We're all to blame.. Are we?

After quite a succesfull year for the Enemy Territory scene with various LANs like PGA, QuakeCon, SHG Open and the CPC the community expected a great ClanBase spring season like we have seen in the past, but will it be that succesfull? There are a few major upsets in the ClanBase EuroCup which will make it much less interesting for the clans participating:

• Still no LAN finals for the Enemy Territory EuroCup
• Not even prizemoney

No LAN finals.. Not really unexpected but still not acceptable, ClanBase does give LAN finals to WarCraft 3 (1on1 game) and Counter-Strike, two games where the clans / players don't even care about ClanBase much. The only good decission ClanBase made was to give CoD2 LAN finals again. Is ClanBase on backtrack?

Lets compare the different ET EuroCups with each other:

ClanBase EuroCup XV: Hardware prizes : Teams: tba (Spring)
ClanBase EuroCup XIV: Gameserver; Teams: 16 (Fall)
ClanBase EuroCup XIII: $ 1000; Teams: 20 (Spring)
ClanBase EuroCup XII: $ 1500; Teams: 16 (Fall)
ClanBase EuroCup XI: € 1000; Teams: 16 (Spring)
ClanBase EuroCup X; none; Teams: 16 (Fall)
ClanBase EuroCup IX; none; Teams: 20 (Spring)

As you can see ET started big at ClanBase, with 269 signups ET topped all competitions. At that time ET had no prizes yet, but they were surely heading for that. In the fall season that same year signups grew to 345 teams, still ClanBase decided not to add prizemoney, maybe they believed ET was just a one year wonder, however the next year they thought different about that. The EuroCup XI was the first cup which featued a prize purge, 1000 euros. It seems a ncie ammount, but at the same time a game like Call of Duty got a total prizepool of 7500 euro! ET has never been big on ClanBase, but still ET teams took care of cups filled with a large number of clans... For the EuroCup XII, ClanBase partnered up with Intel and was able to offer a total prizepool of $115.000 for the AmeriCup and EuroCup combined. 1500 dollars went to the ET EC. Bigger than last year, but still not that much compared to the other games such as Call of Duty.
EuroCup XIII saw the prize pool shrink back to 1000 dollars, it seems like ClanBase rated ET as dieing at that point, a lot of ET players themselves rated it dead as well. However ET was still one of the major games at ClanBase. The season after that is the EC held most recently. A successful season in my opinion, even though the lack of prizemoney (well.. you could win an entire warserver!). No games got LAN finals or prizemoney this season, and there was no EuroCup for games like Counter-Strike. Now the EuroCup XV got announced, and it lacks both prizemoney and LAN finals for ET, while games like CS, CoD2 and WC3 do get this. Does ET have no future at ClanBase anymore?

It's rather strange that ET draws big OpenCups and boosts a lot of experienced and skilled teams every EuroCup season, but still ClanBase looks at us as if we are playing this game solely for fun. Surely we are gamers for fun, but we ourselves are ready to play this game for a more serious cause. One of the things which make ET look so small is the lack of ladder activity by top clans. Two years ago a ClanBase admin wrote an article why ET didn't get taken seriously by ClanBase, and one of the reasons was that most clans "didn't even play two officials a week". Playing two officials a week is a lot for most of us, but in a game like Counter-Strike Source or even Medal of Honor this is not. So maybe this is one of the things we need to adjust on. Don't be affraid to lose ladder matches, just stay strong and play again.

However we turn it ClanBase has a large influence on the ET community, however now ClanBase has made another backstabbing move towards the Enemy Territory scene will ClanBase still be the king of the Enemy Territory scene? They have to change otherwise I don't think so. Not with so good alternatives for the clans who want to see the time they've spend in ET rewarded..

ESL International Premiership Series
Last year the ESL IPS for ET was run, a large online league with the largest ammount of prizemoney an online Enemy Territory event had ever seen, shamefully, the ET scene didn't really thank the ESL for this great competition with a large ammount of dropouts. Hopefully we will be forgiven by the ESL and they will host another ESL IPS for Enemy Territory.

ET Masters
Impact Gaming organizes this online event which features the greatest clans ET has to offer, fighting for a prizepool which has a total of £ 250 pounds! This cup has served some thrilling matches on ETTV already, and we can look forward for some great matches in the playoffs

Crossfire Prizefight Challenge 3
While the third installment of the Crossfire Prizefight Challenge has not yet been announced there are a lot of speculations. TosspoT has given little information about the CPC3 yet, but in a comment he mentioned that they offered to host the ET LAN finals at the event, so that means the CPC3 will still take place this year.

Poznan Game Arena 2007
Unconfirmed as well but this will most likely take place. Hopefully there is more room for clans outside Poland as well this time, because last time only two teams from outside Poland could compete.

There will also be a number of BYOC LANs like The Party 5, but some people need to step up to organise these events. This is another thing you can take care of! Big BYOC LANs like the Assembly, Netgamez and so on lack an ET competition, maybe you can organise this for the sake of your own game.

Read on at the suXus eSports website were I've asked three questions about this subject to five possible EuroCup players for clans like ultimate Conspiracy, AuxiliA and Team Dignitas.