The AMD PGL Is Off and Running

The qualification rounds for the first season of PGL play ended November 30, and the field has been narrowed to 256 players who will compete in games of Quake and Command and Conquer: Red Alert through January 1998 for a shot at part of the US$65,000 cash-and-prize pie.

The next six weeks will see 128 players in both games face each other in single-elimination play to determine which gamers (perhaps we should call them professional gamers now?) advance on to the next round.

The user names of the 20 top-ranked PGL players in each game are:

Command & Conquer: Red Alert Competition:

1. BJ2 2. SOLJA 3. push 4. N-sane5. MOBBIN6. unabomber1 7. Havoc3 8. Hoggleford9. WaGnaRd10. DeepBlue11. CnC_God12. E-scape 13. shooter114. Seymoure15. Maddness9916. STR8BALLIN17. TankMaster18. NuKeWinte219. DADO10020. DuDeY

Quake Competition:

1. Rept-POST2. Azrael133. Frick4. Dmann5. B26. Cabalist7. graphix8. TankMaster9. Rykov10. Kryotekk11. Qboy12. JenBUNNY13. Razaela14. Beazer15. Green1216. Lord_Jim17. XP-Hob18. XP-Pookie19. OverTime20. c0rky

Conspicuous in his absence from that list is acknowledged Quake overlord Dennis "Thresh" Fong. The PGL gave Thresh a partial bye, officials said. (League rules allow for eight player "invitations" per season.)

League rules state that Quake players must log 200 "encounters" (kills or deaths) before qualifying for PGL play; Fong tallied 147 kills and one death in 55 minutes of play, PGL officials said, but in subsequent attempts to rack up more encounters, he was avoided by players each time he entered a Quake match. League officials verified these claims and decided to grant Fong a one-time exemption from the qualification period. Thresh enters the PGL tourney with a 46th-place ranking.

The PGL people also announced that they disqualified 50 gamers from first-season tournament play for failure to follow registration procedures, failure to achieve the minimum qualification requirements, or violation of PGL rules - with "rank padding," a method of falsely improving one's performance rating, being the violation of choice.

PGL's host network TEN has put together a Quake mod, which can be used to observe the action of matches in that game in real time, without affecting play between the opponents. Users can control the "camera" in this mod, choosing to zip around through the game, hover over the action, or "ride the shoulders" of any player they choose.

Once the players are whittled down to 16 through over-the-Internet matches, those players will be flown to the Season 1 championship site, the date and location of which have not yet been announced.