CEVO could be an experimental league that works in tandem with ESEA. Teams that play ESEA could use CEVO as a place to test new lineups or tactics under match conditions without having to do so in a p2p league.

There's potential here.

@Kohaku:

Some of the same people that have taken community dollars to go to LAN have also done their part in contributing to the community. It's not always a black-and-white relationship.

Furthermore, there are some invite players that have really never taken that much money at all from anyone to get where they are today.

Your complaints of the ESEA service are valid, however. In a perfect world, we'd have an ESEA league system that really works and is worth buying into.

There are alternatives already on the books: CEVO and UGC. The drawback with those is that UGC is not designed with the invite community in mind, and that CEVO hasn't really been given a chance by the same people that talk a big game on the forums.

I know that CEVO may never be the #1 league in NA TF2, but I think we as a community can at LEAST give them a chance.

I'll talk with my team about it and see if they're interested - it's not like we're paying any money to sign up so there is nothing at stake...

This looks like a fair fight based on what I've seen from both teams this offseason. I'll probably watch a replay of this cast after scrims tonight.

My boss just asked:

"May I see some footage of a TF2 LAN?"

I took Friday as a scheduled off day for GXL - and I just sent him the i49 video as an "example" - but told him that GXL was a little different.

That was such a weird question to answer.

What the fuck Cole...

Of course the TF2 tourney doesn't start in time...

We need to update the thread with information regarding STVs.

http://i.imgur.com/Gyw6Z3q.jpg

That's benk, freakin, benk's friend, and myself. That was at around 3:45 am.

http://i.imgur.com/sWjxLOH.jpg

There's my cheesesteak that I had for lunch.

17 teams are needed for a perfect round-robin. Schedules this season will be a full round-robin + 1 additional game (who you play in this additional game will loom large at the end of the season).

Complete sweetheart. Pretty good roamer, but an even better person to spend time with in mumble. It's unfortunate your team didn't make it.

Main is about 10-12 teams. IM is about 13-16 teams. If you combine the two it is about equal to what we started IM with last season.

You do have a great point about it no longer being summer, however.

There were 69 teams at the deadline last season.

With 4 days left, you have about 32 teams out of a possible 50+ paid up.

Where did all of the open players go? Just like always, there were about 13-14 teams that went up a division - so that isn't an explanation.

That's an affirmative.

When the regular season kicks off would you like to review a match demo or two? I'm going to have my IM debut this campaign and could use a second set of eyes. I wouldn't ask for much outside of maybe 3-4 demo reviews this season (depending on how things go).

Thanks, radium.
ESEA page: http://play.esea.net/users/408442

Playing medic is good, but make sure you're really going to be OK with not fragging for a period of about 2-3 months. An unmotivated medic that is sick of the class is usually a death sentence for a team.

I would say that WET are currently 5-1 or 5-2 favorites over the "muddled middle" of IM. Teams that are good at making half-time adjustments will probably be the ones that find ways to win matches as I don't see too many rolls happening this season. As of right now, WET don't have any clear-cut weak points to attack - and if you try to overload one side of the map they have the team intelligence to punish you for it.

There are a good number of unknown quantities this season - and I'm curious to see how they'll handle close matches early on.