Yup, I'm a Quake head. In fact I've been into all First Person Shooter's (FPS for short) for some time now. I dabbled with Doom but really got into the whole business when Quake appeared and more importantly when QuakeWorld appeared and brought a real multiplayer online experience to the Net in the UK. Over the last year or so, I've been seriously into QuakeWorld and mostly PainKeep which is probably the best Quake 'conversion' that's deathmatch specific.

I got hooked. I spent every second evening on the server for hours at a time. I got myself ISDN, an even bigger and better kick-ass PC and even a 3Dfx based Obsidian for the ultimate Quake machine. The fruits of my labours was that I got 'a bit good' at it. Pff, here's where you normally insert the chest thumping stuff but I'll just point you to Smashed UK Painkeep stats. Even though I've not played there very much at all since Quake 2 was released, they aint gonna bump me off No.1 for a time. As a result, I get lots of two-bit Clans asking me to join. Unfortunately I can't remember the last time someone with [Silly Clan Abreviation] in their name was actually good enough to make me want to be a part of their Clan. Well there you go, so I remain the lone Lurker. That said, I quite like those UNR guys but man their site sucks.

In more recent times, as you're no doubt aware, I now work for PC Gaming World as the New Media Editor. That means predominantly I put together the CDs, or rather source all the demos and stuff to go on it - normally attempting to call overpaid, underachieving PR people who are souly interested in magazine covers and how many beers and free dinners and overseas trips they can scam out of the industry. I digress (I should put this rant up somewhere). I'm also the guy in charge of online gaming stuff so I sorted out the official PCGW Quake 2 server which also has stats, you can find the links on that page. As you can see, I'm taking to Quake 2 quite nicely despite the complete lameness of Id's efforts as far as multiplayer.

Generally these days I terrorise the plebs on our server (I still use an ISP from home so I'm not a big time LPB) or some of the Lithium servers when the BFG-removing, anti-camper patching lameness can be tollerated. In fact the main reason I hang out on our server is that it's probably the best configured in the UK. It's got a subtle server-side only mod called ServerConfig which gives obits/death messages, and I had a LOT of fun making those up. It's got proper level rotation with only the maps suitable for DM play being rotated (the reason why standard servers suck). It's also got a funky message of the day which reminds you that it's PCGW's Q2 server and that you should E-mail us to tell us it's appreciated as it costs us money and stuff.

The most recent thing to happen is that I got myself a nice Quake 2 skin commissioned from this mad Scottish bastard who actually doubles as a damn find artist. Mr Rorshach can be found at his Rorshach journal site which tells you all about how you can get skins off him at the totally reasonable cost of £20 a throw. Reasonable if you're a Quake head of course. Anyway, my skin rules big time but sadly you wont see it unless you download it for yourself. Of course, Id's 'point release' should fix this, if it doesn't I'll do something exceedingly nasty to them. Anyway in the mean time, perhaps you're one of the people I terrorise on our server so you'll be wanting it. If you want to see me coming, you'd better click on these two links and save the skin in your baseq2/players/male directory in your Q2 installation of course. First the icon which you can seen on the right. Then the main skin you'll mostly only see the boots of. Or if you're just a pussy, click here to view it. Thanks for downloading my skin, I'll be gibbing you soon. The Lurker

OK, so my ping is normally half this, sue me.

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Mat Bettinson was here, did this and can be E-mailed, cunningly by clicking on my name. Just there, to the left.