E-sports:Wolfenstein Enemy Territory

by Ronald Schmidt

My name is Ronald Schmidt ,i m 31 years old and today I will tell you about the way Wolfenstein Enemy Territory made a small difference in my life. Enemy Territory is one of the games which during the last 8 years had been very actively played, both on a amateur level by many people around the world but, also on a professional level as what pro gamers call E-sports. What is E-sports:Electronic sports, abbreviated e-sports is used as a general term to describe the play of video games on a competitive level. Most common genres for this are real-time strategies (Starcraft), fighting-games (Street Fighter, Virtual Fighter, Tekken) and mass-multiplayer online games (World of Warcraft). Then there are first-person shooters (Counter-Strike, Halo, W:ET) which concern us ET-players more. As you may notice, the easiest way to play an electronic sports match is over the Internet. General online play is subject to the lessened ability to detect cheating and the more unpredictable network latency not being the ideal environment for high level competition; however, due to its convenience, even players who are used to LAN games use Internet games for fun and exhibition games.

Just like any other normal sport, e-Sports can be a real hogger of your free time. From 2 evenings a week to 6 days a week and one LAN a month, it depends on how much effort you put in it. In some sports, like olympic lifting, the best of the best lifters dedicate their whole lifes to enhance their performances. They sleep, eat and recover in their training centers. Normal Sunday-lifters cant do that and same thing happens in e-Sports. You can tell apart the amateurs from real professionals by telling if they make their schedule so that it syncs with their daily job or school, or if they almost live in the internet-cafeterias and LAN-centers. But what is Wolfenstein Enemy Territory?To understand that,u have to understand how this game was borned and how it end up today by being one of the strongest and popular first person shooters ever created in the history of video gaming. You might be surprised to find out that Apple is not a stranger when it comes about Wolfenstein game.Castle Wolfenstein, a game written by Silas S. Marner and released in 1981 by Muse Software for the Apple 2. The Apple 2 is an 8 bit home computer, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products,designed primarily by Steve Wozniak, manufactured by Apple and introduced in 1977. It is the first model in a series of computers which were produced until Apple 2 production ceased in November 1993 . Castle Wolfenstein is a stealth-based action-adventure shooter game set in World War 2.The game's main objective is to traverse the levels of the castle to find the secret war plans and escape alive. Progressively higher military ranks are earned upon each successful escape with the war plans, and the game becomes correspondingly more difficult as each higher rank is achieved. There are 8 ranks, beginning with Private, culminating at the rank of Field Marshal. A sequel, Beyond Castle Wolfenstein, followed in 1984.Its game play and graphics are nothing like those of Wolfenstein 3D, but the games share a similar story/plot/goal. The first-person shooter, titled Wolfenstein 3D, was originally released for DOS on May 5, 1992 by ID Software. It was later released in 1994 for the Macintosh. There was also a version released for the Super Nintendo and later for the Atari Jaguar. In 2002, it was even released for the Game Boy Advance. The game features the first-person perspective with which we are now so familiar. The items and enemies are sprites. Sprites are a collection of static images that are moved around, resized, and even animated. For example, an enemy's feet moving would be an animation only a few images in length, the enemy's traveling left and right would be movement of the sprite, and the enemy coming closer would be an enlarging of the sprite. The levels are single-layered; this means that even though the game is a "3D first-person shooter," you can only move in 2 dimensions: left/right and forward/back. In Wolfenstein 3D, you can not jump, crouch, climb stairs, etc. Since Wolfenstein 3D, games have steadily improved. Doom added the ability to walk up stairs creating differing heights. Descent and Duke Nukem 3D made the levels even more 3D by allowing rooms to actually be on top of each other; there is also jumping/crouching in Duke Nukem 3D. Quake added highquality 3D items and enemies by using polgon models rather than sprites. Since then, game makers have been constantly improving on graphics and gameplay. The first sequel to Wolfenstein 3D was released only for the PC in 1992. This 20level game is called Spear of Destiny. Since then, there has been only one sequel to

Wolfenstein 3D. In Fall 2001, Return to Castle Wolfenstein was released for both the PC and Mac and according to many is still the best team based, first person shooter video game ever created. A free, online-only follow up to RTCW, was released on May 28, 2003; it is called Enemy Territory. Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is a downloadable, free-to-play multiplayer game in which players wage war as Axis or Allies in team-based combat. It's a team game; you will win or fall along with your comrades. The only way to complete the objectives that lead to victory is by cooperation, with each player covering their teammates and using their class special abilities in concert with the others. Featuring multiplayer support for up to 32 players, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is the ultimate test of communication and teamwork on the battlefield. Players join the fray as one of five distinct character classes each with unique combat abilities. The Covert Ops can steal the uniforms of fallen enemies and perform covert reconnaissance behind enemy lines, while Engineers can plant and diffuse land mines as well as construct battlefield structures including bridges, guard towers and forward operations bases in the midst of combat to gain advantages for their team. Medics provide health and revive fallen teammates, as Field Ops use their binoculars to mark enemy positions for a Soldier's mortar barrage. Each Axis or Allies team can divide itself into smaller fire teams for quick and easy communication using an intuitive messaging system and dynamic command map of the entire battlefield.Strategy is what this game is all about. Strategy can also be described as the roles everyone on the team does, and how they interact to win against the enemy. Wolfenstein Enemy Territory should be played understanding how to help your team. Try to think about what your objective requires for capture or what is needed to destroy it.Don't just focus on all the little things like killing a bunch of players, instead blow up the objective or steal the parts. You should also be aware of what other people are doing and whether what you're doing is really of any benefit. For example, if your team is getting severely outgunned, maybe you could better serve your team by choosing an aggressive role. No longer does winning a single battle win the war. In Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory multiple objective-based scenarios are linked together over the course of three maps to form a campaign where teams struggle for successive victories. Throughout a campaign, players gain experience in categories like battle sense and light weapons as well as their class specific abilities, each of which persist and accumulate over the course of the campaign. As players reach higher levels in each of the seven categories they are awarded with enhanced abilities as well as battlefield promotions that are represented as ranks on each players helmet. The 28 enhanced abilities range from higher ammunition capacity and faster power-bar recharge times, to the ability to see land mines, revive fallen teammates at full health or use a machinegun instead of a pistol as your secondary weapon. In addition to objective and campaign modes, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory introduces a team-based Last-Man-Standing game mode, where squad-mates cooperate to ensure their team has the last surviving man on the battlefield. Additionally, Splash Damage (an independently-owned game developer in London, which created some of the

maps for the game and helped at game development ) has created a new terrain foliage system that allows players to hide or take a sniper position in the cover of long grass or snowy mountaintops. With numerous game modes, epic campaigns, persistent character progression and an arsenal of overwhelming firepower including land mines, mortars, mobile MG-42s and a silenced sniper rifle, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory will have players battling in the trenches for hours. From the many mods that ET has , the best and popular is by far ET PRO.ET Pro is a mod specifically targeted at competition play, with features specifically designed for administration of competition servers.ET Pro has been chosen as the official tournament mod for ESL(Electronic Sports League ) and Clanbase(a unique system, for online gamers, built and maintained by online gamers where they can arrange their wars, play in ladders and competitions (cups), read news, download files, talk in forums, follow competitions, view demo's, listen to live game coverage, etc., etc. ).The biggest community of ET PRO players is crossfire community,created by the belgian Raza and hosted on a university server where he first created the site during the lofty RTCW days .The site was called crossfire.nu and it was created in 20 june 2006. But what makes ET and in particular ET PRO so special? First, being a free game, a lot of people got it with a simple click of mouse. These were our own John , and to a lower extent, Jane Does. The average age was average, both old and young play it, everybody who wants to experience a little bit of World War 2 plays it. The everyday occupation is varied, both the poor and the wealthy play it. And most of all, people from all over the globe are part of this community. Somehow this community evolved into one of the best, and now nostalgic, societies out there. Clans such as Gunslingers(Finland),Ocrana.Ati ( Germany), and Reload(Mix Europe), just to name a few, were very mature teams. They held up a standard of attitude and the so called medskilled acted like it because everyone wants to be like their role models . The second difference is that Enemy Territory is a game which is easy to master if you put in a big enough effort . Since may 2003, most of us grew to love it, and many still play it day in, day out, in an attempt to improve their skill and get some of that e-fame. Surely, this game should be considered a classic. It has a brilliant mix between aim, movement, weapon management, teamwork and that ever helpful bit of luck. Many games have worked with a similar system since Return To Castle Wolfenstein first catered it to the masses, but it was in Enemy Territory where most will agree it was perfected. Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory has a long lasting existance within the world of online gaming so far; realeased as an uncompleted add-on to it's big father Return to Castle Wolfenstein it had a hard time developing to such a competitive and overall balanced game what it today without a doubt is.Eight years have past since its birth and there is still a player base of about 10.000 people constantly playing this game. No other game could compete with such a stable player base which circles continiously around the 10k mark. Of course there are bigger games; Counter Strike might be a good example for that, with a still growing crowd of ten times more players than ET has got. What I want to say is; ET is still there. Other games like Day of Defeat, Soldier of Fortune, Tactical Ops and Unreal Tournament on the other hand were not able to keep their players.

The competitive scene had its ups and downs. After being praised to death when Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars was announced in early 2006 it was one of this moments in Enemy Territory life where the future didn't look as bright as before. But then again there was another highly prized tournament at QuakeCon for ET, the sHgOpen opened its doors to the community(a big Denmark Lan with prizes in money of aprox 40 50000 dollars), the ESL featured ET in its very own IPS(ESL International Premiership ), Crossfire began with their LAN Challenges and ET was shown in German television by GIGA. The game which housed big names in eSports like OCRANA.ATI, Check-Six, Team9 or INfensus in the early days; was then again featured to the masses of online gamers by top class gaming organisations such as Dignitas, The Last Resort, Insignia Cadre and k1ck eSports Club. Enemy Territory has great tools to become a more popular game in the gaming world: A dedicated community, the crossfire.nu community website, amazing TV mod for the game and a great website (gamestv.org) to make using it even easier. If Enemy Territory can manage to keep on rising as a competitive game and can make sure that events like SHG Open or ESL IPS were not a one time thing, then these tools will greatly help new players get right into action and this will further improve the games chances of being featured at new tournaments. Written coverage at Cadred.org and sometimes eSreality made gamers of different games aware that ET is played competitive wise. Like no other game, ET is one of the best examples for being communities work. Starting with bani and the ETpro crew making ET to what it is today, FlyingDJ, kafux and Chosen three guys known to nearly every Crossfire member having put a lot of work into ET to get it supported by GIGA and the IPS or TosspoT also known as 'God of ET' organsising LANs for the community, sending the allstar crew of ATI.Crossfire to QuakeCon 2006 supported by the community or establishing a deal with gaming equipment seller QPAD to give players the CrossfireQCup. Let me tell you something about mystic and the movie parodia magnifica.Hans Zimmer vs. Lambretta (Loxodonte mix) opens up the movie and I can already feel the hairs on my neck standing on end, my mouth is dry and I know something special is coming. I'm on the edge about to be swallowed up by something utterly awesome.Juha comes from Helsinki.Best medic, best aim, best overall player and most over-rated. It seems he couldn't win everyone over, not that he ever tried. He's in the best team and his last team, GunSlingers, were voted the most popular ever. Skill doesn't get you to mystic's level though, there have always been challengers and the likes of Markus 'feruS' Stenmark, Jeroen 'teKoa' Augustinus, Sebastian 'butchji' Eisregen and David 'mAus' Herreman still pale in significance for anyone old enough to have seen mystic in his peak. The movie concludes with mystic's frags and I begin to remember why and how I started out in ET.. I look gingerly for demos, I already know the matches I'm looking for because they're memories as real and vibrant as my first kiss, burnt into my conscious: parodia versus u96d, the Eurocup' XI final. It's the map Supply Depot and after an awful first stage defense parodia lock down. feruS is in the east turret with a pistol waiting on axis respawn, he leans and spots mystic - it's

the encounter the entire ETTV server has been waiting for, Jesse 'saintt' Leino nades' feruS in the face, killing the Swede and the hopes of 2000 others watching the match live. saintt feeds mystic ammo packs at east, he gobbles it up and spits out allied bodies. The overbearing thump of body shots pound continuously through my headset, head shots sing like harpies: ting, ting, ting, another foe downed in three. He's a wall you just can't get past, you've to bring your team mates and break him down. Minutes pass and he still hasn't died, this is what three generations of talent have aspired towards, he's the star which even the top players look up to. Mystic doesn't speak, ever. He doesn't leave comments on websites and doesn't chat during matches. He could've just won the Eurocup' and you'd never know. No gl, hf, gg, nothing. He lets others speculate, debate and comment. He's above it. He doesn't even speak on ventrilo, apparently. His team mates never break the spell, it's as if there's some high skilled pact to keep mystic's status. A god in the virtual world, untouchable, unassailable, we the barbarian masses only watch on with bestial stupidity, clapping with dropped jaws as he butchers another defense. Words without experience are meaningless; Juha Porvali from Finland is a nobody, mystic is a somebody. What's an alias worth? It reminds me where I come from, what I've achieved, what I believe in and shows me how far I've still to go. Their skill make us stand to attention, their personality makes them memorable and it's their alias which makes them unforgettable. Whisper mystic to the right person and you'll get more than a smile in return...And this is just one of the many examples of ET silent warriors. When it comes to events, shows and concepts ET is a pioneer and the players and teams do whatever they can to actually present themselves in best possible shape no matter what.It is about the effort and dedication people came up with to make sure ET can not be anywhere near its death:test clips, movie tutorials, awesome tools and so much more that makes sure we actually enjoy watching the majority of today's released frag movies. . Of course many people disappeared for different reasons but the amount of time put into promotion years ago is what we benefit from today,is one of the important factors that contributed in keeping the game alive for more than 8 years.And that s something you can meet only in the incredible community of ET Pro players.With people like Sean Seanza or Lewis Merlinator Hanlon stepping in the biggest foot steps possible and doing good with using their own and mostly modern methods to spread the word to the world: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube ,even the scene over the big sea seems to have some heartbeat which wouldn't be possible without such a strong core within the community. I asked some of the crossfire members,why are they playing ET?Here are some of the answers: Ross(England):Its a game that i enjoy because I am competitive. Also there is a great social side to it, such as hanging on ts with friends having banter etc. The prize money is just an added bonus

Tom(England): I enjoy the aiming and teamplay side of ET, not many games nowadays seem very aim based and this is what I enjoy. Aleksandra(Poland): I like et community,this is also very addictive,im playin also some games but i think that yes, et is much more emotional,i dunno why,maybe that i spend a lot of time with this people and with some im good friends ,so et is not only a game. Ludovic(France): Playing ET since 2003, and for me it's a good way to spend time whitout beeing a "nolife". By playing ET I met some people i like to play with and which share the same opinion about this game.. That's why i'm playing ET Cristina (Romania):To relax and have fun with my friends :) Reety(Finland):I mostly like ET scene .There's so much adorable people Dialer(Poland):I ve been playing all cod games cs since 1.3 but et got this somthing that keeps me playing it.Quake like movement and q3 engine makes game fast,unpredictable,fun to watch and play .Thanks to stopwatch gametype its more unexpected that cod4 seek and destroy rounds game and im still playing it since theres no other game provading such things. There are emotions involved,since im not playing only for fun i wanna win,if i do im happy,if not im hmm angry dissapointed. Gifted Geheim(Belgium): I met some nice ppl, went to some lans was cool, used tax/teamwork/motivation to win something togethr.There is an awsome community and it was amazing to see them at lans Airen Patlevic(Slovak): Because it have a nice gameplay, its about player skills brain and aim. Its not like a StarCraft game, when you just sitting, clicking arround and do a 1 or 2 pushes. In this game, you need to speak a lot, make the good decisions (skills), and have a little bit luck ;) T4MjEE(Czech Republic): To be honest, for those 3 years of my ET career i met really nice guys which i had a lot of fun, in my starts those guys were like my family, i wasted with 'em most of my time, i was nerding in my every free time. I had very nice times with ET and lot of nice memories, i learned some languages, those guys learned me how to behave and how to be successul. ET made me different person as i was before, thats why i still play it Slajdan(Sweden):I play ET because it is awesome. There is no other game that have the same feel, where you can still find decently skilled players and wars. Most other good, active, first person shooters either have the counter-strike or battlefield style, and sometimes the quake style.And those are so far away from competitive ET. Which contains all very specialized elements of awesome shooting, teamplay, the q3 like engine and many many players contributing with controversy and fun. In the end,i will tell you this:ET is for video games, what The Beatles was for rock music,2pac for hip hop,Mozart for classic music,Einstein for physics,Van Gogh for painting and Steve Jobs for the IT.I love all this people and the impact they had on all those who came in contact with their works,as much as I love ET and the people I met inside it.The day ET will die,some part of me will die as well,but I m prepared to fight

among the rest of the community to keep it alive as long as possible.Why?Because it s one of the small things in this world that makes me happy.And that is priceless.