Divison 1 Shakedown

Fresh season, fresh blood:

Armless' Team

The most talented of the 3 Spanish clans, Armless' swept away last years 2nd tier opponents to finish top of their league. Household names such as vara and Guito will give their opponents cause for concern. Although probably not as strong as previous premier Spanish clans- such as the EoD team that took knife to a cup final replay- a mid-table finish would be respectable for this squad.

Coldspell

A clan that- if I remember correctly- dates back to 2.0 days; Coldspell are finally given a shot at the big league. Led by Magpie, Coldspell may struggle in this league, but I'm a strong believer that in this stage of NS's life, the skill gaps are starting to close so no team should be under-rated. This squad may well look up to ex-Levitacus player Kylma who has lots of experience at this level.

el'pheer

Another old team, the el'pheer players of days gone by have gone on to become some of the most talented players in NS. Unfortunately, over the past year el'pheer have struggled to keep their squad at the same "nightmare skilled" level. Nevertheless, they still have some top players with the likes of ContagiouS and Trigu. Indeed, teams beware of el'pheer's early alien round, as they can rely on Trigu to cause a lot of marine headaches with his lerk. And if they can keep cohesion, they shouldn't ever have a problem field a 6-man team with an incredible 17-man roster.

epic

This season's version of lucky sees a fair amount of changes. Although the loss of the deadly aim of zaCK will come as a bit of a blow, they have managed to recruit 2 levitacus players in Hopeanuoli and Tane. They have also added, in my eyes, this season's hottest prospect in zharp, a player who joins from the recently deceased omgwtfns? clan. In purple they have arguably one of the best commanders in NS (and a sexy gorge) so their marine round will be the highlight of their game. Their alien round isn't quite as strong, but they still have the necessary speciality classes covered. Expected fades are Hopeanuoli and Fera, with the lerking going to be taken up by purple of zharp. In the unlikely event that lucky actually manage to finish a season, they could well have a top 3 position at the end.

Flatline-Ns

I've always been impressed with Flatline. If memory serves, they have had a top-2 finish in the last 2 seasons of division 2. They rely on a solid, team performance as opposed to a speciality player carrying them. As skipjack and syl have gone inactive, their roster has been depleted to the minimum of 6 players. Obviously, this is a worry if one member fails to show up (d'uh!) but I've always been of the opinion that the smaller squad is better. You learn how to play off your team-mates, and it builds up a sort of camaraderie- and this fits Flatline's stly of play perfectly. Nevertheless, Flatline will find it hard in this divison, though I don't expect them to finish bottom, I would be mightily suprised if they came away with honours.

knife

Euros elite, the signs looks ominous for the opposition this year. Any squad who has come close to displacing knife in recent years have died- lessthanthree (who did succeed in beating them), Insane and Levitacus. After their revival, they have kept their policy of recruiting the creme of Europe. As well as the core players, recent recruits include France's "nicest guy in NS" tutu, and "I need your meds to live" dux. Dux in particular has come on leaps and bounds this year. He's always been a top player, but now he's in that league of "stop killing me?!" marines- so long as his commander keeps medding him. Unfortunately- he's still Welsh. It's this point that we need the obligatory mention of morphz. I feel that if he wanted to, he could walk over the pools of water in the maps if he wanted to. The most recent mop adventure is the the s3 ENSL final between knife and Levitacus on tanith. Breaking off from his squad at system waypointing, the lad rambos to their hive at cargo, and keeps the entire team back for a good minute or two. It's not a question of "is mop going to kill him?" as it is "which weapon is he going to use to kill him?". Of course- at this level you don't have one-man teams. The star-studded line-up has world-class players in every area. Players I have yet to mention include Fana as marine, wltrs and pantsu as fade and b1 as commander and skulk. In my view, their sole weakness is lack of a natural lerk. Having said that, I don't ever remember them having that kind of lerk (use comments section to correct me- but off the top of my head, previous lerks include Oetel, evilness, frG and Fana) and they've almost always been the best. Put this down to skulks such as b1 and wltrs, and sexy teamwork.

lessthanthree

lessthanthree had the advtange of being under-rated when they beat knife to top several moons ago. No-one will make that mistake this time as they have kept their core players- such as aA, avl, ben and buggy. Obviously, to fill the void that their inactivity caused they had to recruit some new players. SlayerX will give aA some Polish company, tmk will be... complaining about something (joke!), danster will show them what West Midlands players are made of, and PhOeNiX will be the most gifted player in the squad, despite being Natural Selection's only ginger player. With the loss of Levitacus, lessthanthree will most likely be the closest challengers to knife (bar the possibiliy of epic). Can they repeat their feat of beating knife? Much as I like to see this kind of competition for top honours, I don't think they can. Although a lot of players are racking up their e-cool points by saying "knife aren't as strong as they used to be", I believe knife are still top dogs in EUNS, and considering their inactivitiy, it would take something special for lessthanthree to finish first. But that is far from being a foregone conclusion. Both sides of their game are strong. On the marine side: buggy to com, with the UK players of avl, danster and PhOeNiX being a strong trio. On the alien side, buggy as lerk and PhOeNiX as main fade is without doubt the strongest line-up; but there is leeway for the second fade: avl, ben and SlayerX are all fit for the role. Expect a top-3 finish.

Semper Fi

s&m are effectively a new squad this year. A large and constantly changing roster set them back in season 3, but this year only Coldspell, Flatline and epic have a smaller squad. Led by lump and sherpa, the most notable transfers into the squad include Ed|Rush and genz. The loss of PhOeNiX is a huge blow to them, and they will be looking to the in-form lagga to fill in his shoes. In Sublime, they have one of Europe's best ever lerks. Indeed, this should be his most challenging year yet- the re-emergance of buggy finally means that Sublime has competition to be recognised as the best player in that role. Although they will struggle against the likes of knife, anything less than a mid-table finish will be considered a failure by Semper.
sherpa on 02 April 06 13:20

Comments

176

Blank jiriki | old people

Don't forget Goðar, they will revenge upon the ns-scene which has abused Iceland!

Other than that, thanks for the coverage although I disagree in some small points.

2 April 2006, 13:32

18

Blank mu

swirl re-enters the arena and takes gold place, lol

2 April 2006, 13:33

81

Blank lump

Bloody nice job Jimmando! You never fail to impress with your essays.

Swirl, splitter, eXo were the lerks in knife too, eXo was a rather good lerk also, underrated for some time.

skipjack is active now wtf.

2 April 2006, 13:43

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Blank Lugh

i will try 2 bring him back :))

2 April 2006, 13:44

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Blank PhOeNiX

Omfg I am not ginger!

2 April 2006, 13:47

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Blank Varro | Keen Edge

Our goal is to win one round. Thanks kylma for getting us in to the first division ^^

2 April 2006, 14:12

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Blank anderval

both ed and dan are ginger sherpa, way to be wrong

2 April 2006, 14:23

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Blank danster | Keen Edge

:<

2 April 2006, 14:26

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Blank Magpie

A Well written post sherpa.

However... although Coldspell might be an underdog in this division, this isn't exactly the first time we compete in the top division heh.

2 April 2006, 14:30

18

Blank mu

yeah coldspell got to the finals of the innox cup

2 April 2006, 14:49

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Blank Skyice

fresh blood? no. #pitchfork is fresh blood. only 70% of our rostor has never played competitive ns before. I think we deserve to be written about... not knife.

2 April 2006, 14:55

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Blank vara

:)

2 April 2006, 15:06

15

Blank frG | TROLLS

its a division 1 shakedown.

2 April 2006, 15:18

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Blank Guito

LOL sherpa <3 ; )

2 April 2006, 15:25

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Blank Fana | Archaea

Good job, certainly a good read -- some factual errors though!

As mentioned, by Coldspell players, this isn't their first time in the limelight. Throughout the early 3.0 betas they were always difficult to beat, and during 3.0b4 they were easily top 5 europe.

Also I wouldn't expect me to pull off amazing stuff for a while as marine, I haven't really gotten into the game since I came back from my 5 month break a month ago, but I'm hoping I will sometime during this season.

Now onto the interesting stuff, the history of Knife and Lerks.
The old Knife tactic was always the two early fades, late lerk tactic. We used this up until the end, only with some brief experiments (such as our ns_lost alien tactic against <3 in the ensls1 finals) that never really worked out too well. The first time we've ever used early lerks consistently is actually the last month that's gone by.

In the past we've had b1 (rages when he dies:P), exo (suicidal), cheeZ (even more suicidal, although he was amazing against ownage in GO), Swirl (just plain not very good at it), evilness (always tried escaping using vents, but ended up getting stuck on entrance), morphz (hahahorrible), frG (we all know his rep, do or die :P it's usually either amazing or unbelievably bad) and me (:P). splitter is a good lerk from what I've seen, but he doesn't want to lerk for some reason.

For only having lerked about one, maybe two months on and off I'd say I'm doing ok though. People get all these weird opinions because we keep playing finals on shitty danster servers which give me 1-10 loss spikes, which doesn't really make lerking that much
fun. It's kind of typical that no-one remembers knife vs. Random mix in the NSNC4, or tn vs. storm in the NSNC1, yet everyone remembers knife vs. Levitacus where I could neither bite nor fly around much because bites didn't hit and flying just made me stick to random crates in double. :|

2 April 2006, 15:37

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Blank Fana | Archaea

Correction: Coldspell thingy should say 3.0b4-3.0b5 not just 3.0b4

2 April 2006, 15:40

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Blank Fana | Archaea

Also damnit TMajor lerked for a short while too, and Oetel was our primary lerk throughout 3.0b5. He was pretty much just useful for sporing stuff with adren though. :P

2 April 2006, 15:43

86

Blank B1 | iMAGINE

dux aint that bad too yo.

2 April 2006, 16:41

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Blank ben

way to care too much, geek.

2 April 2006, 18:11

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Blank GibbZ | 9L

zharp > sublime yea =/

2 April 2006, 18:20

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Blank wodKa | Flatline-Ns

phil > zharp :P

2 April 2006, 18:30

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Blank Skyice

zamma > phil

2 April 2006, 19:01

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Blank anderval

avl > you all as lerk

just wait ye biznitches!?

2 April 2006, 19:12

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Blank weezer

lmg > zharp
pistol > phil
knife > avl

2 April 2006, 19:31

81

Blank lump

life > tmk

2 April 2006, 19:32

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Blank tjo

anyone > lump

2 April 2006, 19:49

15

Blank frG | TROLLS

tjosan > tjosan

2 April 2006, 20:39

174

Blank d-

TOMMANDO DOWN

2 April 2006, 20:40

81

Blank lump

shit > wales

2 April 2006, 22:54

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Blank danster | Keen Edge

very nice of you fana to call my servers shit. well i guess they are not shit now they are gone. nevermind.....

2 April 2006, 22:59

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Blank ben

DETH 2 ALL

2 April 2006, 23:01

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Blank danster | Keen Edge

and to think i even wasted 10Gb hosting your NS movie

2 April 2006, 23:01

18

Blank mu

DAMN SON @WNED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2 April 2006, 23:08

18

Blank mu

btw they did have bad reg but most servers do now whats up with that (NOT MY AIM)

2 April 2006, 23:09

174

Blank d-

lol hi tom

2 April 2006, 23:24

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Blank cheeZ

noobs lol

2 April 2006, 23:34

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Blank Skyice

WTF

3 April 2006, 08:56

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Blank Disqo

klatu < break :(

3 April 2006, 09:21

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Blank Xur | Netherlands

n1 sherpa :)

3 April 2006, 11:32

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Blank Heras

hola amigos

3 April 2006, 11:36

86

Blank B1 | iMAGINE

trying-to-be-funny-comments < not-commentating-at-all

3 April 2006, 11:55

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Blank weezer

irony > you

3 April 2006, 12:05

81

Blank lump

b1 < the trend

3 April 2006, 12:13

213

Blank Hammond | coolclan

Fana: Please don't become like Tiberius. Please :(

3 April 2006, 14:00

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Blank cheeZ

pizza, who the hell is that.

3 April 2006, 14:05

15

Blank frG | TROLLS

MALLERD

3 April 2006, 14:32

90

Blank Iots | el'pheer

18man roster now ;s

3 April 2006, 14:32

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Blank oma

pizza tastes good

3 April 2006, 14:57

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Blank ReD

"They have also added, in my eyes, this season's hottest prospect in zharp"

Wooh go marko D:

3 April 2006, 15:18

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Blank SlayerX | Team Poland

way to have no predictors this season :E

3 April 2006, 17:32

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Blank cream

MARKO IS SEX ON LERK !

3 April 2006, 17:44

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Blank tjo

I think recent events have shown how retarded it is to play a two map (read: two hour) match on weekdays.

I believe there was a reason behind the first idea of one map matches. Think about it.

3 April 2006, 18:08

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Blank GibbZ | 9L

MARKO PAULO MARKO PAULO

3 April 2006, 18:10

286

Blank qin

Where can i download hentai torrents plZ1!?

3 April 2006, 19:03

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Blank Fana | Archaea

danster: no offence to you, and I know a lot of clans in the community enjoyed those servers a lot. I will however state how my experience on them was regardless of that. It's not your fault that the servers had bad routing to my connection, but the fact still remains that they did which made my playing experience on them bad. On a different note I did play on a dansterland today that had no loss at all and played nicely.

(Oh by the way, if you intend to use your mirroring of fananation as some sort of leverage you can fuck off and die in a very small hole. If you weren't prepared to be a nice guy and donate the bandwidth with no other intentions you shouldn't have.)

3 April 2006, 19:35

90

Blank Iots | el'pheer

"I think recent events have shown how retarded it is to play a two map (read: two hour) match on weekdays."
^
Am so fucking tired. -.-

3 April 2006, 19:37

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Blank danster | Keen Edge

fana : you always seem to ruin your posts right at the end and they always make you seem quite a dick

3 April 2006, 20:26

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Blank Fana | Archaea

Think what you will.

3 April 2006, 21:08

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Blank weezer

i agree, "fuck off and die in a very small hole" is a very smooth way to finish a post

3 April 2006, 21:47

45

Blank aA

who's that zharp guy?

3 April 2006, 22:12

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Blank sherpa | cisequaltothree

The guy who solo'd your lerk!

http://www.kolumbus.fi/meeri.ryhanen/zharp/hiaa.rar

3 April 2006, 22:58

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Blank static

yet again the top divisions get all the attention whilst the lower div clans think "screw this" and leave. Way to go ENSL staff - try doing something for the lower divisions once in a while yeh

4 April 2006, 00:09

5

Blank sublime

TOTALLY PWNT OLAF

4 April 2006, 00:12

45

Blank aA

#care

4 April 2006, 02:14

45

Blank aA

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v233/dragon143/sm.jpg

4 April 2006, 02:37

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Blank weezer

aA wins. ^_^

4 April 2006, 04:53

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Blank weezer

also i like how aA had 40ish hp after killing the first guy, and zharp didnt hit him once with lmg+pistol :o

4 April 2006, 04:55

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Blank cream

zharp will kill you all

4 April 2006, 05:52

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Blank vara

LOL DRAGON DIED 6 TIMES

4 April 2006, 09:39

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Blank ben

I died 0 times. NIGGERS.

4 April 2006, 10:25

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Blank sherpa | cisequaltothree

lol 1-9.

I'll go for my saves-all, generic "I must have been playing on my shit PC" defense.

LET THE WAR COMMENCE:

http://kgiswellnew.com/sherpa/aa0-1netcode.zip

4 April 2006, 10:53

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Blank PhOeNiX

DRAGON GOT AVI'D

AHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAAHHAHAHAHAH

4 April 2006, 11:23

5

Blank sublime

IM SORRY BUT HOW DOES WINNING A ROUND AGAINST A CLAN THAT HASNT PLAYED FOR 6 MONTHS BEAT GETTING KNIFED AS LERK ROFL!?

4 April 2006, 11:28

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Blank tjo

"ololololol aA soloed s&m"

4 April 2006, 11:38

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Blank sherpa | cisequaltothree

Actually that's config, not s&m.

Why was deano commando?!

4 April 2006, 11:51

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Blank pimppy

i like the way how aA didnt go away if we had 40 hp.. stupido

4 April 2006, 12:19

18

Blank mu

please, tell us more

4 April 2006, 12:38

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Blank lagga | 9L

"By sherpa (s&m |), on 04/04/2006 @ 14:51

Actually that's config, not s&m.

Why was deano commando?!"

- Would explain why we were getting prawned :D!

4 April 2006, 13:17

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Blank sherpa | cisequaltothree

=D

I don't remember that game. Probably due to the pounding it looks like we took.

4 April 2006, 13:33

45

Blank aA

sherpa that game was when i were in lucky, and you can clearly see s&m's tag there...
Fera i didn't go away becouse the game was over, you didn't notice that(?!) and i rushed those 2 marines with something like 80 hp i didn't really care if i die or not, don't make a big deal becouse of that i still don't get you're trying to make me look bad,vilify etc.
Anyway the only thing you can see on this avi is zharp's poor aim.

4 April 2006, 15:02

45

Blank aA

btw. sorry fo my engrish ;x

4 April 2006, 15:16

18

Blank mu

please, tell us more

4 April 2006, 16:03

5

Blank sublime

YOU ARE A RETARD OLAF

THE TAG WAS THERE BECAUSE LAGGA HADNT CHANGED IT!? WE WERE ALL USING FUCKING OLD SCHOOL NAMES FROM WHEN WE WERE IN CONFIG

YOU FUCKING SUCK OLAF.

4 April 2006, 18:00

18

Blank mu

By mu (knife.), on 04/04/2006 @ 19:03
please, tell us more

4 April 2006, 18:09

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Blank cheeZ

whats the significance of it anyway? ;s

4 April 2006, 18:18

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Blank vara

ADMINS SHALL CREATE A NEW NEWS SO THAT WE CAN ALL FLAME ABOUT aA's LERK GETTING KNIFED PLZ: 86 comments atm

4 April 2006, 18:48

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Blank ben

He sucks? At least he doesn't sit in the vent i'm trying to fly into going "oh i dont know whats going on cause i have my minimap up hi im sublime the unaware retard" whilst i get shot my a fricking HMG you fucking douche bag.

4 April 2006, 21:51

5

Blank sublime

what?

4 April 2006, 23:01

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Blank tjo

Och så kommo de att gråta stora floder; kallade vi annat namn är det de senare tagit avgjordes ett stort slag; och för polackens vilja veko de sig, alldeles för lätt: sägandes "What?"; säkert träffande, fast vid fel mål.

5 April 2006, 03:03

213

Blank Hammond | coolclan

Javisst, jag köpte godis.

5 April 2006, 05:20

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Blank Cheese

wtf is going on? when did this match happen? ^^

5 April 2006, 06:40

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Blank tjo

omg, I even make typoes in swedish :(

5 April 2006, 06:50

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Blank Peacham | Saunamen

When danster had only one (1) server it was amazing to play. Hit+reg was 100/100 and there was no loss or choke, but when the 2ns+2svencoop servers came the hit+reg went down and it started to choke and give some loss. only if he had kept one server it would have fucking pwned!.. btw nice job Jim xD

5 April 2006, 07:09

86

Blank B1 | iMAGINE

settle down kids

5 April 2006, 10:22

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Blank SlayerX | Team Poland

weathers good today, how about you actually go see it yourself and take a break from internet

5 April 2006, 13:18

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Blank danster | Keen Edge

i never had 2 NS and 2 Sven servers up, dont know where that rumour came from.

5 April 2006, 13:35

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Blank danster | Keen Edge

just put 2 NS servers up these days

5 April 2006, 13:35

45

Blank aA

btw. wszyscy wiedz&#261; jak chujowy jeste&#347; sublime wi&#281;c ogolnie móglby&#347; raz na jaki&#347; czas zamkn&#261;&#263; ten swoj g&#322;upi ryj i zaj&#261;&#263; sie czym&#347; lepszym ni&#380; bycie jeban&#261; zdzira jak&#261; zawsze by&#322;e&#347;.
I ogólnie jeste&#347; bardzo przewidywaln&#261; osob&#261;, kto&#347; mi powiedzia&#322; ,ze zachowasz si&#281; tak a nie inaczej i wysz&#322;o jak wysz&#322;o :).
really obvious thing.

5 April 2006, 14:15

45

Blank aA

ensl site is crapp keke.

5 April 2006, 14:16

15

Blank frG | TROLLS

ahahahaha good job aA :)

5 April 2006, 14:40

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Blank cheeZ

noobs

5 April 2006, 14:54

86

Blank B1 | iMAGINE

it wasn't built for nub languages :p

5 April 2006, 18:53

86

Blank B1 | iMAGINE

good luck beating me in predictions yeh, i got it on lockdown 1/6 right, aiiiit.

keep up the work sherpa, looking good mate.

5 April 2006, 19:40

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Blank anderval

rofl aA down, nice language meight

5 April 2006, 20:08

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Blank static

Yeah aA, 40hp .. that's why you survived 2 knife slashes and died on the 3rd.

Jimbo - you might want to link this to "vara" in the news post :

http://www.omgwtfns.co.uk/wtfvara.rar

6 April 2006, 15:01

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Blank PhOeNiX

need more avis plz

6 April 2006, 16:01

18

Blank mu

clicking that link in hot anticipation


no, wait

6 April 2006, 18:45

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Blank sherpa | cisequaltothree

The problem with hitreg videos is that blood decals don't take latency into account (i.e. it appears that nothing happens when you hit the model in a video);so you should take them all with a pinch of salt.

Me? Hell, I'm common enough to be a fan of text abuse.

6 April 2006, 18:49

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Blank tjo

What happened there was probably that you shot before your before your client had recieved the death imput, which had already been sent by vara. Or whatever. I put it down to latency, not bad reg.

7 April 2006, 05:35

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Blank GibbZ | 9L

Ill put it down to the fact hes spainish.

7 April 2006, 10:06

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Blank tjo

... which means a high latency

kk?

7 April 2006, 10:28

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Blank vara

thats what happens when i kill u in my screen and it takes 0.2 for u to realize that u are dead

7 April 2006, 11:54

81

Blank lump

rate abuse

7 April 2006, 12:42

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Blank static

vara, watch the video.

the blood decal shows before i fire, which is the server confirming that you hit me - i fired afterwards, it didn't reg, then you bit me again and I died.

and you don't play with 200ms ping vara, i know you're spanish but even most spaniards don't go higher than 100 or so.

7 April 2006, 17:11

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Blank tjo

No, the blood decal means your client has gotten the message that he hit you. The hit was confirmed before that.

7 April 2006, 18:03

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Blank tjo

And the total latency is his latency plus your latency. Which should approach 200 ms considering vara lives ont he canaries.

7 April 2006, 18:04

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Blank frost

Plus server proccess time ^^ :)

7 April 2006, 20:14

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Blank static

should be around 150ms tjo

7 April 2006, 23:28

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Blank vara

pantsu is eXo

thats all i have to say

15 May 2006, 20:20

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Blank C11H17NO3

que?

17 May 2006, 09:36

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Blank C11H17NO3

and yes im reading the comments of 1 month old news

17 May 2006, 09:37

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Blank C11H17NO3

and and and i think youre trying to boost your postcount >_>!

17 May 2006, 09:37

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Blank Skyice

wtf whos doing that?

17 May 2006, 15:16

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Blank Skyice

?????

17 May 2006, 15:16

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