From:
Jason Ely
Subject: Quakeworld Rant
I'm sorry, but I have nobody
else to really rant to at the moment. This message is going to go off
about the current state of Quakeworld. Basically Quakeworld is DEAD!
Its not dead because of Quake 3 Arena, its dead because of such things
as Speed Hack, Kleenex aimbot and all the other low life, non-skilled,
whiner players that have surfaced in the past few months.
I've been with Quakeworld
since it's debut. I've been here through the changes, both good and
bad. It is sad for me to say that tonight I will remove Quakeworld from
my machine. It is truly sad for me because I had many hours of pleasure
playing this game. I started a Quakeworld Clan (Masters of Pummeling)
back in June of 97. The clan came together and several people become
very close friends, we never really cared about being the best clan.
I'm sure throughout the Quakeworld community, many others share the
same experience. I fear those days are now long gone. Clans have come
and gone, most moved onto Quake 3. A few who never really enjoyed Quake
3 (I being one of them) wanted to stay with the game that filled that
void, that desire for action and excellent competition. Many of us stayed
behind in Quakeworld.
In the early days there
were people who were good, people who were bad and people who were lame.
The lame players either camped, tried to exit levels over and over,
spammed grenades while running in a frenzy, used dark skins or whatever
else they could do to inflict emotional and mental agony on all the
players in that game. That was fine, it was accepted as a part of the
game. In recent times Quakeworld has been suffering a huge illness.
This disease known as cheating has been tearing at the very foundation
that has kept Quakeworld alive for so long, the honest players who enjoyed
the game.
Now cheating has been debated
and I personally have always dealt with it. My personal opinion was
let this guy use hacked models, skins and maps. It makes him/her a much
more challenging opponent. The feeling after you drive a cheater from
a server is a very good feeling indeed. Since the release of the quake
source code, cheats have become far more popular. The most famous is
the speed hack. This hack is idiotic. The moron runs around at about
10 times normal speed. 90 percent of the players using it are idiots
who cannot control themselves and end up taking a dive in the lava or
blasting themselves with their own rockets. However, they still destroy
the game for some players. Some High ping players believe that the speed
hack (in moderation) can even out the performance gap between the high
ping players and low ping players. Personally I think nothing warrants
using a cheat.
The worst cheat of all is
the aimbot, most popular being the Kleenex. People who have to resort
to using this cheat are worse than any knat buzzing in your face, lower
than the gum on the bottom of your shoe. The truly sad thing is that
I've seen players who have a fair amount of skill turn to using this
proxy. That makes everything even more frustrating. The Kleenex is so
easy to spot. I've seen some good shafts in my time, but you know when
your being zapped with a Kleenex guided shaft. You die INSTANTLY, there
is no way to escape. If you are in view of the player and they are within
shaft range, kiss yourself goodbye. There is NOTHING you can do to avoid
being nailed DEAD ON with this weapon. Also, any player who is owning
a level with the double barrel shotgun would be under heavy suspicion
by me. Most players using this cheat are morons and don't know how to
use it properly, so they end up shooting into the floor, making odd
spins for no reason and try to use the rocket launcher. The RL with
a Kleenex is useless to a long distance moving target.
Ok, so we have all heard
this whining and complaining about cheating before. And as I have said,
up until now I have dealt with this crap. I was extremely happy when
the Muppet Clan hosted a Quakeworld Forever server. Yes! At last I can
go to a place where A) I am no longer called a cheater and B) Players
will not have to suffer the wraith of the speed hack and aimbot. So
here I am, sitting on Muppety QWF Matador server. I'm twiddling my thumbs
waiting for a player to join. Nothing. I check back an hour later which
was a time when that server was usually packed with players.... again
Nothing. What in the world? Why is nobody playing? Why? This escapes
me! People complain about the cheaters but will not play on a server
where there is no cheating (I believe models and such were still an
issue).
All the cheaters are on
the non QWF servers and thus, the non QWF servers have players while
the QWF servers tend not to. Holy rolling dungheaps Batman!!! So again
I try to just deal with the cheating. I figure I'll just deal with it.
The cheaters will help me improve my game. In the last 2 days alone
I have experienced more players in a total of 3 hours of playing than
I ever did in my 3 years of Quakeworld before then. In fact I was on
a particular server were 4 of the 6 players had speedhack and 2 of those
players were using some form of autoaim. What is the point of the game
if you don't play it the way it was intended to be played? How can you
measure ones skill when they are using a proxy or hacked source code
to aim and shoot for them?
Quakeworld is suffering
from a terminal disease and it is just a matter of time before the rest
of its organs decay and die. Someday in the not so distant future one
will open up GameSpy and there will not be a single server under the
Quakeworld tab. The last server will be shut down and Quakeworld will
slip into the afterlife only to be remembered at Lan parties and in
the columns of the wonderful sites that documented the events that molded
and shaped the life of this great game.
I hail all those players
who had then and still have today, honor and respect for the game.
Manowar (Leader of MOP Clan)