Swedes triumph at video games world cup!

[Deepak]

Link

POITIERS, France (AFP) - Sore-thumbed Swedish players have swept two of three finals in the Electronic Sports World Cup held at Poitiers in central-western France, organisers announced.

The Swedish "Team 9" beat the US "Zex" at counter-terrorist operations in the game "Counter Strike", winning them 100,000 dollars (88,000 euros).

Earlier in the day, Sweden's Alborz Haidarian, aka Heman, beat compatriot Fredrik Johansson, aka Mad Frog, at the heroic fantasy game of "Warcraft III".

German Christian Hock, aka Gitzz, however, defeated Swede Zulg, at "Unreal Tournament" to prevent the Scandinavian nation sweeping the board.

Organisers said they had expected a strong European showing but they expressed disappointment at the South Korean performance, favourites to win at the start of the competition coming from a country where professional video game players have been around a while.

In total, 400 competitors from 37 countries thumbed their control pads in front of 8,000 spectators.

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How good are these gamers?? How would I fare against them in UT (I play quite good IMO)?

 

[Evil_Cloud]

FPS are the most popular in Sweden acording to a report...
So it's quite logical it will spawn the best players.

 

[MfA]

This doesnt belong in the console forum ... that said, the quality of the broadband services probably give Sweden a big advantage over the US too (in nurturing good LAN players).

 

[London Geezer]

This doesnt belong in the console forum ... that said, the quality of the broadband services probably give Sweden a big advantage over the US too (in nurturing good LAN players).

all about priorities really.. i mean yeah they get 10Mb broadband services (or something like that), but i guess they must be spending more time indoors than, say, people living in california........ now, why did i start talking about this again?

 

[zurich]

Yea the Swedes/Finnish are scary good at FPS's. Team 9 made headlines many a year back for wooping DeathRow (Thresh's clan) back in the QW day. Ocfourse, lets not forget the crushing defeat in 1998 of Vallasherra at the hands of Aftermath in a 2 match, first-of-its-kind intercontinnental QWTF match

 

[Grall]

Hehe, this Alborz "HeMan" Haidarian guy just made headlines in the largest national newspaper in Sweden, and damn, he's CUTE. Hhehee!

He claims to have had no expectations whatsoever, and was as surprised as anyone else about winning. As for the prize money, maybe he'll get his drivers' license he says. Pretty cool!

*G*

 

[Gubbi]

This doesnt belong in the console forum ... that said, the quality of the broadband services probably give Sweden a big advantage over the US too (in nurturing good LAN players).

That and the long, dark freezing winters with nothing to do but sit indoor shooting up (no, not like that).

edit: Norway are pretty good too.

Cheers
Gubbi

 

[zurich]

This doesnt belong in the console forum ... that said, the quality of the broadband services probably give Sweden a big advantage over the US too (in nurturing good LAN players).

That and the long, dark freezing winters with nothing to do but sit indoor shooting up (no, not like that).

edit: Norway are pretty good too.

Cheers
Gubbi

Actually, Scanadanavians grew up on ISDN, and didn't get true broadband until much later in the game (compared to North Americans), which is probably why they fare so well in high ping environments (and consequently woop ass on a LAN).

 

[Gubbi]

This doesnt belong in the console forum ... that said, the quality of the broadband services probably give Sweden a big advantage over the US too (in nurturing good LAN players).

That and the long, dark freezing winters with nothing to do but sit indoor shooting up (no, not like that).

edit: Norway are pretty good too.

Cheers
Gubbi

Actually, Scanadanavians grew up on ISDN, and didn't get true broadband until much later in the game (compared to North Americans), which is probably why they fare so well in high ping environments (and consequently woop ass on a LAN).

Actually I had better ping on ISDN in QuakeWorld in the old days than I have today on my 2mbit/512kbit ADSL (21-23 ms compared to 25-28ms today). I live in Denmark.

Sweden also had early cheap broadband (cable and shared ethernet). I guess it's the same story with Norway and Finland

Cheers
Gubbi

 

[zurich]

Actually I had better ping on ISDN in QuakeWorld in the old days than I have today on my 2mbit/512kbit ADSL (21-23 ms compared to 25-28ms today). I live in Denmark.

Sweden also had early cheap broadband (cable and shared ethernet). I guess it's the same story with Norway and Finland

Cheers
Gubbi

Well, when we were having that spat with the plucky Finnish QWTF clan Vallasherra, they all had ~50 pings on ISDN to their own server (hosted by their ISP), and about 120 to ours at GATech (Georgia, US), which was amazing. We were half cable modem users, half college boys on VNBS, which worked out to be ~50ms to our server, but ~200 to theirs. Damn internet routing Heh, back in the day we'd use QWProxy for the cable modem guys to 'hook into' the VNBS network and score ~75ms to the opposite side of North America

Anyways, that was 1998-1999 or so.. and IIRC, the Finnish blokes didn't have broadband yet (unlike us). But as I said, it didn't really matter!

edit: but we still won, 5-3