Talk to people when you do what you're doing, thankfully if your role involves a lot of communicating like mine, days I turn up with little sleep are counter acted by conversations with customers/colleagues.

I'm not brushing-over threatening bans on people for not playing because if it were true it'd be the most baseless decision in TF2, you can't ban teams over something that has no rule to re-enforce it as a bannable offence. I brush it off because I could not believe ETF2L admins would even threaten bans for forfeiting a match, it just sounds absurd in my mind. If it is true then someone somewhere has made a horrible representation of themselves.

Also I was not aware the deadline dates had been changed, I assumed they ran from 8th-14th like everything else with the option to extend beyond that if necessary.

From reading this as far as I can tell no team is fully available until after Christmas, so it isn't like the admins delaying it beyond the normal deadline would make a difference. I can't really see how this is the ETF2L admin's fault or specifically Permzilla's like some people are alluding to, feels like the responsibility is on the players here.

Threatening to ban or punish teams for forfeiting when they can't play is a strange one a I can't quite grasp, but the whole scheduling issue is wholly down to the players, unless there is some other evidence that is withstanding.

So that some form of game can be played I assume, not much of a justification but that is I am guessing the reasoning behind it.

http://etf2l.org/matches/45745/

The match comments say:

1) Epsilon can't play until Thursday onwards.
2) WWF can't play on Thursday or Sunday.

Saturday and Friday only days left according to match comments - so a weekend default date is only option according to what is posted.

However since it's a Grand Final, and it is a one off match I can't see why an extension couldn't be granted to play any day from the week of 16th-19th. A strange decision indeed, perhaps there is another underlying reason why this can't be done after Sunday.

Kill Switch got this

To be fair I never saw AG making the top 3, so well done to them but mTs, I am sure Harbleu just wants to win a proper UGC season so he can quit HL forever and sail into the sunset.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgcTvoWjZJU

30 mins late? That's early for HL.

I'd assume they will cast "closest" games in each round.

This is great, we had a ton of these cups in Europe, always fun to play/watch. I am glad to see NA starting to have them now!

It's unlikely money will attract too many "super teams" - In Europe we've had 3 seasons (in fact maybe more) with prize money for HL Prem, it hasn't encouraged teams to try any harder or see players from the likes of Epsilon form a HL team. Simply put - Some people aren't interested in playing HL, the same way some people aren't interested in 6's.

QL is always worth watching...and sc2.

Also people misunderstand the "Professional" aspect. The purpose of this event is more than likely to gain exposure for TF2 on a larger scale, using the term "pros" quite loosely here, the event is supposed to highlight to the wider competitive community that our scene has dedicated players who invest time into this game with the aim of winning. A professional may mean something different, but if you're a casual player of any games and want to test the ability of a high level TF2 player, the term "pro" can be used.

Besides it is not as if we can afford to fly Clockwork or Stefen out to Dreamhack.

This is not true, we won 500 Euros in Wireplay Highlander, my Engineer can now afford new tyres with his cut of the money. I have now finally made a total of £150 from this game after investing thousands of hours, I esitimate I will turn a profit circa 2037. So long as Yanks and Aussies stop attending summer i-series so I don't dish out anymore money, selfish bastards.