| DonKing & Agent: Can you tell us about yourself? The usual name, age, where you live, hobbies, etc. |
]km[serm: My name is Paul Martinez, I am 17 years old, and my birthday is in March. Right now im studying English in Atlanta but I live in Caracas, Venezuela. Hobbies include hanging with friends, soccer, and of course q3!
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| DonKing & Agent: What got you into gaming? |
]km[serm: Well, I think my brother was the one that got me into gaming because a couple of years ago he got a computer with some games like duke nukem. When I played them the first time against some friends I just liked it and started playing a lot so I could kick their asses
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| DonKing & Agent: You placed in the top 12 at Babbages, are you happy with your placing? |
]km[serm: Definetly! Im really happy because I didn't expect to get that place. Playing against such players like lakerman, wombat and lobsta was pretty cool.
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| DonKing & Agent: Why did you decide to use the nickname serm? |
]km[serm: Well that was my brothers nickname. Like 4 years ago I started playing quake on some venezuelan servers and I didnt know how to change the nickname. People started to know me as serm and my brother decided to change his nickname. Serm came from Sergio Martinez (my brother's name).
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| DonKing & Agent: Tell us about your history in the Quake scene. |
]km[serm: I started playing with QW. I used to play on some Venezuelan servers, first playing ffa. Then I made a clan called cicu with some venezuelan friends and started to play 1v1's and teamdm. Then some of my clanmates went inactive and I started looking for US teams. I found a q3 HPB clan Sinful Illusions, but the clan started playing Counters Strike so I then joined clan knightmare which im playing with right now in the lpb division.
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| DonKing & Agent: What are your pc systems specs? |
]km[serm: P3 600, geforce, logitech mouseman wheel, 3M mousepad, 128 megs ram, Western digital 7200 rpm HD.
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| DonKing & Agent: In what way and against who did you practice for Babbages CPL? |
]km[serm: Well I played a lot of games over the net with my clanmate propolys which was like almost every day. I got a few lan matches with some players in Atlanta like matador, orb, slam, and ajax.
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| DonKing & Agent: A lot of people play Quake 3 but do not like it. They either play for money, competition, or something else. What is your take on all of this? |
]km[serm: Well I think I play for lots of things including playing for fun, for money, and for being known.
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| DonKing & Agent: Challenge Pro Mode (CPM) seems to be either loved or hated, why do you think so many players do not like it? |
]km[serm: I think most of the players like CPM because it was like QW, but other players don't like it because maybe they just want to play a different kind of game.
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| DonKing & Agent: Every gamer has strong and weak points, what are yours and what do you think makes your the way it is? |
]km[serm: I think my strong point is that im calm most of the time and I do not get desperate in games. I also feel that I know when I should attack and when I shouldnt. I would have to say that my weakest point is I sometimes forget to time stuff which is really bad.
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| DonKing & Agent: Tournaments, especially high callibur like CPL, bring a lot of stress and other symptoms. What do you do to overcome those symptoms? |
]km[serm: Well there is no doubt that those tourneys give you a little stress and make you nervous. I think the trick is that you always have to have in mind that you are playing for fun and think in a possitive way.
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| DonKing & Agent: There are a lot of maps out there, do you think the current id maps are sufficient for high caliber tournaments? If not, what kind of maps would you prefer? |
]km[serm: I think they aren't good enough. I mean t2 and t4 are fine, but t4 might get thrown out because of the floor bug. DM6(tmp) is great, but there aren't any other good maps =/. t2, dm6, ztn3dm1 and cpm1a are great maps. I have heard that other ztn maps are great but I have to see them first.
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| DonKing & Agent: The maps played at Babbages CPL are: Tourney 2, DM6, Tourney 4, and ztn3dm1. What is your oppinion on these maps individually? |
]km[serm: t2 has been one of my favorites since the beta. It has the armors and weapons well placed. DM6 gets boring sometimes by just running from one armor to another. Tourney4 is an intensive and good map because players are always fighting, but aiming is more important in this map than strat. ztn3dm1 has become one of my favorites maps, the strat of this map is like on dm13 (which was my favorite map). If you do some frags at the beginning in ztn, at the end its easy to run from the enemy.
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| DonKing & Agent: The CPL is starting to adopt Team Play. What are your oppinions on having more teamplay tournaments and less 1 on 1 ones? |
]km[serm: I think it is great because there are many players that don't like to 1 on 1 that much and they prefer playing teamplay matches. I myself prefer playing 1on1s though.
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| DonKing & Agent: Professional gameing is on the rise, how do you think that it will evolve in the next couple of years? |
]km[serm: I think professional gaming will rise in the next couple of years because tourneys are giving more money prizes than before and people like money.
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| DonKing & Agent: You won first place at NeuralNet 4. What was that like? |
]km[serm: I was pretty confident that I would get top 3, but I have to admit that I was kind of scared because it was during my high school finals and i didn't have much time to practice.
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| DonKing & Agent: After playing some warm-up and qual matches at Babbages, what did you think of the competition? |
]km[serm: After playing in the BYOC area with some friends and with other good players, I saw that babbages had lots of skilled players and I thought I was going to get owned in one of the first matches.
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| DonKing & Agent: Your first two matches were against 4kiln and nb-ryanbrown, two well know players. After beating both, what was going through your mind? Did you think you could keep up the winning streak for much longer? |
]km[serm: I just couldn't believe that I was playing that good. I didn't think I was going to keep winning because I was playing against skilled pro players with tournament experience.
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| DonKing & Agent: You got up to round 5. Unfortunetly, that meant going against second place finisher Lakerman. What are your oppinions on that match, and how do you think you did? (good/bad?) |
]km[serm: I was really calm in the first 9 minutes of the game, but then lakerman started to attack and I got nervous. I did pretty good but think I could have done better.
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| DonKing & Agent: After Babbages, who do you think is the "#1" player in the world? |
]km[serm: I think there isn't a #1 player in the world because there are lots of players that could be the best.
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| DonKing & Agent: What player do you admire most and why? |
]km[serm: I think doomer and lakerman since quake 1 days because they are really smart and know how to play the damn game.
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| DonKing & Agent: We have witnessed clan 9 and k0z (Deathrow + Demolition), agruebly two of the most influencial clans in Quake, break apart. What are your oppinions on the breakups? |
| ]km[serm: I think they shouldnt have broken up because they were two of the best clans in the world, and because the CPL is going to do more tdm tourneys in the future. |
