Click on the thumbnails below to view the photos
The location and date for QuakeCon 2008 were announced last year but registration was not announced until mid-April
April 30, Registration night
Running through the registration checklist
Registration actually began about 10 minutes early
Driving to QuakeCon we encountered the usual traffic in the Mixmaster
Reunion Tower, a Dallas landmark
The Bank of America building with Renaissance Tower on its left
New construction around the American Airlines Center
Storm clouds gathering to the west
After a grueling 8 mile trip, we arrived at the Hilton Anatole
Our room was on the 25 floor and had been recently remodeled
Double vanity in the bathroom
The desk and seating area (human provided for scale)
A large walk-in shower
The only drawback was the bath only had one sink
The view from the 25th floor of storms north of Dallas
The storms quickly passed and we had no rain the rest of the week
At 9:00 PM, early registration had not yet opened
Obviously a Quake 4 player
Some people had been waiting in line for early registration since 10:00 AM Wednesday morning
The tournaments began Thursday afternoon
These are the tourney computers for QuakeLive and ET:QW
kgb, Clov3r, and pyro wait for the tourney bracket announcments
1v1 brackets for QuakeLive were announced at 5:00 PM
Pyro readies his machine for the first 1v1 round
Killing time before the start of the first 1v1 round
There were some technical issues that delayed the start of the first round games
Players were asked not to leave the Tourney area but eventually, nature called
Team rage preparing for their first round QuakeLive CTF match
Dell and Intel had a huge booth area which included a large trailer set up as a store
Ryly lights it up on Guitar Hero
Nice paint jobs on the GameRigs PCs
This is a Flac jacket-type vest that transmits the impact of gaming hits to your body . . . Sounds like fun :-/
Electronic Arts was promoting the upcoming Wolfenstein RPG with posters and booth babes
amBX, in conjunction with Micro Center, had a nice booth and gaming area
AMD and ATI had a large booth area with stages, gaming PCs, and real live Rubys
Unfortunately, they also had a complicated scheme for getting swag that involved walking around getting coupons stamped
Chillin' in the comfy chairs in the Activision booth
Finally, Bawls is allowed to sell their product in the vendor area
Girls with machine guns in the Activision booth . . . We need more of that :-)
Another of the Wolfenstein Girls
Just the thing on a hot August day, Sno Bawls!
Triton was displaying their gaming headsets
FRAG, the movie, was screened on Friday night while copies of the DVD were available at this booth
PNY had a nice booth with demos and gaming PCs
Steel Series was at one edge of the PNY booth with mice, mousepads, and headphones
Cooler Master was also sharing space with PNY and Steel Series
DLP was a last minute addition to the vendor area
A single DLP HDTV with a ghosted image . . .
With the special glasses, each player sees their own full-screen ingame view
The Linksys booth
The new Linksys N Wireless Router
The Cybertron booth has several demo PCs setup
FSP Group gave away several gaming rigs during the convention
Power supplies of all sizes
The team from CPU Magazine were a bit overdressed but had good taste in beverages
This funky box was suppose to provide 3-D visuals for your games
The Quake Girls and Todd Hollenshead on the Quick Draw stage
Despite the name, it took quite a while to draw two names that were actually present
Ventrilo was giving away a 2008 Corvette
Not bad . . .
The Quake Girls seemed to approve
(photo by Quakecon Staff Photographers)
The Wolfenstein Girls
(photo by Quakecon Staff Photographers)
The Quake Girls, the Wolfenstein Girls, and Ruby
(photo by Quakecon Staff Photographers)
The "other" Ruby
More views from the 25th floor, Parkland Hospital, Southwest Medical Center, and the Renaissance Hotel
The Dallas World Trade Center
Stemmons Freeway (I-35) with Las Colinas in the distance
The Double Tree Hotel (for the fans of the Dallas TV show)
The Galleria area
Between the Tower and the Convention Area, a section of the Berlin Wall (with graffiti) is on display
Double-wide PC case with lights
With three fans drawing air into this case, I would suppose there are no cooling issues with this rig
This rig has an LCD screen mounted on the side of the case which functions independently of the main LCD display
Whataburger FTW \o/
Very ornate design on this case
This case has a Wofenstein logo cut out from the side panel
Overall, a very nice job
Large, liquid-cooled rig
The wire mesh side panel was a popular addition this year
I don't know, I would get a bigger monitor
This case is double high with CPU and drives on top and the cooling unit below
A really poor shot of Ic3-IX's gaming rig
The barbequer PC
A look inside the barbequer PC
Sitting next to the BBQ PC, was the Ice Chest PC
Another shot of the Ice Chest PC
Saturday afternoon and thee were still plenty of empty seats at the BYOC and people were still trickling in
Praetorian and the rest of the network staff kept the BYOC network running at peak efficency
The family that frags together stays together
Ryly *ahem* chats on DC++
The masses wait to enter the Main Stage area for the Saturday night party and finals
Like the Black Gates of Mordor, the portal swings open
The Saturday night party featured free food, drinks, and beer
The Main Stage
The money winners from the ET:QW console tournament
The money winners from the ET:QW PC tournament
The CTF finals, billymaysdaze came from the winners bracket
rage came from the losers bracket, having only lost to billymaysdaze
Oh, that hurts!
billymaysdaze scored with less than 60 seconds left to win the first game 1 - 0
rage tried to come back in the second game but fell short 3 - 2
In It For The Money (pyro's team) won third in the CTF tourney
rage took second place
billymaysdaze collected the first place prize money
The CTF winners
The winner of the Bawls chugging contest on the right with a time of 17.3 seconds
The winner of the Guitar Hero singles competion
Collecting his trophy from Spicey
Playing for third place in the Guitar Hero Co-Op competion, one team scored 654,937
The other team failed out!
The first place Co-Op team scored 1,195,834 and had a 1571 note streak on One by Metallica
Collecting their trophies from Spicey
. . . And getting mobbed by the Quake Girls
The winner of the 2008 Corvette seemed a little subdued
Finally the QuakeLive 1v1 finals began with Zero4 coming from the losers bracket
Cypher came from the winners bracket
Cypher dominated the first map, only losing control for a brief period in the middle of the game
Zero4 tried to come back on the second map but simply ran out of time
Waiting for the 1v1 awards presentation off stage
Griffin won third on the 1v1 tourney
Zero4 finished second
Cypher receives his prize money
Cypher is the 2008 Quakecon 1v1 champion
We played quite a bit of QuakeLive FFA during the con and have lots of screenshots and demos but the QuakeLive Beta NDA prohibits their distribution at this time.
Check back once QuakeLive has been publicly released!
We played until 7:00 AM Sunday morning, a new Quakecon record for Ryly and Ice
Sunday morning, people were lined up to check out of the BYOC
A few diehard souls were still playing QuakeLive
Fatal1ty was playing his final games as well
The BYOC was starting to look pretty devoid of computers
The last computers were being broken down
Chairs were being stacked to begin the tear down
Even Praetorian had packed his equipment for the trip home
Nothing left now but the cleanup