QuakeCon 2007
The first event of QuakeCon is the NVIDIA Kick-off. During this show/presentation people from the audience get a chance go on stage and pretty much make fun of themselves by doing crazy stuff for prizes. It is good ice breaker to get everyone in the right mood for the long and fun weekend.
Property of QuakeCon.org
An event that was started last year, Quick Draw, was once again the hit of QuakeCon 2007. During your registration you are given a card to fill out with; one half you keep that has a number assigned to it while the other half is kept by QuakeCon. All the cards that are collected are then placed into a barrel and pulled out, at random, at the assigned times. Each persons ticket that is drawn is given 5 minutes to appear on stage and if they do not show then another card is selected. Once both contestants are ready they compete in a 1v1 Death match in Quake 4 for fifteen minutes. The winner of the Quick Draw gets $1000.00 USD and the loser get a small gift for playing. This tournament is done 10 times over the course of the weekend. Some of the games are a bit one sided as an above average player maybe picked while the other person is a casual player of Quake 4. Even then the match can be quite fun to watch as the casual player starts a comeback and the crowd starts to get involved. What a great idea to be able to let the average LAN attendee feel the pressure of playing in a tournament and being able to walk away $1000.00 richer!
The biggest tournament this year was called Quad Damage and again a great idea. This placed all the tournament players in battles through-out all the Quake games. To advance you needed to have great skill in all the games and how they play. Each game has its own unique style and flow and you know how hard it is sometimes to adjust and get the feeling of a game after playing another one for an extended time. The final tournament is played before the whole QuakeCon group on the main stage with large screens that allow everyone to see how each player is doing. Cheers and jeers can be heard all during the match play. When one player was beating his opponent pretty badly in Quake 4, 21-2 or so, the crowd started to chant “SAW BLADE”. Apparently he must have heard them and switched to the weapon and a round of applauses came from the crowd. Each time he tired to kill his opponent and failed the crowd grunted out with “Ah’s and Oh’s”, but when he did finally achieved success the audience let out a collective “YEAH!” and stood up and clapped. Here is the list of winners.
QUAKE® Quad-Damage Tournament
- 1st Place: Johan “toxjq” Quick — $20,000
- 2nd Place: Magnus “fojjji” Olsson — $12,500
- 3rd Place: Timothy “DaHanG” Fogarty — $7,500
- 4th Place: Mikael “purri” Tarainen — $5,000
- 5th Place: Tim “naymlis” Bowes — $1,250
- 6th Place: Chance “EG/chance” Lacina — $1,250
- 7th Place: Rafik “LoSt-CaUsE” Bryant — $1,250
- 8th Place: Tom “griffin” Wall — $1,250
The other large tournament help over the weeked was the Enemy Territory: Quake Wars 6v6. The teams that won were….
Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars™ 6V6 Championship
- 1st Place: Team-Dignitas — $22,000
- 2nd Place: Team HOT — $16,000
- 3rd Place: Check-Six — $8,000
- 4th Place: DEMISE — $4,000
Check out this link to some videos of the finals at QuakeCon 2007
I am not sure where this fits into a PC LAN event, but Guitar Hero (Editors note: My son and I saw the debut of Guitar Heros at CES over 2 years ago and we both thought “Yeah right…FLOP!”.)had its own tourney with a pairs against pairs. At the finals each group played “Freebird” and after the second pair played and lost by 1% it was discovered that the system had not been calibrated. After doing so the tournament was played again with a new song to play along with and the winner easily beat the losers this time around.
