By Alec Meer on May 27th, 2011 at 4:01 pm.

QuakeCon. QUAKECON. QUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE-A-CONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN. Just saying that name makes me laugh: truly, it is the most testosteroney of all gaming conventions. If QuakeCon and BlizzCon were ever to merge, terrible, terrible things would happen. Fortunately, id’s being owned by Bethesda these days means there’s no risk of that happening. QuakeCon ’11 isn’t far off – the doors open August 4. It’s going to be a big one, because that date means it’s a mere month before RAGE finally ships so doubtless there’s going to be a ton of exciting hands-on access for atendees. And could it maybe, maybe, pretty please maybe entail a first glimpse at Doom 4?
One way to find out (actually there’s two, but ‘watching the internet around that time’ scarcely seems like making an effort): pre-register now.
The Con itself is free, so long as you can wing your way down to Texas, but if you want perks id are kindly allowing you to pay them some money. Details here, but in short three tiers of $20, 35 and $50 gets you stuff ranging from guaranteed seats for the bring your own computer tourneys to Bethesda-themed zip-pulls to fancy RAGE mousemats and express-lane access so you can pretend you’re important. Not that important, however: the $50 pass has already sold out.
Register here. Anyone going? I’m not, because I’m a vegetarian. A vegetarian in Texas wouldn’t last a minute.


Don’t forget the highlight of any Quakecon: Carmack’s arcane ramblings.
August is post-E3, so hopefully he’ll have some thoughts to offer regarding Project Cafe and NGP.
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Highlight of every quakecon is the quake tournament :-]
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DOOM
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More at 11.
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I’m the same. Next year I’m roadtripping across America, and I’d love to head south to New Orleans and Texas et al. but I assume I’ll have to survive on potatoes or something while I’m there. It’s a bit like Eastern Europe, not very Veg friendly!
I’m starting to get a little excited for RAGE. And man oh man, I really hope that their reboot of Doom lives up to it’s legacy.
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We don’t all drive around with cows on top of our cars.
Dallas: http://www.happycow.net/gmaps/searchmap.php?distance=10&address=Dallas,%20Texas
New Orleans: http://www.happycow.net/gmaps/searchmap.php?distance=10&address=NewOrleans,%20Louisiana
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In spain, we do. (Well, mostly, and I think you should speak spanish quite well to understand the joke… sorry. Cow -> vaca, Roof the car -> baca.)
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“It’s a bit like Eastern Europe, not very Veg friendly!”
What a load of old rot.
There’s the same restaurants in Dallas that there are in the rest of the US. Coupled with the fact that due to the prevalence of tech jobs in Dallas and F/W there are a ton of Indians here and lots of Indian restaurants with more veggie options than your local Tandoori.
In fact there’s a well reviewed Veggie/Vegan restaurant not 1.5 miles from the hotel the con is in:
Cosmic Cafe
Directions
You and Alec should have no problem.
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Man, I cant wait for DO4M.
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Personally I hope it’s a prequel called Do0m!
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you gotta thing outside the box man, it’ll be called Doooom
or maybe Doom with 4 legs on the m
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“DOOIV!”
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That last one is actually really good!
DOOIV!
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MeteorologicalPhenomenonCon?
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QuizCon?
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BlakeCon!
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Woo Quakecon! I’ve been going for years. If anybody’s going, I’m registered for A15-1, and should have a two-player arcade stick in tow. I WAS going to use it for Super Street Fighter 4, but thanks to Capcom’s brilliant strategy, it looks like I’ll be hosting all the classics.
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You would be surprised, but there are plenty of vegetarians in Texas! Austin especially has some amazing vegetarian and vegan restaurants.
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Austin isn’t the rest of Texas, sadly.
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mkultra -
You say that as if it is a bad thing.
The big three cities(Dallas, Houston and San Antonio) all have 1 million plus residents, more if you count the surrounding areas. Houston and Dallas are both are cosmopolitan cities, and San Antonio has made great strides in becoming one over the last 20 years. Do we have a lot of unsophisticated people here? Sure we do, but so does everywhere else.
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hey mkultra, SO WHAT, not every city in Texas wants to be Austin, that little slogan “keep Austin weird” is around for a reason, to keep Austin the weird place in Texas so that the other cities can do their own thing.
/rant
Sorry my Texan rage just couldn’t be contained
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Pfft. Figures that ID would jump on the “Free to Attend/Pay to Enjoy Yourself” model. All these microtransactions will do is drive a wedge between the paying and nonpaying congoers, with those willing to shell out lots of cash getting preferential treatment while the free-goers are left to grind through queues and scavenge for the shitty seats in the back of the auditorium.
And even worse, I hear they’ll have all of these “souvenirs” at the location already! They are already there, and can just give them to you, but are withholding them from anyone who hasn’t shelled out money for the “privilege” of carrying around this “hand-outable content.” I imagine they’ll be employing their draconian “con-pass” DRM too, after the whole fiasco when a couple of people started faking handstamps.
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Looking forward to Carmack’s keynote and possible some Quake Live tournament action.
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Yeah, I’m looking forward to the QL duel tournament too.
It was pretty frustrating last year, as they had all sorts ot technical problems and from memory they pretty much just kept telling us it was scheduled to start in an hour, then half an hour, then an hour again, etc., until they finally admitted they were going to have to move it back a day.
This all happens pretty late at night for those of us in Australia, so it was a bit of a kick in the teeth to people who’d stayed up for it. Technical problems happen, but I hope they’re more honest/realistic this year.
Whinging aside though, I’m looking forward to it. It looks like there’ll be two or three Australian players this year, and it’s a pretty small community here so even for people like me who aren’t all that active and just sort of hang around the margins, you almost feel like you know them personally.
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Also Carmack, now that you mention him. I could listen to him talk for hours, even when I don’t really understand what he’s saying. His passion and intelligence are infectious, as long as he sticks to geeky things he is deeply involved with, and doesn’t worry too much about being a PR man.
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