I got bored, so I figured I’d do a little rant about how I’ve seen things change in the last few weeks.

We are all well aware of Painkiller being the World tour game by now (unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last few weeks) and a lot of us have mixed views on it. Anyway, I’m not here to talk about that, I’m here to talk about the effect the CPL announcement has had on the game.

Just a month or 2 ago, Painkiller.euro was pretty much dead in the water. We have active IRC channels for all websites we run, and we noticed a huge drop in people on the Painkiller side of things. After CPL summer, a channel of around 250 people went down to about 15, which as you can see.. is a very very big drop. 🙂

Then came the World Tour announcement, which attracted a lot of gamers world wide to tune into the announcement which was broadcasted by TsN. Everyone was eager, and all hoping it was their game.. however, Painkiller got chosen. I’ve never seen such things in my life.. from the very same hour the game got announced, #Painkiller.euro went from 15 people to 100. It was amazing. The CPL had created a community within a few hours. The game was certainly dead before the announcement, then bam, suddenly everyone starts turning up. The website was getting all kind of hits, and new people signing up, it truely was amazing to see.

Ofcourse, we at Painkiller.euro were overwhelmed with what we had seen, we want nothing more than to see a very big community blossom with the help of us. We run the website for the community, and we run the IRC channel for the community. You all have your say.

We currently have about 830 unique members signed up at our web-site, and we get thousands and thousands of non-signed up people viewing the site every single day. I think it’s a very cool thing that has happened, and I’m glad to be apart of it. Whether people like the idea of Painkiller being the game for the World Tour or not, it’s still very cool to be apart of this community we have now.

We have a whole year to go through yet, and it’s still growing each day. I’m sure by the middle of 2005, we will have nearly double of what we have now, if not triple. Also, with BooH due out tomorrow, I’m sure that will bring quite a lot of new folk, as does every new release.

Thanks for your time, and help us keep the community growing. 😀

-The guys at pkeuro.

Noticed over at the BBC website, there is a nice little article about the upcoming Painkiller BLOODLINE tournament which will be held on the 3rd-5th of December to find 2 top Painkiller players from the United Kingdom who will win a year long pro-gaming contract from the ever-famous 4 KINGS clan.

The article describes the event a little and more importantly, lets non-gaming folk know about the event. Its good to see well-known media like BBC getting more involved with the gaming scene, especially the Painkiller scene. You can check the full article out here.

Its finally happened, Painkiller: Battle Out of Hell has gone GOLD. Heres the press release:

Paris, France – November 8, 2004 – DreamCatcher Games today announced Painkiller: Battle Out Of Hell has reached gold status. The Expansion Pack for the award-winning Windows® FPS, Painkiller, will begin shipping to North American retailers on November 11th and will begin releasing across Europe on November 24th.

A shooter in its purest form, Painkiller boasts truly inspired graphics and some of the most intimidating level bosses ever seen. Utilizing the Havok 2.0 physics engine, the game continues to achieve new heights of physics-based game play while the latest version of the “PAIN Engine” cranks out an unbelievably high polygon count, and exciting new features like heat and haze distortion, light blooms, spectacular pixel mapping, new shader effects, tweaks for the latest video cards and an improved networking core.

Wooooooooooo!! Let the games begin II. 🙂

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/564/564359p1.html