WTFPwning in Quake Live

Ok, I was not pwning anybody who was not a noob. And I certainly was pwned trying to take some of these screenshots. However, in my first week of playing this game I managed to figure out a few tricks. I will pass along a couple to you for playing Capture the Flag.

First of all, if you find yourself in an arena playing CTF, and you end up wandering into the enemy's base picking off random people, and you're not quite sure where you are or where their flag is... You probably should not go for the flag cap. Let someone else who is on a circuit do it for you. If you don't know how to get into a good circuit, then perhaps my tips will help you. That way if you find yourself on a team with no one capping the enemy flag, you can get yourself on a good circuit and earn some large amount of points.

To start, get one of these:

That is your team Scout power up. Once you pick it up it gives you a speed advantage AND it prevents area effect weapons fired by yourself from hurting yourself. You cannot pick up an opposing team's Scout powerup, only your own. Once you have it, you have it until you're fragged.

Next, get one of these (whether doing this strat or not):

This is the rocket launcher. It is always good to have one of these on your avatar. It is also particularily useful in combination with the Scout powerup. Why? Because it is basically a liscense to rocket jump at will and indefinitely, provided your avatar has rocket ammunition. Rocket jumping is old-school Quake tricks, and is the only way to get meaningful vertical mobility in Quake Live. All you do is jump and simultaneously shoot a rocket under your feet such that the explosion propels you in the desired direction. With the Scout powerup and 30 rockets you can FLY. Don't get out of control though, it is easy to mess it up if you are not used to it, especially on maps with holes of death. With practice will come greater control. Then you can try rocket jumping off of walls, and other zany things (like giant annoying eye-balls with legs).

Basically map out the quickest route from their flag to yours and work on cutting down the time it takes you to do a lap. Shoot only imminent threats and try first to outrun your opponents... Chances are you will unless they are also Scout powered-up. You're not in it for the frags if you're capping the flag. If it won't take you too far out of your way, prefer routes with less visibility and less traffic. You can still rank top in the arena with points from caps, and the numerous flag recoveries and assists you will make.

With that, I will show two other screenshots I took during this session to demonstrate the visuals you can achieve with Firefox, or Internet Explorer (and an expanding list of other browsers).




And that will probably be it for Quake Live for a while, lest I deceive readers that this is a Quake Live blog. Undoubtedly it will return as a concrete example in other discussions of PC gaming to come.