Hey there Vloody. Thanks for taking the time to reply to my questions. Could you please introduce yourself to those that don't already know you?

Hmmm…
My name is Or, 24 years old, from the holy land of Israel.
(Note to readers, soma forbid me being funny/stupid/me so I'll try keeping this serious)

Needless to say, Israel isn't exactly famous for online gaming. I was pretty surprised when I saw that you guys actually had a scene down there. How and when did you get into QuakeWorld?

Well, I've been pretty much addicted to video games since the age of 2.5 (no, I'm not exaggerating). I owned an Apple 2GS, Atari and all the Nintendo consoles. ‘93-‘96 or so were the "modem years", I used to play C&C, Red Alert, Descent and most importantly Duke Nukem 3D, which was by far my favourite. I remember when I first got a hold of Quake, It seemed like the most awful thing my eyes had ever witnessed. It was too dark, everything was pixelated, it just seemed so ugly and depressing compared to colourful open space games such as Duke and Mario. I believe I deleted it the same day.

Luckily, I had a neighbour who was involved in the Israeli QW community (about 15 people at the time, probably less) and also used to organise a weekly local Lan in his house with 2 of his friends. One time he invited me to their Lan, so we were a total of 4, this was at the end of ‘96 I think. All 3 of them were about 13 years older than me (I was 11-12, they were 25 or so). He showed me how to a play a shooter with a mouse, and naturally I couldn't hit anything the first time playing with a mouse, So I pretty much got my ass kicked while claiming Duke is a much cooler game. About 2-3 months later I was already owning them badly and started to fall in love with the game . I used to practice for hours with bots, and then every night at 10 PM the community gathered on our only server for some 200 ping DM action. Also, every few months somebody would organise a "big" Lan for the whole community, 8-12 people, I participated in some of those. Playing at a Lan with 13 ping seemed like the most incredible and magical experience in the world back then, the peak of excitement, god I'm such a nerd...

Having asked around a bit, none of the oldschool players from Western Europe knew about the existence of a QuakeWorld scene in Israel. Yet despite being so isolated from the rest of the QW scene, you and your Israeli mate Mr.Potato were using the latest clients and knew how to bunnyhop when I first ran into you guys on an Israeli server a couple of years ago. Somehow "everything QuakeWorld" made its way to Israel and it makes me wonder if you guys were actually up to date on what was happening in the QuakeWorld scene a couple of thousand kilometres north-west of you. Did you guys know about Villains, Smackdown, Swedish Chefs, Clan 9, Flaming Fist and all the other big tournaments, clans, etc? Did you guys, like everyone in else in the scene, also download demos of Western European players?

Nah, we never really knew/cared about what was going on in Europe (or downloaded demos for that matter). We just used to update our clients to the latest versions (MQWCL, fuhQuake, etc). You must understand that we were mostly playing CA in Israel, never had enough people for TDM clan fights and nobody ever wanted to duel besides me. Our only connection to Europe was the British "Willow CA" server, which used to be pretty active until about 2-3 years ago. Me and my mate Mr. Potato used to play there quite a lot actually, maybe that was the reason we knew about bunny hopping, tricks and what you'd describe as "everything QuakeWorld".

And then... On a nice and shiny day, completely out of blue, you and 123 decided to pop in our little Israeli CA server and whoop our asses with 110 ping or so, making us face the fact that we suck (we used to think we're great players up until that black, oh very black day). After that day me and 123 became good friends, he introduced me to QW IRC (#ibh), QuakeWorld.nu, EQL and used to tell me glorified stories about his clan FS. I suppose I became a part of the euro QW scene at that moment, more or less. :/

QuakeWorld has now disappeared in Israel. Do you think this has anything to do with the fact that you were so isolated scene- and ping wise or was it purely because QuakeWorld was 'getting old'?

Both.
1. The game + Players have gotten pretty old by now.
2. Naturally, being unable to play in ANY other country with a decent ping doesn't help much either, you have to rely on other Israeli players/Israeli QW servers, neither existed for a long time now. We're a pretty small country, for those who didn't know .

If I remember correctly, you managed to gather quite a few Israeli QuakeWorld players together a couple of years ago for a Lan. How did that turn out? And was this an attempt to resurrect the Israeli QW scene or more like a nostalgia thing?

It wasn't a Lan, just some kind of a reunion of all the old players on our servers. Surprisingly enough, most of them actually showed up. We gathered around 25 players that day, that's really a lot in Israeli terms.
The purpose was both nostalgia and resurrection of players, but I think they got pretty frustrated when they saw all that bunny hopping and how much the game had changed. The few of us that were still active just slaughtered them. Some of them kept playing with us for a few more days, but that was it. We got back to being 4-5 active players quickly enough, followed by the complete death of QW in Israel.

Are you still in touch with any of the oldschool players from Israel? If so, what are they up to? And do you think there's any possibility to draw these guys back to QuakeWorld?

Nope, I'm not in touch with any of them. I could probably get a hold of a few if I really wanted to, but I don't really see why...

From what I can gather, you don't really play much anymore. However, you have recently been quite active as a news writer, as well as some admin work for tourneys. Your best ping currently lies somewhere around 90 and you don't have any QuakeWorld mates from Israel that you could play on your local host, making the game pretty unenjoyable for the most part. What made you stick to QuakeWorld for so long and why do you still bother putting any effort into this game despite the shitty circumstances?

It's true, I hardly play these days due to a couple of reasons:
1. Having to ALWAYS play with 90-100 ping or more is really frustrating, I can never tell if I lose purely because I suck, or maybe it's a combination of sucking + having a terrible ping.
2. I'm feeling a bit too old for games, I have lost that childish motivation to play too seriously (be 100% concentrated and wanting to win at any price) a long time ago. I have other things on my mind these days, back when I was 13 it was pretty much just QW.

Nevertheless, I will never stop liking video games and always be involved with them, one way or the other. Writing about my all time favourite online game is just one of these ways. It was also a nice opportunity to improve my English which is always a good idea. Hopefully one day my involvement in video games will go a few steps further and I'll design my own video games, I have quite a lot of unique Ideas for those.

Have you, like many others, ever been tempted to 'move on' to other FPS games?

I did move on at around ‘98-‘99 when QW died for the first time in Israel (there were a few revivals followed by more deaths later on). I used to play Quake2, Tribes, Starcraft and even CS for a while.
Quake2 was just too slow and the whole the game felt like it was in one big lag, I never really enjoyed it.
CS... well I won't even bother telling you what I think of that one.
Tribes was actually nice, for the first and only time in life I experienced teamplay/clan matches. I led an Israeli clan called YMP (Your Mamma's Puss) to the 2nd place in the European league. Quite an impressive achievement considering we were always playing with a huge ping disadvantage, although ping in Tribes is not as important as in QW. I suppose I also tried tons of other games just for a short while, but nothing ever felt close to QW. The only other online/multiplayer game that felt complete, balanced and satisfying was Starcraft, but it's not exactly a FPS... is it?

The speed of QW, its simplicity and clarity, the perfect response time, your complete control over your character and the general feeling that everything is up to you, is something I haven't felt in any other FPS games, not even close. It's the only shooter that maintained that feeling of tightness and perfect response from good ol' challenging 2d games such as Street Fighter 2, Mario Kart, Mario, etc.

To cut it short, I think QW and Starcraft are great online games to play professionally / seriously while all the rest is pretty much rubbish.

I guess you'll agree with me if I tell you that nobody is going to play QuakeWorld anymore in the year 2050. Having agreed on that, we conclude that QuakeWorld is going to die some time between 2009 and 2050 - but when do you think we'll reach that point in time? How much longer will QuakeWorld be around until someone finally turns off the electricity at the Abondoned Base?

Uhh... Seems like the players who are still left are quite fanatic about the game. I think it will survive for ~7 more years, then we'll all just get too old for this shit and move on to playing Boules at local parks.

Seen as QuakeWorld is going to die at some point in time, all the effort put into new clients, proxies, tutorials, maps or tournaments are basically just attempts to postpone the inevitable death of our beloved game. Why do you think QuakeWorld players have such a hard time letting go? Perhaps because it was the first social / community-based game they ever played? Maybe QuakeWorld is simply better than all other games? What do you think?

I can't really speak for others, but the reason I stick to it is simply because it's better. For years I've been hoping for a new QW like game to come out, so I/we can finally move on, unfortunately it never happened. Ever since CS came out it was pretty much one big downfall. The big companies realized that people like slow/retarded/incredibly annoying realistic games, and just stopped making games that have that simple/basic "arcade-like" feeling to them. It is my dream to design a shooter which is some kind of a combination between QW and Mario 64. A fast/intense and completely crazy game where you can jump on walls, be able to perform loads of ludicrous tricks and basically fly around like crazy, but never at the cost of full control. Hopefully one day I'll move to the US and fulfil my dream .

Just before I started writing the questions for this interview, an astonishing TEN 4on4 games were played simultaneously due to QNC and EQL. 4on4 seems to be covered quite well these days, so what do you think is missing, if anything?

I don't follow 4on4 that much to be honest, I mostly enjoy watching duels between the div0 guys. QWDL gave us plenty of that in its first season, hopefully that will continue.

I feel the need to ask you something a little more ordinary. Please take a look at the current EQL divisions and tell me your favourites for places 1 to 4 of all 3 divisions.

As I just mentioned, I really don't know much about 4on4. I rarely watch it and hardly ever got the chance of playing it myself. I'll only give you the first division; I'm pretty much clueless about the rest.

Division 1:
1. TVS
2. CMF
3. DRZ
4. Slackers

Right, the interview has come to an end. Is there anything you'd like to add?

I like turtles?