DerQuaker

Can you just introduce yourself please?

“Hi, my name is Michael “Yellack” Schreiber. I’m 34 years old, live near Frankfurt, leading 2K.Clan since 2000 and “designer” of the map Purgatory.”

How did you get into gaming and especially how did your way lead to Quakelive?

“Well, the only good thing about my age is that I’m a gamer of day one I think. My first machine was the Atari Pong, then the Atari 2600 console, first PC: C64 with datasette!!, then back to consoles, Gameboy, Sega Mega Drive, Sega Saturn, Sega Dreamcast and back to PC.

I actually can’t remember what the first FPS was I ever played, so in no order: Doom1/2/3, a bit of Wolfenstein & Unreal, Hexen, Exhumed (loved it), KISS Psycho Circus, DukeNukem3D (uberloved it), Quake 1/2/3. Played all of them SP since Q3 Arena on Dreamcast (yeah lol, with 33k modem and around 160 ping, but hey, we already had Hidden Fortress back!)
That got me hooked, it even was pay per minute (to Sega, not id) and my average Phonebill was like 200-300 D-Mark every month :/ I created 2K back then in the end of 2000, hence the name, while I enjoy being called 2 Kings aswell.
We moved to PC Q3A in 2002, stopped around 2007 when it was dying and came back in QL beta, so I guess we are one of the oldest clans around, while the lineup changed a lot. Only me and Zelig are here since the Dreamcast days.”

Do you like QuakeLive as it is or what would you change?

“Well I do love it! It’s by far the best FPS out there and I can’t see anything beating it.
All games today are focused on gfx and must sell millions of times, they look great but aint fun after a few hours, if at all. While I admit that I might be to biased, after playing Q3/QL for 10 Years its kinda difficult to give something that’s different a fair chance, I’m not sure, Painkiller for example was decent. Didn’t like Q4, or Doom 3.
I wouldn’t change much, it obviously could need more support from id and ladders and stuff which is already been said enough. ID should also work closer with the Dreamhack Guys!”

What do you mean exactly?

“Well it kind of saddens me that there isn’t a single Original QL Banner or any promotion for the game. It’s a lost opportunity in my opinion when there are thousands of young gamers walking around and hardly see that QL is played there. Shouldn’t be too expensive to pimp the area up with some original id/QL stuff. It’s the biggest Lan in the world goddamnit!
And nearly all games had to be played online, that’s just…. But I don’t know the reason for this, so I can’t really comment it. Playing the duel Final in the Hockey Arena between SC2 was awesome and a genius move btw! Who made this happen? 2gd/blaze? <3″

What are your thoughts about Dreamhack and are you satisfied with the 4th Place in the TDM Tournament?

“The only thing I would wish for is a fat TV with the QL stream on it, not only for the players, also to attract some of the people around. Just a minor thing tho, Dreamhack is defiantly an amazing Event which couldn’t be any better. 2gd, twitch.tv, blaze, lvl^, sharpe, nvc, dis, trance, the sponsors, all players and everyone whos involved doing their best to make it an awesome event. When I read all the whine on esr I was really shocked I must say. Most of us pay hundreds of euros to go there and attend, for fun, to support the community and the game and hopefully make it a bigger and better event and then you read all this shit about dropping tdm, boring tdm, bleh blah… I’d say get your own ass up, create a team, go attend or stfu! Seriously… don’t have words for this. I do understand that it aint that much of fun to see 200-40 games, but there been good games aswell, and going back to a 16 players Duel only Event is a wrong move imo. Duel should have been announced with tdm in the first place though but, as we know, there has been Sponsor problems.
Really hope that they can fix both for summer again and announce it early enough, but reading these comments I probably wouldn’t bother myself anymore if I were an admin..
Also disappointed that there haven’t been any Swedish/Scandinavian teams besides OnFire.
Anyway… yes I’m very happy with the 4th place, although I think we could have been 3rd aswell. Hidden Fortress was damn close till the 16th Minute and we lost Purgatory by 6 frags, decider map would have been Dreadful Place which I think we could have won. Speculations though and ye, our group could have been worse I guess.”

Lets speak about Purgatory, one of the most played TDM maps these days. How did all this start?

“AKM is in 2K since 2002 or something, mainly being our coach back in the days, I knew that he made quite some maps for Q3, most known should be ne_duel.  As QL was in need for new maps I simply asked him if he would like to team up with me as I don’t have a clue how radiant even works. I wanted to create something really new and fresh, double PU but not a copy of Grim Dungeons. Pretty much everyone said that I can’t place the RA Area in the middle of the map which I luckily ignored. You can’t really test the map in 4v4 so I’m pretty amazed myself how great it turned out and never thought it would get so popular. Very happy <3 (Shout outs to Tony btw, he told everyone @ DH that I made the map and pushed me to the lvl^ interview which took me by surprise, hence I spoke so much crap)”

How long did it take to create the map?

“This is a tough question to answer tbh, because you don’t work every day on it.
Must have been around 10 to 12 Month in total, changing stuff back and forth, also need to check that the routes aint to long, nor to short from Quad to BS and vice versa etc. I’d say something between 8-16 weeks if you work every day for 8h on it.”

Are there any new maps in the pipeline?

“We already made a new TDM map named “Limbus” which is done since quite some time, waiting for id to grab it. I have a good feeling that it would be quite successful as well. It has more of a classic map design with the primary RA, secondary 2x YA split. MH more or less between those 2 areas and a pretty open, let’s call it ‘campgroundish’ Quad Area.

We also finished our first Duel map “Sinister” which has an awesome texture set imo, looks really fresh! Although I’m not that experienced in duel, so I’m really curious if it will work out nicely. You can check pics from all of our maps @ http://2kclan.ffs.dk/leveldesign.php“

Anything else you would like to say?

“Thanks to akm for mapping, greetings to all my friends in 2K (especially long time member Zelig), also cityy <3 and ppl like blaze, williebobc, nicerdicer, lvl^, all casters, interviewers, streamers, movie-makers and everyone who puts effort into the game. People must realize that WE, THE COMMUNITY, keep this game alive! Less whine, more play, create teams etc etc.
Kisses and hugs :*”