I was smoking for many years. I used to hang around with kids a lot older than me. They hit the age where drinking, smoking and drugs became decisions and simply put, I was younger and easily influenced. I became addicted to smoking through peer pressure, and found it extremely difficult to quit.

In more recent years, I've bought several electronic cigarettes. It became a bit of a hobbie, buying the latest models, mixing up different flavors and strengths of liquid, but I was still smoking cigarettes on the side (less than before). My brother has been on solely the e-cig for about 3 years now, but it just didn't have that 'dirty' feel of a cigarette.

Anyway, I really wanted to quit smoking, so I decided to stop. I considered myself a drug addict, and that in order to quit, you don't give yourself little bit of the drug. The key was knowing how the addiction worked (or at least convincing yourself of how you think it works). My scientific explanation (right or wrong I do not know) is that your body requires a certain level of nicotine in your blood to be 'satisfied' and while you're not at that level, you will suffer from nicotine withdrawal. This withdrawal will only occur while there is still some nicotine in your body, but once the nicotine has left (after 72 hours), you will no longer suffer from nicotine withdrawal, but from associations with smoking (basically, the habit rather than the addiction).

So I quit. For 72 hours. 72 hours of HELL! I nearly killed a guy for driving the wrong way around a McDonalds car park. Because of my understanding of addiction, I couldn't allow myself to have even a single pull on a cigarette, because that would put a tiny bit of nicotine in my blood, which would take 72 hours to leave, and so I'd suffer from withdrawal for 72 hours from that point. Simply put... I never took another puff. After 72 hours, things got remarkably easier. I had queue induced cravings, after eating, while walking, after waking up, but these were because they had been part of my routine for a long time. They get weaker and weaker, and now I'm probably down to one or two queue induced cravings a month.

I quit smoking on the 4th of January this year (I don't like doing new years resolutions as you should do something because you want to do it, not because of a specific day). To some, that may not seem like long, but I'm sure to a regular smoker, or anyone who has quit before, that is pretty impressive. I'm not going back to smoking, I haven't had _ANY_ nicotine since I threw away all my stuff for the fear of having to go through those 72 hours of hell again, and being too weak to do it. Maybe someday I will enjoy a nice victory cigar with my friends, but for now, it's simply not going to happen.

As for the feeling. I do feel a lot better. I was always reasonably healthy despite the smoking, and I haven't noticed too much on that side of things. I feel great though, simply because I wanted to quit for so long, and it really gets you down when you're unable to quit, and you feel weak, depressed and controlled by little white sticks of smoke. I taste things a lot better now, I smell things a LOT better. Breathing is a little bit easier, I don't have a permanent cough (was only a small one). The most surprising thing for me, is how less stressed I feel. I thought I'd get stressed at things really easily and have no 'cure' for it, whereas before I'd just have a smoke. At the moment though, I'm simply not getting stressed half as much as I did while I was a smoker.

Anyway, sorry for the essay, but I figured if someone wanted to quit, it might be useful for them to hear. I had tried some nicotine replacement stuff before, but I realised I needed to get off the addiction, and by my own theory, having a patch or gum would simply attempt to address the habit of smoking (which took months to truly break) but it would keep the addiction. I think it's better to fight off the addiction first... and it worked!

I think the hardest part of all of this is going to be seeding.

Do you seed HRG as #1 because the American's came 1st and 2nd at the last large event, or with it being a different team, could you still seed them as #1?

With Epsilon winning the ETF2L, home continent advantage, they could be there.

Where do you seed the Aussies with no reference to go by? Do you seed them high up to potentially give them a better chance to progress, or do you seed them low as they are untested?

Admins going to have a fun time!

Australia should do quite well in the tournament. I'm almost certain they will cause some sort of upset as they will be much more hungry for it than some of the European teams.

Can they win it?

With no disrespect, probably not, but I'm sure they are going to give it a good go and they are going to catch some teams off guard.

They gave HRG too much respect at times in my opinion. Take the fight to them!
Good game so far though! Me and beta hopefully casting the next few too.

Now to see what mixup and cc look like. Excited!

Quite drunk. Post #888 though, which is quite badass.

http://arxandbeta.com/images/point.jpg

I might just buy a mug with Ads' face on it if one is made. Imagine to conversations at work...

Battlefield 3 was / is awesome. Hopefully they have a spectator mode in BF4, and battle recorder so the game can be played professionally. FPS gaming needs some more presence in eSports at the moment.

http://youtu.be/vq-kDXHAno8

It would be broadcast on whatever platform Multiplay use to broadcast their games. VanillaTV are hired by Multiplay to broadcast for them, but it's not our show, and they have their own sponsorship deals to fulfill. If Multiplay are using twitch, then that's where all of the coverage would be :)

Lastly. If you're trying to raise money for a tournament prize pool, you're going to have a bad time.

Something like that can work when a game is first released, as a group of competitive gamers can see that a new game has X amount of money, and everyone is on the same level of skill and experience, so it's worth their time putting effort in to try and win the prize fund, so you get more players into the game, more teams popping up.

This doesn't work for an established game. You're asking several hundred, if not thousands of people to give a prize just to the winners. Personally, I don't want to fund prize money to TF2 players, I want to help get them to a LAN event that they wouldn't normally be able to attend. Also if those teams win any prize money, morally at least half of that should go straight back into the community (a giveaway or something where everyone has an equal chance of winning), or automatically contributed towards the next similar event, since they are getting a free holiday paid for by the community, their rewards for winning the tournament should contribute further to the community.

oh, and in terms of a donation. I don't see it that way.

I see it as purchasing a ticket to a show, where you will see the best TF2 teams in the world playing against each other. Whether you're going to see this show in person, or watch it online, or even watch the videos afterwards, the value I personally place on one of those tickets is between $30 and $60, others will value it more, and others less.

Why is everything always about TF2 becoming bigger? That boat sailed off years ago. We even had a second chance when TF2 was made free to play, but again, there was a distinct lack of community drive to make anything happen. We never had a 'day9' producing exciting daily videos, we never had highly motivated commentary / promotional teams. In fact half of the people that tried to get into it, got verbally abused straight out of it again. Players couldn't be bothered to even practice half of the time, we didn't even have a distinct set of rules of even team sizes (we kind of still don't!). We simply didn't market our eSport the way we should have, when it actually counted. The game is too old now, it is still played by a large number of players, but in terms of it becoming a recognised popular eSport up there with the likes of the big guns... it can't happen.

So what is left for us?

We simply need to enjoy what we have. We have a great community (yes... it is great, at least compared to other games), and we have pretty tight competition both in Europe and the US. Sure, we can increase coverage to increase our exposure, and with a little hard work, we might be able to obtain some slightly improved sponsorship deals resulting in bigger prizes for our tournaments (yay more keyboards), but the reality is, TF2 isn't going to become that 'level' of eSport that people hoped it would one day reach, and even if it does, how many top players in the community are ready to quit their jobs / school to play full time for a reasonably low salary? That's what these other professional gamers in those 'big eSport titles' are doing.

i46 was an amazing experience for all involved, and for me and many others, it was the peak of competitive TF2. Could we do it again? Yes... we very well could! It will however take even more community drive than the i46 donations to get it going, as the initial 'Europe vs US' hype has been answered. The marketing strategy would be all about the rematch. New hype would need to be created, Europe would need to show that it can put up a better fight than last time, and the US teams need to show that they have still maintained or improved on the level they were at previously. We certainly can have an absolutely EPIC i49 tournament if enough people want it to happen. We will never have these kind of events being a regular occurrence, there will never be that much money in TF2 to make it happen, but would you rather work hard and have one of these incredible events each year, or just carry on with the online play, a few local lans, and having a couple of teams pickup some headsets or mouse mats each season?

I say the day that i48 finishes, should be the day that we get the drive going. Every video / vod released by all the global TF2 communities, should be highlighting the i49 movement. Every forum needs a thread, every website needs a banner and headline. Reddit, Twitter, Twitch, YouTube all need to be buzzing, trending. As I've repeatedly mentioned in this post, TF2 will never be a professional eSport, but we can sure as hell host one of the greatest offline tournaments in the business, at least once a year, with the right drive, determination, and hardworking people.

TL;DR... Just don't.

I genuinely feel like TF2's decision over team size had a huge negative effect on its status as a competitive eSport.

I came into the TF2 scene around three months after the game was released, and that was pretty much the time when the European scene was _just about_ accepting 6 vs 6 as the primary team size.

The problem was, there were still 9v9, 8v8, 7v7, 6v6 and 5v5 leagues / competitions going on. Different continents were playing the game with different team sizes, and different leagues within each continent were also enforcing different rules and team sizes.

I honestly believe TF2 should have been made a 5v5 game. All other competitive FPS games at the time were being played in a 5v5 format, meaning that CS, CoD, and other FPS teams could literally pack up their things, and come and play our game, but instead they would have to find an additional player, and that was just too much effort :P

The other problem was that the teams that did move to TF2 came from games such as TFC (8v8 in Europe, 9v9 in US), and I think games like natural selection, ET, Quake etc.. didn't play 5v5 matches. They didn't want to break up their teams, and so playing in 8v8 matches would have been ideal. But still, going against the current meta for FPS games proved to be a problem.

The problem became apparent at the multiplay i-series when the final was about to be played on stage, and we needed an additional computer setup on the stage. No other game needed six computers, and so a last minute PC had to be found and setup. The extra PC's crashed, people were sitting uncomfortably at a desk made for five, and overall, it was a complete mess. I believe other 'turn up and play' LAN events could not accommodate a TF2 tournament, simply because their TUP setups were meant for teams of five.

I still think 5 vs 5 would be best, with class limit 1 across the board, but it can never be changed, because the meta game would be completely different, and a 5vs5 with medic, soldier, scout, demo, and heavy/utility would feel so much slower than the current setup.

End of badly structured post. Don't care!

My first ever match in TF2 was also my first ever time playing the game.
I knew a load of players from TFC who invited me to come and play with them, and I just finished the download as the game was starting.

It was a game playing for mambo number 5 (who after the game became Team Infused) vs 4kings (The team that went on to win season 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6 of ETF2L). The map was cp_well, and my instructions were to follow the other scout (I was scout) and shoot what he was shooting.

I don't think I did too badly, but we did lose the game. I just didn't know what all of the calls were. Luckily, CP_well is a very linear map, and some parts are very familiar to the TFC map, so I didn't really get lost.

Still, it was fun enough for me to keep playing the game.

I think that US events in general will always get less viewers than EU, simply because of time zones. EU casts are watchable at reasonable hours by spectators from Europe, and daytime US, but not Asia/Aus. US casts are watchable at reasonable hours by spectators from US, daytime Asia/Aus, but not Europe. But still, we are only talking about small numbers anyway, so maybe this doesn't really factor as much as it suggests it would.

The bigger issue with casting, is that the casual players aren't watching us. The non-tf2 players aren't yet watching us, and the competitive players are all playing at the time of a broadcast. I don't know if you still used fixed match times over there, but when I was playing in the US, all the teams were playing on the same day, at the same time. That means most of your target audience, can't watch the games.

If anything, both of our communities need to get some sort of... out of hours shows going on. Casted vod replays in the late hours of the evening so people can watch games once they are done playing. The show matches are great for the growth of TF2, but sometimes I swear I see more people watching an individual's stream at 1am, than I do watching the same individual's stream at match time.

All casts are good casts! I loved the fact that seanbud and co provided an alternative commentary for i46. 99% of the time, it simply means that more people watched the event, which benefits the tf2 community. The only exception would be if the casters are terrible, in which case viewers might be taken away from better casters, and the viewer gets put off by the low quality of the cast, but that would be a rare exception, as it's hard to be a bad caster at TF2.

I don't make a single penny from casting, and while I wouldn't mind making a few quid for my time with adsense or something, it's not essential. However. the one thing I am cautious about, is people making money off of my back, when it doesn't help the community, however this very rarely happens.

If the LAN supports the teams, and supports the community, with prize funds, or even a tournament at all, then I see it as a good thing. I'll do what I can to promote the LAN's sponsors, and show them that covering TF2 will benefit their business, in hope of future, bigger, better events to come our way. However, I'm not a millionaire, there's only so much cost I can eat up, and so for some LAN events, I'd look for some funding to eat up the cost of the ticket, accommodation, or general expenses. If none can be provided, then I'd simply cast at home, with no beef towards the organisers... it's just simply my bank balance doesn't match my love for the community.

Now about EXTV, I completely understand where they are coming from. They are excited for this event, and want to put on the best show possible. There are mutual benefits for both the community, and the casting organisation. However, in order to put on the best show possible, time and commitment are needed, and there's only so much work one can put into something for free, especially, when it starts eating into your own pocket. The problem is, it's all in ESEA's court. They effectively have a budget, went into discussions, and things have obviously changed. Business sometimes works like that.

EXTV should still be committed to providing the community with the best show possible, and when they hit a point where time is too valuable, and no additional support can be given to them, then that is the final quality of the show, whether it means casting at home for free, casting live at the event for expenses, or casting live on national television for a salary, you can only work to the level of 1) your own will, 2) the budget you have.