Back/Quake4Life
In 1996, id software released their next generation game, Quake.
What follows is my story...
I was living in Madison, WI (still am) at the time of the quake
release. I owned a PowerMac 6100 and a 486/66 back then, so the
first tremors of Quake past by without me ever noticing.
Then it happened. I was strolling down State St with a couple
of my friends when we spied a small neon sign, beckoning us
from a basement window. "Grand Opening of the Underground. Play
vs your friends". Intrigued, we went forward, opening the door
and trudging down the spiral staircase to a dimly lit room.
There, a slack jawed fellow showed us the goods. Pentium 100s,
with 27" Sony TVs and ethernet cables attached, sat about the room.
"You guys want to play a game?" he asked. It seemed such an innocent
question. I felt compelled answer him affirmative. 5 years later, I
still find myself quivering at this question, unable to respond anything
but "yes".
We played there for hours. And I came back every weekend, playing down
there in that dark dungeon of entertainment till my eyes were bleary
and my hands numb. I met fellow users, RedBud, Paste, E-Dog. The
Underground was a place where people like us could meet, and engage
in bacchailian pursuits until....until we ran out of money.
And thats how my life went for awhile. Playing Quake was a luxury I
gave myself whenever I could. Until oneday, those infernal coders
at id software decided to up the ante. They released Winquake. No longer
was I forced to trudge down to the Underground to receive my paltry,
overpriced fix. No, now I could utilize the Win NT machines at my work.
No timelimits, no cash expenditures, the whole internet was my playground.
It so happened that one of the first servers I visited was one local
to UW-Madison. Qclan it was called. It ran off of a OC3 down in the
engineering building. The pings were silky smooth, the server always
full and it ran a version of CTF called Server Modules. I played there
every day after work. Sometimes for up to 7 hours. I met people with
needs similar to my own. Druvo, Oshea J, Biz, DevilDog.
I would continue to play quake almost daily for the next 4 years. The servers
changed along with the players, but the community remained. I joined a clan,
Xg, at the asking of a player named juice. I had seen him before on one of
the more active servers, Quake.insync.net. He was trying to organize a clan
to participate in a upcoming tournament between all players of ServerModules.
I was thrilled to be asked. Finally, someone had noticed my skillz. Then he
told me I would have to tryout against someone already in the clan, Imperium.
We found an empty server and warped it to Ogre (e2m2) and went at it. It was
a fast and furious game, neither of us able to dominate the other. After
winning 1 game apiece, it came down the the final tiebreaker. I had his flag
and was geared up, ready to bring it home for the last cap. As I came up the
elevator and spun towards home, I saw him. Standing there like some lone Grendel,
ready to tear me to pieces. I swung my rocket launcher to bear at him when...
CURSES! My mouse had slipped off the pad and I was looking at my feet. I braced
for the impact of his kill shot but it never happened. Fortuna had it in for us both.
He was stuck, spinning like a rag doll on the wall. I fragged his lagged ass
and preceded to capture the flag. RAARRGGH! VICTORY IS MINE!
So anyways, I managed to make it into Xg. We went on to dominate the tourney
and the entire community. Future leagues and tournaments would come and we
placed first in just about everyone. I made many friends, as well as enemies. I improved my skillz and teamwork till
they reached the pinnacle of human accomplishments (okay, maybe thats a bit much).
I even wrote a new mod, which would allow the community to have real, competitive
tournaments.