There were quite a few people that came up to me at the end of last GXL and told me that they would absolutely love to help out for the next one. I already wrote down some of those names, but once I get to a point where I create a list of roles needed, I'll make a public post to gather volunteers.

In a really awesome situation where I have tons of help, I'll be able to play with my team at the event. However, it's not in the cards at the moment.

As Fire said, this is important. Typically, you acquire good gamesense as a whole, but don't try to specifically work on gamesense for just one class.

I think most people who have bad gamesense are people who have a really awful understanding of their surroundings and environment. They don't check around them all that much, tunnel vision hard, are oblivious to a lot of simple things, and have a difficult time anticipating certain plays that the opponent(s) can possibly do. A lot of this can be obtained by playing pugs/scrims/matches and reviewing your own demos. You won't get good gamesense in a day, but it's very achievable for most people.

No, I'm not MIA. No, I'm not scared of impending nerd rage.

When I said we were supposed to announce details a month ago, that was 100% on track and ready to go. Unfortunately, things got pushed back and we could no longer announce for Friday. Things within our staff group became a little dormant when this happened, and the rest of us were basically "what the fuck, let's actually get this going, please."

The chain of command has now been rearranged as of a day ago, and things should be getting off the ground soon. I can't give an ETA, and I know I've said that things would be starting soon before. All I can tell you is that the new chain of command will be pushing things harder than before. We are looking to announce the details as early as possible, and that's all I can say.

Trust me, I've been as eager (and honestly annoyed) as anyone else during this entire time that details have been put off for so long. Things will be looking much better soon, hopefully.

I sincerely apologize to anyone and everyone who have been affected by this delay.

Again, a huge shoutout to everyone who helped put this together, and another huge shoutout to everyone who donated! It was a great showmatch and we had a lot of fun.

Pubbing in DoD 1.3 is pretty much a joke. There are only a few servers worth joining, most of them being filled with mods and/or bots. Trying to find 12 mans is pretty much impossible. I think nineteeneleven used to do pugs years ago with former dod invite players, but that website seems pretty inactive now.

Pubbing in DoDS is fine for the most part. You'll still run into a decent amount of servers that run realism mods and other crap, but there's quite a few mod-free servers. It should be easier to find 12 mans in DoDS, but not by much.

All things considered, both games are incredibly fun.

My favorite 1.3 frag video

If someone pisses me off, I might handcuff them to Marmaduke.

So, basically you're saying you want me to buy you guys pizza at GXL, right?

Well, alright.

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE FOREPLAY, BOYS.

The states part uses radio buttons instead of check boxes, so it only lets you pick one answer. :(

Saloon wouldn't need to be shut down. You could have it so games from certain leagues would no longer be added. CSGL does that when it starts to get out of hand, or if the league asks them not to put up their games.

Nine Inch Nails - The Fragile

Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral

Cursive - The Ugly Organ

iamamiwhoami - Bounty

Bazooie - The Path of Least Resistance

Bring Me The Horizon - Suicide Season

Explosions in the Sky - The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place

The Flashbulb - Red Extensions of Me

Have A Nice Life - Deathconsciousness

I think you're getting your numbers mixed up. There are nine teams in Invite and the season is eight weeks.

edit: whoops, there are nine weeks (and still nine teams), but I don't know why that's necessary. Pretty sure the seasons were eight weeks a while ago. Everything would make sense with eight weeks, as all teams would play each map twice and play each other twice. Oh well, pretty off-topic but whatever, haha.

I typed out a bunch of stuff, but it was really just me shitting on CEVO and saying "well, ESEA does this fine for the most part, but it could improve."

If I had to directly compare it to ESEA? Hm, I'll name a few things really quick.

Take what ESEA has, and then have better servers, either no client or a client that actually works / catches cheaters / doesn't run as a process in the background, more TF2 content on the website itself or at least direct itself to TFTV for the content, having the maps played in the season actually consistent (ie: I think my team has to play Metalworks once this season and Process four times? Why?), more diverse stats like sizzlingstats, and a few other reasons I probably can think of later but can't think of now.

I had the new CEVO season become a front page article with a banner, while constantly making and bumping threads regarding the new season and maps. While I did tell b4nny and ma3la (and maybe other streamers) to advertise it, it's not their job to. How much they wish to mention the new season is up to them, so if they only mentioned it once or twice, that's still cool for the ~200-300 people that were tuned in, but I'm not going to badger them to mention it every five minutes if someone missed it.

I also asked enigma for assistance in further promoting the new CEVO season on TFTV, but he told me he didn't want to campaign something he didn't really want to support, as he also had an awful time in the previous CEVO season. But again, he was totally fine with having the front page article with a banner go up.

Truthfully, I hear some people tell me what you just told me about not really hearing about the new season. CEVO themselves said they could have done a bit of a better job advertising it, but at the end of the day, I think a good majority of the community genuinely did not really give a shit about the next season of CEVO. Some people didn't feel like having 3-4 matches a week (if they participated in both CEVO and ESEA), didn't like their servers, didn't like paladin, really hated navigating their website, liked ESEA better in every way, and/or weren't so hung up over despising them for the bitcoin event.

I tried to campaign it hard, I really did. I would say the only thing I could have done more is constantly bump the new season thread the moment it left recent discussion, and that would have looked really fucking annoying, because I would have bumped it 3-5 times a day for a good 4-5 weeks. That's not an exaggeration, either.

I'm not stopping anyone if they want to try to campaign for a new league. But do I think it'll fall flat on its face while ESEA still supports TF2? Yeah, I do. But do I hope that something better than ESEA will eventually come? Yeah, I do.

You guys can agree or disagree with me however much you want. I'm all for keeping this game alive. If you want to try to be a CEVO admin, please do. If you want to try to start your own league, please do. I don't say that in jest, either. I want absolutely nothing but the best for this community, which is why I poured a fucking ridiculous amount of hours and money into GXL.

edit: NO GXL NEWS YET PLS DON'T BOMBARD ME. ;_;

This has been lpkane's demeanor before TF2 even came out. I think he's grown to react this way after dealing with shitty counterstrike players for over a decade. Despite that, he is actually a ridiculously nice guy in person. I'm not saying he's an internet tough guy, but again, it's just how his demeanor has grown on those forums. Like it or not, it's how he is and this is ultimately a decision he feels like is best for a $1 million dollar league.

To be clear, I'm not necessarily thrilled that an ESEA process will be running in my background, but I'm not really shattered about it.

Also, I see a lot of people saying "omgomg fuck ESEA, let's leave and go to something or make something of our own!," but the community has not proved we are capable of that at all. We tried that with a season of CEVO while still also having ESEA. Despite all the massive backlash ESEA got, ESEA still had more signups and having two primary leagues split part of the community (which is what we don't want at all). No one took CEVO seriously, and Lange (CEVO admin at the time) said it was a massive nightmare from start to finish.

I became the CEVO admin the following season, and despite how much I tried to advertise it to the community, no one gave a shit. Everyone wanted ESEA. I tried bumping the threads on TFTV, but literally no one would post and it would fall off the recent topic list within 30-60 minutes. I posted on Twitter, mass-messaged everyone on my friends list, told b4nny and ma3la (who are unquestionably the top 2 competitive TF2 streamers, at least at the time) to advertise it on their streams, and we got little to nothing. I think we had less than 16 teams sign up in total, and about 15 players were paid.

Whether we like it or not, ESEA is here to stay. The foundation for competitive TF2, regardless if you include money, is laid out and totally there for us to stay afloat. As long as ESEA keeps TF2, that will be the primary league of choice.

If something seems to be unquestionably better in just about every way, then I'm sure everyone will entertain the idea.

$5 forfeitted.