Concurrent? I doubt it. The other problem is I don't know how accurate ow3d.tv's numbers are - they could easily spoof viewers and manipulate them via API drop ins from other sources. Twitch has gotten significantly more accurate for their viewer counts and numbers in the past few months, so I trust their numbers more than any other streaming site - even YouTube. Pulling 5,000+ during LAN was something we regularly did, and wholly expect to do once again - especially if we're on ESEA Orange. Don't forget, we topped 6k last LAN which was more than the CS/CSS stream COMBINED.

About 3,600 views - 778 peak concurrent in the first hour, 527 in the second and my personal favorite metric: 2,400 comments in chat (about 6x what we had for Highlander on Monday - just shows how much more engaged the ESEA crowd is).

I was asking Sal about this - you guys are referring to the ESEA cast on eXtv last night, right? Those numbers are good, and what we should pull regularly, but by no means outstanding. I'm not trying to be a debbie downer here, but this is what I expect to see with every single cast we do. We have just over 4,200 subs on Twitch - assuming 10% of them tune in regularly, that means we should have at least 400 regular concurrents - factor in another 10-15% trickle in (those that show up after we go live, 10-15 min in) and we should see 700-800 concurrent for every cast, especially when we plug the shit out of it (which Gunners has been doing a great of, and shoutout to lyna for coming on to help Gunners out and schedule some more casts for us). The fact of the matter is, those numbers are what we regularly do for Highlander casts - personally, I expect MORE from Highlander, just because of the larger viewer-base - but it really is great to see the ESEA stuff finally getting on that level of regular viewers.

What's important, though, is that we don't rest on our laurels and think this is some sort of accomplishment. This is how it should be, and we're going to work hard for S13 to make sure that every cast has that many people when we go live and that we're live at least 4 nights a week with ESEA.

Yeah that one isn't bad either, doesn't look like it does 1080p though, if that's something you want to do. The thing I like about that C615 is it's performance in low light and not making you look like a pale ghost with the glow from your monitor is really impressive.

Cool to know there's even cheaper options out there though, thanks atmo.

I've noticed that some of the dudes (and hopefully in the future dudettes) that have been streaming and appearing on certain critically acclaimed podcast shows don't have webcams... if you need one, this is the money shot:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826104650

I picked one of these up and it's amazing. Streams in 720p @ 30fps into whatever software you want (xsplit picked it up easily as a camera source) and it'll record in 1080p (haven't tried that yet, but I do know that it works) but I guess takes a bit of processing power...

So yeah, if you need a webcam, there ya go. $30.

I noticed a lack of developers from Valve... that's disappointing and a little surprising, they're usually all over stuff like this. They've played in all the Mixups in the past (does that make them the classic Mixups? haha sorry it's early and I haven't had much coffee).

I had posted about it a month ago, I'm sorry you guys didn't see it - my fault for not making a bigger deal about it. We were hoping to cash in on the event being fresh in everyone's minds... talked about it on eXtravision as well, I think. Anyway, we'll talk about it internally and see if postponing would be OK. What do you guys think? Push it back a month or just put the prize money towards a tournament or paying back sal or something else?

It's not much info, but it's one of those done when it's done things. Not really one of those things sal, eXtine or anyone want to rush. It deserves to be done right.

I haven't seen anything, but I'm assuming most people are waiting until the deadline. We posted instructions on that forum post for how to submit.

Hopefully a bunch of you are already hard at work on these, but there's only 14 days left to get your videos done and submitted.

Check this thread for more info: http://www.extelevision.com/forum/index.php?topic=323.0

Reminder, first place is now $200 and we're still looking at adding more prizes.

Did Robin ever "officially" contribute to i46? Or was that just a rumor that was floating around that he donated... understand if you can't comment publicly, and if you can't just say it was a rumor.

Valve was in Europe at Gamescom around the time, though, pushing DOTA2 hard. That's when they announced the first International, I believe.

A bunch of us are planning on heading to FITES in February, as well.

Yeah, I gotcha... I just wonder why we, as NA TF2 players, keep sinking so much time and effort into getting to European events (at great expense to the players and sponsors) - at what point do we stop seeing a return on our investments? Have we seen one at all? Near as I can tell, NA TF2 (at least invite) has fallen apart since i46 - the opposite effect I think we all expected. Granted, competitive TF2 in general has grown, but it seems like the top-tier has become slightly complacent over here.

Nothing against the effort, I think our primary goal as casters, supporters, etc. still needs to be facilitating general growth of the game competitively - but it seems like a case of massively diminishing returns when we're not putting that money and sponsorships towards establishing a North American LAN event that rivals i-series and Dreamhack. It seems, to me at least, that we're helping international TF2 grow far more than we're supporting things here at home.

eur 43k to get what, exactly? I could host a LAN in Chicago for that much, a really nice one.