So here we find ourselves, in the week preceding my birthday, staring into the void of the weekend without a game listed yet on the gtv schedule. And normally, no, there would be no problem with this - after all, the weekend is designed for visits to the `culbs`, for visiting your grannies, and for giving your fellow skinheads a good serving on the sports pitch. Hell, some of you make even mark the weekend by chucking an extra between-map dellekes into the frituurpan. Regardless of what you do, it`s all going to change this weekend. And why you probably wonder. After all, those dellekes sure are tasty. Well I`ll tell you why:

This weekend marks the opening match of the King of the Hill tournament so widely publicised in Crossfire ever since it`s first mention all those weeks ago. Because it`s the first week, we`re limiting it to only the one game, but I`m sure you`ll agree it`s rather more than just a tasty prospect!



We`re already arranging the ETTV, and hopefully soon a shoutcaster will join forces to make this a truely memorable first match for the KOTH format. Until then, all you need to know:


Match: elite vs Team Helix
Date: Sunday, May 21st
Maps: sw_goldrush (hx), adlernest (elite)
Time: 21:30 CET
ETTV: GTV id / 533
Shoutcast: Listen - http://www.flyingdj.net:8000/listen.pls

So lets forget about all the hard work that has gone into getting this far, and lets just enjoy the action!

We have been through the wars here at Crossfire, plagued by downtime and a few unfortunate individuals who seek to abuse the trust given to them with such a site. Nevertheless, we are back, the bugs are being busted, and with them too comes the resurgeance of the KOTH which garnered so much publicity when it was first announced, all those weeks ago.

Now however the site has returned to something close to its former glory, and we judge it as good a time as any to open the competition once and for all. But to do that, we need you, the players, to place your challenges to become the very first King of Crossfire. A web-based challenge system will be on its way, but until that happens, please submit your challenges to an op in #crossfire (BNC messages get logged! ;>). The deadline for challenges is Tuesday May 16th 20:00 CET, with the schedule being published on the same day.

If you need a refresh of the format, or have any questions, just refer to the KOTH article which I wrote recently. Readmore reveals the current clans involved in the competition. Good look to all teams!

By now, you've probably seen the journal, probably noticed the new addition to Sweden's film archives. Yes, in the context of the internet this movie might be considered what Fred Flintstone is to cartoons, but lets not spend too long on that thought, because the mjo produced movie in partnership with 141 and ex SplashDamage player sikota sure is one of the hottest servings this May.

Whilst the English sun might play a game of hide and seek, the action in this film is relentless, offering just over 8 minutes of x264 and special effects goodness, and featuring frags against some "top" names, including parodia and well, even JOTE (they'll never diee!). If you experience any gfx irregularities, using the included VLC player should do the trick. Overall this is one movie that should not be missing from any respectable collectors library. Grab the download now!

Contact at #141 and #uE.et

Mirror: SweRTCW

With Warleagues starting its campaign before its main rival, ClanBase, the hype and talk surrounding the new season was all too evident to see on Crossfire and the other community sites, with much speculation given over to predictions and opinions on the various cosmetic changes that had taken place. That was before, this is now, and so without the aid of images (coming soon!), we take a guided tour around the competition to see just how events have been unfolding.

Dropouts have been a major talking point, as they always have been in WL, but fortunately the top leagues have been only slightly affected this time around - Azure Fate, the team to pull out of the running before a single bullet had been fired.

On the contrary, clans who might otherwise have been predicted mid table obscurity (like Charlton Athletic) or inactivity woes have flourished, clans like the supposed 2 week clan #stfu, who recently merged with cdap to become a strong contender for EuroCup domination. And what about SoF, who many had cast aside as inactive and past their sell-by-date. Not only have they put in some convincing performances, they have also done so without dropping a game. The divide grows ever wider between the top and the not, and common bedroom names such as Vagrants and recently EC released dfiance languishing down in the nether regions of top-flight ET.

There must be something more interesting to talk about than the positions, and thankfully there is, served up in a dollop of European controversy. During the angeldust vs. sFx Muse match, it was discovered that -shockhorror! angeldust were using a merc due to being short of player numbers... just what is thay Toxicboyo like?
The story goes that aD told sFx before the game, who then agreed to play. However pending sFx's subsquent loss, a complaint was filed by the muse team regarding the situation. aD player addict gave his thoughts on the matter:
"They knew it from the beginning i guess, but they kept playing". Well, quite.

And all this frenzy has been making the premier division look like a sleeping volcano - promising much, but never telling us when its going to wake up. Only two games have been played as of yet, with the other sFx team EVIL losing over three maps to perhaps one of the most underrated teams in ET's history, Polewka, and the European clanhoppers incorporated xtraZone overcoming a strong challenge from the lovely tank34 Ruskies. However, the division explodes in a furore of activity come May 1st, with several highly interesting games to come, including:

Quote

[/i] vae vs sYnc
rewind vs helix
xZone, vs ¦:P¦
HighBot vs BETA
sFx EVIL vs artificial

Stay tuned to Warleagues.com to hear of all the upcoming developments.

ET might be getting on somewhat, it is infact 3 years old this month. Some have proclaimed it dead, others have worked tirelessly to ensure the game is played long after the Quakers have gone to bed. Here's some things which you might not have noticed having happened while the frags have been mounting up: Greece won the European football championships, John Prescott didn't pay his council tax and bird flu has failed to seize hold of England. And, ladies and gents, there's been something else amiss in this world of ours, that is, until now.

Have you ever wondered about the lack of highskilled-only competition in ET? Sure we have the EuroCup, but that only comes round once in a while, and other cups whether indepdendant or in collaboration with Clanbase and other such organisations always have a few lower skilled teams in the mix to spoil the pro's fun. Wouldn't it be nice to have a realistic system of determining just who exactly is the best clan in ET? Sure it would, and that's why Crossfire is doing it.

Doing what? KOTH is what, which means Xfire King Of The Hill is coming to a screen near you! The format is a familiar one, but let me just clarify. The first game will be organised by the management and the winner be named as the "running leader", essentially the "king" of the hill. As a reward, the clan will be featured right on Crossfire, in a method soon to be revealed. This will generate an enormous amount of attention and publicity for the clan, as well as the "prize" of being known as the "best". A selected number of clans on a pre-made list are free to challenge for the top spot, with challenges always being accepted pending the date, and challenge games taking place once a week. The finer details, such as who gets priority, match formats and configs, etc, can all be found in a post to be made shortly.

Of course, whilst this is in the interests of the clans themselves, one of the primary goals is to involve the community as much as is possible. Each game will have ETTV, as well as match reports and clan features, which each clan having individual information pages for you to browse at will. This brings me on to the first game.

This game is being rearranged for strategic reasons. All infos you need will be posted on xfire and GamesTV - stay tuned!

However, none of this would be possible without some changes and additions to the site software. While it might not be able to be called Xfire 3, our beloved queen bee raza has been hard at work coding the new sections of the site. And, because we love you and TosspoT is safely hidden away in the land of blondes and born pros, I thought it'd be nice to share a preview with you ordinary plebs! Take a look:

Quote

[/i][*] Expanded clan information box
[*] Match summary and coverage page

This is only a taster, and it is important to remember not all the honey has been collected yet. Strange bee metaphors behind, the coding is nearly all finished, and when actual content is added to the system we shall see how impressive it can really be. As mentioned, this KOTH is only opened for ET's best at current, but there are plans to expand into other skill departments depending on sucess. Read more to see the 32 clans invited to take part:

It's been quite a ride these last 12 months for Australian ET outfit Modus Operandi, who have emerged from relative obscurity in the eyes of the yanks and euros, to become one of the most well known of bedroom names. From conquering Oz, to releasing their movies Mo Vindication and truc1dio, and competing at Quakecon 2005, their schedule really has been a rollercoaster from start to finish.

Recently, Idle.ee poster and fellow Aussie chin0o sought to discover more about the Australian side, and caught up with Modus's team leader Andrew 'Dman' Townsend to discuss life down under. Here's a little snippet:


How was the 2005 Quakecon for you and your team? What aspects of it did you find difficult, and if you could go back would you do anything different?

Quote

Quakecon was a fantastic experience that none of the guys regret. Meeting up, boot camping with x6, playing at the event.. It was an amazing time. The most difficult aspect for the team was the transition to LAN, as we had never played together in real life before out x6 boot camp in Texas. If I could turn back the clock, more practice before the event would have been helpful, however is just wasnt possible at the time.

Read the full interview over at the Idle.ee community.

There have been some pretty noteworthy movies of late that have made it down the copper wires and cables into our whirring harddrives: we've had the recent FFStyle, sexyhot's flick "RomaSanta", kris's fragmovie and a number of others worthy of a mention.

When Gifty contacted me to help promote his movie, I could hardly turn the offer down - after all, in return I was promised he would take a camera around to Coffin's house, and record the dealing of a few "neutral" Swiss slaps. Although, unforunately, it seems this prize is unlikely to make it to me, the fragvid itself surely helped to appease the angry person in me, delivering nearly twenty minutes of high quality film at 2.30 in the morning. It features everything that any great video requires:
[*] Frags against top teams including infensus, demiurge, idle & more..
[*] High quality editing & encoding by the maker vaGgi
[*] Music syncing throughtout
[*] Corny music, Junkie XL Elvis Presley anyone? *tick!*
[*] Rifle trickshots!

And on the note of rifle trickshots, some are geniunely very impressive, with the most unlikely of grenades killing their target, leaving their victim left to mutter a quiet "wtf" to his monitor.
As stated earlier, the movie is around 20mins (19.31 exact), and so the download weighs in on the heavier side, although the encoding keeps the file down to under 500mb, which seems to me an impressive achievement given the quality on-screen. So then the gory details:

Quote

[/i]Duration: 19:31 mins
Size: 504 MB
Resolution: 856x480
Frame Rate: 100 frames per second
Video Codec: XviD MPEG-4
Audio Codec: MPEG Layer-3 56 kBit/s
Used Disk Space: 127 GB

[*] Download GIFTY'S FRATZENGEBALLER DELUXE (swertcw)

Gifty: "Greets all my friends and teammates/ex-teammates!!!!!111
Thanks to vaGgi for making my vid!"

Contact:
#fac.vae
#clan.sanctuary
#vaGgi
#eXodermia.Pictures

[img|left]http://www.gamestv.org/images/links/small_3d.gif[/img]It's the lull before the storm, and the folks over at GTV have been going about their work with a degree of industry before the coming OpenCup, and Warleagues season. The site has been constantly tweaked and upgraded over the past few weeks without throwing up much noise at all, and so I took it upon myself to ask gamestv's development man, Arni, just how things were going exactly.

[*] We've seen updates to the site, such as the layout, and other new features, is this part of one big gtv makeover in anyway, and what is left to be done?

arni: Yes during the past few weeks quite a lot has changed in the visual apearance of the page as well as we've added new features to the site. We thought it was about time to give the old layout a freshup which favours bigger screen resolutions. We are constantly working on new features and design improvements, so keep your eyes open ;-)

[*] Throughout its history, gtv has stuck with enemy territory, despite moving from the domain ettv.org --> gamestv.org. How soon do you expect it'll be until other games are introduced int othe schedules, and what games to you expect to go to first?

Arni: At the moment no broadcasts for other games are planned - apart from contacts to the cod(2) scene we are simply missing some people who know the other scenes and could get things going - so for now no other games apart from et are planned but are always welcome.

[*] And if you had the people in place to make it happen, it'd be CoD2 and any others?

Arni: We've had talks to people from cod2 (missing a broadcast tool at the moment) but also brief talks to people casting cs(s) with hltv - as i said, we are open for everything that might come but the gamestv management is only involved in et at the moment - we are currently comfortable with beeing the number1 source of ettv.

[*] Finally, have you been getting any sense of recognition for your services from the big name sites, for example ggl.com, esreality, etc?

Arni: I think the fact that the whole community links our schedule (which they are free to do, check out our new buttons) gives us quite some recognition in the scene, whever there is some big event in the scene, we are the ones to ask for coverage, on the other hand we want to stay fully autonomous which im my opinion secures our agility to respond to changes.

Quote

[/i]Check out all the happenings over at gtv.

There are some things in life that can be guaranteed, and others which are not so predicable. But, boys & girls, the organisation which was recently beaten by the Clanbase crew has finally delivered on its promise and published the groups for the upcoming season VI.

With the usual eight teams to a group, and going from Alpha through to Juliet, it seems even the most dogged problems of dropouts and forfeit wins will do little to slow the upcoming Warleagues season, with the NationsCup coming to a close, and the OpenCup still debating its map pool. Clanbase might claim the prestige, but it is WL who surely run the show in the style department.

If your team signed up, be sure to check out your draw on the groups page. So with the players all ready, the ETTV ordered, and the admins set for another spell of mp40 love, all thats left to be said is bring on the games.

Warleagues.com

Fresh from the perils that is the #ET-Cup fast gaming cup, both uQ and xtraZone have been looking to improve their performances, with neither side managing to get past the semi final stage. In that particular competition the sides didn't meet, having been knocked out by 141 and STAR respectively. But while the clans might have finished their tournament, the work continues for the #ET-Cup staff.

This Wednesday (March 29th), 4th generation uQ will play against xtraZone in a showmatch on battery, designed to test the way ET plays without the mortar, or any mines. It's a controversial experiment, but if any map is capable of showcasing the results, it surely has to be Battery. Due to the nature of the 'showgame', we are very interested in peoples's reaction post-game, i.e, after you have watched the match on ETTV. As an incentive, the poster of the best contructive comments will receive a 20 slot teamspeak server for several months, and possible we might chuck a bnc in there too for the runner up. If you wish to post feedback, the forumthread can be found here. But of course, to stand any chance of winning, you'll need to watch the game first!

Matchdetails:

Quote

[/i]Match: xtraZone vs. uQ-Gaming
Date: Wednesday, 29th March @ 21.00 CET
Maps: Battery / Battery
ETTV: GamesTV.org / id 341

Lineups:
xtraZone: lioco, snot, guest, kevin, acid, mesq
uQ-Gaming: razz zeto ziff senti second Ati_

Don't forget to add your comment in the forumthread!