WCG 2010 Team USA Quake Wars Online Overview

Those who still follow the Enemy Territory: Quake Wars scene are most likely aware of the presence of a Korean reproduction of the original known as Quake Wars Online. Quake Wars Online holds a number of similarities to ET:QW in its general game play, but many features have been modified to give the game a more unique feel. For example classes have different weapon sets available to them, weapons function differently, item shops are available to customize your character, map layouts have been tweaked, and new game modes have replaced the traditional stopwatch mode. This year Quake Wars Online was hosted at the 2010 World Cyber Games as a promotional title. As the game is currently only available to residents of Korea, the game developers (DragonFly) requested participation from a US team for the WCG event. A USA qualifier was held a few weeks before WCG through the original version ET:QW, and our team, AmeriMiX, was selected to represent the USA at the event.

The 2010 World Cyber Games were located in Los Angeles, California this year. WCG functions similarly to the Olympics (it is called the Olympics of video gaming), being hosted in different regions of the world where various countries compete for world championship titles in video games. This video displays the journey of WCG during its 10 years of existence http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FddU85byk_4 . Although each game functions in its own prize pool and match making system, the combined results are used to declare an overall world champion nation; which receive a WCG trophy and separate prizes for all their players. This year there were 58 countries competing for the world title at WCG. Here is a video of the opening ceremony for the 2010 World Cyber Games http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlWp76ceHKQ . This ceremony marked the beginning of the event and gives an overview of what WCG is all about (I personally find the questionably cheesy theme song to be the best part xD).

WCG was the first large scale LAN tournament for everyone on our team so this was a very new experience for all of us, especially considering that WCG is a major global event (many people get the chance to work their way up to such an event). I will attempt to give a brief time line of memorable moments from our experience at WCG.


Day 1- September 29th- Wednesday

Our team members are from all over the United States; INF3RN0-Oregon, Ras-Connecticut, Adhesive-Missouri, H4rdc0re-California, Raccoon-Texas, SoulVoid-North Carolina; and we had never met each other in person until WCG. Some of us have played ETQW and other games together casually in the past, but like our team name hints we are essentially a mix of ETQW players from presently dissolved teams. As you can tell some members had to endure very long flights to get to WCG, but the organizers ensured that we would all arrive within a similar time frame. We met up in the late afternoon at our hotel, where we were given ID badges and details on the event. We were not allowed to enter the WCG zone until the next day, so we spent our first half-day together exploring Los Angeles and getting more well acquainted with one another. Walking, eating, and unpacking brought a quick end to our first day at WCG, but we did get the chance to meet some other gamers and have some fun. Not all of us had even been able to play QWO yet, so we spent a few hours before bed testing out the game on my laptop.


Day 2- September 30th- Thursday

We had to wake up fairly early in order to catch the free continental breakfast for WCG players. We were able to meet a number of US players during our breakfast sessions, such as WC3, LoL (hotshotgg only), Guitar Hero, Carom3D and Forza. After breakfast we were able to see the WCG Match Zone for the first time, and found it to be quite impressive. We strolled around the area for a few hours until the opening ceremony began. It was quite a spectacle with dancing, music, and cheering, and definitely made us anxious to start playing. The tournament for QWO did not have a set schedule, as it planned to recruit two other non-USA teams on site to play in the tournament. While the other teams were being sought out by the organizers, we were able to test our gear on the QWO PCs and get in a few practice games with Korea. We experienced a lot of technical issues at first, but were eventually able to get everything in decent working order. We played 2 game sets with Korea, one on Refinery and Salvage. During this time we were able to learn how the actual game mode for the tournament worked, as it was called Objective Mode instead of the Stopwatch that we were accustomed to. In "Objective Mode", each objective has a set time to beat and at 40sec-1min left on the clock the game hits sudden death. During sudden death you only get 1 life so it becomes a game of survivability. The win is determined by who has the fastest time overall on all 3 objectives. Our first practice match with Korea went quite well, and we beat them on all 3 objectives. We moved on to Salvage, which is quite a lot different than the ETQW version, and had a fairly strong opening round on defense. With our success we chose to use some very strange tactics, but we soon found that Korea would not have it and our overconfidence backfired. It was important for us to realize that although we could beat their team when playing normally, we couldn't let our guard down during our official match. After our practice ended, we watched some exciting Counter Strike and SC:Brood Wars games on the broadcast stage. We checked out some of the floor booths as well, a highlight being INF3RN0 and Adhesive being tricked into participating in a dance competition. Raccoon was focused entirely on stalking the Korean SC players, Jaedong, Flash, and Goojilla, but he did manage to get some good pictures with them. It turned out to be a very eventful day filled with a lot of hilarious moments.


Day 3- October 1st- Friday

We started our day in the usual fashion, but this time we knew that we would be playing our first official games of QWO that afternoon. We discussed some strategies after breakfast, and then took a shuttle to the convention center. We watched a few matches of other games before heading to our own match zone. We found out that the Australian and Serbian CS teams had offered to play in the competition, and that we would play Australia, while Korea would play Serbia. The organizers decided to set off our match with Korea as the final the next morning, as we were all fairly sure we were the top competitors. We watched Serbia and Australia practice with each other, having never tried the game before, and found it to be quite entertaining. An Aussie saw the Cyclops on the objective and yelled "WTF IS THAT THING!", while a Serbian raged at his PC because it still had SoulVoid's inverted controls on it lol. Soon after we spectated Korea vs Serbia, where my favorite part was when a 7ft tall Serbian kept yelling "MEEEDIC!" and one of the Korean players kept backstabbing everyone in their spawn because they didn't realize he was in disguise. It was bit funny when the Serbians actually managed to get one of the objectives inside the last infantry stage, they were extremely pleased with themselves. After their match, we setup to play Australia. Our match became one-sided very fast and holding them at the gate of their spawn didn't offer us much useful practice for our match the next day. We did however notice that the Koreans where watching us play very closely from the sidelines and chatting with one another regarding our strategies and tricks. It seemed as if they didn't know about the shield on the hog or how to re-direct artillery. They appeared to copy a lot of our positions during the practice rounds the day before as well when playing Serbia as well. In just a few hours we had both won our matches against Australia and Serbia, but they weren't complaining about the free prizes they were getting and we had some good laughs with the Australians afterwords. That night we decided to relax before the final the next day. We met up with one of our friends/fellow ETQW players Destruxto, who lived in LA, and left in search of food. We ended up walking to Little Tokyo quite a few miles away from the hotel, and had a full meal. It was only then that we realized we were going to have to walk all the way back to the hotel... but we did eventually make it back though it was hard on the stomach.


Day 4- October 2nd- Saturday

Our match was scheduled for 9am, so we got to the convention center to set up on the stage as early as possible. I think I only ate part of a muffin myself, but there was definitely some anxiety among us. Thankfully we were having so many problems actually getting the game to run properly that any nervousness quickly faded. My computer refused to start the game, until maybe 1-2 minutes before match time. I was so relieved that we wouldn't be forced into a 5v6 that I couldn't remember if I was nervous about anything. They ran the cameras across the stage, we readied up, and just jumped straight into the game and started playing. We all agree that were off on our game from the start, but we slowly adjusted, making our stand in the most hilarious spots. Raccoon was experiencing some technical difficulties on the 2nd objective, which we lost almost immediately after the tech crew was able to fix his keyboard. The 2nd objective had been our strongest defending point in the practice game, but somehow we ended up with only 1 person on the actual objective forcing the cyclops to be abandoned in an attempt to stop the hack. The momentum gained by the Koreans threw us completely off guard and they again took the following secondary objective extremely fast. We knew that we had to step up our game considering there was no room for more mistakes, and that we would need to deliver a full hold here if we had any chance at winning. That was exactly what we did and we had some great infantry play indoors, full holding the last objective for a solid 5minutes. Our offense started off in a similar mess, although we did manage to beat Korea's time for that objective by about 15 seconds. We quickly found ourselves hanging on the 2nd again because we failed to stick with our strategies once again. We had some hope for completing it, but lost the opportunity when we lost half our players in Sudden Death. We were all laughing when INF3RN0 and raccoon were taking out by Beetle's flier drone and when H4rdc0re managed to get a triple kill only to discover he was stuck between a supply crate and a wall xD. We still had a very good chance of taking the win even though we had not been able to complete the 2nd objective. The last objective had the longest time of all the objectives, meaning it was the most influential for the win. Unfortunately as the 2nd objective ended, the Korean casters mistakenly declared Korea the winner as they had forgotten we still had to play the 3rd objective. We all experienced a 5-10 second lag spike when the stream was cut off, but we knew we were not done and our referees said to keep playing. We quickly cleared out Korea's forward defense and pushed into the south objective, where we once again cleared out the Korean team and got a double plant. As the Koreans attempted to retake the objective, I took the vents to North and got a double plant off. The Koreans became split between the objectives, and we were able to setup very strong crossfires on their spawn entrance and forced them to enter one at a time. It was unfortunate that the last objective did not get cast, as it showed us playing at our full potential setting a time just over a minute. There was controversy following the game, when we found out that they had broadcast us losing before we were even done playing, but according to the rules it did not necessitate a rematch. Some of the Koreans claimed that when the casters disconnected they were replaced by bots, which we cannot argue as none of us were paying much attention, but the referees confirmed that they had told everyone to keep playing and watched them all play. There may have been bots, but they were not seen killing players, being killed by players, or interfering with the objectives. It took about 5+ hours to find out who officially won, but it was eventually a unanimous decision that we had won fairly. QW without drama, just isn't QW :D. We felt very good about how we performed, considering it was our first time and 9am in the morning, and I can guarantee that if we played a 2nd game we would have put on quite a show. I only wish we got to play more than we did, but it was quite exhausting even for only lasting an hour. Once the problems were sorted out we were very relieved and spent the remainder of the day relaxing and watching the various other finals (Jaedong vs Flash) and matches that were taking place. After dinner we went through the photos we had collected and had some laughs before going to sleep. We were free the next day, and so we planned on sleeping in.


Day 5- October 3rd- Sunday

Half of us woke up after the free breakfast ended, so those of us who had not eaten headed out to the local IHOP, while the others went to watch the morning matches at the convention center. It was the last day of WCG and all the big finals were taking place. We watched Flash vs Goojilla for SC, and the incredibly exciting CS finals mTw (Denmark) vs Na'Vi (Ukraine) with 2 overtime rounds; live of course :). Time flew by rather quickly and at 5pm the closing ceremony began. We had to wait back stage for half an hour, until they began to call out the teams for awards. We were all a bit in shock when we stood up on the stage and got our medals, but it was definitely a great experience. We not only left with our 3k grand prize, but also found out that we got 8GB ssd cards and 22" 120Hz 3D monitors as well. We were very happy and received congratulations from numerous people. The USA had gotten 2 golds and a silver/bronze in the promotional games, as well as a gold in Guitar Hero. If QWO/LoL/LostSaga had been official games, we would have won or possibly beaten Korea for the overall win. A big player party was hosted at the nearby ESPN bar and grill, which we headed over to soon after. There was a short presentation and more congratulations, followed by free food and games. We stayed for a few hours and then had to head back to the hotel. Adhesive had to catch his flight that night, and the rest of us had to leave early the next morning. We were able to take some pictures with the Koreans before we left, and although there was still a little bit of tension I was glad we ended our night on a positive note.


Day 6- October 4th- Monday

We all woke up very early the next morning, most of us skipped breakfast. We said our final goodbyes and headed to the airport. Most everyone didn't make it back home until late in the day, and I am sure we were all equally exhausted.


Being able to go to the World Cyber Games, especially in Quake Wars Online, was something that none of us could have ever expected. We had a truly great experience and I can guarantee that if the opportunity ever presented itself again we wouldn't hesitate to do it all over again. QWO got more attention than we expected, and thanks to our controversy with the win almost everyone there knew about it xD. Next year WCG will be hosted in Beijing, China, and if QWO is picked as an official game next year, you can bet that ET will get that rematch they were hoping for :)!