Photos
Quakecon 2010
August 12-15, 2010, Hilton Anatole Hotel, Dallas, Texas, USA
Thanks
Click on the thumbnails below to view the photos
No Ryly at Quakecon this year. She was in Palm Desert, California at the Toastmasters International Convention.
I brought my computer to the BYOC Wednesday night but the check-in database was down. These guys were waiting for it to come back up.
This is the line of people who backed up behind me while the database was down.
A huge NOC was located in the middle of the BYOC.
I had to park in the overflow lot most of the time. A quarter of the way to the hotel, I walked past this vehicle.
The official opening of the BYOC was delayed Thursday morning because of some last minute issues. A large line quickly developed.
One line was for people who had already dropped their equipment off and the other was for those who still needed to check-in.
Finally, the line moved enough so I could get to the air conditioning.
At 10:00 AM, the lights were still on in the BYOC but it was slowing beginning to fill.
Here it is, home for the next four days.
I immediately opened my browser to play some Quake Live and encountered this surprise … Network problems!
An area was set up this year so spectators could watch the early tournament matches and listen to the shoutcasts.
Yvonna Lynn (of Charisma +2) and Fatal1ty on the Quick Draw stage.
Spectators watching a game from the 1v1 Masters Tournament.
This is some of the equipment brought by QuakeLive.tv to support the shoutcasts of the tournaments
Ventrillo donated two Shelby Cobra Mustangs, one blue.
… And one red.
The Quakecon Girls on the Quick Draw stage.
PCs were set up in part of the vendor area so gamers could try Quake Live.
Clov3r coached the Quakecon Girls, teaching them the finer points of Quake Live.
The Quakecon Girls played Fatal1ty in a Quake Live match.
Afterwards, various gamers had the opportunity to play against the Quakecon Girls.
Most of the Quakecon Girls had console experience but did not want to stop playing Quake Live.
Two Quakecon Girls discuss their match with Fatal1ty.
The Bethesda Softworks booth featuring their games Brink and Fallout, New Vegas.
The center of the vendor area.
The Air Force Reserve had a booth set up in the vendor area. It never seemed very busy.
Patriot Memory had several laptops set up to demonstrate the speed of solid state drives versus hard disk drives.
The nVidia booth.
Asus had a great booth with lots of overclocking demos and cool gizmos.
A first for Quakecon, the Retail Store.
Alienware has their H1 Hummer decked out with multiple gaming PCs on display in their booth.
Part of the large AMD + ATI + Sapphire booth.
The guys from CPU Magazine were overdressed, as usual.
The front of the Bethesda Softworks booth.
Antec has this interesting little PC on display in their booth.
The Guildhall at SMU was back again with a booth.
The PCs in the tournament area were provided by Dell Alienware.
Back in the BYOC, network problems continued. There was a local Steam repository but you had to logon to the Steam via the Internet to access it.
The guy sitting on my right tethered his PC to his phone and played TF2 over a 3G connection.
As the tournaments moved into their final stages, a large crowd gathered to watch Rapha vs. Stermy.
Rapha lost, was eliminated, and finished 6th. It was his second worst finish at a major tournament ever.
Cooller and Cypher chat before the 1v1 Masters Tournament finals.
In the CTF finals, fnatic won the first game, played on Japanese Castles, against EG 3-2.
EG came back on Siberia, a map that is not their strongest, to even the match.
EG won 3-2 over fnatic on Stonekeep, a new CTF map, to win the $15,000 first prize.
Cooller prepares himself for the 1v1 Masters Tournament finals.
Cypher make final adjustments to his PC prior to the start of the match.
Cooller's brother (and manager) watches the tournament action from the stage.
Cooller won the first map, Lost World, 9-0 but forfeited the second map, Battleforge, to even the match one win each.
Cooller won the third map, Furious Heights, 2-1.
Cypher came back on Aerowalk in the final minutes to even the match with two wins each.
Cypher again came back on the final map, Blood Run to win his second Quakecon Championship and the $14,000 first prize.
A brief discussion took place at Cooller's PC following the match.
Nice paint job on the case and interesting wallpaper on the monitor.
Three views of this PC, one from the left …
One from the right …
And one from the front.
The case had a nice skin applied to it.
This PC had nice green lighting inside the case.
Which nicely complemented the green highlighting on the exterior of the case.
The PC was entered in the case modding contest.
This monster was almost as tall as I was.
It was very noticeable in the dark BYOC.
This acrylic case was lit by six LED fans.
This hand-built case was huge and required a large hand cart to move it.
No towers of Bawls cans in the BYOC this year. This was about as complicated as the construction got.
Possibly a Cooller fan boy?
This case modding contest entry was quite small.
It also looked really cool in the dark.
This was a popular look, the second PC I saw with this skin.
This Quakecon will be remembered for its network problems but when the network was up, I had a solid 4 ms ping in Quake Live.
There were always a few Instagib, FFA, CA, CTF, and Freeze Tag games going on.
Although the number of players seemed low. I keep running into the same people over and over.
Everyone was given premium level access to Quake Live while playing in the BYOC.
This was my last game of Quake Live at Quakecon 2010. Nice to finish with a win. :-)