Quake 2 History || Old-School Clans || REViLLA Profile || REViLLA Quake Autobiography
The History of Quake 2 in the UK This is something I've wanted to put together for a long time. A record of everything I can remember about events, leagues and clans in UK Quake 2 since the beginning. There are very few sources of information like this on the net because most old clans' sites are wiped and old league sites like the UKCCL's are gone. A lot of this has come from memory, some from looking back over my own column updates, the rest from scouring the net for information. I have listed some useful sources of information at the end. Because of the lack of decent archived information available there could be some mistakes. Please tell me if you spot any or if there's anything major I've missed.
Bookmarks 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 Results Sources
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 zendog[moo] who ran the entire first season before leaving
the net. In that first season, the Battle mod still hadn't come
out so they had to use the CTF mod. In the second season, Alexander
Storch, aka {AbFab}Vincent, took over running the league with the
help of several dedicated admins. 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.
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.
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.
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.
Q2 History Part 5 : The Year 2002 January concluded the Jolt Season 1 Cup, which was won by CoG over Resistance. In February, XTC won the Savage Season 3 League title, beating WDB into second place. This month also saw the conclusion of the first NDML season, which was won by Sweden. They won all three legs of their final against Germany. The UK had reached the semis and were knocked out by Sweden, Finland being beaten by Germany in the other semi. WDB made up for their league defeat by winning the Savage Season 4 Cup in March, but then XTC continued with their winning ways to win Jolt Season 1 in June, the Season 2 Cup and then Season 2 League title in August! They also won the Savage Season 5 Cup in August. On the Savage side, three other clans took the honours, with CoG winning Season 4, REG winning a disrupted Season 5 and Dream* winning Season 6.
Q2 History Part 6: The Year 2003 2003 was the year of the Q2CDML, a league run by Q2 Central. XTC continued to dominate and won both of the two seasons 1 and 2. At the end of the year, a new Savage season was set to begin, but early in 2004 this was cancelled.
C = Cup, S = League Season. UKCCL : S1/2/3 (Unreal), S4 (NME), S5/6 (Unreal), S7/8/9/10/11 (Clan Stealth) Savage : C1 (CoG), C2 (CS), C3 (CoG), C4 (WDB), C5 (XTC) ; S1 (WDB), S2 (CoG), S3 (XTC), S4 (CoG), S5 (REG), S6 (Dream*). Q2CDML : S1 (XTC), S2 (XTC). Jolt : C1 (CoG), C2 (XTC), C3 (XTC); S1 (XTC), S2 (XTC), S3(XTC).
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. General coverage of recent league results from 2001 onwards can be found on Clan XTC's superb clan site.
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Contact Information - E-Mail: REViLLA, ICQ: 21345065 Site Created on 1 January 2000. All Content, Design and Graphics by REViLLA.
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