So ESR crashed and the db gets corrupted and there goes my textwall journal. I'll try to re-produce it again. Sorry about the broken english structure since I'm just quickly gonna rush through all the major points again.

Let's start with yesterday. Since Group B and D were being played yesterday, you had the guys from Group A/C doing loads of practise games in the other pc area. You could see fellow countrymen duelling amongst themselves.

You'd see fox duelling spartie the whole day with a few games thrown in for l1nkje. Chance and DaHanG, stermy and noctis or cypher, all of them doing their own duels. Jibo was the only guy who looked like another solo lone guy besides myself but I think that's just his nature and he seems calm and content with it.

Big thanks to Jibo who was kind enough to duel me in most of those practise warmup/games. Thanks to smoke and madix as well.

Day 1 practise games vs Jibo went like this:

ztn : Jibo 20 - 4 spammah
t7 : Jibo 19 - 4 spammah
t9 : Jibo 20 - 4 spammah
dm6 : Jibo 20 - -1 spammah
dm6 rematch : Jibo 16 - 6 spammah

Day 2 I got to play with jibo, smoke and madix.

t7 : madix 20 - 5 (i think) spammah
ztn : jibo 7 - 5 spammah (he was messing around a bit)
ztn : Jibo 12 - 7 OT spammah
dm13 : smoke 15 - 1 spammah
dm6 : smoke 20 - 3 spammah

It was hilarious to see that everyone had a ping of 16 or 24 on "LAN" though. I imagine it's probably because of the web/content system running for QL. I experienced 2 wall-thru moments with the railgun in my matches vs. Jibo. DaHanG also mentioned getting similar wall thru stuff. I think this clearly indicates that the netcode lag compensation or assist is coming into play which is NOT supposed to happen in a LAN environment afaik.

QL on LAN is a LOT different than playing online or even playing with bots. Playing QL online has a CPMA feel where the movement and aim feels tight. QL on LAN feels very floatish, feels almost like OSP in the good old days.

As you guys must have obviously seen, it seems that anyone can beat anyone in a good given moment. The only ppl looking unstoppable (from what little I saw) seem to be Cooller and fox. We'll have to see tomorrow though.I personally didn't get to see any of the matches taking place since I was playing playing playing with the other guys who were free.

Jibo, smoke and DaHanG commented on my play and said that they expected to see someone who wouldn't be able to know to strafejump or even hold a mouse etc. but anyway I think they were surprised to find out the opposite, they said that I move well and hit shots well but as Jibo said, my issue was "aim" and it was pretty much right on the dot. As far as I saw from my perspective, I had no trouble with the other stuff like timing, initial spawn etc. but the most important and major issue was aim.

So basically Jibo said "your problem is aim". smoke said "your rail is pretty good". DaHanG said "you move pretty well". Any positive comment is always a good morale boost for the future, I guess.

The aim felt a lot different on LAN. Well, maybe it's because I haven't really gotten to play a low ping game in QL. Now I really don't know. The dodging at this level is really insane. Not to mention the fact that the QL pros seem to use the jump-crouch a LOT and they use it extremely well. The model animation for the jump-crouch looks really retarded though because it looks like they have a leg sticking out of their ass. I'll give you an example of how effective the jump-crouch is. Imagine your opponent rushing/charging at you while you're basically holding your ground or preparing to counter him with a readied stance, you fire a rocket when he's close enough to you, you predicted the rocket well BUT the opponent simply jump-crouches and the rocket sails below his feet. It's like the dodging scene in the Matrix except that you simply jump over the rocket using the jump-crouch technique (which also lowers your vertical model height from the head a bit I think) in Quakelive.

Everytime I'd get into a confrontation with one of them, they'd just jump or slip just slightly outside the xhair right at the moment I was about to shoot. I think all of them really have the QL movement down perfectly and I was still using some sort of Q3 dodging thingy. Or maybe I never experienced this sort of ultra high level dodging. Bottom line is, QuakeLive is a completely new beast and you will have to re-work your movement strategies from scratch because Q3 movement sure as hell won't cut it.

At one point when I was playing a prac game with Jibo (the one which I narrowly lost), 2GD was casting some cooller game I think, and 2GD goes like "and here we have Jibo who's doing some warmup at the moment, I'm not sure if he's playing bots or what though" So yeah that was a pretty lololol and :-( moment for me. I explained it to Jibo who also went like "LOLOLOL HAHAHA." :-((((((((((

2GD asked me if I wanted to get interviewed but I went like "no" because I was feeling that bad for myself lol.

I also got one of the roccat mousepads signed by Cooller with a "<3 skint" written on it. Enjoy it skint.

So all in all, it was a pretty dull & depressing event for me. I knew not to expect much since everyone was focused solely on the tournament and there wasn't much time for "socializing". I know I don't match up to any of these guys and I assume at least some of the guys think I've got "potential".

Obviously I'm not trying to make excuses for my performances which was expected by everyone anyway. Well, I think it doesn't matter now. I think we won't see middle east servers for a long time and I'm just tired living on false hopes and promises so back to my normal work + school etc and remain as an underground unknown player.

I know most of the random rants here will be quite obvious to some of you out there but hey, it's a "journal" and I hope you guys can take it easy with your comments/opinions. Hope you liked the Arab's perspective or view about the whole thing.

Major thanks to the ESL for even considering me for the Pros tournament.

SLIGHT EDIT: I want to point out that there is a huge sound positioning problem in QL which you will evidently see in all the demos/live stream as the players get surprised by their opponent's location sometimes. At first, I thought it was the Sennheiser pilot headphones or maybe my own headphones I was using but that doesn't seem to be the case.

It's like if you're standing at the RA in ztn and you hear your opponent with his railgun out and humming on your right, you won't specifically be able to tell if he's down by the teleporter or waiting up at the top platform. I think you get the idea.

Another random thing I just remembered: The ESL this year is drawing lesser crowd and I imagine it's due to the clusterfuck of the other shitty booths and also those new white paritioned temporary-walls you see on both sides of the hall (the food court is situated behind these walls) which discourages or makes not people not want to go to that side of the event.

Another small update: To those of you who've been asking if I was ever nervous or intimidated or afraid or whatever of playing the pros, I will honestly say that I wasn't even 1% feeling any of these things. Just getting disappointed after losing every battle.