http://www.na-quakeworld.com/index.php?l=2

Unless you live in North America, they won't accept your registration and even won't accept your registration to their website.

I don't know about anyone else but I find this really lame. Ownage, Duelmania, Ignition, EQL and BesMella mini-Tournies are all open to everyone, but not the North American Tournies?

I personally ping under 100ms (90ms) to the NA.QW and QuakePhil servers in New York. Both servers have anti-lag and with 90ms I find this 100% playable and I am happy to play all my games in NA, happy for no ping-ups to be used and happy to play in any of the 3 divisions they are planning on running

This isn't the first time that these people in NA have denied non-NA people from tournies either. The 4on4 draft league that finished last night, I signed up for it, never heard anything back, but just wasn't included in any of the teams... I only found out I wasn't included by discovering the tourney had already begun.

What gives NA?

Seems like you just didn't hear about that kind of tourneys before.
I personally took part in most of rqwl seasons. I think there were 15 of them.
It is Russian QuakeWorld League. And guess what? Only Russians (actually players from ex-USSR) played in it.
Maybe one 2on2 season was open for eu players.

That kind of tournament usually aimed to increase activity of local small community.

About the ping. If only NA players will be in the league, players like Sane, Serp or me will play all games with 40-50ms pings.
If EU players signed up, we will be forced to play with 90-120ms most of our games. Yes, USA is big and I have 100-120ms on all NY servers.

And how many of Europe players love to play tournament games on 7-8am?

I think organizers trying to make the tournament as enjoyable for NA players as possible. Low pings, ppl who are actually spend a lot of time on irc and mumble.

And if you really want to in, you can talk with admins; say that you are early bird, have a lot of free time in the morning and that you even agree to play on Dallas servers and I am sure, you will play in it.

At least it is much better to speak with them rather than to post it here.

good point.. I live in Western Canada and its kind of annoying having to play on the east coast to please european players in worldwide events.. and then they end up OUTPINGING me in my own CONTINENT ahaha

Besides Europe is where Quake thrives, you guys have enough stuff to play in don't you? =)

Actually it could work both ways.
You can play in tournament like Duelmania and your opponents will be forced to play in UK or even in NY.

I just think that it is acceptable when you have like 3-4 US players in 64/128 players bracket tournament.
But in that case it could be opposite. Right now it is just 3 US players in PRO div...

Dirtbox,

I spoke with you on IRC about this earlier and must say I find it pretty ridculous that you are .spam'ing this all over IRC. After receiving both an email and IRC message from you containing the same information, I gave you a polite response stating among other things:

"(Rusty`) i got your email, at this point i believe we will be keeping it NA only to keep it local to the guys we play with day and night"

I went on to tell you that if the divisions didn't fill out and we had some extra spaces that I would shoot you a message, I even finished it off with a " ", clearly what works on my girlfriend doesn't work for you, my apologies.

With regards to our scene here in North America, after countless years of no organization and a player base consisting of, oh say, 10 (excluding when it all but died this April); we have finally managed to bring back some old players, obtain reliable servers, and hold a successful organized draft league in an attempt revive OUR NA Quakeworld scene to a level of sustenance.

Let me put into perspective for you and others that might be unaware of how slim out scene is over here:

How many teams actively compete in EQL this year? 25+?

For the draft league, this time around we managed to field 6 teams, all having 4-5 active players, one of the teams (7th) was disbanded due to inactivity. To us, being able to get 24-30 people together, play out a round robin season, a 4 team playoff series and actually complete all of it is absolutely outstanding. Remember those are DRAFT teams, forget even thinking about forming clans in our scene, it would be impossible currently.

As stated we unfortunately don't have the luxury of holding EQL sized tournaments or having an abundance of devised clans here at this time, but small tournaments like our draft league and 1v1 duel tournament are the first steps to getting people interested, active, and most importantly, bringing their friends back to play with them. I would hope you, a tournament organizer would understand that.

You recently ran a duel tournament, just the other day, something that you set out to compete in a single day. Our duel tournament will be in round robin form as having a 1 day or even a 1 week duel tournament, single elimination style would never be feasible with our type of player base.

The whole purpose of my starting the duel tournament (and for others starting the draft league), as I told you, was to increase activity and build a sense of community with the people who play on our servers daily, those we play with on a daily basis or just chill with on mumble while waiting for a game.

You seem to have taken the wrong message away from the "NA only" aspect of it, it isn't to exclude the rest of the quake world or to 'hate on the Euro's', it is to develop the NA scene so that one day it can thrive much like the Euro scene does. Perhaps then we would be able to have mixed tournaments where more than a few NA'ers took part in your tournaments, where the showing was split evenly amongst both sides; wouldn't that be fun ?

Truthfully it's both childish and selfish of you to take this attitude and stance given the two drastic different situations that each of our scenes finds themselves in.

IMO it is perfectly understandable and I don't think this kind of jealousy "we let them in so they have to let us in too" is justified.

B1aze - I wasn't aware of any RU tournies. If I had have been aware, I would have tried to compete and would be happy to play on RU servers

Looking back at the 4on4 draft tourney, the website I signed up to never had any mention of "NA Only". I just simply wasn't included and wasn't given a reason.

And before you begin referencing my "Euro" scene, remember that I am Australian (I am a guest in the the euro scene) and the AU/NZ scene had the exact problem you had, we have a huge country/area, high pings are a problem and the scene there is now dead and buried. We would have been stoked to get more players from outside AU/NZ to play. West-coast Americans ping about 120ms to NZ (well used to when servers existed there). I actually used to ping up and play against a couple of american players for fun in NZ.

I understand that some players may not want to play with high-ping in New York and I never said I would only play there, clearly if I have a lower ping than them then we will play in a server closer to them. Maybe you guys need to get some more QWfwd's set up, doesn't look like you have many and its amazing what some better routing can do. I get 30ms lower to some servers due to a large number of QWfwds set up in EU. What happens if you have an American player on a shit dial-up connection and pings 130ms to NY and all other servers are unplayable... and he always works night-shift. Will you disallow them also?

Is there any reason, if I am happy to play on your servers at your timeframe etc, that I not compete? If its a 1-day tourney at a specific time, I will make myself available however the website made no mention of it being a 1-day tourney, in fact it says "I would like to get the first games played during the break between 4v4 Draft league seasons to keep people active" which sounds to me like it is the exact opposite of a 1-day tourney which means it is even easier to organise a time when both NA and EU players are available.

The reason EQL gets 25 teams is that they don't limit their players. From memory in previous EQL there was many American players even American teams.

High-pings is really the only valid reason I am seeing and for those who get over 90ms ping to NY I will happily move server by server closer to you until you have the ping advantage. Honestly.... 130ms and below is completely playable with antilag when both players are on equal ping... Only the Aerowalk tele will give you problems. I recently played a game in USA vs terrorhead from Australia. He had 180ms and I had 160ms... due to the equal pings we both agreed it was playable. Clearly not ideal, but if we can play a game like that then really 100ms + antilag not being good enough is just being pedantic.

Also it would be great to see some NA players use Johnny's QW Ping database so we can really compare connections: http://cqe.rytir.com/pingdb/

I am under "nl | dirtbox" for my old connection and "nl | kattenbak" for my current connection.

I used to run Czech QW tournaments where only Czech players were allowed to participate. Sorry if it is shocking news. I am a devil.

I can understand people running single-nation tournaments.... RU, FI, CZ... But this tourney is already multi-national... Hey and they let B1aze in!

Then I shouldn't even mention I also allowed .sk players in. And once I was considering doing exclusively .de + .at + .cz + .sk + .hu event (close pings and skill levels). Am I a sinner? A racist??

definitely a racist johnny

edit

Dirtbox,

You continually feel the need to mention and debate over your ping. You have made it abundantly clear that you are willing to play with whatever ping you have, I understand. Please listen closely, PING has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with it, neither of my responses (the admin) here or on IRC state that I'm not allowing EU or others due to their ping. It really makes no difference if you ping 30 to all of USA/CAN. We have several NA individuals that in the best case ping 100 to whatever server we are on, we have one member that played the entire season of our draft league while on vacation with pings of 170-190 for all games.

You make mention of understanding "people running single-nation tournaments.... RU, FI, CZ" but not ours? I must have missed the governing ruling on what was acceptable closed door policy for QW/game tournaments, please link me. Further, I don't really understand your comment regarding "letting B1aze" in to our tournaments, he is an active member of our community. He plays with us daily in pickups, 2v2, 1v1, basically anything that's happening. Whether he lived in Russia or USA would be irrelevant, he is part of our scene. Furthermore, I have actually invited a few players from various countries to join, these players play with us on a daily basis and have become part of our community over time. If this doesn't show you and others that it literally has zero to do with ping or location I don't know what will.

This tournament is for people in our community. It's about getting the people WE play with on a daily basis more involved, more likely to stick around, more likely to bring their friends back from the dead because there are games going on nightly.

The term "NA Only" is a safe assumption as 99% of our community is from North America. The point I'm getting at, you're not a "regular" here. You continually make the mistake of thinking that tournament numbers = active and involved community, it does not. I don't want players in this tournament who come on the server, ready up, play their required matches, say "gg" and we never see them again.

If you are going to make a comment such as "The reason EQL gets 25 teams is that they don't limit their player", please look at the facts first and don't attempt to insult my intelligence. Based on the page, I'm showing 32 clans/teams for season 14. Only a handful of NA players join the EQL at this time., by my count 7 from USA/CAN, less than that active. These players form only 1 team total, team 'oclan' which features NA players and other european players. Without them, you would have ONE less team this season, meaning EQL would have 31 instead of 32 teams (crippling...). Given from a sample of 6 random teams I clicked through, that each feature at MINIMUM 6 players, you'll yield a result in excess of 186+ players. For those of you keeping count at home, we had 30 players in our draft tournament, which is probably 90% of our community.

I've never played you, I have NEVER seen you playing in a pickup with us. Where are you when we are trying to organize a pickup or 2v2? I don't see you idling our our channel trying to get to know everyone as others have done. You are exactly the type of player that I would like to keep out of the scene, those that come to partake in tournaments and vanish back to their thriving community.

As said before, this tournament is to INCREASE activity in our NA community, not to see who can take top spot.

You don't care to contribute to or play in the NA scene at any other time of the year, but now that we hold a tournament for those players that do, you attempt to rally the troops to make us out to be unfair? If you had shown this much interest in playing in our scene regularly, I would have extended an invitation to you; ping nor country the relevant factor. At this point please consider my offer to involve you if spots open up revoked as you clearly are out for your own enjoyment and not the longevity of various QW communities.

-Rusty`

I have no problem at all with rules like this, people that setup new tournaments can use whatever rules they see fit (you can perhaps make a case for the community having some input into existing tournaments, although even then I'm not convinced).

When you are talking west coast US players getting drawn against EU players, there is a big problem. Not just because of pings (West Coast players will likely resent having to play with 100ms even if it is 'fair') but also because of timezones. A West Coast player who does something fulltime during the day (work, college or whatever) likely won't be available to play until about 02:00 CET at the earliest. Now I'm sure that there are some players around who go "yep that's fine, I'll play at 02:00 on US servers", that is still VERY restrictive on any west coast players, you basically end up limiting the hours that can be played and possibly the server choices.

I've played in 'foreign' leagues before on foreign servers, for example I played for an NA clan "5 angry men" some years ago when I was single and could say up late, and also my predominantly UK clan played in the german DECL/0wn4g3 league. So I get the desire to play in as many tournaments as you can. But I've never harboured a grudge against a league that restricts it's entrants to a local community. For example some people may not know this but the popular NQR (Nations Quake Rank) tournament, which at one point was arguably the premier QW tournament in the world, actually started life as the "Nordic Quake Rank", restricted to Nordic clans.

Just because you haven't seen me in NA, doesnt mean i'm not there. Adrenalin and I pop over there to find some 2on2's a few times a week and separate to that 2-3 times a week I go over looking for a duel (usually i play as kattenbak) however as I am not from NA i find people won't play me I've asked GND quite a few times for a game the last week, just ask him.

I have never spent any time following EQL or the stats but ive always noticed NA players in each season, that was my point.

My whole reason for this posting is that I want to play in your competition, simple. I wanted to know a good reason why and the only reason I could see was people complaining about pings in NY. If i am going to be in your tourney I am going to want to practice on high ping and therefore I will be on your servers more (and I am there from time to time already). Keep an eye out for me and Adrenalin over there regularly.

Dirtbox, you come from a scene where differences in "nationalities" didn't really matter. As you said, Australia itself is so huge that an west coast player has trouble playing an east coast player on a playable ping. The only other nation you used to compete with were the Kiwis. As a regular and very loyal follower of Besmella and formerly CHAU and Ichor's demo archives, I watched all demos of the village challenges, Wart's lans etc. There may have been differences in your cultures but one main aspect was/is the same: the language (assuming that Englishmen and Scots speak the same language and Kiwis and Aussies, too - let's just say we do not take the p.iss here and we agree that everyone speaks English). In Europe that is not the case. Germany had its own league for a very long time, so did the UK, and recently the Polish and Russians also did. Most of the time that really went on unnoticed because the websites were in the native languages and not English. Finland, (I know that you looked a bit suspicious when they announced their own Finnish duel tournamenet) also has a long history of running their own leagues and probably are one of the few nations where it still actually makes sense.
The German league(s) died a long time ago. So did the British league. In the last last seasons of the UK leagues, many "foreign" teams participated (I, myself am German, but used to play for a British clan) because there was no language barrier as the site was hosted in English - and it pissed off some of the locals.

The North American scene also runs their business in English language, so this barrier doesn't exist. But there's the lack of player issue. When you always run leagues that are open for everyone, you basically get the same people in a league all the time. Some people like to play with people from their origin, have a little smalltalk of how life is different in Praha than in Ostrava, from New York to Los Angeles.

IMO this has nothing to do with xenophobia, racism or the similar. Quite the opposite, in QW terms I generally believe the term "nationality" has been very very broadly used. It depends on which language you speak (A Swede who speaks Finnish can play in a Finnish league), where you live (A Fin who lives in Sweden can play in a Finnish league), in which clan you are (as I said I've been in an UK clan for a very long time and was accepted as a "local" to which timezone you belong and maybe some more.

To sum it up: The (North) Americans haven't had much qw action for quite some time. It's great news that this is going to be worked on, but don't take it personally that you are not going to be part of it

hehe not true, i was never going to deny finnish people from my tourney, it was a bit of a pisstake (some people dont get dry aussie humour).

Surely they can fit an aussie in their tourney. I actually do play when i can in USA. Only been back on the scene about 6 weeks so maybe thats why rusty hasnt seen me.

+1, well spoken by both HangTime and yourself

Dirtbox, at this point I feel you're making it your personal mission to try and stir up drama for everyone.

Let me put it in real life terms for you. Perhaps someone you don't know is having a private party at their house and you show up asking to be let in. They tell you politely "Sorry, it's a closed party, just some close friends getting together to watch the football game here at my mates house", you protest and call the local news because "You like watching football games and should be allowed to partake". Sounds like of absurd doesn't it ? And you probably wouldn't do that in real life would you? Essentially you are attempting to do the same thing here with this thread and your persistence on the matter.

I wasn't going to bring this up earlier because it's not 1 specific persons doing nor do I blame anyone for it, but let me enlighten you a little bit on your "scene that accepts all players", from my perspective as an NA'er with a 110 ping over there. Ask me the last time I went on a pickup 4v4 in EU and WASN'T told/asked to spec even though there were 3 slots open and they were still spamming IRC waiting for players. While I obviously wasn't happy about this as I just wanted to play a few games, I did and do however understand that I am entering YOUR scene, YOUR stomping grounds. You may do things differently there, you have your group of friends and players that you play with on a daily basis, it would have been rude for me to try to go against that as I'm a guest on your servers. Perhaps no one knew who I was or thought that I didn't know how to play 4v4 tdm (that's still up for debate with some!). Perhaps I needed to start a game in EU and post it for people to join with me, or talk more in #quakeworld and other heavily based euro scene channels. Whatever the case was/is, that is how things are done over there and I accept/ed it.

Numerous people from your own community have voiced their opinion and understanding of our league setup at this time, as well as expressed their excitement over the recent surge of NA QW action.

If you are experienced in tourneys and play on our servers 2-3 times a week; where were you trying to help us with organizing an NA tournament when it was dying over here? As for 'keeping an eye out for you" on our servers, I have no interest in having you involved in our tournaments, activity in the NA community or not. You have clearly showed your "ME ME ME" attitude when it comes to this subject and your inability to listen to reason. Your replies that shows you are too selfish to be patient and understanding of what we need in NA right now to make the scene flourish and maybe one day have an open tournament.

We need players who WANT to play with us when it's dying, WANT to get to know us even if there is only 5 of us that play, and WANT to stick around in the hopes that more will join; NOT players who play with us when we are growing just to gain admittance into one of our tournaments.

This will most likely be my last post directed towards your responses as I feel I've said everything relevant on this subject, if you don't understand based on everyone's responses in this thread by now then you probably won't and I'm okay with that.

Rusty`

I think I made it pretty clear before that by joining an EU server you are certainly not joining my scene. As I have explained I am not European, i'm a guest here, and I don't think you are reading my posts if you missed that. I belong neither to the EU or the NA scene. I have also witnessed the behavior of asking people to spec if they have high pings and me tell you, 90% of the time i jump in a server with my 100ms+ ping in NA I get much of the same response.


As I mentioned also previously I have only been back active in QW for about 6 weeks. The second I came back I was contacting duelmania and ownage tourney managers offering my help and was encouraged by them to run my tournies (open to everyone of course, even the finns and the yanks) and the first was a great success. I was a smackdown admin for 5 seasons and have ran 7 (8 including the most recent) successful online tournies.

I noticed no one else has even replied on my questioning (multiple times now) why I was not included in the draft 4on4 and not even an email to say "sorry NA only" or "who are you?" or anything, just completely ignore the signup. I just wasn't included and the website made no mention of not allowing NA players. I don't think my attitude is unwarranted if that is the way I am seeing things done for NA tournies. This time I was making sure that I wasn't ignored like the last NA tourney I tried to enter.

Also if this was a private party then why was it broadcasted all over IRC encouraging people to sign up. A poor analogy.

You did read the bit where he's from Australia right? He's only been playing in the EU for little over 6 weeks I think after a very very long (multi-year) absence... So arguably dbox doesn't know how things are done over here either

As another Aussie who's moved to the EU from Australia (though has been here/active for a fair bit longer) I can understand why he'd be so keen to play in a NA tournament (or generally in NA) - because it's something you simply can't do from Australia. I ping 77 to NY servers - I used to ping 84 to New Zealand (from Tasmania) and about the same to the Australian west coast. So it is/was a bit of a novelty and unexpected opportunity.

That said, your rules, your decision.

I came back to QW in 2010 to a very dead scene (1 4on4 mix per 2 weeks, a few 2on2s per week). There have been busier periods, and worse.

When this 4on4 NA draft tourney started I was completely skeptical that it would work. I have to eat my negativity because it was a smashing success. NA players consistently played, and many more joined the scene. I never dreamed that I would ever see two 4on4 mixes at one time again. But it happens, now, thanks to these NA tourney admins. The NA scene is coming alive.

I am not a big fan of 1on1ing, but I think this NA 1on1 tournament will be yet another success, for the many reasons others have given, that I will not repeat.

I love the EU and world players, but I have to admit I would likely not sign up if there were many others not from the NA community that were participating. I am just incredibly busy the next few weeks so I would let everyone else fill the spots.

But since I see 6-10 of my community friends signed up, many who rarely 1on1 like me, and most who I would consider to be same skill level as me, I am incredibly excited to join and be part of this local community quickie.

I am out of town, and haven't been following this tourney in detail, but now after reading Rusty's explanation it all makes sense to me.

DG|Cyanide

Hello Cyanide,

Curiously, I cannot see you registered on the tourney page yet. Which division would you be in? Would it still discourage you if people you didnt know where entering a completely different division to you?

enjoyable drama posts.

i just want to say that i'm glad that NA players are coming back thanks to these leagues. The leagues are "invite-only" - no problemo. It's no different than SuddenDeath invitional or the "old" local leagues. They want to keep it simple and friendly, they want to play with ppl they know, they want to have fun playing.
No harm done. You can proceed =)

I think it mainly comes down to time zones myself. Most NA matches take place 8pm-midnight EST which works out to be 1am-5am in London. So matches will be hard to make and you likely won't play with us a lot. By comparison it's afternoon time here when it's night time in Europe so it's much easier for us to play in EU when you guys are playing the most. Anyhow I'm 100% sure exceptions will be made for individual players if they are actually playing with us on a somewhat regular basis in pickup games and part of our scene if you will.

dirtbox: I am out of town with limited internet and email access (but obviously I can log in to the board here), and I am having some problems registering, so that is why I am not on the list.

It would not discourage me at all if people I didn't know were playing in a different division. But, the rules were not made just for Cyanide, they were made for all NA QW'ers. That would include the ones in the division you want to play, who likely only want to play friends (for this tournament). So while div2 and div3 players wouldn't mind you playing, the div1 players probably would.

Regardless of all this discussion, I have to tip my hat to you, and anyone else that runs a tourney. It is you and those people that keep QW alive. Thanks.