QuakeCon 2003 Grand Final: ZeRo4 vs Z4muZ Quake3 Arena Duel Tournament dm6 1080p 4k

This is the Grand-Final of QuakeCon 2003. The players are John "ZeRo4" Hill (USA) and Alexander "Z4muZ" Ihrfors (SWE).
Quake 3 Arena was played with the competition mod "OSP".
The map played was PRO-Q3DM6 aka "The Campgrounds II".
There are two demos put together. From the first round of double elimination and the Grand Final, where ZeRo4 and Z4muZ played.
0:26 First round of double elimination
15:49 Grand Final
60 fps version is here: • 60 fps QuakeCon 2003 G...
For a ton of other Quake demos go here:
demos.igmdb.org/
PS.
This game is somewhat similar to QuakeLive.
Remember QuakeLive is a FREE GAME, which you can play downloading it from this site:
www.quakelive.com
Have fun and enjoy :)

[@gratler]

first map Zero4 hit some really sick rails early on. i think he got in Z4muz head a bit, either that or z4muz might have been a bit nervous. z4muz made some pretty poor decisions afterwards and gave up too many frage when there was no reason to. its a 15 minute timelimit. you can play defense for a while no problem. z4muz instead went with the more risky style of "getting a frag with high risk and grab the control afterwards" a style favored often by good aimers. Zero4 was to smart for it and he had the rails ready to save him. or the better predictions to pick up easy frags. Zero4 was a real beast back then. Zero4 and cooller had some insane matches back in the day. cooller was much smarter. he would be high risk also but he would do it when you didnt expect it. Zero4 and cooller were allready deep in the meta when others where still playing it straight.

[@Insommer]

Try to not over look the massive difference between what was vanilla Q3 and modern quake. There was absolutely zero net interp back then, even on lan you couldn't really use the hitscan weapons like lg and mg like you can now. The sprite for the LG would lag behind the cross hair making it hard to use, and commands like cl_timenudge -1 would cause you to appear laggy so it was often banned at LAN(this was the fix for online play but it didnt help much) It had a massive effect on the dynamic of dueling back then. When you see these plays that look dumb (and they are when viewed through modern quake meta) they were made with the understanding that its very unlikely to get punished like you would now, consider them calculated risks rather than ignorance. Back then the meta in duel was just to run the RA and Mega on maps like dm6 and just wait for the opponent to make a desperate challenge for a powerup, cut them off at YA or mess up. These aggressive plays where you grab a yellow and just rush the opponent with a rocket was considered a legit way to get back into a losing game, ESPECIALLY on a map like dm6 with only a single YA and only 5 Shards. Back then we also had a 15 minute time limit for duels, it was only really when CPMA came in around 2008 we changed to a 10 minute time for dueling, so you could make some more risky plays knowing you had more time to get back into the game. Also i know from experience of being at early quakecons that we had terrible headsets and the atmosphere was more like a house party than a professional event, it was so loud you couldnt hear a damn thing even with your volume on max. FPS was a big issue too, most computers couldn't get 75FPS back then which was needed for the Bridge - rail jump, it's taken for granted now that quake is so old that its an easy move, but set your fps to sub 75 and try for yourself (in q3a) its almost impossible to do. Also i would like to note that the physics of the game were different too, the bounce you would get off rockets was much bigger, your characters gravity control was a little different so air rockets were a much more common sight, movement speed was slightly faster, i think by default it was 5UPS more (dont quote me on that) and you could move faster when strafe jumping slightly. Your de-acceleration on ramps and slopes was different and the knockback from weapons was way more powerful especially the LG and Plasma. Overall the game had a heavier but faster feel and you were more bouncy or floaty compared to modern quake. it's hard for me to quantify but you can still download the quake3 demo if you google it, if you play that for a couple minutes youll see what i mean. All of this had a big effect on the way people played duels Some of these effects aren't even viewable in demo's because they are being played back with modern viewers or with the cpma client or QL. CPMAvq3 completely changed the meta when xerp_clients came and later QL changed the meta completely again. So it isn't really fair to judge them through a QL/CPM viewpoint and it's often something that many players dont consider. Dueling in Q3/OSP was almost a completely different style. Wasn't untill CPMA/Vq3 came out in 2008 that we saw the big aimers take over in the game like spartie, cypher, av3k, jibo and the like. Go watch some of the games from ESWC 2008 that was the first year we had used CPMA at quakecon and then watch some games from the 2006 quakecon the meta was totally different and the way we played was too. Youll see more risky plays with rockets and overall a much more aggressive style of play, all of that changed with CPMA and QL because the netcode had been improved so much that you could punish anyone caught out of a position with an LG, this made players become much more defensive and slowly the games meta morphed into what it is now. Personally i think i prefer modern quake even though i miss the OSP era but they were very different games play style wise and obviously players have become more skilled as time progressed and technology improved. tl;dr any demo pre-2008 from q3a will look very odd when viewed through a modern quake mindset. Anything from 2008 onward will look like what we now know as meta for quakelive. Also as a interesting side note, zero4 used a rollerball up untill atleast 2008 he was using it at the ESWC 2008 finals, i couldn't believe it when i saw it but it is true. Just figured i would add some context from the view point of an old semi pro player who peaked pre CPMA/QL many of the old great players from quake3 quit around the time CPMA was introduced, it was a really big change to the game and play style we had gotten used to :) sorry for the very long post, just figured i would offer a different perspective as i often see people making the "X modern player would destroy "pro player" back then" hopefully i have outlined why that would not be true here in this post, the games were totally different with different metas and much like the osp style of playing doesnt work in modern quake, trying to play modern quake in osp wouldnt work either, and the key reason has little to do with the skill of modern players vs old players, it is because as technology progressed quake did too and as a result of those changes the way we duel changed.

[@ex_interp]

Thanks for the info. Context like this really helps.

[@Insommer]

@@ex_interp No problem, your name is very relevant :]

[@simovihinen875]

I think even for that era this doesn't look like the best quality of plays. Z4muZ especially making pretty strange decisions of where to position himself etc. For example at 6:15 why does he try to attack Zero4 at red with the plasma AT MID RANGE? Whaaatt?

[@ЕгорТиганов]

Nice vod man. Specially when you switch pov in right time! At qc2004 was Doom3 1x1 tournament, it is intresting to see some games)

[@TheVanillatech]

Zamuz was always ones of my favourite players to watch because he was pretty unorthodox at times. I liked his style, same with Matrox. Zamuz was a real contender to the top level though. A threat to anyone on his good days.

[@decebal01US]

@eat at medve's - modifications Thank you for the link to the wolfcam texture pak, I've been searching for it for a long time. I will use some of these textures in my next ql/q3 video.

[@Mikael_Puusaari]

zero seems to be the big wtf here, the map knowledge is nice, everything seems pretty smooth but the perfect jumping? is that a button set to jump 100 times a second? I was in the top once and didn´t see any1 ever jump that smoothly and perfect, but I could be wrong

[@ex_interp]

22:44 so sick

[@mdvhimself]

theres a better mg skin in the kos texture pack. i recommend using it. we use this on the igmdb.org demo render mdv.quake.hu/pub/wolfcam/zzz_metal_xcsv.pk3

[@truckcompany]

Evil would smash these guys now.

[@truckcompany]

Your comment assumes a lot about the intent of my comment. It was merely to point out that the skill level has improved in q3/ql a lot since 10+ years ago. I used Evil as reference because he was the best (at least online) player in the world at the time I commented. Happy??

[@truckcompany]

evild0ku . So comparing players from 11 years ago is just stupid, but comparing players from 8 years ago is okay?

[@corriedebeer799]

truckcompany these games are 12 years old.

[@TheVanillatech]

+truckcompany Right now, pretty much any 2000+ ELO dueler would "smash these guys". Back in 2003, there were less than 30 players in the world who wouldn't get raped by Zamuz in 100% of games, and probably less than 15 for Zero4.

[@lawldep]

+TheVanillatech I would take z4 over any of those guys. hes one of the most natural skills you will ever see. remember he is playing with a ball mouse here