Photos from the ESWC Masters of Athens, October 17th-18th, 2008

Right before the ESWC Masters of Athens, the German eSport site fragster.de interviewed the Swedish Quake star Magnus "fox" Olsson. Find out what he has to say about the upcoming event, his friendship with Johan "Toxic" Quick and why he plays with inverted sound.

Fragster: What is your opinion on the comeback of toxic? Only a few might know him as good as you know him. Do you think he will be able to continue his past successes? And what did he do the whole time?

fox: Well, he's a good friend and I'm happy to be travelling with him again. Damn shame that we always get put in the same groups etc. or face each other early in the brackets :) We are pretty sick of it. Toxic has been quite active in QuakeLive for a while so I won't underestimate him. Looking forward to watching him play versus Rapha.

Read the complete interview over at fragster.de.

Carmac over at SK Gaming has interviewed Poland's most fascinating individual Maciek "av3k" Krzykowski.

Is it possible that ESWC Athens will be your last tournament?

av3k: I think that it is very likely. I need to focus on many other things right now. I think there will be fewer opportunities to go to events.

Head on over to SK Gaming to find out av3k's views on Jibo, Cypher and toxic, is the young Pole prepared for the event?

(Photo courtesy of SK Gaming)

In the next edition of the Masters of Athens Special on DerQuaker.com you can learn more about the French playboy Pierre-Emeric "link1n" Portier and what he thinks about French quake scene and other topics.
The interview was made two weeks ago and unfortunately due to the issue with his old sponsor, Team Millenium, he isn't going to attend the ESWC Masters of Athens. But fortunately we didn't talk only about the upcoming tournament and touched on some other topics.

Now you have been in the USA. Can you give a good answers on Rapha's "French food is bleh"? How you liked American food?

link1n: HAHAHA :D To be honest, we can't really give a good answer when you're traveling about a tournament. I mean you have no time to go in a great restaurant or something like that, so of course food is gonna be "blehh" and I'll say the same thing about American food, I mostly eat hamburgers. So yeah, American food is bleh and French food owns the planet! FROOOMAGGGEEE!

Read the full interview in english on DerQuaker.com.

After Quake 3 a few days ago, the Warcraft 3 seedings and groups for the Masters of Athens just got posted today on ESWC.com.


Press Release - Official Groups

ESWC guys have posted their seedings and groups for the Masters of Athens on their website.


Press Release - Official Groups

Just two weeks before the ESWC Masters of Athens tournament some changes were made regarding the attendees list. As for Quake 3, Makaveli and Chance have been replaced by Spart1e and matr0x.

Also, the Warcraft 3 tournament have sonkie, Soccer and Reign still not included in the participants list so their participation might be unsure.


Source: ESWC

Just like the 2006 Finals and the 2008 Masters of Paris, the ESWC 2009 Finals will take place in Paris at the Palais Omnisports de Paris Bercy (POPB) taking place on June 26th till 28th 2009.

The event will of course take place during the Gaming Show of Paris (also know as Mondial du Gaming) and the set up isn't known yet.

After the 2008 Finals held in San Jose, the big show is now back in France!

Source: ESWC.com

Two American Quake 3 legends, Paul "czm" Nelson and John "ZeRo4" Hill, will miss the upcoming ESWC Masters Greece event, though for entirely different reasons.

Neither Evil Geniuses' Nelson or SK-Gaming's Hill will participate in Athens next month for the ESWC Masters. Nelson, a Princeton undergrad, current CalTech grad student and mathematical genius, forgot to sign-up in time.

"I had thought of applying but didn't know the deadline was coming up", says Nelson. "I was busy all weekend and didn't check when it was until today, which was too late."

Read the rest of the article at SK-Gaming.com.

The international participants for the Electronic Sports World Cup's Masters of Athens have been announced.

They are:

Quake III: Arena
av3k - 2007
Chance
Cooller - 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007
Cypher - 2006, 2008
fox - 2004, 2005
Jibo
K1llsen - 2008
Linkin
Makaveli
Noctis
Rapha - 2008
Toxjq


Announced as well are the computer regulations and computer specifications.


Source: ESWC

Our favorite Polish e-sport journalist Michal "Carmac" Blicharz once again managed to catch one of the key men behind the ESWC for another interview: Matthieu Dallon. They discuss subjects such as the Masters events, the last ESWC Finals in USA and the games chosen for ESWC 2009. Here is a short extract:

Have you ever regretted any of ESWC’s game choices?
No. But I regret some games we have not chosen and I really understand the disappointment of some communities, but we cannot work with all the good games. We have to represent families of games, we have to make choices valuable worldwide, we have to favour the most popular titles and we also have personal affinities.

Feel free to read the entire interview on SK-Gaming.com. Also, you can still find the video interview from the ESWC 2007 Finals with the same fascinating individuals on GGL.com

Scheduled: 02:00 CDT, 17 October 2008
Schedule: Passed

Electronic Sports World Cup just announced the ESWC Masters of Athens to take place from October 17th to 18th and will feature Quake III and WarCraft III: The Frozen Throne competitions.

Both games will have a 15.000$ prize pool and 12 international participants as well as 4 Greek champions. The champions of the event will receive an auto-berth to ESWC 2009.

Those interested in applying to enter the event can do so here until September 21, participants will be announced the next day, seeding will be announced October 8th and groups will be announced October 10th.

Electronic Sports World Cup today announced the first pool of games titles for ESWC 2009 video games competitions worldwide: Counter-Strike 1.6, Quake 3, Warcraft III and Trackmania Nations Forever.

The first line-up of games selected as ESWC 2009 official disciplines are:

• Counter-Strike 1.6 (PC) (c) Valve Software
• Counter-Strike 1.6 (PC) reserved for women (c) Valve Software
• Quake 3 Arena (PC) (c) ID Software (the game version could be subjected to modification with the release of Quake Live)
• Trackmania Nations Forever (PC) (c) Nadeo
• Warcraft III : The Frozen Throne (PC) (c) Blizzard

All tournaments are open to male and female players except CS 1.6 Women. In the coming weeks, the ESWC Committee will announce further titles that will take part in ESWC global competitions, including most probably a football game and a RPG-like title. The 7th season of ESWC will start in October with National Preliminaries worldwide and a series of ESWC Masters tournaments to end summer 2009 with the ESWC Grand Final event.

source