so broke Unreal's unbeaten run in the final season of 1998.

In 1998, there were actually two very distinct and separate scenes. For many people, Wireplay was their first introduction to online gaming. You would pay Wireplay for your time online and have direct access to their private servers using easy-to-use software. Non-Wireplay users couldn't get on the servers. So on the one hand, you had a very loyal Wireplay community and on the other hand the Net community. The Net community was centred around the UKCCL, whilst the Wireplay community had their own leagues with competing clans such as HooD, Revenge, Children of Gaia, Z, ROK, SEX and MKC.

Savage was the centre of the CTF scene, which was just as competitive as Team Deathmatch. The first season began in May 1998 and featured just eight clans, AbFab, UKF, TJD, TSCC, RSC, APO, CGS and LNM with Absolutely Fabulous being the eventual champions. For Season 2 the league expanded into three divisions and Unreal joined in division 3 along with the bYc, both of whom would eventually rise to the summit of the competition. It also saw the creation of one of the first super clans, KING, which took the second Division 1 title in an unbeaten run. Like many such clans however, they were short lived and were replaced in Division 1 by Unreal for Season 3. Unreal won following this promotion and were the only clan to ever "do the double" and hold both the DM and CTF titles at the same time. Upsetchaps took the fourth title, beating Unreal into second. This fourth season was the last one of 1998 and by this time the Savage CTF league had grown to five divisions of eight clans.

In October 1998 there was an international LAN tournament at the Playing Fields in London. It was called Quakeadelica and it was intended to pit the best player of the US against the best in the UK. The star from America was the all-conquering Thresh. Thresh had an unbeaten record and played with a ruthless determination and never lost his head. The American duel scene was far more advanced than in the UK, and they had gained a lot of experience in the PGL (Professional Gamers League), which offered large cash prizes to the winners. Thresh had won this and had also been a famous dueller in Quakeworld, winning John Carmack's spare Ferrari in one tournament.

Duelling in the UK was strong with some top duellers like [UNR]Luke and [FED]Maskaler. However, these players and many other top duellers didn't bother to enter the tournament. This was perhaps due to the event being organised by Wireplay. And during the tournament there were some questionable selection methods involving FFA deciders so that, Billox, a relatively inexperienced dueller, won the competition and the prize of going up against the greatest dueller the world has ever seen. The resulting match is famous and Thresh is merciless in his destruction of Billox with a final score of 56 to -1. Both players were names on both sides of the Atlantic, but Billox did live down the humiliation eventually and became one of the UK's best players.

Part 2 will cover the Year 1999.

3 August 2002 - Those eyes in the mirror

A good first line for a novel perhaps? Bit cheesy maybe. Would love to write a book one day, but I probably haven't been through enough hardship in life to write anything from the soul :). Like today for example. It's mostly just been a relaxing sprawl about :). Managed to catch a (or should I say "the") whole hour of sun at lunch. Crawled out of bed at about twelve and sunbathed till it disappeared. Nice while it lasted. They say only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun, but there's really no option when it's as rare as it is at the moment :). And it's raining now.

Anyway, I've made a couple of updates, including a link to an excellent recam by Sinner, and there's a new clan at the top of my Clan Sites Chart. Ooo! ;).

Contact Information - E-Mail: REViLLA, ICQ: 21345065

Site Created on 1 January 2000. All Content, Design and Graphics by REViLLA.