Interviews

ZzJohnzZ: North American Division Admin - dK

You started adminning with Challenge Smackdown season 1, what made you decide to admin this league?

To be honest I am not sure how I first heard about Smackdown. I knew there was going to be a few EU divisions and I think that I suggested that there should be a North American division as well. I also volunteered to run it. I knew many people still played quakeworld in North America. There just weren't any events going on. I thought it might be fun for all the quakeworld players if there were a league and smackdown sounded like a good thing. I liked the idea of playing on a variety of maps. I also thought qizmo should be used more in North America as well as Kteams. Now these things are all standard.

How hard was it running SD2 and also being on a team, AG?

First of all, most people can't imagine the time it takes to run the North American division of Smackdown 2. I had to sit around at night in IRC waiting for teams to play. I had to admin 99% of the matches. I had to ask teams to play games. I had to beg teams to submit demos. After each match ended I had to write reports. In addition to this I tried to practice with my clan almost every night for at least 2 hours. Many of these things were my choice. If I am going to run a league, it has to meet a certain standard. If I can't find people that I trust will do a good job, I will do it all myself. The same goes for playing. I will put in as much effort practicing as needed to ensure that I will play well for AG. I know I play a lot better practicing 4-5 hours a day, but with the adminning all I had time for realistically was 2 hours.

In addition to time constraints, playing in official matches was also a mini-drama. When a decision had to be made, I would try my best to follow the rules. Whenever I made a decision as an admin and my team was involved, I would get yelled at by the opposing team in messagemode 1. Then my teammates would yell at me in messagemode 2 because they liked my decision even less than the opposing team. No matter what I decided both sides were unhappy. This was extremely stressful and very frustrating to say the least.

I helped a bit with SD1 and I saw a huge amount of "dumbasses", only word I can think of, were there a lot in Season 2?

Yes Smackdown 2 had its fair share of people that were less than pleasant to deal with. People trying to argue that an average team ping of 20 ping vs 60 is more fair than 70 vs 80, people waiting till 11:59 on Sunday night to try to schedule two matches, people making the play-offs but having no idea what qizmo is. The list goes on and on. This season some people became very creative and would crash servers that they didn't want their team to play on. I wonder what new and exciting things people will come up with for Smackdown 3 :)

Did any NA clans performance surprise or impress you this season?

I knew the clans fairly well and knew what to expect of them. There were a few surprising games like when EG upset XX in the 5th game on dm3 because of [5]FienD's excellent play. Outside of those types of games where a clan would win a map I thought they would lose on, things went as expected for the most part. I knew GQ was very serious and would try hard each game. They are a very well organized team. I also knew XX had trouble getting their starting line-up together. XX had this same problem in season 1. Even so I was midly surprised that GQ made the finals over XX but it wasn't a total surprise. I think AG's level of success was surprising. In the pre-season if someone said, "AG will go 18-0 in matches and lose only one map the entire season. AG will then win the finals 3-0 beating their opponents by about 100 frags on each map." I wouldn't have believed them. The AG Smackdown 2 lineup was almost completely different from Smackdown 1. I had confidence that AG would win Smackdown 2, but I thought it would have been much tougher.

Why did you decide not to admin SD3?

The main reason is school. I don't have 5 hours a night to sit around waiting for people to play games. I need that time to study. I also don't have time to play quakeworld anymore. Right after Smackdown 1, I "officially" joined AG. I thought that the other players would stick around and I wouldn't have to play that much. In fact, I thought I would only have to play selected maps. Then there was a mass exodus of people leaving AG. I knew I would have to practice a lot with the team if AG was going to win. I put in as much time as I could afford, trying to help the team out. I knew I couldn't keep up this practice schedule forever. Even though I was studying a lot, it wasn't enough. Eventually I would have to take much of the time I dedicated towards quake and use it to study even more. So at the start of the Smackdown 2 season, I said that I would quit playing quakeworld at the end of the event whether my team won or lost. Fortunately, Smackdown 2 went well as an event and my clan won. Still, it just took too much time out of my schedule, far more time than I ever anticipated. I started thinking about all the work I had to make up. Even with help of more people, I knew I wouldn't have the time to run Smackdown 3. After a bit of searching for a replacement, Ziploc agreed run Smackdown 3 and I am sure he will do a great job.