Monday, 02 July 2001 - ph33rl3ss
aNc.de... the german juggernaut

Interview done by ph33rl3ss. Questions answered mostly by stelam. If answered by someone else it's marked by whom.

<ph33rl3ss> Hi. Could you please state your names, ages and nicks plus known aliases.
NeoK: Tobias Grieser, 18
siro: Oliver Burkietowicz, 22
Slinger: Markus Paege, 21
SteLam: Stephan Lammert, 17
Sting: Martin Lammert, 18
zyz: Benjamin Bohrmann, 20

<ph33rl3ss> What is your history in gaming personally and together?
<SteLam> Neok and zyz both come from Quake2. They are still playing it for Clan Unmatched. siro played both QW and Quake2 before and joined up with neok and zyz in [u] about a year ago. Slinger played played QuakeWorld Team Fortress before he came to Quake3. SteLam and Sting started paying online with Quake2, but that was about the time Quake3 Test came out so they switched over.

<ph33rl3ss> How much do you practice together and with whom?
<SteLam> We're trying to LAN on free weekends, since we don't like playing online with our ISDN connects. So we don't practice very regularly but when we do we mostly play with Mortal Teamwork or Schroet Kommando.

<ph33rl3ss> What's your computer setups? Mice, headphones, cpus, gfx-card and memory.
NeoK: Pentium III 550, GeForce 2 GTS, 256 MB RAM, Logitech Pilot Wheel Mouse, Sennheiser Headphones
Slinger: Athlon 1333, GeForce2 GTS, 256 MB RAM, Logitech Pilot 3 Button PS2 Mouse, Sennheiser Headphones
SteLam: Pentium III 800, GeForce SDR, 256 MB RAM, Logitech Pilot Wheel Mouse, Sennheiser Headphones
zyz: Athlon 800, GeForce DDR, 256 MB RAM, Logitech Pilot Wheel Mouse, Sennheiser Headphones

<ph33rl3ss> The best Quake game is? And why?
NeoK: Of course Quake2 is the best Quake ever :).I've started playing it 2 years ago and it still offers me huge possibilities to increase my skill. Besides that, it is just the best teamgame and still absolutely unequalled in it's depth of teamplay and strategy.
Slinger: Quake3, because it's the first deathmatch game I've ever started playing.
SteLam: I'd say I like Quake3 most. It's the first and only game I've ever played seriously at competitions and I like a lot of aspects about the game. I like the weapons, the strategical thinking you have to put behind the game. I like it in teamplay and in 1on1. I think that's enough to make it my favorite game.
zyz: In my opinion Quake 2 is the best quake. On the one hand it was my first ego shooter, on the other hand I like the movement and the way to lock a map and having total control.

<ph33rl3ss> How would you describe each other's playing style?
<SteLam> I think every one of our players can play every position/style we want him to play and every one can handle all the weapons well. That probably is one of our strengths.

<ph33rl3ss> How do you profit from the sponsorship that aNc has with Hitachi and Kenwood?
<SteLam> I don't think we receive sponsorship from Kennwood or Hitachi but still we get paid trips by ATI or someone else :).

<ph33rl3ss> How much contact do you have with the other aNc players?
<SteLam> As far as aNc.de is concerned I think I can say we have a lot of contact to each other. We're all friends in real life and meet from time to time. The only difficulty is that some of us live very far away from each other so that we all have to put some effort into meeting us, but we try to do that as often as possible. As it goes for the whole multiplayer community aNc, the most contact we have with the italian Quake3 team and our finnish Counter-Strike team.

<ph33rl3ss> When will your own site be finished? And will it be of any use (ie, updated and stuff)?
<SteLam> "When it's done". And yes, of course it will be of use, we'll update it and hopefully put up an own demo database.

<ph33rl3ss> Neok, slinger, zyz and stelam plays. Sting coaches. But what does siro do?
<SteLam> He's doing the part of general organisation.

<ph33rl3ss> Is increased level of professionalism at the cost of fun, or can the two co-exist?
<SteLam> The only bad thing about the increased level of professionalism is that it costs a lot of time. We have to travel around germany and/or other countries to play games and this always takes several days. But we all play the game for the competition and competing is, for us at least, fun.

<ph33rl3ss> Best moment of Quake?
<SteLam> Winning EuroCup 2.

<ph33rl3ss> 10 best German TDM-clans are?
<SteLam> Naming the 10 best German clans is not an easy task. There are a lot of equally skilled clans below the best three or four. I can only tell you four of the best that come to my mind at the moment: fs, mTw, SK (alphabetical order) and us.

<ph33rl3ss> 10 best European TDM-clans are?
<SteLam> It's hard to name only ten since there are quite a lot of good teams, especially the ones that compete in EuroCup. So I'll try to name ten: 4K, Allstars, c58, Cx, ic, mTw, SK, team9, Vikings. Named in alphabetical order and hopefully we're among them too.

<ph33rl3ss> There's a huge interest sparked in both Europe and Northern America in Q3CTF. Any chance you will try it out and play in it competively as a clan or in other clans?
<SteLam> zyz plays CTF actively in the German National Team, Slinger is in the team as well but he hasn't had enough time to practice CTF with them yet. NeoK and myself don't play it. As a clan, we probably won't start playing CTF in the near future. We play for competition and until now the major Teamplay game still is Team Deathmatch so we'll definitely stick to it and fully focus on it.

<ph33rl3ss> The interest in Challenge Promode (now called Challenge Promode Arena - CPMA for short) has also increased with the Clash of the Titans tournament in USA/Canada. Any interest in this? Have you tried it?
<SteLam> I think the only person of us who really had a closer look at one of the newer versions is NeoK. He likes it very much and enjoys the stuff it adds to the game. I, myself have stopped following the development of promode shortly before cpm 1.0 was released. I was very interested in it back when they started playing it and I checked the promode messageboard every day but now I've lost a lot of my interest in it since I only want to play the game where the major competition is. And this over here in Europe for me still is Quake3. I enjoy playing Quake3 and I don't think it's any bad for competition but I'm sure if promode would be played at the big tournaments I'd enjoy it just as much.
Slinger: I don't like Pro Mode, normal Quake3 with OSP is the best Quake3 there is.

<ph33rl3ss> Who do you 'have most respect for'/'fear most' in EC3 and who do you think will win?
<SteLam> All the teams deserve a lot of respect. They have all fought through the qualifying rounds of the EuroCup and earned their spot in the finals. Our predictions are: C58, Cx, ic, Allstars, aNc.de.
Slinger: Cx, c58, ic, All and for us I don't have any respect.

<ph33rl3ss> Anything you want to add?
Slinger: We hope to finish at least 5th in the EC3 lan finals!