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September to November 2002 Archive

26 November 2002 - Autumn Clean

I've just been through the links, demos and movies to tidy the links up. There shouldn't be any dead links anymore. Unfortunately, almost all the movie links were dead, but I've left the names of the files at least :(.

I've been playing RA2 whenever I'm online and I still really enjoy it because the games are always good-natured. There are one or two grumpy gets on there sometimes though :). Not sure what's happened to FFA. There doesn't seem to be a single busy server now. I always hated Claranet because the ping was bad and there were cheats on all the time, but at least you were guaranteed a game. Now it's gone I don't know where to go instead :). Anyway, I'll stick with RA2, because it's more skillful.

6 October 2002 - Resistance is Futile

I've received some good feedback on my Quake 2 history so far, glad that people have enjoyed reading it! Anyway, just to say that I've uploaded a new demo provided by Rob* of a friendly match between Resistance and the Swedish national squad, which is well worth a look.

27 September 2002 - History Page

I have now collated the previous updates and added some information on 2002 to create a single History Page, which can be accessed from the main menu. It's a complete history of Quake 2 in the UK from 1998 to the present day. Please read it if you haven't already and give me any feedback/corrections if you like.

13 September 2002 - A Quake Odyssey

Q2 History Part 4 : The Year 2001

2001 couldn't have started in a worse manner. In mid-January the UKCCL folded. This meant the end of the longest running DM league. It also dropped Savage CTF in problems as they had been using UKCCL servers. At the same time, Barrysworld announced its liquidation. It appeared that the only league left was the Wireplay league, which had never had the mainstream popularity of either the UKCCL or Barrys leagues. However, Savage saw the opportunity to get involved in the DM scene and announced its own league the day after the UKCCL died. Barrysworld didn't fold of course, it was rescued by Electronics Boutique in February, but its league wasn't resurrected.

The new league was slow to start, however. Netgames took over the supply of servers to Savage and at the beginning of March, the Children of Gaia were the first ever winners of the Savage DM Cup. It should perhaps be mentioned that CS had temporarily disbanded and half of its members had joined CoG. The first league then started and ended at the beginning of May. Whiskey Drinking Bitches were the first Division 1 winners. A clan that would come to the fore later, XTC, won Division 2.

In the second Savage Cup a re-formed CS defeated CoG quite heavily in the final. However, CoG went on to win the second season, XTC finishing in second. July saw the introduction of a new international RA2 league, the RA2 Champions League. England fared very well, but Sweden beat them into second place in October after some very competitive games. August saw the introduction of a great new demo site, XTC's Demo Central, which would become the new home of Quake 2 demos.

Another new feature of the the UK scene that deserves mention is the increasing number of European players in the competing clans. The old UKCCL had strict 1 Euro limits but the new leagues abandoned these. With improved connections it was easier to play abroad and some UK players even joined overseas clans. However, the flow was mainly in the UK's direction. XTC, for example, recruited a number of Sweden players, including the great purri. WDB recruited several German players and so completely reshaped itself. The old dominant force of Quake 2, CS, merged with Dutch/German clan ALS to form Resistance. This is not a trend that should be lamented, however, since it brought new skills and playing methods and made the scene far more competitive and exciting.

A new international DM league, the Nations Deatmatch League was created by Adam in August. This was a league for European national teams and would be far more successful than the short-lived NSL from the previous year. 18 European teams signed up for the league but the NDML began with some All-Star games between Scandinavia and the rest of Europe in October to get things warmed up. Also in October, CoG won their second Savage Cup against another old-school clan, N3D.

At the end of the year, Jolt launches a league of its own, the Cup for which began in late December. Division 1 clans in this new league were CoG, XTC, WDB, SC, Dream, PK, REG and N3D. So in one year the two main league players had changed from the UKCCL and Barrys to Savage and Jolt, there was a new active European league and Quake 2 looked far healthier than it had twelve months earlier.

10 September 2002 - An Apple, An Orange, And A Clip Round the Ear

Q2 History Part 3 : The Year 2000

Suicide Squad were the oldest surving clan in the UKCCL and had been in Division 1 since the beginning. Despite coming close on several occasions they had never won anything but this was to change in their swansong match in January. MKC had defeated CS in the Semi-Final and went up against SS in the Final. SS defeated MKC convincingly and took the Season 7 Free Cup. They then retired from the Q2 scene, like so many other old-school clans had done just before Christmas.

It seemed at the time that Quake 2 didn't have much longer left, but there was life in the old dog yet and many clans remained in the UKCCL. Furthermore, many players found that Quake 3 was too much for both their connections and their computers and returned to Quake 2 to join the remaining clans. It became difficult to judge many of the old clans because of this. Division 1 clans at this time included PK, HIV, PB, =Mr=, Rv, and CS. Clan Stealth was the only remaining top clan and they would continue to dominate the scene throughout the year, winning every major league and cup match in which they participated, including all four remaining seasons of the UKCCL, 8 to 11.

June saw a major change to the UKCCL. Since the beginning there had always been a Mixed format, with a limit of two LPBs (and only one Euro). As the cost of Broadband/ISDN had become more reasonable, there were increasing numbers of LPB's and teams were struggling to field modemers. This lead to the creation of a separate Free League, which all the top clans were keen to join.

But that wasn't the only change. 2000 was the year that the UKCCL went commercial. Suddenly, the site was relaunched, you needed a login and the UKCCL had its own dialup. They had always used Barrysworld servers in the past, but now they had their own dedicated servers. Some players begrudged having to dial-in to the UKCCL for a decent connection, but I think the majority realised that the free lunch had to end and that all the hard work put in by Alex Storch (aka {AbFab}Vincent) and the admins needs some kind of monetary reward. Unfortunately, the venture wasn't a great success. The league became less and less well run, with fewer updates and rarely updated tables. Games themselves took place on time, with admins and on reasonable servers, but the lack of tables meant no clan knew where they were and it was quite demoralising. There was a sense at this stage that the UKCCL could be coming to an end.

The North Sea League was a new venture towards the end of 2000, a European league in which national teams would participate at both DM and CTF. A new UK team was needed and so, similar to 1999, trials were held once again to select the team. The eventual team was pretty much dominated by Clan Stealth, whose leader was also the UK captain incidentally, but it was a pretty fair selection of CS/FED players. The final squad was Rob*, Tres, Adam, Fuze, Puppetmaster, Jecks, Hell and Liquid.

September also saw the creation of a new clan to rival CS. It was called Acura and was basically a CS/FED amalgam, led by ex- FED^Adam. Many had played together in the UK DM Squad so this was presumably the catalyst. In December, the clans finally went head-to-head in the UKCCL's final season, number 11, and Acura beat CS in the Cup Final in a couple of very close games. The clan was short-lived, however, as many such clans are, and folded soon after.

The end of October was a sad day for FFA'ers, the removal of the Minos server from Barrysworld. The Minos server had been run on Barrysworld since the beginning. It was weapon stay with a 50-frag limit and generally the top players would play on there so it was always the best game you could find. There's never been a server since to match it in my opinion.

In November, Barrysworld launched a league of its own to compete with the UKCCL. It was well run and benefited from the excellent servers that Barrysworld had to offer. However, by the end of the year both the Barrysworld and UKCCL leagues had collapsed and UK Quake 2 looked in a terrible state.

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