The CPL just delivered what could be the knockout punch to competitive Quake3 players around the nation. Quake3 has been dominating the 'professional gaming' circuit for the past year or so playing host to several big tournaments including a couple of $100,000 prize events. The peak of this interest probably at the Frag4 4on4 tournament. However over the past several months though there has been a noticeable drop in interest from the competitive scene, however many players were still pointing towards the upcoming $150,000 CPL Quake3 "World Championship" event as a reason to continue competitively. Well all that just changed.

The CPL announced today that their banner event of 2001, the CPL World Championships, will be a Counter-Strike tournament. The prize money for the event is $150,000. [... ] Long live Counter-Strike. Quake 3 - we hardly knew ye.

As a competitive Quake3 player myself for quite a while this is honestly no surprise. Quake3 was great fun for quite a while but for some reason it just "lost its legs" a while back. In fact my own Quake3 (r3v) clan which took 2nd place at the last CPL Q3 team tournament had nearly stopped playing Quake3 completely months ago. It just wasn't fun anymore. (Well, CTF is still fun) What have we been playing for the past few months? Counter-Strike. A ton of it. We're not alone either, several of the top Quake3 teams have been secretly or not-so-secretly trying their hands at Counter-Strike. It's a really amazing shift. Those 50,000 are about to meet up with some new friends. I'm looking forward to it.