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Sunday, May 31, 1998
Are you ready for International Quake?:
Tomorrow night we'll take a look at Quake in Malaysia and Singapore. They love their Quake too, by the look of it :-) What happens if 100 ppl email me to say "yep, got ISDN, let's paaarty!!!". In the meantime, check out: http://clan.backroom.net/links.htm

Raven talks with Ajax:
has been talking to a number of top Kiwi Players, as well as getting together a clan match between Phonenix and a Kiwi clan called "IP". Looking forward to bringing you some coverage of that :-)

Among those Raven talked to was Immortal, perhaps the most legendary of the NZ Players. Immortal said that he'd "love to play some friendly games against you Aussies, [but] I have to decline for now ... I havn't been playing much Quake at all of late... I'll probably wait until AGN before I start getting back into Quake, and give your guys some good games :) At the moment I only play game of clan arena in Q1 & Q2 on LANs with mates, just for fun".

Another Kiwi Player he spoke to, Ajax, has a really strong rep in NZ and would love to play some Aussies. He lives in Auckland, though, so we need to get that ISDN connection happening in Auckland. (Message to potential ISDN partners based in Auckland - "come on guys - do you want Wellington to be always ahead of you on this one" :-? ). As soon as we get an ISDN partner in Auckland we can get some games going with Ajax :-). Meantime, following our successful test yesterday, we are going to get an "international" organised with the Wellington crew, to be hosted by our cool capital city partner - Paradise.net :-).

Raven did this cool interview with Ajax, hope you enjoy it :-)

So what do u think of the quaking scene in nz?

Well.. its very strong considering we have a relatively small population here.. we have a tonne of good ctf players and also lots of great deathmatchers. Its kind of different from the scene in most other countries I would say because everyone tends to know everyone else.. especially in Auckland, where a lot of the best quakers live, we have a lot of regular lans, and all the top players get together.

So how big would you estimate the nz quake community, quake is very strong here in australia

We had a recent lan event in auckland which attracted about 350-400 quakers, and that would have included the top 50 or so players in the country.. I would say there are another 200 or so players who didnt come.. so maybe 600 quakers in total, although some of them are pretty inactive.

I've noticed on your Xtra server, i dont seem to play many of the big names I've heard of. Do you think this is to do with nz being such a tight knit country and the good players just play LAN's together?

Most of the 'names' that I know play mainly on lans now.. a lot of people are fed up with the lag on modems, although you still see alot of the good players turning up on internet servers for clan matches and that kind of thing. Also, everyone tends to use aliases :) Its totally out of hand here, you can log onto a server and have a bunch of total strangers, all of who seem really good ;)

Is there any one person, who kicks your butt constantly?

Hmm.. I've lost a few games to Immortal in the last few months but thats all I can think of.

We've heard a bit of Immortal here in oz, who's the main player you've heard of from oz?

I've seen a few demos of Bro, and his name seems to come up alot as the best player in Australia.

Have you ventured onto any over the aussie servers yet? I've seen some screenies of people from nz playing on aussie servers

Nope, the lag from my isp to the aussie servers I've tried has been terrible.. usually in the order of a consistent 600ms plus ping.. which is hopeless for quake. As for the screenshots, well I think its pretty pointless logging onto a server, kicking a bunch of unknown guys and newbies, and then posting a screenshot. Posting shots of good scores against known players would have some value.

Agreed :) What do you think of Quake 2, it seems us aussies haven't really taken to it

Personally I dont like the feel of it. I have not been able to get excited about it yet, I dont like the weapon balance and the controls.. to me even playing it on Lan feels like Quake with a 200ms ping. But I think Q2 rocket arena is quite fun with a group of mates. Also, my favourite type of quake is 1 on 1 games, and I think Quake 2 is awful for that.. large maps, and long drawn out fights.

The CTF scene in nz seems quite strong, i know here in oz, we play a lot of TF. Why do you think it's so popular in nz?

i think theres a pretty simple explanation. The first few quake servers in NZ, back in '96 and early '97 were all running the CTF mod. We had pretty much no choice of what to play :) So everyone got good at ctf. Later on as quake became more popular, a large proportion of the new servers continued to run ctf, and so its really taken off here.

Whats you favourite map for 1 on 1?

I love both dm4 and dm6.. I cant separate them, I think they are both near perfect 1v1 maps. Dm2 is also a great map, although I wish it had a lightning gun :)

Us aussies are a bit of rocketeers, whats the most popular weapon over in nz?

The rocket launcher dominates here as well. Its the most versatile and easy to use weapon by far. I'm also noticing people starting to use the LG more and more, but mainly on lans.

Are there any female quakers in nz?

There have been maybe half a dozen that I have heard of since I have been playing. There are probably a few more too, but its almost totally dominated by males.

If you could go a few rounds with any quaker in the world, who would it be?

Interesting question.. I'd like to play some of the best USA players like Thresh, Gollum or Reptile. I have a feeling I would take a beating, but it would be an interesting experience. I'd like to play some of the Aussies as well.

AGN looks like its gunna be huge, do you think we might see your name up in the leader board?

heh, well I'm not sure. AGN is going to be more Quake 2 based than Quake 1, but I will definately play in the quake 1 tournies.

I heard of someone arranging a party of kiwis to come and take on australia's best for Gib Con '98. Do you think we might see you over here?

I'm not really sure whos organising that, but probably not unless that person wants to pay airfares and stuff ;)

? (May 1998)

Saturday, May 30, 1998

Just joking :P Did I get your attention? Weeaaal, it was just a "test", a "friendly", but you know it still bites that those Kiwis beat us today. Who was there to represent Australia? Well, it was just GreySeer and myself (Hoony). We had some other Players who were supposed to come along, but they had a huge night and couldn't get out of bed! It's not every day that you see a direct ISDN connection to New Zealand go begging, but there you go, you've seen it all now :P.

Still, it's prolly a good thing that those Kiwis won their first games, because it means that we have some real competition over there :-). Those damn Kiwis were HOT! "Man of the Match" had to be WOLPH [VOID], who took old Hoony to the cleaners and had GreySeer bouncing round the walls as well. Congratulations mate, you da Man!

As for the connection, omigod :-) New Zealand Players based near the Wellington region are now totally accessible for "internationals". With two players going through 64K we still enjoyed around 100 ms PINGs and virtually no packet loss. I can't exaggerate how good it was, though you know I try! This means that serious games, with bragging rights, are possible. It also means that we have a proven model which we can hopefully reproduce with the United States. OK, so the PINGs will be higher, but it looks like we can get a playable connection to Kornelia and sCary.

What's next? We're going to try and organise some more "serious" matches. However, at some stage in the nearish future, we'll have some sort of "Open Day", which means that quite a few people will be able to come along, try it out, and while they wait for a go there will be a small LAN running. I hope that sounds like a good idea to you. For obvious resons we can't just open this connection to all and sundry. So the main focus will have to be on "internationals". If you have any questions about it, pls :-)

I recorded a few demos for the History books. They're relatively small, and we don't make any claims for them competing with Thresh just yet, but you will at least see how good the connection is :-) (They require QW 2.21)

• grey_sten_dm4.zip - Grey wins the first round (696K)
• grey_wolph_dm4.zip - Wolph runs amok (772K)
• grey_wolph_dm6.zip - Wolph running some more amok (766K)
• wolph_hoony_dm6.zip - Hoony gets a beating (770K)

Friday, May 29, 1998
I'm having a beer, and I'm glad it's the weekend:
Just one item for you tonight, but it's something special - an Interview with Dethon, who came within just 2 frags of winging his way to E3. A champion bloke and a Quake2 Champion, expect to hear more about this Player =) Check out the interview HERE. Tomorrow morning, some more tests will take place between Australia and New Zealand in the race to have the first high-speed Quake international online. We'll let you know what happened tomorrow night. Until then, cheers :-)

Thursday, May 28, 1998
Sub-100ms PINGs, no packet loss:
Aaaah, it was with some relief that Grey and I tested the ISDN at lunch time today and got it running with, yep, sub-100 ms PING and virtually zero packet loss (oooh ahhh :-). Like LAN, except this was a 3,000 km connection, and we used only one 64K channel.

Big THANK YOU must go to GoosE_ (Shane) of Paradise.net, a very kewl ISP based in Wellington, New Zealand's capital city and home to the upcoming A Gaming Nation LAN event in late September. It's not easy setting up the ISDN connection on the Kiwi end, but Paradise.net sure appreciates a good game of Quake, and their guys put in the extra effort to make it work. Shane is no stranger to international gaming, as he said:

"Yeah, playing Aussie is not something that was strange to me, last year I took great pride in staying at No 1 for 6 months on the Australian Descent 2 Ladder :), I used to use ISDN back when the link to Australia was pretty damn good at night on the net. Look forward to trying the same on Quake 2 :)"

You hearing that, guys? We gotta plan some Q2 games next, but first things first. The immediate plan is to have some more Q1 "tests" under match-like conditions, and then to organise a game with some stake to it ;-). We're hoping to be able to bring you something exciting real soon.

Another big thanx must go to one of our key sponsors, Ascend Communications' Peter Watson, who came by the www.consult office for a few hours today to ensure that we could get together the best farking ISDN connection possible!! You good thing, Mr Watson!!

Here is the obligatory screeny of , in Paradise :-)

?

Next BIG Interview coming up tomorrow night - DETHON:
Possibly, when you think of the recent Wireplay Frag-U tournament held in Sydney, you think of the winner, BeZerKa, who is heading off to the USA tonight, along with Borg, on their way to E3. Well, the Free For All comp was run over two maps (Q2dm1 and Q2dm5) with eight players going hard at it for about 15 minutes a map. Dethon is one shit-hot Q2 Player who hails from the Multiplay service, and while he can't recall where he came in the first map, he won the second map. After the scores were added up BeZerKa beat Dethon by just two frags. Now, Dethon would be the first to congratulate BeZerKa on his deserved win, but I think this guy got a bit overlooked in the rush and so, tomorrow night there's an opportunity for you to meet DETHON. Here's a taste of what he has in store for ya:

"At the moment I am forming a new Clan that will cover most competition styled computer games (Quake,Quake2,Unreal etc)..at this point in time we will be called the WAR Clan...we intend to bring you southern guys some Quad Shaft and Railgun lurv...and when we are finished with the south we will take our message OS :) Ready yourselves :P"

AU vs .IE.. We did it via lag ;):
Have you met up with [nD]Krusty, Gandalf , Hobbes, Fischbach, Ronin, Von Swine, Helvis and the rest of the Irish crew yet? Aussie and Kiwi Quake have been fortunate indeed to meet these guys, as they breathe new life flavoured with a very distinct sense of humour into our local scene. But that's not all, these guys are keen to play us, and Malby has taken up the challenge:

"I jumped on from work today, went onto the Irish irc server (irc.iol.ie), and was greeted by the most friendly bunch of Quakers ever!

We discussed playing over the net.. Which we did.. I had a few games against Ronin.. He raped some poor newbie on an Australian server, then I had a go.. I played from work so I had an 80 ping.. I won 5 - -1 (5 frag limit), on Dm6.. We then went to a .ie server to play, where he stomped me good something like 6 - 1 in 10 mins on DM6. (I had him close to death a few times though.. dammit!).

Then we played DM4.. ho ho ho.. I was playing with a 600 - 800 ping, and I managed to beat him 4 - 0, although we both fell in the lava a lot, so there were more frags than that. It was fun, and then the Irish guys started callin me a ninja.. and I'm like "Back in oz I'm average guys!"

Although, I did come across a guy called Bunny? He gave me a whoopin 16 - 1 on DM6.. He had a 75 ping, I had a 750 ping, so I was lucky to even frag the guy. Apparently he's like one of their best players. So I'd like to give him a go on a server of my choice. muahaha."

Sounds like fun eh? Hey you guys over there in .ie, know anyone with an ISDN connection and a few Quake servers? If so, give me a holler , and let's see if we can get a connection that's playable half-way around the world :-). Meantime, as Malbs has shown, it's possible to have some extraordinary games already.

Rulz save time and argument later:
While we gear up for the first "international" with NZ, some thought has been put into the rules that should apply to the match. Like to give a big thank you to for offering the benefit of her skillz and experience with such matters. Here's the preliminary set of rulz we have pulled together. Check them out:

1. QW 2.21 - so noone can play with hacked .mdls
2. 3 games of 15 minutes each..... win based on frag count... best of 3 isn't fair when it comes to Quake matches
3. Best maps are DM2, DM6 and DM4
4. 1 spec from Australia, 1 from NZ... specs should record a demo each and also be responsible for checking player's cfgs and should keep an eye out for camping or any unfair play... Specs are not allowed to talk throughout the game at all
5. None of those v_kick commands and stuff.... cfgs should be clean and free of all that... otherwise, anorher option is that both teams can use them which will also be fair... suggest neither team to be able to use them however, so the game can be as fair and clean as possible
6. Teams are to use base skin, and no other skins.... One team to be in red base skin, the other in blue... Cross-dressing should not be allowed as this seeks to confuse one's opponents
7. GL should definitely be allowed.... as there is no water in DM2, DM6 or DM4, vissed maps are not really an issue
8. Teamplay should be set at 3 as this is what most people are used to and as this is only really a "friendly" teamplay 2 will not be as fun
9. Deathmatch to be set at 3.... this avoids weapon-hogging on maps such as DM4 and DM6 where this is prominent ... particularly on DM6 as there is only the one pack of rockets
10. Duel patch should be used... this is easy to set up etc...
11. Powerups should be turned off in all maps... this will avoid Quad camping etc... and will make for a much fairer match

Please email any feedback to or .

Wednesday, May 27, 1998
Say's it all really:
Saw these posts on the Faultline message board tonight - at http://www.faultline.gen.nz/discuss.html:

GoosE_ <> Subject: the aussies got on!
OK well the Aussies connected, and they had their LAN segment downloading off our site at 7K per second using just 64K, but - the latency was high, like 200ms! must be something to do with the 3000km between us or something but it was interesting to see. What this means is that they should get modem like pings when they play on our servers, consequently we will be playing on mostly even ground if our players are on modems too... - Wed May 27 21:56:09 1998

Hoony <> Subject: GG GoosE_ :-)
Cheers GoosE_ for your help in getting the ISDN connection established =). Took a bit of tweaking about but we finally got there eh. Yeah, I saw the ping was around 200ms too. We didn't get a chance to fire up QW, so fingers crossed it will be a little better under QW conditions. Also, we'll have to see how it performs in terms of packet loss. But, importantly, we got a fast connection happening, and this means we can get some sort of playable arena happening between NZ and Aussie! We'll be there for some fun games this weekend. Thanks Paradise.Net! - Thu May 28 00:13:13 1998

It happens to Clan 311 too:
If you wondered how Clan 311 forfeited the last match in the QuakeWorld Invitational League, costing them their spot in the playoffs, here's the story from Kornelia:

"Ozy is very good. He runs quad usually. He went out of town and didn't tell us. My clan failed to get any practices going for the past two months. Ozy has a friend who is also in 311. Ozy is on a oc12 and he's friend would go over to his place where they can be in the same room on a very good conn. Since Ozy is gone his friend couldn't play either because he has a bad connection. I was left with 3 members who are really good but due to lack of practice we lost. In the third game two of the high scorers on my team (I played my worst game, I was very pissed off to see my clan and myself play like this) decided that they "had to go". I was left with one guy who is good, a person who just joined our clan last week and who hasn't played in any important matches and a clan mate who went Q2 over a month ago. (Last time I played in a friendly team scrimm with him he had -14 effi and he killed me when I finally had quad rl as I was saying "quad quad!!") So far I was always there for my clan and this was the first game that i wanted to sit out. We only forfeited the last game".

Wooo Hooo!:
Malby is back on the deck over at Quake.AU. Good to have you back man! I guess now that we have more news floating around this means I can have the occasional night to rediscover what "A Life" means :P.

It's a bit like Randon ASCII:
Saw this over on Ab's Message Board - pretty cool eh?

Tuesday, May 26, 1998
Stuff we're working on =):
Preparations are under way, Challenge.AU is testing a 128K direct, digital ISDN link to a hot NZ server for some fragging fun with some top Kiwi Players. Tell you more soon :-)

Australian Server list:
Meantime, why not try some 33.3 Quake on Aussie servers? Head on over to Quake.AU, run by the indomitable Malby, and check out his excellent listing of Quake servers.

Look at all these bloody Tournaments:
To find out more about the Five Nations Tournament, head on over to the HQ at http://www.llamanet.net/5nations/. Thought you might like to know who the Captains are - for England: Nightwing; for Scotland: Traz; for Wales: Treznor; for All Ireland: Von Swine; and for France: Gradur. The most likely starting date, is Sun 7th or 14th of June. The organisers have prepared a fairly detailed set of RULES, which are worth a look here.

If the QuakeWorld Invitational League hasn't captured your attention yet, better check out http://qil.gibbed.com/ . According to the introduction, the QuakeWorld Invitational League "is an invitational 4 on 4 league for only the top clans. This is the final proving ground to find out who is truly the best of the best. Twelve LPB clans will square off in a 5 week season, after which the top 8 clans will advance to the playoffs. There will be an East and West Conference. There will be full stats tracking for every clan and each player. Only 12 clans will recieve an invitation. So, if your clan gets invited, please read the rules carefully, and get ready to experience the reason you play Quake". [r3v] leads the Western Conference with 43 Points (14 Wins, 1 Losses), while [Negative Burn] leads the Eastern Conference. If you check out the rankings by Efficiency the Western Conference has Warmonger [r3v] in the number one spot with 82.9%; followed by Kornelia [311] 81.9%; Ozy [311] 81.7%; and sCary [r3v] 78.1%. According to the Shuga Shack, the QIL "has just finished up the regular season and is about to hit playoffs. ... 311's choice to forfeit the last 2 matches costed them their spot in the playoffs". Wonder what happened?

Also spotted on sCary's, the Gamesnet Deathmatch Tournament (GNDM), sporting 32 HPB squads as well as 32 LPB squads is about to get underway, and Sujoy is one of several top UK Players entered in the new UK FFA League.

Luck of the IRISH:
At precisely 17:59:01, on a fine sunny day in Ireland, Krusty piped up: "Jaysus Lads ........check out that aussie site...its list the ninjas from around the world. Including quakers or the female persuasion..........AND THEY ARE ALL SOOO FINE!!". He added, "In fairness.......we're being left for dust when it comes to sexy (FEMALE) Quake players here on the auld sod........Cmon...lets get this sorted. BEUERS OF IRELAND UNITE......START PLAYIN QUAKE....PLEASE..!!!!!! Go on ya mad beuers........I know ya want it. Imagine gettin Fragged by numerous strange foreigners and not feeling guilty the next morning......MMMmmmmm".

Immediately sensing the presence of a new message board, GreySeer moved faster than the speed of light: "Hehehe, so you like Bit(hy do ya? :) (editor's note - clever use of the "(") Click the link to find more pictures of sexy aussie Quake grrls. Not only are they good looking but two of them ( Bit(hy and GoDZillA ) are members of one of the best clans in the country!".

*ahem*, said BITCHY.

*aheeeeeeeeeeeemmmmmm* "Howya ;)", replied OverLord.

"Oi oi!", said Krusty, "Listen ......pleeeese don't us (me) wrong.... U see...over here ....we have very few female quake players, and when we(I) saw the challenge.au and TS homepages, we(I) got a bit of a shock.... Not only have ye ninja female quake players....but they're also quite FOINE :) It's not that us Irish are twisted or severely deprived of women it's just that we (I) have a strange was of showing admiration...and thats exactly what it is...... So here's the formal apology to Bitchy and Godzilla and all the others I can't remember.... Please don't take offence by anything that us (me) throws up on the quake.ie WWWBoard. It's just that WE HAVE NO QUAKE CHICKS!! *sobsob* So....if ya any spares will ya send them to Krusty c/o quake.ie ...and I'll take good care of em... as long as they're house-trained :P...only messin. And by the way....keep in touch wiv us....I'd love a game wiv U lot sometime.....nice 1.. Laterz. [nD]Krusty"

To which [nD]Fischbach added some clarification: "In lieu of the postings to the Irish Quake WWWBoard regarding Bitchy, the Irish Quake community may appear to be filled with nothing but frustrated boney arsed bogmen muckers who havent seen a bit of live female flesh since they popped outta their mothers stomach following an immaculate conception nine months earlier. This view is entirely correct. :-P".

I'm not telling tall tales now, you can see for yourself over at the Irish Message Board at Quake.IE. What a cool bunch of blokes (and beuers )!

Monday, May 26, 1998
EUROPEAN Quake Scene:
Did you know, Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales and France are currently organising a 5 Nations Quake Championship? I bet you knew that Norway and Sweden are full of mad Quake Players. According to one source, they are in fact "two godawful cold miserable nations. The perfect recipe for quake ninjas and those countries take their quake very seriously - they consider it a national sport and everyone seems to play".

Apparently, the top European Players are Sujoy, Timber, and Razza, unless you ask a Swede, in which case they are Sniket, oKKun and DOOMer. Then again, you better not forget [7]Sectopod , [7]Killerloop and [7]Mastah-Killah :P

Where did I get this stuff from? Thresh's message board over at Gamers' Extreme, plus a couple of emails. For more info on European Quake, you might like to check out http://www.fragzone.se/dreamteam/. Or you could take a look at the Swedish Quaketeam Homepage at http://teamsweden.fragzone.se. Or you could check out this demo of Sniket playing vs DOOMer http://www.propos.se/~robert/demos/snidodm4.zip, or this of the Official Swedish Championship http://www.demolition.org/demos/qsmfinal1.zip. Another good European demo apparently lives at: ftp://ftp1.barrysworld.com/QuakeWorldFiles/demo/sujoy/tim_mast.zip and lots more at http://www.sujoy.com. Or, if you want excellent demos of both Euro and American players, you might pay Methos a visit at http://www.llamanet.net/methos/. Don't forget to come back!

Well, pretty soon those Euro's are going to start hearing of a few Australasian nicks huh? By the way, Val Hallen sent word today that the Canadians "are throwing the idea of a national team around for AGN as well :)". amazing :-)

The_Bitch:
There's a really interesting interview with up in the Interviews section :-)

More Info on NZ Quake:
A few of the Kiwis have offered some more info to add to/clarify what Juju kindly volunteered a day or so ago. First up, NZ Quake probably has more Players than Prof. Juju estimated; more like 300-600 Players, with about 120 regulars. Some more servers (popular ones) are games3.clear.net.nz & games4.clear.net.nz. Games3 is a standerd TF server and games4 is Mega TF and a booking server. Auckland is large, but not 2/3rds of NZ Quake ;-) One source offered that "about half the NZ Quake Population plays TF... Most of the NZ CTF community aren't even aware that a NZ TF server exists.....". Another source pointed out that the 'Bloodrain' Quake CTF competition was about the only 'real serious' action atm. The rest of the comps. are setup at the major LANs every now and then. Finally, a source sent me this helpful list of some of the main servers:

• Quake1 CTF - quake.netnet.net.nz:27000 -QW- (2.21)
• quake.xtra.co.nz -NQ-
• Quake2 RA - quake2.netnet.net.nz:27910
• Quake2 DM - quake.xtra.co.nz:27910
• Quake2 CTF - quake.xtra.co.nz:27911
• Quake2 DM - games5.clear.net.nz:27910

Thanks to all you "sources", it all helps to build up the picture for us Aussies :-) Could I pls ask for some helpful Aussies to do the same for dem helpful Kiwis? I'll have a look around tomorrow for a server list, but if anyone could save me the trouble I'd be "much obliged" :-)

Sunday, May 25, 1998
sent word of a NZ vs AU Clan match being organised by Clan Phoenix, with Arial in NZ currently working on arrangements with the NZ Clan. Hopefully we'll have some coverage of this historic first Clan match available for you soon :-) The match will probably be held on the XTRA server. (202.27.184.4:27500). posted a message on Malby's board to say that XTRA have a link with Optus while the Clear servers have no trans-Tasman links, meaning the data gets routed through the USA. Haven't confirmed this yet, but it sure explains the tracerts GreySeer and I recorded on Friday night. It also means that most ISPs which have good links to Telstra or Optus should also get a good connection to the XTRA servers in NZ. This means a lot of Aussies can get a playable game in NZ on NZ servers :-) If you want to try out the NZ servers, some useful info, including lists of NZ servers, can be found at: http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~linus/nzmaster/.

Interview with The_Bitch [TS]:
Tomorrow night the latest in a continuing series of interviews with Players will be published at Challenge.AU. This one is with Bitchy, one of the three co-founders of the Tormented Souls, one of the strongest Clans in Australia.

Bitchy is also in line to play against Kornelia and sCary, alongside Australia's three-times State Champion, Bro, when we get the US ISDN connection established. Here's a sneak peek of what is a fascinating interview with one of the strongest female Players in Oz:

"Women love beating guys at their own game, there is no better feeling, and I have never met a female Quake player who doesn't kick arse. News has it that a new all female clan will be coming soon. The line up I have seen seems unbeatable in my opinion. So guys watch out the women are coming to get you :P"

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but wouldn't this fulfill more than a few fantasies among male Quake Players everywhere ;-)

Tripping down Memory Lane:
Last week was a pretty good week as far as recording our story for the NXT_G3N goes. The History section has been updated with some outrageous stories of our wild past. For example, recalls the day he and Fox were sticking a sign up outside the brand new CIC shop saying "'Quake' is now available inside for play/sale at CIC"...

"At that exact same time 3 dudes stroll by and take notice. They turn out to be none other than Bro, Jojie and Scuba".

OK, what do you figure the chances of THAT happening? But it did - Believe it or not :P~ Then there were a few tales of the old glory days on GOL (Canberra), with Elron saying that: "I think we can claim to have one of the last demos involving some of the top players. By the end of the game we have beast, flush, goodash, morph and a few others. It was a great game". Well, pls pls pls send that demo to the guys at Demos Down Under, I think a lot of us would enjoy watching that one :-) And finally, sent in some ancient tales of the days when Onslaught were the toughest Clan online. Zeke remembers Tas having the first animated name sequence he ever saw in Quake -- at the top of the flag score-chart was usually this guy called "You have been fucked by Onslaught". hehe, some things never change :-)

Challenge Organising Committee (COC):
The thigh bone is connected to the knee bone, and the knee bone is connected to ... how DO you organise a national team to represent Australia at the big Kiwi A Gaming Nation LAN in late September? The answer is that you get a lot of bits organised and you hope that they all add up to a machine which WORKS. The latest NZ_Plan is now there in all it's naked glory, for you to look at. Pls look at the damn thing, and email me if you think it stinks or if you have any brilliant ideas. Thx to all those ppl who have offered their help already, I am certain to take you up on your offer somewhere along the track. Meantime, the most important role that we need to fill is the National Communications Officer (NCO). Seriously, ppl, I think that without the right person in THIS job it'll be so much harder. So I would like to call for volunteers, or for ppl to dob in their mates ;-) We need someone with the time, the contacts, the energy, the smarts, and the respect of our community, to be the "glue" that hangs it all together. Just your average Quake player? Why not have a read of the latest NZ_Plan and help us out?