The QuakeCon Files: Day 3

With both Jared ‘jRAD’ Hefty and Dave ‘ducks’ Johnston out at QuakeCon 2008, we’ll try and bring you regular coverage from the event in form of riveting and highly emotional blog updates and photo galleries. Find below the thrilling conclusion that was Day 3 of QuakeCon 2008!

It’s all over!

In the morning, we stumbled over to the ET.tv guys, hoping they’d have found a spot in their busy schedule of shoutcasts and live matches to handle an interview they wanted to hold with us. Surprisingly, they were free, so off we all set back into the main hotel, found a spot, and spent about 45 minutes discussing aspects of ETQW, the console versions of the game, Splash Damage, our new partnership with Bethesda, and jRAD delivered an interesting analogy involving various kinds of fruit.

Cheers off to the enemyterritory.tv guys – GreasedScotsman, mattc0m and stlava for being so hospitable, friendly, warm and not firing too many hard questions at us…

We then proceeded to watch the finals of the ETQW tournament with the enemyterritory.tv lot, and even managed to sneak onto their commentary to deliver our own impressions of the final match between Kompaniet and mamut.si.

QuakeCon wrapped up with what is creatively known as ‘The Wrap Up Party’, in which all the remaining battles are settled. Teams are awarded their prizes, the true Guitar Hero 3 champion is cheered, Bawls are chugged until we’re blue, the Quake Live King is crowned, and that dashing blue Corvette from Ventrilo is handed away to one lucky contestant as the fog of war dissipates once more.

It started off with the ETQW exhibition match between H20 and The United Force warming up the crowd of thousands in the enormous hall with two main screens and a sound system that had been cranked up to 11. The buzz of hyperblaster fire and the booms of the Titan’s shells nearly shook the hotel apart, and alongside GreasedScotsman’s commentary, gave us an amazing ETQW match. It was fantastic to hear and see the response not only from fans of the game, but those new to Enemy Territory gameplay, and once GreasedScotsman got going even the non-ETQW players were able to enjoy the sneakier, tactical elements of the match.

The party continued with the Quake Live 1v1 and CTF finals where, loaded up on free booze, the audience got ever louder at even the slightest whiff of defeat for either team. This was followed by Guitar Hero, which included (several) sterling performances of Through Fire And The Flames on Expert… my fingers were almost bleeding from the sight of it.

So, now all that’s left to do is pack our bags and hop back onto a cab to the airport, jump on a couple of planes and once back in London attempt to stop and reverse the jetlag that we’d both finally recovered from this morning. I hear there’s torrential rain in London, temperatures barely peeking past 20C, and still no legal requirement to wear shorts. Meanwhile here in Texas, I just cranked my hotel room air conditioning up a notch, and opening a crack in the curtains to the sight of the scorching hot Dallas skyline has caused my one remaining good eye to burst into flames.

Thanks everyone we’ve met during our little visit out here – for being so kind, and warm and welcoming, and being such genuinely wonderful people! We couldn’t have had a better time.

Oh, and bye enemyterritory.tv guys!

More pictures can be found in ducks’s QuakeCon photo gallery on Flickr!