Listening to my Oasis albums this morning and reminiscing over the glory days of Whats the Story..?, I tripped across the question of the power struggle. Back in the early 1990's it was Oasis vs Blur, Blackburn Rovers vs Man Utd, and things today are just as feisty. Clanbase, undoubtedly the dominant force in ET over the past years are suddenly facing stiff competition from the ESL and their prizemoney competitions. CB no longer enjoy market dominance, but just what is the real situation between these two big leagues?

Well, certainly CB is the one with all the history and tradition, with its regular Euro and nations cups being held as the pinacle of achievement in the game and where almost every player aspires to be, with the best players on stage and so on and etcetera. Down the seasons, CB's competitions have provided home to all the notable names and some very memorable games, all supported by a solid backbone of admins who consistantly put in hours far beyond the call of duty.

Up until a few months ago it seemed CB's weight in the game would remain untroubled. However, several controversial decisions later and the waters have begun to look like a fish tank which has been forgotten about by its owners. The most obvious of course was the annoucement of switching totally to 5v5, and a direction that was stuck with doggedly for a lot longer than many predicted. By switching back to 6v6 its certainly true that CB saved some face and swallowed a bit of their pride, but at least it arrested the slide that the gametype was putting them in.

In the meantime, leagues such as ESL saw the opposition CB was accumulating and actively promoted their support for the 'community's 6v6', which undoubtedly didn't do them any harm, certainly they raised their profile a lot throughout the 'saga'. With the IPS holding a prizepot larger than any EC that had been in the past, obviously people were going to be interested. But through no real fault of their own, the IPS has faultered, and as FlyingDJ said all but 4 teams dropped from the final stage, leaving the competition in a hazy limbo. This, unlike my personal favourite Jenna Haze, is not good. ET was left with a weak ESL competition and an organisation trying hard to regain faith in the community.

But now the EC doesn't have any monetary funding and unless I'm very much wrong I can't see another IPS coming for at least some time. But, Warleague's season hasn't begun yet, and they, as ever, are suffering from the label as 2nd best. Recently ET-Cup have again shown their ability to host some great games, but at present they are in no position to challenge the sheer girths of ESL or CB.

Which leaves the question, who is going to emerge on top after this tricky period for both organisations? CB have all the tradition and framework working for them, but ESL have people such as chosen behind it who has almost singlehandedly got ESL to where it is today. No longer can you really place the tags "dominant" and "alternative" on these two, and it'd take a confident person to predict what the future holds... it'd be very interesting to see how readers of xfire now see the picture: Are CB still in the driving seat, or have ESL bought enough nitros to boost themselves back on level terms? And not just that, who's going to have it better in the future? All questions which for the moment at least, don't seem to have any set answers.