going live

We're not asking that everyone abandons esea, obviously that is their own choice to make. We're just trying to create a 2nd league option for players to play in. From what has been said so far, it seems like cevo is going to go the 1 match per week route - initially, at least. Some teams are going to abandon esea and some teams aren't. To those who aren't going to do so, we'd like you to participate in both leagues and give cevo a shot. Obviously for the invite players it isn't going to be their #1 priority. That's fine. It used to be a fairly common practice for teams to be in 2 leagues. I doubt anyone remembers "twl-invite", but half of esea invite participated in it while still participating in esea. There will be prize pots up for the taking, and who knows, maybe you could put that money towards your esea lan travel costs.

Don't shun cevo just because you think esea is better. Be supportive of it and maybe one day it will grow into something bigger and better than esea.

PARTAKE IN BOTH LEAGUES

I fail to see the logic behind the argument "There is no central location in the US that is easy for everyone to travel to", especially because 3 times a year we have 4 teams flying to dallas from all over the US just for lan. I don't think anyone is arguing that a community based lan would attract the entire community and everyone would go. It's more realistic that (given the prize pot was big enough to give the top teams incentive) we would have the top 2-4 teams flying in for the finals, and on top of that, other players in the area could go. In addition to having the "CEVO Finals Tournament", there could be an open tournament going on for those players who would be attending because they are within close proximity of the lan. Just picture the GXL with an additional invite tournament going on. We would have the highest level of play on display right in front of the general public who attends the lan, as well as an avenue for them to start playing in an open tournament right then and there.

I also fail to see the logic behind the argument "we can't host our own lan because it is too expensive." Existing lans already have all of the servers and all of the necessary hardware to host a lan. They are already shelling out the money to host the event. The only real expense for everyone would be travel. We have a long standing member of the community in Nick "TheFragile" Leon who is in charge of the tournaments at the GXL and even said that he would help us out with hosting a lan there. I'm not suggesting that this be the location or the event that we decide on, I'm just pointing out that it is not a far fetched idea or anywhere near as impossible as some people are making it out to be.

When esea had it's first season, I believe they had around 20 teams participate in a 100% open league. Teams such as Pandemic and 20ID participated, as well as teams who were far below their skill level. My memory is kind of foggy, but i also believe that they only had 1 match per week in their first season and then once they gained our interest with all of their "fancy shiny things", they switched it to 2 matches a week, almost as if to prevent us from participating in any other leagues. They most certainly did not have a LAN for us.

All of that being said, ESEA is not what it once was. In the earlier seasons, Torbull himself would message team captains of cevo rosters trying to convince them to sign up for their tf2 league. They would constantly hand out free premium to players to try out their pug systems, and they would actually treat our community with respect because they actually needed us to make their league and pug systems work if they were going to be successful in TF2 (except for lpkane, who has always been a dick, and would hand out bans to people who complained about him playing pyro in 6v6 pugs).

ESEA will always revolve around counter strike. Honestly if i was new to competitive gaming and i went to ESEA's site to inquire about their tf2 league, I'd probably say to myself "why am i trying to play tf2 when CS is so much bigger and is where the real money is at". Their coverage of the TF2 portion of the lan is mediocre at best. I have to shovel through tons of CS photos just to find that the only pictures of TF2 players are captured in the background of CS photos (hyperbole). Last season i'm fairly sure that the winner of the TF2 lan wasn't even posted within a reasonable amount of time, because when i tried to go see a picture of the winning team it was nowhere to be found on their website and i had to ask people on steam who won.

Basically all i'm trying to say is, nothing is going to happen over night. I think we can easily trump the numbers of the first season of esea. I don't recall what the prize pots were in those first couple of seasons, but i'm pretty confident that we can trump those numbers as well. There won't be a lan right off the bat. Those things take lots of planning and time. We have a league willing to take the first step with us, and community figure heads who are willing to put in the time to jump start this new league option. The fact that people are already shunning it is ridiculous. When companies compete, the consumer always benefits. Risks have to be taken to make progress, stop being little girls about it.

Edit: In regards to them supplying computers and monitors to the players who fly out, this is not a rare thing or uncommon at lans. Even the small intel lan in Atlanta has a set up like this for players to play finals on.

I think cevo has full intentions of hosting LAN finals if we show them enough support. And like others have said, it would be better than the esea LAN because it wouldn't be held in a hotel lobby exclusively for the "elite" players.

I think his argument was that not having a LAN doesn't really matter. He didn't say it would be more competitive.

Cevo has historically been a pay to play league, they're probably only free now to entice teams to play. Also having users pay for the league is not the only means of creating a good prize pot.

Doesn't change the fact that they're a shady company who treats their customers like trash and operates under the assumption that we need them more than they need us. Doesn't erase the bitcoin mining. Doesn't change the countless times that we are forced to play on their client and reschedule matches, even though the client literally does not catch tf2 cheaters. Esea might work fine for cs, and those players should stick with it. Tf2 should go in another direction. The fact that we talk about this every season should be reason enough to actually do something about it and not an indication that we aren't going to do anything about it. And don't even get me started on lpkane.

Unfortunately it was so busy catching cheaters in cs that it failed to ever catch a cheater in tf2.

I didn't make the poll and I agree with not putting "I'm crazy blah blah". I don't care that I shared my own personal view. I am campaigning for cevo

Someone posted this in another thread, just wanted to make sure people see it.

http://strawpoll.me/741278/

My personal vote is for cevo though etf2l seems like a good place as well

they gave me a refund for this month of premium, lol. Not my league fees though.

And yea, it's just like ripping off a band aid. We just need to do it. LAN isn't a good enough reason to continue playing in the league. There are plenty of lans that would host a tf2 tournament if there was enough interest. If we create our own league we can always just host our own "LAN finals" at a lan that already exists. Buy out the required amount of tickets and make it happen.

All of my hopes and dreams, just thrown away

Just got a 10 year ban for a first offense!

Haven't logged on in quite some time but I wouldn't mind getting back into dueling on QL. Username is StPatrick. Add me if you want to game. Will also play cpm but I'm not that good.

http://www.quakelive.com/#!profile/summary/StPatrick

The original gotfraggon would not make such a post. Way too many positive emotions going on here. I do not approve.