Unless anyone knows otherwise, im pretty sure its not thresh

Why do you say that? Have you watched it yet? :) I know the feeling, if you ever encountered anyone online named "Thresh" you could be sure it wasn't him (etc.), but I've never seen anyone who's style is similar, and this has all the characteristics, right down to being recorded by a spectator, saying "hehe" (though not saying much at all), shaking his mouse periodically like it's dirty, not being at all smooth or coordinated on the latest jumps or fast movmenet (though he does try a few things with mixed success), extremely high sensitivity (rough/twitchy), sometimes wayward aim, etc. But at the same time, extremely effective, uncanny prediction, and very, very smart, in a thoughtful, deliberate kind of way. Very calm, despite the twitchiness. Oh, and he kicks ass and doesn't die a lot (all the while twitching and jerking and looking slow and old school:), against pretty good competition. Does this describe anyone else you know of?

The other obvious candidate is Reload maybe, but it doesn't really look at all like Reload to me, even the later ones, though the nick is similar to "ulrik" that he played seaweed under on dm4. Any other ideas?

menace... howm any confirmed thresh performances have you seen in the 2000-2004 years? i presume a lot, since you know so much about his style?

i've seen maybe three q1 demos from thresh's pov and they were all 97,98...

the thresh thing is a joke right?

very obvious reload demo (the sensitivity, ping, tactics...)

Thresh is a frequent flyer to down under. All the air miles he gets from his winnings, etc.

He did admittedly play qw as burpy for a titch. There's a demo of him playing a clan game as burpy on his Firing Squad web site.

so i watched the demo and you can believe what you want but im pretty sure its not thresh. no way would he ping 30 to australia (serverinfo says IPGN) and besides thresh pretty much quit nq, and he never got into qw (altho he owned some decent qwers in qw all the same). he focused on q2 in the 99-00 and forward, and has played some exhibition q3a in '02 and maybe later... and the "hehe" bind is distinctly and typically australian, which this hans uses

this might be reload, but I dont think so. i never saw him yap the hehe bind so much and even rustyre moves way better. (last i checked he got 470-480's on first bunny, this dude is 450's)

and seaweed, no offense to him, wasnt performing that well in this game, especially being afk what half the game, and to top it all off, judging an aliaser from a map that is as +forward as aerowalk is, it tends to slush peopls styles...

its not harl either cause his bind is all caps. of course it *could* be anyone, maybe carmack was vacationing in australia, right? but im talking about a probability of more than 0.1% :p (carmack is testing rockets in mojave desert...)

menace how can you even suspect its tresh if he has 30 ms in au ? l o l B)

Whose idea was this that it would be thresh anyways? No one would of thought that. His alias doesn't even suggest that.

menace, in the demos you've seen of thresh the only reason he was twitchy is because Netquake lags to all hell. 100 ping in quakeworld feels the same as 20 or less in netquake. Also when thresh played quake1 hardware sucked. Mouse technology alone has made leaps and bounds in dpi and megapixels.

Just because seaweed got owned by some twitchy player with poor movement, good aim and fast reflexes, it doesn't suggest in the slightest that this is thresh.

Why would he go to Australia and play Quake anyways? If you visited Hawaii would you go there to play Quake?

Here's Tresh playing as Hans at QHlan #5! http://demo.qhlan.org/qhlan5/1on1/duel_que99_razor!_vs_hans%5bdm4%5d27.mvd

rofl. wow what a surprise it is that some euro would alias as "hans"

I never said Thresh would be pinging 30 to Australia from the USA, I assume he must have been on a trip there, either business or vacation. While he was playing, he was earning up to around $100,000 a year for a while from endorsements, prizes, writing strategy guides, etc., but that's irrelevant: since then, he's started 3 companies (the latest is xfire/Ultimate Arena). Why would you expect the dude never travels or doesn't have a million frequent flier miles?

Why would he play Quake there? At the time (2003) he was setting up a gaming company that allowed players to win money at competitive 1v1 or team games online (they'd put money in a pot, then try to win it back), where he had the title "chief gamer". I'm sure he was doing a lot to talk to active gamers in the process (getting opinions, drumming up business). (It's since evolved into a more conventional free player-matching service, and appearantly dropped the money/prize aspect.) Again, doesn't prove anything, just provides a possible explanation.

Alias? You must be kidding. He plays under all manner of aliases, mostly simple and kind of silly sounding (like lots of other players). That doesn't prove or disprove anything.

"hehe" is something that I've seen in probably at least half of Thresh's demos (sometimes multiple times) and even in many interviews. That's not a lot to go on, but at least he didn't say anything inconsistent with being Thresh.

This demo was also recorded by spectator (1)unnamed, not by "Hans". Again, doesn't prove anything, but since he never really liked releasing demos of himself (they were almost always either recorded by a spectator or required by a tournament), this would be consistent too.

He is twitchy in LAN QW demos also, which I've seen maybe a half dozen of prior to this, and in Q2 and I think Q3 (haven't seen much of him playing Q3). His very high sensitivity and jerkiness were unusual and distinctive even in NQ, and much commented on at the time. It's just his style. You're crazy if you think 1996 was so the dark ages that mouse movement or demos were twitchy, because they weren't (necessarily). A good mouse with ps2rate gave as good (and smooth) an experience as anything today, if you kept it clean. Beides, even most of the NQ demos I've ever seen of him he has 30 ping or less (he got a T1 to his house back in 1997 or whatever), and he always had the latest, fastest computers (and used crap settings to get the fastest framerate, and always played software for maximum smoothness), so it wasn't NetQuake making him twitchy.

Thresh never realy "quits" any game per se. He quit public competitive gaming under the name "Thresh" around 1998, but do you think he ever stopped playing? Again, he's started two gaming companies since then where his title was "chief gamer" (I think the third company wasn't gaming-related). His bio at his current company lists him as "World champion of Doom, Quake, and Quake 2" which I think is pretty tasteless (probably written by some flack), but might still indicate that he gives special place to these games. Periodically since then he's written things saying how he misses Q1 and still enjoys going back and playing it and how great a game it is and how nothing else since then has been quite the same. But mostly he just plays on LAN with his friends. (And doesn't record demos. No demos != doesn't play). Also, I think since playing against 9, his aversion to QW pretty much went away.

He's always been good at every game he plays, in every genre. He's just naturally gifted at gaming. I knew some of his friends for a while, and they all said they'd never beaten him at any game, ever, even pacman or tetris or whatever. B2 said he chose a particular level (dm1?) at one tournament against Thresh not because he thought he would win but because he KNEW he'd lose badly on every other level but he'd never played Thresh on that one, so who knows. Of course, he lost badly on that one too. :)

Thresh focused on Q2 for about a year or two at most, then moved on. He never seemed to like it as much as Quake. It was just the game du jour, the game you needed to play to win tournaments and make money. After that (when he retired from competition, since he'd proven he could win when he wanted to and was earning plenty as a dot-com founder) he was playing Q3 (which he also didn't like as much), Tribes, CounterStrike, Battlefield 1942, Call of Duty, America's Army and about 100 (if not 1000) other games with his friends, and probably online in clan stuff (but obviously not under "thresh" and maybe never in formal tournaments). I think he's focused more on team gaming than 1v1. He owns at all of them, from everything that I have heard, but he also hasn't taken any of them as seriously since then (no formal competition), what with running a business, having a girlfriend, etc. The exhibition Q3A was way earlier than 02, I'm pretty sure, probably 2000 at the latest.

What I'm saying is, just because he stopped competing in Q1 publicly doesn't have anything to do with whether he still plays it or is good at it. He's retired, not dead. :)

BTW, the Burpy demo is available here on challenge-tv, it's r3v vs FITH from QIL2. http://www.challenge-tv.com/index.php?mode=demodetail&demo=19726

Another demo that might suggest his overall style is dm2 vs reptile (or vs anyone really, though just ignore the hanging out behind the grate at ya teleporter:) It seemed to me he was playing the lakerman/reload dm2 style before they were known for it (but only using the horizontal rocket jumps etc. when he thought he had the advantage). He also had one or two very early trick demos on methos quake, such as the grenade/rocket jump to the MH window on DM3 (not hard to do, but he was one of the first to demonstrate it).

In this Aerowalk demo, it looks like he's trying out some of these tricks almost for the first time. Most are started by horizontal rocket jumps (an old favorite of his), but he seems not so good at conventional speed movement (which he never learned while playing Quake seriously).

Phil, you've seen 3 Q1 demos from Thresh's POV? I've certainly seen at least 30, and probably around 40 or 50 demos from his pov, mostly NQ (many converted from chasecam or QTV), some QW, some Q2 (at least a half dozen of each), and maybe 1 Q3 (can't remember on that, probably chasecam only). And I've watched him play in person (Q1 and Q2).

Anyway, I must have downloaded this demo a year or so ago, I don't know from where (possibly here, though it disappeared from the site since then). I didn't come in with any preconcieved notion of this being thresh or anyone recognizable. I just happened to watch it yesterday, having no memory of it and having only watched more recent demos for a while, and all I could think of was "this looks like Thresh". I watched it again, then a couple of his other demos (and a couple of reload, since he's also twitchy and very good and has played seaweed under similar nicks, but again, this just doesn't look like reload to me), and I still think it's him.

Oh, I should also say that Thresh's style is pretty much the same in Q2. Jerky aim and mouse movement, fair amount of (sometimes uncoordinated) rocket jumps (including horizontal for speed), ability to do a few other tricks (but not always consistent), but basically not all that smooth, and without the mastery of movement that some other players got. But ultimately so smart (and with effective aim and quick reflexes) that he pretty much always won in the end.

Well when it comes down to it, it's probably Reload. Looked a little different from some of his other demos, but maybe within his usual range of styles. But if there were a demo of Thresh playing Aerowalk, this is probably what it would look like. :)

It's clear that you're still inconclusive as to who it is but you sparked a new debate on how much computer hardware and quake software has evolved quake gaming.

I realize that you are now attributing to Thresh's twitchiness to some sort of a "style" of gamplay that has been with him through q1, q2, and possibly q3. But I have to say the r3v burpy demo he didn't look all that twitchy but even back then hardware was still not up to par, and qw was still severly lacking compared to how much it has evolved to today performance wise.

If you're also saying that NetQuake isn't utterly craptastic for movement and overall game-play, visit http://www.quake1dm.com to get hooked up with everything you need (including active servers) to play Netquake. Try playing NQ again and then tell me that it doesn't feel like utter shit even with this latest Proquake client/server updates (http://www.planetquake.com/proquake)

As for tweaking out Netquake, I probably know more about the client/server than Thresh ever did and there's nothing that can be done to make it feel smooth. As for hardware, the sound, video, mice, mothboards, memory processors of today make a huge difference in game-play from when thresh played. Even if thresh did have state-of-the-art equipment, which presumably he did, there was nothing he could of had at the time that would of even come close to comparing to the computers we play quake with today. Not to mention software such as Operating Systems have been optimized, software drivers, and also the qw client/server has been drastically updated and performance enhanced.

I still encourage (and challenge) you to your modern day computer and load up Netquake and see how it feels. It's more than likely you've forgotten how insanely crap-o-la it truly is.

oh my good christ

gimme threshs cock anyday, right up my vagina :>

My, a Quake-historian focused on Thresh. Nice! The Q3-demo with Thresh was -99 or -00 for sure. I also think he played some pracs with the reborn DR during QIL3, that was the winter/spring of -00.

Ah nostalgia, staying up all night and watching excellent Q3 teamplay on US servers, with 50% qw/nq masters playing, 'twas fun!

It occurs to me that menace is a cockmunch and blows goats on many a full moon.

OH MAU HA HA

p.s ITS NOT THRESH OR RELOAD ITS JUST SOME AUS-QW ASS PITCHERS.

You're right that computers have got much faster, and that NetQuake is hardly playable online (though some people seem to think differently, even today), but on LAN it's fine, and LAN NQ demos aren't necessarily jerkier than modern QW demos, though I'm sure some people had lousy settings and slow computers (even for the time). But particularly with something like ps2rate, and with crappy-looking settings, people could get framerates good enough to always exceed the refresh rate of their monitor, as well as the ability of a demo to record, and input fast and smooth enough to exceed Quake's rate of updating it. While tricky jumps and speed moves don't work as well (or not at all) in NQ, aim should be just as good. See for instance Honus vs Kurtz on DM2 from methosq.com, probably from 1997 or so. It's as smooth as anything I've seen more recently.

I think the players have evolved as much as the computers. The mastery of movement and the environment is much greater now, and, combined with the prevailing DMM3 settings, the game is a lot faster. But people could get framerates and mouse input consistently >60 fps even in 1997 (though maybe not at default settings).

Fair enough. Sounds like you've had your share of interesting experiences in the world of online gaming. I wish you luck with it.

I'll talk to Thresh tomorrow and see what he has to say. I really doubt it's him tho.

I doubt it, too, the more I think about it (it's just highly unlikely). Not sure why I was so set on it, but anyhoo... Reload, maybe, or someone unknown (to me) from down under. DonKing, if you get the chance, could you change the name to just hans_vs_seaweed? :) Sorry for all the hullabaloo!

I remember watching the demo of 'burpy' when it found his way on the net. It was an incredible performance back then. If im right he played with eG?

Probably reload, tim or vindictiv if any of them still play or one of the numerous anons that frequent the servers nowdays

OMG you stupid shitbuckets what the fuck are you still debating over? MENACE GET A FUCKING LIFE.

DONKING DONT NAMEDROP.

NO BLOWJOBS ALL ROUND.

Pure legs mate

uhm .. people have different mouse movements that stick with them, this is mostly because of theyr sensitivity. Thresh uses high sensitivity and are quite "active" when it comes to using the mouse. I have the same mouse movements now when i try quake then when i used to play quake 4 years ago . It has nothing to do with NQ crappy ping or whatever, its just who he is.