image: etxd7January 14, 2007 – Enemy Territorys gaming history is quite long. There have been Up's and Down's like in every other online game. For about three years Enemy Territory is competitively played now, three years in which famous clans like mTw, Ocrana, Dignitas, United5, team9 or Check-Six had their own ET squads. Most of them left the scene very soon because there was nothing to win in ET at this time. We had Quakecon and Eurocup – that's it.


But things changed. In his column “Enemy Territory taking off?“ stewie described that chance - which ET has - to become one of the major online games very well. In fact there is a change. With GIGA and GIGA// broadcasting live matches ET got the chance to be watched by thousands of people. In addition GamesTV gave a big support with featuring about 4 to 8 ETTV matches a day. Radiostations like iTG and Headshot Media bring excellent shoutcasts to you. Besides the growing media attention ET gets picked up by more and more big leagues and LANs.

The Electronic Sports League (ESL) started with announcing their International Premiership Series (IPS) and gave a total amount of 1.500 euro for an online tournament. LAN tournaments were created by the community or picked ET as a game. Yet last year there were the Crossfire Prizefight Challenge (CPC) and Poznan Game Arena which offered next to Quakecon cash prizes. Smaller LANs like the ETL Steel LAN Series in Portugal, the LANparty Slask in Poland or the Invex Cup in the Czech Republik brought as well fantastic events to our community. As you can see there is a continuous process - ET becomes more professional. I say process because it wasn't just one shot.

ShgOpen 2007 selected ET besides CoD2 as a new game to their LAN event with an own competition and cash prizes and joined the line of great ET events in 2007.
Fragland3 an ET LAN party with cash prizes will take place in Paris, France very soon. Preparations for the second Crossfire LAN are on the way.
Furthermore we could hope for another edition of the yearly PGA in Poland with great ET matches between Europes best.
The ESL admins confirmed to do all possible they can for bringing another IPS season for Enemy Territory to our community.
Clanbase announced to feature moneyprizes and LAN finals for their next season. The chance to get LAN finals for ET should not be forgotten.
At the end of year 2006 Quakecon 2007 was already announced. Again there is a chance that the quakecon admins choose ET as one of the official games.
As you can see we can look quite optimistically into the future if it depands on tournaments for ET.

But tournaments and leagues won't make a game more professional by theirself. A game needs well known multigaming organisations to become a real competitive online game. And those big organisations have to give ET another chance. And again you might notice a positive change.
Well known organisations around the european gaming scene like zeroPoint! Gaming, cZar Gaming, suXus eSports, FourVisions and Exotic Island - to name just a few - showed their interest in the rising ET scene with taking their own ET squad. Nevertheless I hope these clans are not the only ones entering the scene.

With shgOpen 2007 we have a big event coming our way very soon and it should make every ET fan happy to see such a great event picking up ET as one of their major games. However, the question of how many teams could really make the trip to Copenhagen, Denmark makes me a bit sad again. I might have totally wrong impressions but I heard about just three up to four teams with honest intentions to take part. Finally we have a big event but where are the big clans? Dignitas Manager Fredrik “NewmaN“ Reinius signified once to have a look at our scene and to take a new team when there is the right time for it. But let me ask then, when is the right time if not now? A lot of teams deserve to visit such an event but they do not have the money to pay the trip and their stay. The big clans are the ones who are able to support those teams.

In my opinion it is a shame that there were at least two strong teams without any support of a multigaming clan last year attending Eurocup. I hope this won't happen again next season. A team attending Eurocup should be able to find a proper organisation without major problems. In fact it's up the clans itself, deciding to join or not to join any multigaming organisation to achieve the listed advantages but it should be clear that known multigaming organisations cause more publicity for ET and our community.

When you have a look at the latest changes around the gaming scene of Europe and the USA you might have noticed that Counter Strike 1.6 will slowly but surely die. Publisher Valve gave no TV licences for their most successfull game and prioritised the younger brother Counter Strike: Source. Big leagues like CEVO and the totally new Championship Gaming Series (CGS) support it now and famous teams like Complexity, Team3D, Pandemic and Check-Six followed with announcing their CS:S lineups.

Also Call of Duty 2 gets a real boost these days. With countless LAN tournaments announced for 2007 the CoD2 scene became an example of how much a community can achieve. Whether big leagues like WSVG will pick CoD2 remains to be seen.

It can be assumed that CS 1.6 takes its last breath these days. And with that a lot of other gaming scenes could be happy to get a little slice of the big cake. Enemy Territory got also the chance to become a respected online game. I wouldn't suggest ET being able to beat CS 1.6 or CS:S but we can definitely hope for ET becoming a major eSports title behind CS 1.6, CS:S and CoD2 if you look at the shooters.

Now it is up to the community, the managers and the active teams to improve our state of online gaming. Give ET another chance, have a look at our scene and watch out for stable and successfull teams which deserve to be supported.


Intendet grammar mistakes conduce to amusement ;)