I came into this game feeling it would be pretty hard finding a server, knowing that Turkey just doesn't have very good intrenet-connections. As for the Russian team I knew little, but thought they would have less problem finding a good server. Knowing this, I decided to start finding the server as soon as I was handed the admin job for the game. I immediately started talking with Str1ker (about 1.5 hours before the game was to begin) , and he explained that Turkey pretty much ping bad all over Europe, but he wanted to find a neutral server if it was possible. Good, cause that would be the best choice by far. Anyway, about 15 min later Voron showed signs of life, so the three of us started trying out servers all over Europe. It was early on quite obvious that Russia would have better pings than Turkey on every server except Turkey's homeserver. Allthough the pings were the most fair on .de server, Russia had a clear advantage there as well. Initially Turkey agreed to play all games there, but later when seeing how the Russians pinged there, they prefered a home/away sorta game, with the german server being the last and 3rd server if that was needed. I thought that was fair enough really, Russia had around 250 ping on the Turkey server, and Turkey had around 180 ping on the russian one. And the last server (if needed) seemed semi fair at least. So, we started playing q2dm2 (Turkey's map) on the russian home server. Match was very uneven as expected, and Russia won. Then we was to play q2dm5 on the TUR server. Now, that's when the problems arrived. The problem was that the server had a different version of q2dm5 than the stock verison (!!), which I hadn't even thought about when deciding to allow a home/away sorta game. The TUR players did what they could to get the server-admin to fix the problem, but to no avail. A last desperate move was to play on Str1kers own host, which turned out to be useless as his connection/comp couldnt handle the number of connects and everyone but him had 500 pings. So, what to do? Well, the German server was the second best server for the poor connected TUR players, and they were almost forced to play the last map there, as there were not any other options really.



q2dm5 - 's map




Q2DM5 is a map that is centered around two items: the quad and the Red Armor. It was a game looking a bit unorganized at times, with countless RA room takeovers by either sides, which made it quite entertaining actually. Str1ker always being really close to the quad did a good job on this map, either grabbing the quad or making life hard for the RUS quadrunner. Lasthero never seemed to get into the game as he wanted, seemed to be running a bit inbetween delivering damage but not getting the frags as a reward. On the Russian team the teamplay seemed quite strong, when they held RA they utilized it to the fullest, using it as base for attacks on quad, where they shared weapons and ammo, as well as getting stacked with RA. Allthough, as I said, noone really managed to hold on to RA for too long. TUR could use a bit more team-awareness, as the guy holding RA at times were left behind without much of a weapon to hold it with. Quad too was filled with battles, mostly railers defending themselves from incoming rockets, and nade spam at quad and so on. You know, the usual style. TUR held the room with up to 3 players at times, but Russia wouldn't let them take quad without a fight. Anyway, the game was really close for quite some time, one of the reasons was that one of the Russian players lost connection temorarily, which meant Russia had to battle 3v4 for a short time. The lost one got back soon, and then the battle was on once again. Towards the end the Russian's got their act together, holding RA very well, as well as whoring quad some. Good game!

q2dm2 - 's map





Well, here we were, two maps played, but anyone could see this hadn't been a fair game. This was also noted by several mean and evil head admins, and thus, the first map had to be replayed. After a short discussion, Gravgon showed them where the closet should stand and the game was replayed. To everyone's joy, as this time around the match was way more entertaining. Poor yand3x felt the wrath of his fellow teammate as he was the target of quite a few friendly rockets/rails/nades, you name it. Poor soul. Anyway, ColD was doing his own thing by the mega lift. And boy, did he camp that lift! Maybe he forgot a bit about the quad, as he didnt really seemed to die a lot. Str1ker did, but then again he is one good guy at attacking the quad. Lasthero seemed more confident on this map, good work with the RL and gathered frags all over. Russia on the other hand played as they did the last game, after a bit shaky start they just used their teamplay to hold the TUR players down. And RA control was the key here, with Dobr1y and yand3x doing the talking with the rail. Some intresting battles around RA as usual, and quad seemed to go to either team, but quite often killed before any harm was done. An intresting game, and nice to see the game end as it did, in a good spirit and everyone was happy and lived happily ever after.

A big thanks to players for playing, and showing good attitudes mostly, a bit confrontations here and there, and a bit problems with the RU players timing out and so on. But overall a good game, and nice to see TUR play! Good luck both teams.