ESWC 2003 Retrospective Part 2

Unreal Tournament 2003Quake 3

This tournament has gone down in history as the toughest ever duelling competition for Quake 3. Even though the players were fighting for prestige more than money, no other tournament gathered so many galvanising names and no other tournament had a system that made progressing to the final so tough. That included two group stages and a four-man knockout stage with all games played in best of three. Twenty Q3 legends were invited, among them ZeRo4, Cooller, Socrates, LeXeR, Akiles, fox and uNkind. Picking a winner from throng of stars was a tough thing to do.

From the beginning every single map was a game where the players played for life. Surprises have started in the very first round, when the underogged Fazz stole Socrates’ ticket to the second group stage and when the unprepared proZaC (who arrived as a replacement for uNkind) sneaked through past Python and Akiles into further play in a group dominated by cha0ticz.

In the second group stage there was no telling what would happen. Group A had LeXeR, Cooller, cha0ticz and Z4muZ and group B had fox, fazz, ZeRo4 and proZaC. Unexpectedly, Z4muZ lost all his games and LeXeR beat Cooller for first place in the group. Fazz won the other group and ZeRo4 was one map loss away from getting knocked out by fox. At this point everyone was sad that proZaC was out of the tournament because not only was he on fire in some of his games but he also sung and danced for us.

The four men left in the competition lived up to the expectations and gave us an excellent spectacle, especially in the LeXeR – ZeRo4 game which was a rematch for the 2001 WCG final. The atmosphere in the theatre was electric. After each good frag a crowd of 1,000 spectators awarded both gamers with cheers and applause and if there was one thing missing from that match it wasn’t quality frags. ZeRo4 took it 2-1, with an expected win on T4, an expected loss on ZTN and a graceful victory on DM6. The other semi final also ended with 2-1 with Cooller on top, having lost T4 (Fazz’s map in the competition).

After LeXeR had beaten Fazz for third place it was time for the most awaited game: Cooller vs ZeRo4. Again, the show was magnificent to say the least. The match started off on T4, where Cooller was giving the American surprisingly strong opposition only to be broken towards the end and lose 6-5. The second map was Cooller’s home – ZTN. There, he got a few frags ahead and was comfortable until ZeRo4 took and decreased the frag deficit to just one point between both players. At that moment Cooller needed to hide without any armour for half a minute to stay alive in the tournament. His face on the big screen looked as if the youngster was carved of stone but his heartbeat rating was sky high! In the end, it went down to whoever would be better on DM6. And this time it was Cooller again with a 16-4 win over the American. The little Russian crowned himself Quake 3 king for 2003.


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