Is It Just Me?? By HappyKamper

Is it just me, or are a significant proportion of quake players obnoxious pratts? As someone who’s only really become a part of the online game community in the last six months maybe it’s not my place to ask – or maybe it’s something I should make more of an effort to ignore…

I guess I should probably give you a few details about why I asked Fribs to post my gripe (do seppos know what a gripe is? do seppos know what a seppo is?! Oh well, sorry – no offence if you’re a seppo). Anyway, about six months ago a few of my mates and I who had just started quakin’ online (in Australia) decided the game could definitely be a bit more fun. Don’t get me wrong – I absolutely love Quake. I tried Q2 and Unreal and still nothing rox quite like quake. Unfortunately, however online Quake suffers from two drawbacks that can take the edge off the game…

Firstly, almost every server plays the same maps all the time – and when it comes down to it there are better maps around and sometimes it’s just nice to have a change of scenery, and

Secondly, it seems almost impossible to find a game that doesn’t degenerate into a profanity slinging match after some moron can’t handle getting beaten, or wins and can’t resist rubbing everyone else’s noses in it.

It is the latter of these that I felt the need to have a specific gripe about.

As a result of our diminished enthusiasm for playing on existing servers we decided to put up one of our own. Nothing serious tho’ – just a backyard job with a stack of maps that we could do what we wanted with. And it was great at first, we’d get together with a bunch of decent ppl and run riot. Sometimes we’d play hard and sometimes we’d just shoot the breeze and/or carry on like complete idiots (if you’ve ever seen Hudsn imitate a weathercock on the top of Gloom Keep you’ll know what I mean :]). No matter what was goin’ on everyone was having fun.

Of course as games started to happen more regularly at the server the number of users started to grow exponentially – many of them coming to share in the joy of Frib’s custom maps (chalk one up for the brown-noser eh Frib’s :]). The variety of personalities we got logging in was quite astonishing. I am still amazed at the extent to which simple forms of communication, like text on the screen, can convey aspects of a persons character or mood. We started noticing new # elements in the game (feel free to insert your own preferred profanity at the #).

This ranged from slagging off at the server (ever contemplated playing somewhere else?) bitching about specific players (usually those winning – you were expecting to play online and not get beaten?)or berating the players who aren’t winning (maybe they have lives beyond quake…) and eventually – as more players felt the need to respond in a similar fashion it seemed almost impossible to have a game without facing all this tripe. Don’t get me wrong, when we first set up the server there was no shortage of profanity, and some days it could really get revolting – but it was always meant and taken in jest.

More recently I’ve resorted to kicking people from the game when they seem intent on trying to spoil it for others. I’ve even had one guy come back after being kicked challenging me to ban him, which I proceeded to do obligingly (eventually I banned his C-class after he decided to re-enter using different IPs). Of course this
might come across as being a bit harsh (bloody Nazi server admin!) and a few people have accused me of not having a sense of humour – of course they don’t get to see me laughing as I add the culprit’s IP to the banlist, but that’s beside the point.

I’d much rather not feel the need to “punish” people with kicking or bans but lets face it – we put the server on to have some fun and if Quake isn’t fun anymore we will have no problems finding other uses for the machine. C’mon guys – it’s a game (and a bloody good one) so lets enjoy it.

Of course if you’re still reading this then there’s a fair chance you’re not even part of the problem and already know what I’m on about, in which case we’d love to have you over at FSD for a game. Anyway that’s my gripe (or at least that’s today’s’ :]). Oh and btw, if you’re thinking about sending Frib’s a rant of yer own, do it!. He’s a top bloke, in and out of the game, and I’m sure he’ll listen to what you’ve got to say (another one for the brown-noser?).

Keep on quakin’ hard,
HappyKamper[fsd]
:)

https://web.archive.org/web/20000529215020fw_/http://www.planetquake.com:80/frib/justme.html