Methos Quake was launched on July 24th, 1997. Methos
(pronounced ME-thoss) originally created his nick name from the TV show version of The
Highlander. The character Methos is the oldest and wisest of all the immortals in that
show. Ray 'Methos' Walsh was born in England and later on moved to Canada.
Nick Name: Methos
Real Name: Ray Walsh
Birthday: October 13
Country: Canada
Website: MethosQ.com
Hobbies: Computers, Sports, Music, Movies etc.
Favorite Foods: Pizza and Mexican
Favorite Movies: The Shawshank Redemption, Se7en, Indiana
Jones Trilogy and many more.
Quake III Skill: Llama
Favorite Q3 Weapon: Until I
can hit something with the Rail, it's the RL
Favorite Q3 Levels: So far,
it's Q3DM13 for 1on1, Q3DM15 for Clan matches.
Favorite Q3 Models: Bones and
Uriel
Chat Hangout: ETG
#quakeplayers, irc.thedbs.com #quake.uk is the best!
CaliGirl: You've
mentioned previously that you have played such games as; Wolfenstein, Spear of Destiny,
Doom, Doom2, Quake, very little Quake 2, and now you play Quake 3 Arena. What type of
games did you play before you got hooked with these First Person Shooter games?
Methos: I had played many games in the 80's, I started playing adventure games such as
the Secret of Monkey Island series from LucasArts and the Tex Murphy series by Access
Software, who also make the Links Golf games. I wasn't seriously into FPS games until Doom
came out.
When Doom was released, I was using a Gravis
UltraSound card and it was the only sound card to have "real" sound (ie: real
guitar and not silly midi files) and true stereo 3D sound. So, when playing Doom, it would
scare the hell out of me. Needless to say, I was hooked.
CaliGirl: You have had a lot of demos of many well-known Quake players for a very long time
now. What is your favorite current demo at the Methos Quake site at this time?
Methos: That's a tough question to answer, as my current favorite demo seems to change
on a monthly basis. Just yesterday, I watched the Timber / Nightwing demo from the Fusion
finals a couple of years ago. I thought, "Wow, this is amazing". I suppose my
favorite demo from the past while would be Lakerman vs Reload on DM6 from the TGI
tournament. There are many, many other good choices though.
CaliGirl: You have always been very well known in the Quake community for years now. With
all of this hype in the air about Quake as well as Quake 3 now, you must receive tons of
flaming emails about people accusing you of things. How do you deal with those type of
situations?
Methos: I do receive a lot of e-mail and I would say that 90% of it is positive.
Regarding the negative mail, I feel that (just like me) people are entitled to their
opinion. If they disagree with something I've posted, that's cool. What does surprise me
is when people, whom I've never spoken with, attack me personally. Oddly enough, most of
this type of commentary comes from Quake 2 players. None of the comments really bother me
unless they're accusing me of things I didn't do or had nothing to do with. All in all, I
get a good chuckle from most of the comments.
CaliGirl: I noticed that you used to be a fan of Steve 'Scary' Gibson because of his
previous Quake demos and reading his personal comments on Shugashack. But most of all, he has always been true
to the game of Quake. He even won the "favorite Quake personality" in a poll on
your site, right? With Quake 3 Arena out now, do you feel the same about Steve?
Methos: I still like sCary as a QW player. Steve and I don't get the chance to
talk as much as we used to, but he's still a nice guy. I haven't had the chance to see him
play Q3A yet and unfortunately, I haven't visited his site in quite a while. His site is
massively popular and has taken over the throne from Blue's as the place to go for the
latest breaking news from id and other gaming companies. In the 3rd Quake Poll on my site,
sCary received over 1,000 votes more than any other person (Thresh was second) to win the
"Favorite Quake Personality" category.
CaliGirl: When did you meet XP-Spookie (previously known as Jarlaxle from Clan Postal)?
Methos: Charles (Spookie) and I have known each other for a few years now. He
used to talk with my sister on-line until she went away to college. After that, we became
fairly close friends and have been through a lot over the past couple of years. Spookie is
one of the really nice guys in the Quake world.
CaliGirl: The great thing with you being so strong in the Quake gaming community, you have
the chance to meet many very talented Quake series of players. Can you name in order the
top ten Quake 1, 2 and 3 gamers in the world?
Methos: Geez, couldn't you ask a tough question? I don't know many "great"
Quake 2 players and the great Q3A players haven't risen above the rest yet so, I doubt
I'll be able to answer this question properly. Here is my list of players that aren't my
favorite players, but they've probably done more for the game of Quake than any other
players.
Dennis "Thresh" Fong -
He was on top for many years, he's made the most money and garnered the most fame of any
gamer in the world. He's even in the Guinness Book of Records.
Juha "Perkele"
Kujala - Winner of every Skillz Reaper contest, star of the Quake Done Quicker
demos, first player I saw that used bunny hopping, helped design the Qizmo proxy and
Leader of Clan Z.
Sujoy "DC-Sujoy"
Roy - Certainly the most well known player to come out of the UK and a long time
Quaker. First person to rocket out of lava and was a Quake demo star with the early gang
in Quake.
Oskar "Lakerman"
Ljungström - Winner of the TGI and other tournaments. A player who can seemingly
do anything in a game and leader of Clan SC.
Benjamin "Kane"
Reichert - Winner of nearly every Euro competition and 2nd at the TGI. One of the
most dangerous players that has ever played the game.
Harv "Xenon"
Migotti - Xenon became an instant Quake star worldwide, after his performance in
the [9] vs Deathrow matches. His play was superb and he dominated nearly every game.
Steve "sCary"
Gibson - Probably the second most recognizable name from Quake. He was a good
team player, worked for gaming companies and runs Shugashack.
Kornelia and Killcreek
- These two made it okay for women to be involved in what was mainly a guy's game.
Kornelia is a much better player. She even beat sCary in a Rocket Arena tourney finals.
Killcreek was there from the start.
QL-Ettu - A true
monster player from Scotland. He was the player that forced id to change Quake and QW to
use random spawns instead of sequential spawns.
DaNoLd (France), Reload
(Australia), Randemarr (Germany) and all the other players that
brought worldwide Quake attention to their home countries.
CaliGirl:
Your favorite Quake player was
DC-DaNoLd for a long time until he retired from Quake for a bit. Do you feel he will make
a come back in Quake 3 Arena at all?
Methos: I spoke with Dan a few months back and he told me he was
playing the "test" version of Q3. He never mentioned if he would be making a
comeback.
CaliGirl: What is your favorite Quake 3 Arena Model?
Methos: I like most of the Q3A models. When Quake 3 was being
made, I was talking with Zoid who was the person responsible for the Teamplay and CTF
portions of Q3A. The biggest complaint that many people had regarding Quake 2 was the fact
that it was very hard to tell the difference between the player models in team games. Even
when the female character was used, the colors were designed so that you had a hard time
telling people apart.
As poor as the original Quake models were, it was much
easier to tell them apart with their flat red, blue or yellow colors. I mentioned this to
Zoid (who made QW) and asked him if he was going to bring back the "obvious"
colors from Quake/QW. Zoid agreed that something had to be done so, he made a couple of
changes in this respect. One was to force the team colors to bright red and blue, the
other was to put the "yellow triangle" above the head of your team mates. These
two small changes have affected teamplay dramatically. You can easily tell which team the
player in front of you is from and if you get a "frag for the other team", you
shouldn't have been shooting there in the first place. :)
My favorite Q3 players models are probably Bones and Uriel.
My least favorite is Orbb, the one that is the big eye that is desperately in need of some
visine. :)
CaliGirl: What ever happened to the Live Methos Cam?
Methos: There never was a real "live" Methos Cam. I
still update the picture from time to time. It surprised me how many people wanted to
watch me sitting at my computer. That's probably why it's never updated.
CaliGirl: At 12 years old, your daughter wrote a beautiful poem
called 'The Ocean' which was even published in a book of poetry by Canadian poets. That
must have been an amazing honor for your daughter. Has she written any poems since then?
Methos: My daughter Kim (who turned 14 last week) never fails to
amaze me with her talent, which she obviously got from her mom and not me. She has written
a few poems that have been published, won many athletic awards and just won a drawing
award for a picture she made.
CaliGirl: Does your daughter, Kim play any online PC games?
Methos: Oddly enough, she doesn't like many computer games unless
they are "thinking" games. She doesn't have a lot of time on her hands these
days. She goes to school and then works at a part-time job with a local ski resort. She's
more into Playstation games than computer games.
Interview by
CaliGirl |
