Who are HV?

3 years in the making

A few months after Unreal Tournament was released, a team surfaced on several ladders called High Voltage or |HV. Five months later, they would dethrone an undefeated number one team in last minute overtime, and go on to hold #1 spots on seven other ladders, all at the same time. After ending their UT career, they would end up with a 223-33 record with a peak of a 42 game winning streak.

HV team pic

HV at work

Autographs

High Voltage moved on to Wolfenstein after their UT retirement, giving the number one ranked team there a palpable jolt, and after a hiatus are back running with a 10-0 record in the current CAL season.

So what’s the deal?

With the recent release of Unreal Tournament 2003, and a whole fresh slew of other FPS’ on the market, we sat down with |HV to reminisce about old memories and see where the team, and competitive gaming in general, is heading from here.

HV en masse

HV final

The interview!

FiringSquad: Where did you boys get started at? What were your first games individually? Your first online experience?

ViolentJ|HV: My first game ever? Pong on my Atari. HV's first game was UT1, ‘bout 3 years ago. Grimdeath and I had played Ultima Online, and Starcraft online before UT. We played in the good ol’ day, not this new-age faction crapola.

GrimDeath|HV: Yeah, VJ, Silence and I were in a guild warring people all the time in UO.

ViolentJ|HV: Yep, Marduke Vengeance Squad

GrimDeath|HV: On Chessie.

ViolentJ|HV: If we killed ya...sorry.


FS: What about Unreal Tournament appealed most? At the time there were several products on the market, the Quake series, the Half-life mods were rising, Tribes, etc. What about UT made you want to spend the time mastering it?

ViolentJ|HV: I played UT because I thought it was extremely fun. It was the first real team-oriented game (over Quake 3, easily.) Its speed and gameplay were totally different than Q3, and CS is simply a spam/camp fest. Tribes had a real cool idea, but just couldn't get it together.

GrimDeath|HV: I had played the Q3 demo before I even heard of UT. It was my first online FPS and I enjoyed it a lot. But when I played the UT demo, I dunno. There was just something about it that put it above Q3A.

ViolentJ|HV: In all fairness to CS, I played UT for a long time before CS. But looking back at it I wouldn't trade UT for CS.

GrimDeath|HV: I think the main thing that brought us to UT was CTF. Quake 3 had TDM, but that was about it. UT's CTF mod had a good mix of teamwork and fragging which made it exciting to play for hours at a time.