#eSports stories — my first LAN party in Germany
It was in September 2001, my family just immigrated to Germany in June. We somehow managed to cheat me into an university without proving my german language knowledge, so I moved to another city to continue studying there. I got a room in a house with three german guys who graduated few years ago but kept using the apartment to stay there during the work days.
And of course one of the guys had Quake III Arena on his PC! Those were the times… you’d always find someone who was playing Quake. So I copied it to my PC and started playing online. I never played Quake online before, we didn’t have DSL or ISDN in my city in Russia back then. We only had dial-up and a sort-of illegal city-wide LAN, where I was also connected but had only 1 guy to play quake against in this network. Pings were around 20–40ms for the client, there was no such thing as a server. We have been playing mostly in local gaming cafes. The german aDSL was allowing to play with 60ms on servers in Frankfurt. I got used to it quickly and played a lot online. I started making friends via Quake and almost all of them were germans. One of the guys we chatted and played the most with took me to a local LAN party not too far away. He actually picked me up with his car from my place. I think he was living in the city called Jena, I was in Freiberg (near Dresden) and the party was somewhat 200 km north. It was in November, I didn’t know anyone and my german wasn’t that good yet, but I was already traveling to a LAN party with a german quaker I never met before.
The first day was going to the end and I figured out that I had nothing to sleep on. I had no idea what a LAN party looks like, only took my PC and didn’t think of anything else except toothbrush. So I bought a bathroom carpet and slept on it! It was the only thing we could find there at the weekend. And my Quake friend shared his blanket with me. I was impressed about his hospitality. He was a very nice and friendly guy, also very funny. I instantly felt very welcome in this community. And I used the carpet in my bathroom for 15 years. I regret throwing it away :(
There was a Quake tournament, it was actually the main reason going to this LAN. Now I remember I was very arrogant. I did not count Germany as a country that would be strong in Quake. After all players in “unmatched” went inactive, there were no more top player left in my opinion (I was wrong). And I was a somewhat very good player in my region and best in my city. I went to Moscow and even played few games vs the absolute superstars back then, like Pow3r or Polosat1y. I strongly expected myself to become best Quake player in Germany very quickly, it was also a very clear goal.
Especially I did not expect any competition on a rather small local LAN party. I joined every game with a clear understanding that I will win, no doubt whatsoever. But there was a very good TDM&CA player, eoe.superior (Suppe), he was also very skilled in Duel. He was the clear favorite and was expected to win this LAN by everyone. People already knew a little about me, as I have been showing myself on public servers beating some mid-skilled players very badly and climbing up the ESL ladder. But I was still rather unaccounted for. Around semi-finals I had to play versus Suppe. It was a tight match, I think it was best-of-3. As mentioned before, I was going into the game knowing that I will win. Very arrogant :D
I have received unexpected resistance and even lost first map. Won the second (ztn3tourney1) and we went onto the third map — hub3tourney1. On the third map there was a tie score and some kind of confusion with overtime and misconfigured server. The game was paused and it was claimed that I had lost. I did not want to argue and accepted it, although I was not sure if it was correct. I was confident that I will just go through the lower bracket (LB) and catch this guy in the finals and win.
And that’s also what happened — I reached the finals through the lower bracket, I beat Suppe in a best-of-three and wanted to celebrate, but suddenly the player and judges came at me saying we have to play one more match, because I was coming from the LB. This time I did not want to agree, my friend told me that the rules only say about one BO3, and I was also very tired. We went onto arguing with the judges, reading the rules and even calling the head judge of the league (WWCL) in the middle of the night. I remember my argument because I found it funny: “the rules say it's one bo3, guys it’s there in german, you speak german better than I do”. It was common to have two best-of-threes but it was just the beginning of the season and they probably just did a mistake in the rules. But rules are rules — the head judge confirmed that only one bo3 should be played. I think they changed it after the incident.
And this was my very first Quake trophy in Germany! I made tons of new friends there, the eoe clan invited me to join them later on, which became my home clan and team for many years. I felt super welcome, I enjoyed being with likeminded people. Through the communication with other players I’ve improved my german very quickly and became fluent in it within a year. It was the beginning of an amazing time as a Quake player and a very lazy student :)
