It's not about being able to send over an NA team to i49, I'm sure it is possible. The thing is simply "is it worth it?". To be honest, no. At this point the only tournament's that would ever matter to getting this game somewhere would be Dreamhack or ESEA EU expansion.

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Eww... I'm sorry, but I rather like the way EU round rules work. More organic I think that way.

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Guys we need to make dreamhack happen

Someone start some sort of kickstarter? I'd be happy to donate to even just get 1 team (bp?) over here. The new Epsilon is beast and who doesn't want to see the best team from NA play the best team in EU for the title of best team World? That is the kinda shit i'd pay for, I don't give a crap if it "expands" the game or not.

Money spent on sending a team over is money down the drain. Donate it to a prize pool or something, it was nice when it happened but I think it was once in a lifetime thing. 20K is a lot of money and I'm not sure it's best used on sending people over again.

euros don't want NA to come over since they got de_stroyed last time
I do agree though it's really not worth the prohibitive cost, hype as it was at i46

i want that :(

Was the whole point of the new Epsilon not to face the Americans? Maybe I'm missing something.

Id donate to host a lan here and send the top euro team here. Nothing else.
+1 for a New York Lan.

If something were to be hosted in chicago (or Indianapolis, which although much more boring, is much cheaper and more easily accessible) I'd be there in an instant. As it is, I'll probably never make it to a LAN, which is disappointing.

maybe we should try it, there's more people here now than there was when i46 happened, we might raise the money now

I second this

I don't think its a waste of money at all. As someone who was at the event, it was absolutely amazing meeting all the Americans, I'd definitely donate £50 or so for it to happen again. Of course last time we were blessed by Sal but I don't think that raising $8k or so to send one team is completely out of the question. We just need someone to start organising the donations drive and the whole community to come together again (showmatches, promotional videos etc.)
The i46 movie that LuckyLuke and eXtv are working on would be the perfect promotional video for starting the donations for this year.

#BELIEVE

The current Epsilon was created specifically to take on the Americans at i49 yeah.

They were even planning to play in ESEA this season to get more experience playing against American teams but KnOxXx and mike's schedules prevented that from happening.

Watching epsilon vs bp would be amazing. I would consider donating for that, for sure.

THIS.

Indianapolis is not boring :<

but it is far cheaper to host a LAN here than a bigger city. Cheaper flights usually too. Good enough for a super bowl, good enough for a LAN party.

Let's just beat the system and ship LAN players via UPS.

Don't pay for one or 2 teams to come here. The exposure it makes isn't huge seeing as the whole process is internal, it has no way of dragging new people into the scene bar some one timers at the lan that probably wont stay in the tf2 community (and bp would just kind of win). Just wait, keep creating hype for the current games and scenes and then when we have more exposure and some sponsors willing to fund teams, help fund an international lan for EU and NA and maybe even the Aussie players (I just want to see their sollys rape everyone I don't know why) and that would be amazing.

yo, I live in Lafayette and compared to Chicago, Indy is definitely boring. It's still an amazing city and is impossibly well set up for events like LANs.

I remember when people were being so hyped up that i46 was going to give TF2 a lot more exposure and bring big name sponsors into the game and such. $10,000 could be put to a lot more use in the community than just sending one team to a two day LAN.

Honestly didn't really do anything except prove that NA > EU.

lol

ya like, i'm sure it was awesome having americans over in europe and i'm sure it was really cool to be on site for it and stuff, but if we're talking about asking for $10,000 in community donations again to send an american team over again, doesn't it feel like we should have a little more reason to than "numlocked and knoxxx REALLY want to beat some americans"? we got a record # of viewers from i46 and then saw nothing else come from it ever

but we have a documentar-

but we have more corporate spons-

but uhhhhhh

In fairness, the number of viewers that consistently watch streams this season are WAY higher than in the past. While I think a large part of that is tf.tv's doing (amazing job Enigma, seriously) in aggregating all of the streams, I'm confused why people think that i46 did nothing. I mean, what were some of you expecting? That we'd suddenly put up League of Ass Legends numbers and sponsors would be leaving SC2 to pay for b4nny's shampoo? Here's how I see it, i46 did several things that are worth noting (not saying that NA vs EU i49 would do the same/improve anything):

1) It got people interested in tf2 that weren't otherwise interested. Look, we're not going to suddenly pick up thousands of viewers, but from my own, anecdotal experience I had several roommates watch just because they heard it was "NA vs EU" and it was a game they played a year or two ago. Did they suddenly jump into 6v6 and keep up with all of the league news? No. But they'll occasionally watch a big game (and ESEA LANs) because the i46 games were exciting. Stream numbers have been WAY up since then and seem to be continuously growing.

2) It bridged the gap between the NA and EU fan bases to an extent. Outside of a few select people, how many people here gave a flying fuck about the teams across the pond from you? I'm willing to bet one of the reasons that ESEA casts are consistently getting 1000 viewers a night is because you now have two different groups of people interested in the same project. I watch WAY more EU 6v6 than I did before i46, and based on some of the comments in streams that I watch, the same is true for many people on both the NA and EU side.

3) It SERIOUSLY bridged the gap between NA and EU communities. Before i46, the only time euros came to post on an NA thread was to say "lol our demos are better. gg Epsilon OP haha" or something similar, while NA just went over to say "lrn2 airstrafe". Essentially, there was a distinct feeling of two separate communities. Now I see the communities working together on a lot of projects. I've seen several EU contributors donate to ESEA LAN funds just because they want to see great TF2; it no longer matters what continent they're on.

4) Lastly, it inspired a lot of people IN the community to really start thinking about ways to promote TF2. After i46 we saw a boom in people pushing for Twitch front page, featured articles, and ESEA stream spotlights. Did i46 cause this? No. Hell, it may have even been in the works before i46. What it did do is convince people that we (as a community) really can do a lot to promote this old, hit-scan-never-fucking-works-for-me-I-swear-no-reg game.

Did i46 have the immediate, dramatic results that several people wanted? Absolutely not. Will doing it again at i49 further promote TF2 to the outside world and continue to increase on the 4 things I mentioned above? No idea. What I do know is that telling people "we shouldn't do this because we won't get sponsors" seems like a really stupid response when the community (especially the EU one) really wants to set up a rematch.

tl;dr If the community wants another international LAN and is willing to back it up, why the fuck shouldn't we do it?

It would be great to send an American team against a European team, for sure, especially against the new Epsilon. But, I think maybe focusing on our own tournaments is a wiser decision for now. The community is (well, some of it) expecting TF2 to grow with that much money being spent. Going international is an inevitable part of an eSport, but it's not necessarily the best first step (although I think i49 would be a great investment with proper promotion and, hey TeamFortress.TV!).

I do have a "secret project" loosely related to tournaments. Let me just leave it at that. :)

ur all crazy, except djc, sry

luv u~

I mean if the community wants it and can finance it it's fine, but I just worry we'll end up roping some poor sap into footing like 90% of the bill again.

c u there wfalfeb