So as HammerTime 3 draws to a close, I thought I'd write up a mini-review of my season, whilst it is still quite fresh in my mind. These are just my own personal opinions based on a set of games I played, so don't get offended by anything I put here

I think most people would classify the Quakeworld community as being relatively conservative. The implication being that, in general, a significant number of players (or people in positions of power/influence) are resistant to change and seek to maintain the status quo. Gameplay, physics, maps, player aids etc – these are all topic that have caused much debate over the years.

I have come to the realisation lately, that I am probably one of the least successful Div1 players of all time. I’m using ‘Div1 player’ in the literal sense, to cover the times that I have played in Division 1 of whatever the premier 4on4 event has been (typically EQL or NQR, before then Smackdown and Villains which didn’t use divisions but were regarded as reasonably ‘elite’). I don’t know how many seasons I played in div1, but it would be pretty much every season until summer 2006, and then from January 2010 onwards. So, other players have undoubtedly played more seasons in div1 than I have. But have any been as spectacularly unsuccessful as I have? In all those years, I have never reached a semifinal that I can remember, never mind a final or god forbid, actually winning anything. There was some random Clanbase tourney I think Hyphen might have reached the semi, not sure, but it wasn’t the same calibre of competition as EQL/NQR. I did win every map we played in 4on4 at the only Swedish LAN I’ve been to (Reunion, back in 2003), but there were no elite clans in attendance. So the best finish I ever managed in a proper tournament was last season where TKS ranked 6th in EQL12.

Well following the infamous pingwhine debate in the recent TVS-Fusion semifinal game of EQL12 ( http://eql.quakeworld.nu/eql12/matches.php?id=253#Comments ), and subsequent criticism of the rules, I have decided to draft some prospective rules on server selection and pings. Please note that these rules are just that, a draft, and one that needs feedback from you, the community. There are some elements I am not particularly happy with, in particular the ‘65ms cap rule’, and it definitely needs some work in terms of addressing situations which I have not considered. Feel free to conjure up any kind of outlandish scenarios (in relation to pings) and lets work out the best way to handle those in terms of ensuring that they are covered in a ‘fair’ or at least ‘sensible’ way by the rules.

Finally, it should be noted that I don't have the authority to implement any rules, as I no longer hold an admin position in any 4on4 tournaments. The idea is formulate a suitable ruleset. incorporating feedback from the community as deemed appropriate, and suggest that tournaments adopt these rules as their disgression.

As usual, the announcement of a new EQL season has let to plenty of discussions both on this website and the servers with relation to the chosen rules. I thought I’d blog a bit about the history of QW TDM leagues as I’ve known them to perhaps give some background into the evolution of league rules. It is worth pointing out that I didn’t start playing QW online until late 1998 and so (unlike a couple of other people on this site) I do not have all the facts about some of the UK leagues I mention below. Hopefully the general impression I give will be accurate though! To those not interested in the UK leagues, scroll down, and hopefully you will find something of interest.

A couple of months ago my clanmates and I were discussing who we considered to be the top 4on4 players around. I thought it might be nice to come up with a list of who I consider to be the best in the business since I started playing foreign clans in 1999, together with a bit about what made them special at that particular time. This list is in no particular order (loosely timebased) and is purely based on my own personal view as to their prowess in 4on4 – other game modes are irrelevant. Finally, I stopped following the scene so closely for around 3 years from summer 2006 so my selections are mainly biased towards the 1999-2006 period.

Below is a blog that's been sat on my harddrive at work since 2007. I never got around to finishing it but thought it might be interesting for someto read, at least those that recognise some of the names herein! Of course, a lot of this was just my musings on how I remembered stuff, so I've probably told a few things a little different to how they actually went down. Bleh.

As a relative ‘veteran’ who has been commentating on QW since 2002, I was interested to see the recent drive to get some more people commentating on the upcoming EQL season. I think it’s important to hear some different viewpoints and in particular I feel the lower divisions have sometimes been overlooked in the past. Below are some general tips I would give to any aspiring commentator:

Some time ago, well, about 2 years ago I think I asked for blog access on this site. Until today I've never used it. I had in mind some big article talking about some of my History in Quakeworld, almost like my memoirs as it were - how I got started, fun games, sad games, clans I played in, memorable matches, changes in the scene etc. You know, the sort of fairly personal thing that would probably bore a lot of people, especially newcomers to the scene, but also bring back a few memories from people I've played with and against over the years. Due to personal circumstances I wasn't really playing any more and it seemed like a good time to write it. I started drafting a copy at work back in 2007 and it reached about 32k in size (rawtext) before I abandoned it half-finished. Purity would have been proud.

But this article isn't it.