Modders-Inc has made the journey for the second time to QuakeCon. This year we will be not be at booth with our mods. This is a plus and a minus as it will allow us to travel throughout the event more than last year, but it will not give us as much exposure we had in 2006. Because we run a website we are able to obtain the privilege of Press Passes. One of the advantages of having a press pass is that you pretty much have access to everything before others. Tazz and I were able to walk past the large line of people waiting in the BYOC line and walk into the large hall that will become home for a few thousand people for the next couple of days. As we enter the empty BYOC the first words out of my mouth was "WOW". Seeing the large hall with rows and rows of tables, from the very front all the way to the back wall, gave me an eerie and surreal feeling. Kind one of like a scene from a movie where a hallway run appears to run into infinity. Though out the halls, members of the volunteer team for the QaukeCon event are gathering in their respective areas. Responsibilities and battle plans are probably being worked on with a bit of calm chatter before the long line of gamers will be unleashed. I thank theses people for taking on the challenge to make the event run smoothly and kept under control and all done for maybe a few pizza’s or a special prize here and there. A stage has been erected in front of the tournament area that I do not know what will be held here at this time. I am guessing it will have something to with the Quake tourneys. A good size area has been put aside just for the tournament players to battle. Each gamer gets plenty of room and a PCthat is identical to all the others within the tournament section. Intel, Cooler Master, NVIDIA and Logitech have donated all the items needed for all the PCs. More of the staff getting stuff ready to go Lastly the most important member of the QuakeCon event...the generators 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. Modders-Inc Give-Away Winners QuakeCon Girls BAWLS Chugging Contest Modders-Inc T-Shirt/Prize Give-Away
