National Pride assisted in the carrying out of WW 1 - but it wasn't the causation. If you're looking for cause you need look no further than the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. Czarist Russia and The Austro-Hungarian Empire really really wanted the bits that were falling off of the Ottoman Empire and they decided to duke it out over them and they brought their friends.

Nationalism, and racial pride is something recent - you'd never really have gotten anything like it in the 1700's - one's religion, one's local city or village was far more important. It's primarily because of the sacro-sanct nature of the nation state which is utilized for great national efforts (typically wars). Why does it continue despite it being illogical? Because it's a powerful tool for ruling people, and as such it's heavily pushed by any ruling power - just remember how bat shit crazy things were in 2001 after 9/11.

Although I'm under the impression that a large amount of the current ESEA-playing community will still be in ESEA come s16, if CEVO can manage a proper start date, it may prove to be a wonderful test-pilot of the league. I say that because sign ups for ESEA s16 probably wont be until some time in mid-late January (not 100% on when LAN is). So, that gives plenty of time for CEVO to get its self in gear and have some matches get played - since currently all it is, is a league with very few actual matches played, 6 servers, and history with the community, some of which I'm personally still a bit salty about lol.

I'm no champion defender of ESEA, but I imagine once all is said and done, the community will ultimately benefit from having more leagues for mid and higher players with ESEA still being populated. I honestly don't get that much of a feeling, from most of the folks I've talked to that're playing in Main and Invite, that they intend to leave ESEA any time soon. I'd also be willing to bet that if ESEA's numbers are significantly down come s16 they may offer incentives to return.

As far as in game items Plat, valve seems to be completely unwilling to provide medals or in-game items to any for-profit league. So that leaves UGC if you just want in-game swag lol. There are 6s medals now and might I say they look pretty cool imho.

They only have to drop the million if they fuck up and do wacky things with the client, otherwise they only have to pay a relatively small fine spread out over 10 years - which is far better than what a lawyer would want.

ESEA has had record numbers, as has UGC 6s - all of UGC's 6v6 league, I'll even slash the numbers a bit by discounting currently dead teams, teams on hold, or teams unreadied:

Platinum: 14 teams - 84 players at least
Silver - 45 teams - 270 players at least
Steel red - 34 teams - 204 players at least
Steel Blue - 38 teams - 228 at least
Iron - 45 teams - 270 players at least

Thus, experiencing 6v6, in an organized way, are 1056 people at the very least. There are more but I've discounted them (dead teams) and subs.

We've had growth like this ever since my first season as 6v6 admin and the growth continued after my departure. I can look at Open and even IM now, and Main in one case, and see teams and people I remember answering questions for. The game is growing.

If anything the dearth of competition we see is from a time period when TF2 in the 6v6 format nearly died before a new crop of players (from s10-s11) came into ESEA. You've got tried and true veterans like B4nny, Plat, Smaka, Enigma, et al, a huge gap (with grape and marma and a small handful of others floating in it), and then these new folks that hadn't played until s10-s11. At the top it'll be slow going for the playing field to equalize, but it will happen given enough time, and TF2 will continue to see forward pressure upwards as more and more teams seek out better and more competition. You can thank the f2p update for chasing me away from pubbing all the time - and I'm sure even more people have that shared experience, along with HL experience which has, say what you will about highlander, it has been absolutely massive for 6v6's player base.

Watch an IM or Main match for a preview of what we could have ;)

We did have an incident in UGC where a team reconfigured their respawn points so they would always get the best possible forward respawn even if they didn't have the points to get it :( Whenever they were on red. It was pretty funny when the other team asked for a color switch and the other team refused and got mad lol.

I believe there's a video also of a team doing this - perhaps from ETF2l? Can't remember.

I liked it

I didn't read the court document ultra-carefully, but I was given the impression that this third party inspector type would just be somebody who showed up (and was paid by ESEA) periodically to make sure things were up to snuff - and not a full time in-house consultant.

If it is a full-time guy that'd be pretty nice from a consumer's point of view.

From my understanding of the bitcoin program, and the intention behind its construction, is that jaguar approached lpkane, and said, hey, I could get the client to mine bitcoins, and in return users could subscribe to a special sort of premium, where they'd get their league fees or premium reimbursed, given that they spent x amount of time mining. Which actually isn't a terrible idea, because I'd sure give a few hours of my PC being maxed out to not have to pay for this stuff. Then something went awry and the bitcoin program, which was being tested, was placed into an update and passed to every ESEA user who downloaded it.

I buy the story that it was a combination of an accident and incompetence (or jaguar thinking he could sneak some free money with his program) that caused this - because I would find it difficult to believe that you'd be willing to damage your company the way ESEA has been damaged in order to gain 3k$ in clandestine bitcoins. They'd have to be even more stupid to believe that nobody would find out, especially given that some pcs sound like hurricanes when they go up to 100% utilization lol.

The main point I'm trying to make is that it's not beyond comprehension to accuse ESEA of incompetence. They'd never have gotten in this mess if that weren't the case. But to take it further and imagine that they meant to steal everybody's personal information, log their passwords, hijack their pcs, etc etc, is just laughable. You wouldn't spend 10 years building a business and then piss it all away like that, especially given that everyone is well aware of who owns and operates ESEA. Maybe if ESEA were a brand-new thing and the owners unknown individuals living on a secret island somewhere, maybe then I'd buy into it.

As far as the inspections go, I doubt they'll be anything more than a hassle for somebody to deal with. Unless NJ is wildly different from IN it took a person being killed for OCEA to even give a damn about my workplace, and even then nothing was really changed. States tend to settle for hassling you and charging you some money rather than actually interrupting or becoming involved in business affairs. My guess is ESEA takes a similar view since they don't seem to be particularly concerned with the third party inspections. If anything I feel a bit safer knowing the inspector is there because they'll be super-super careful about what goes into the client now as somebody will be looking at it at least cursorily lol.

The threat to their business model, due to a weakened AC, is something I hadn't considered - but I suppose that'd take another league with an equally viable anti-cheat getting itself together for the CS people to start hitting ESEA in its wallet.

So you're saying, that the state of New Jersey would allow individuals to commit several felonies, for which they supposedly have evidence, and then just allow them to walk away without admitting guilt and only paying a relatively small fine spread out over 10 years and they're -=not=- a major enterprise or bank?

I'm no ESEA super-fan, but it's pretty ridiculous to assert that New Jersey would behave in such a way. Furthermore, if any such activity exists when they're audited the company will die, so you can bet that everything will be squeaky clean lol.

The CS community also doesn't appear to even be mildly concerned from what I can see, sure ESEA does a bit more for them than us, but you can't charge that entire community with collective insanity no matter how silly they may appear to be in GO lobbies.

However, I think all of this will actually be healthy for the community once people calm down and think things over. Because what we'll likely see is mostly everybody playing in ESEA still (that's just generally the feeling I'm getting) with a few less teams here and there. While large swaths of the community will start doing CEVO/UGC/Potential ETF2l - which means more tf2 will be being played across more leagues, and that's an excellent thing for us all.

Yeah, I'm not even remotely bothered by the statements in NJ's court document - if what they were saying was true, people would be going to jail, not getting hit with a relatively tiny fine.

The main thing I'm bothered about is how poorly questions were being handled in that thread - ESEA needs much better PR.

I'd expect an 11:15 start time, so if we're lucky we'll get 45 minutes in which should be more than enough to complete a game unless it's an epic one.

As a Communist, who has been a member of several parties - why is it that everything I love splits apart into disparate groups :(

the bitcoin code was only in there for a few days/weeks over this summer and was then removed.

The rest of the malware allegations are up in the air as to whether or not it's actually malicious, and it'd be pretty stupid of them to actually use it maliciously because it'd destroy 10 years of building a business.

noobies, that's less of a statement about mix^'s conduct and more of a statement about the state of invite and the competitive level therein.

And just like the Roman Republic, once it demonstrated that it could no longer govern, was usurped by Caesar, we should all hope for the day when the fat cock himself ascends to the mighty twitch throne.