Spurred by several repeated appeals from my qw.ru mates, I finally talked myself into spending some time on tracing one of the representatives of the modern QW scene who’s undoubtably considered to be one of those who are called “QW stars” – XantoM, and to my surprise he didn’t mind answering my questions. Here goes what it all resulted in:

Tell us a bit about yourself, your interests, future plans, what you like doing in your spare time besides playing QW.

I’m currently studying at full time and working halftime in Norrköping, Sweden. I try to go Snowboarding as much as I can in my spare time.

When did you start playing Q1/QW and what made you get hooked on it? There were a lot of other games.

I started playing QW in 2000 when I got my ADSL, before that I had only played QW a few times versus bots or at LAN parties.
There is no other game like QW; the speed, physics, weapons, really made me stick to it and I think I will for a long time. Although you can have a lot of luck doing telefrags, random gl’s etc, I still consider QW the game which requires most skill in several aspects (aim, movement, teamplay) of all FPS games. New tactics, moves, ways to play are still being discovered and the game has been out for 12 years.

How many clans have you participated in? Who exerted the greatest influence on you?
Six clans total. Fragomatic has influenced me the most and still does. I really liked playing in EarthQuake as well.

Estimate the current situation in the QW community. The projects in which you’re actively participating, such as QWDrama, Wiki, Goldrush, FOTW, have given the community the second wind. What in your opinion do we need to improve to attract more players?

I think that clients, tournaments, websites etc are all very good, what we need is to get more exposure. DreamHack is a very good opportunity to show QuakeWorld to a big audience. Another good way of more people to the scene could be to have QW related news published at FPS portals, where people who play games in the same genre hang out and have a higher probability to switch to QW than someone who for example is playing WOW.

What I would like to see the most is some of the “star” players getting back again ( dag, hib, griffin etc) which could give rise to even more players coming back. But like everyone else, you get less and less time for QW as the years go by.

(what we really should have done was to nuke Blizzard and Partypoker.com)

Tell us about the situation in Fragomatic: why did Mem come back in Cmf? What do you think about Mrlame’s prospects in your team?

I asked mem to join us because I believed that CMF weren’t going to play this season, but that wasn’t the case so Mem went back.

I don’t really know much about Mrlame except that he has a lot of experience and despite him being idle for a long time I consider him one of the best players around.

The Fragomatic’s lineup looks very formidable by names, who do you think are your main competitors in NQR?

I think that KOFF by far is our biggest threat.

It is generally accepted that it’s impossible to succeed in QW without permanent practice. How many hours a day do you practice / used to practice? Is it crucial to play against stronger opponents to improve the player’s skill? Who were your teachers when you were starting to play QW?

When I played the most I played for like 1-2 hours/day and up to 5-6 hours during Sundays. Now the activity in the scene limits my playtime to around 1h every second day or so. When I get the chance to prac a good team I can easily play for 3 hours or even more, but it doesn’t happen very often nowadays.

What do you think of the Russian QW community? I think there are quite a few good players in Russia, but we have never won anything serious (except for Doom who won Summerjam 2). Why do you think it’s so? (shitty connection doesn’t count). Detailed answer is welcome.

I don’t really know much about the Russian QW community, I like to think of QW as one big community, not country wise. Finland and Sweden have had the most successful teams and players throughout the history of QW, but also have the highest player count. I don’t think that Russia (nor any other country) is worse/better than any other country in general.

We recently played a NQR game versus the Russian team called “No Pasaran!” and they weren’t far from taking home E1M2 (our strongest map), which says quite a lot about the quality of those players and what they could achieve with some more practice.

Can you give a piece of useful advice for rookie players?

I learned a lot from spectating better players, so I recommend it to anyone new. Learn from their decisions in certain situations, how and where they position themselves when having certain weapons, where they spam, what areas they value/protect the most etc.

Another very good thing is to join a clan and start playing 4on4. Playing 4on4 is a very good way of learning how to master all weapons at the same time as learning maps and tactics.

Can you remember the funniest moment in your QW career?

It’s hard to tell the funniest moment among the ones I have experienced, perhaps one of the times where ok98 got killed and explains it in mm3 with his funny dialect.

Who, according to your opinion, is the best 1on1 and 4on4 player and why?

Reppie (1on1): Flawless RL aim, aggressive style, nice movement.
Gamer (4on4): Plays 100% for the team, great aim and is very good at reading the situation.

Name three perspective players, who could consolidate their positions in div1.

mm, xn, Darkki

Favorite teamplay map?

E1M2

Favorite demo?

Manulito doing quad-rocketjump from lava at DM2 big room and survives from some NQR game.

Which devices do you use for the game?

http://wiki.quakeworld.nu/XantoM#Setup

A few words to your readers and fans :-D

Keep on fraggin’!

Questions: xpr, Centipede
Translation: Centipede