Wednesday, 19 July 2000 - Griff
Slovenia and Quake 3 - An Overview

The golden days of QW are gone and so are the many ppl who once were in the Slovenian Quake Scene. Slovenia had around 20 QW clans in its best times and later also around 10 Quake 2 clans. With the release of Quake 3 the scene has pretty much died.

Nowadays there are only two real clans (d3v and 666) left, so the Slovenians were pretty much forced to compete in foreign legues, obviously cause there aren't any national. And it looks like it's gonna stay this way. No sponsors, no major interest and a few players is what Slovenia has.
The two lans with prizes are held per year don't really weight's this up so as Borut says's "it's kinda sad that we have so little left from what once was a really huge scene. But the guys who remain are good, really good :)"

His comment about the BWEC sound like that:

"As for the BWEC, we just took it as another legue, to prove ourselves and to show what we are capable of ... I think that nothing is gonna change. We are too little and it looks that only the two clans mentioned will stay and compete in serious international legues. And remember, when Diablo comes call d3v and 666 on #devilheart and we will help him get your soul! ;)"

Slovenian Team

These are the basic points about the Slovenian scene, the Qualification for the BWEC Finals surely have proven Borut's comment right and basically started a lot of interest in the Slovenian scene. To get a direct insight Borut was so nice to do some interviews with key players and personalities from the Slovenian scene: Ripper, Miso and Sharaq. Here they go:

si.Ripper
 
Great aim and a lot of experience is what makes him good. He has competed a lot and scored high places mostly from 1st to 4th. A guy who definately belongs to Slovenian national team.


Tell me something about you and your quake history

Ripper: My name is Robert  ircelj, I started playing quake on september 1997. My schoolmate has inspired me to play quake online. We were hanging out at a local cybercafe Kibla. My clans were MvP and LoH. I am playing in 666 now.


How was it at Fragfest 2k?

Ripper: We were all prety excited. We found the Hall quickly (good instructions). When we arrived there were no computers set up yet so we were the first ones there. At the beginning there were some problems with electricity and network. Later everything went ok.


What were your expectations before the BWEC matches?

Ripper: We wanted to win both matches ofcourse. To show the world that we are good at Quake3. We were sure that we could take Austria easily, but you never know. Italy were pretty famous (Tulls 4th at Eurocup), but we trusted in our abilities to be able to win that match too.


Why wasn't the match with Italy played right after the match with Austria?

Ripper: Yeah, we had to postponed the match a lot of times, because of the 1v1 competition and other stuff. So we had a lot of time to practise the things that we are lacking: playing on lan, communication and tactics.


About the game versus Italy, were you nervous and stuff?

Ripper: Yeah, I must say we were. I forgot to change my name the first game, Miso forgot to record demos (doh!) and crazydrake changed his sensitivity a lot. Dm7 started horribly, we just couldn't get any real frags and after a few minutes they had a big lead. But we played as a team and won in the last minutes. Dm6 was better, we changed our tactics a little (copied from SK), so I had that rail position. I missed a lot of shots because I was really nervous. I think that these games against Italy were our best so far. Here the team won and not an individual (like Miso who went berserk against Austria).

Whats next for the slovenian team?

Ripper: Well, we need more lan practise against good clans. We all have a good aim (Griff said that too) but we still have to get used to eachother. Its cool because we dont have any weak maps, all maps are fine with us.

For the readers pleasure here are some demos from the BWEC featuring Ripper:

http://www.challenge-eu.com/files/demos/BWEC/si_ita_dm7_ripper.zip
http://www.challenge-eu.com/files/demos/BWEC/si_ita_dm6_ripper.zip



si.Sharac and si.Miso
Sharac: Slovenian team captain. With all of his experience you know that he will pick the right players to achieve the much wanted goal: the lan finals. And it looks like he did.
Miso, probably the most feared railer in Europe. With his godlike aim he sure is one of the deadliest guys around.


Usual introduction:

Sharac: My real name is Matej Osterman I work at Statistical Office of Republic of Slovenia and i started playing quake in fall 97 with good'ol Quakeworld on 28800 modem and as time went by i switched to q2 (specially q2ctf) and after quake3 came out i started playing just that in clan Devilheart .

Miso: My name is Bo tjan Krajnc. I started playing Quake in 1997 and later me and my friends made Chaos clan. Later I played a lot of Quake 2 for HD and we were quite good. I have started to play Quake 3 seriously this spring and now I am becoming better and better =)


What do you think about the BWEC?

Sharac: I think its great to have this kind of competition since its hard to find a fair server (let alone lan pings since we all know q3 is a lan game) for all the nations and this finals really allow teams to show their best performance (pitty qualifications can't always be held at lans) and ofcourse idea of national teams brings much needed freshness to Quake3 competition and to online gaming in general.

Miso: These kind of leagues are ok, because they give you an aditional motive to play Quake 3. I would also say that its sad beacuse we all the games can't be played on lan. So some games have to be on internet where ping is a big problem and some clans/national teams can really show how good they are, like us =)


One question for you Sharac, was it hard to select the players for the Slovenian team?

Sharac: Actually I didn't had tough job finding our team since we have extremly small scene and most of the good players are in 2 clans (only 2 serious clans here, d3v and 666) and I picked them (some had to be excluded because of their high pings or lack of playing)


And one for Miso. Where did you get that aim of yours?

Miso: Well, from the start I had a really good aim. Its a talent I have.

Sharac: He gets his strenght from a mixture of Jim Beam and Cocacola and his power lies in his long hair ;)


How did you prepare for theBWEC?

Sharac: We had a few online trainings and aweek before our matches (@ FragFest lan) we had a nice train LAN so we got used to low pings. Doh! To get used to low pings ;)

Miso: Yeah, not much. Few fights and a 2 day LAN.


Now about the games against Italy and Austria. Were you nervous and did you expect to win them both?

Sharac: We know both countries have good teams and that on LAN anything might happen but we do have good aim and tactics so we felt confident we can win Austria but for Italy we knew its gonna be really close game (which turned out to be even closer :) - q3dm7 watch demo :)

Miso: Italy was expected to be a hard nut to crack, because we have has some really tight clan fights against italian clans. I was really nervous when we played Italy. Especialy in the last seconds on dm7.

Sharac: Yes we were nervous and as you could hear by our yelling at the end of dm7 we were really happy to win it.


Do you have any favourites to win the BWEC?

Sharac: I think the Russians are extremly good and Swedes also but I think some other countries might surprise since not all have condtitions like scandos (hehe I used that word too) do.

Miso: I don't have a favourite one. But the scandinavians have a good aim and the germans have a nice teamplay.


Can you two tell a little bit more about the slo scene and your oppinion about it?

Miso: It just sux!

Sharac: The problem with our scene is that firstly its rather small and therefore not much target audience for sponsors and ofcourse our ISPs are lousy (most of the thanks for that goes to Telecom and it's monopoly which will run out this fall).


Any chance of pro gaming there?

Miso: I don't think so. There are no sponsors and conditions for that.


So whats next for the Slovenian team?

Sharac: We'll just prepare ourselves for the BWEC LAN finals in the UK

Miso: We are going to look for sponsors, to give us a place to practice and better hardware. But, like I said before, it will be a waste of time. We will just find one of our players vikend house and bring a LOT of beer. =)


Thank you both for your time and gl!

Miso: Yeah I wish gl to all national teams and that they have fun.

Sharac: It was our pleasure. Gl to all!

Thanks for this nice article goes out to Borut for basically writing it, Insanity for overworking and to the interviewed people.