DreamHack Summer '11: TDM Preview - Introduction

“I love Sweden. The entire world should be like Sweden. They all like to drink and get naked, and the women are hot. I can't think of a better nation on the planet.”
(c) Drew Curtis

Although Drew Curtis himself is not quite the most memorable man in history and might have exaggerated quite a bit for our current predicament, the point he makes, however, definitely relates to eSports and Quake Live in general.

Sweden breathes Quake and although in the last few years, ever since Quake Live got introduced to be fair, no Swede managed to dominantly win events, except for Sebastian "Spart1e" Siira's run in the dying moments of Quake 3 and the first months of Quake Live. However, not only on a player basis, has Sweden been important for the Quake community and the Quake followers. DreamHack has been one of very few organizers, lest we forget about ESL and its Intel Extreme Masters for a moment, to uphold the Quake tradition and organize an event semi-annually where the best sixteen of the game travel to and play their hearts out.

If we shortly cast our eyes back some seven months, we entered the double pleasure of the MSI BEAT IT and DreamHack Kaspersky Challenge with two tournaments held within the three days of Jönköping attention. Almost everyone unanimously decided that event had been the most entertaining and interesting Quake Live event of 2010 and conjured up new stories to add to the diary of Quake Live’s nearly two and a half years of existence.

Not only that, but with the Intel Extreme Masters being conclusively quiet concerning the inclusion of Quake Live in their 6th season, the DreamHack Summer 2011 event will be the first European-wide event to happen since the Extreme Masters Season 5 World Finals. What has changed? What have the pro's done since and who has the best cards for this year's first DreamHack edition?

TDM Frenzy To Entertain Community

The biggest news is a direct consequence of the recent growth of the DreamHack 2011 Season, as they have upped their total budget tremendously and have given Quake Live something the community has looked forward to for ages. DreamHack will host the very first and hopefully not last Team DeathMatch event in Quake Live and invited all teams from Europe and even further to attend.

The community reacted wildly. Players left teams. Teams disbanded altogether. New teams formed. Long, yet not forgotten players came out of hiding. The community was simply buzzing with activity and during the diamond process, some real shiners appeared.

4Kings, UltraFrag Xtreme, Team Moscow, METSU, Reason Gaming, colwn and Serious-Gaming, Team-Dignitas, Team Alpha, xentorium. The names alone should invoke thrilling shivers down all your spines and goose bumps across your arms, legs and toes. That’s even before you know who represents which team and who is likely to meet each other in the Playoffs. Although DreamHack had some difficulties in seeding everyone properly and the community reacted full of hate when they found out that colwn only received a mid seed, they have to be given a bit of slack in seeding a bunch of teams purely based on their names and no history of previous events to base their analysis on.

Especially the last few weeks, the top teams have started their rigorous preparation and the community responded by organizing several TDM cups to see their heroes and anti-heroes in a jousting that would get the arms raised and the voices screaming. JeeSports, Roccat and ESL had three different one-day TDM cups across the last two weeks and each time we saw a different winner.

Yes, we'll see the illustrious Paul "czm" Nelsson