While games like Counter-Strike, WarCraft 3 and Quake are teams multigaming clans love to have, a game like Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory never kicked of as professional esports game. Even the father of Wolfenstein ET, Return to Castle Wolfenstein was played by some top organisations such as the 4Kings, so why doesn't W:ET work for them?
One of the reasons ET is not that interesting for multigaming clans is in my opinion that European teams own the scene, there are many disadvantages to a team with players from all over Europe for several reasons...
1. The team can't often bootcamp together
2. Traveling to LAN will be more expensive (lack of group discounts)
3. The team will only visit large events and no local events
To get an example of what I'm meaning, look at the last EuroCup season...
1.
Dignitas
2. zeroPoint
3. aMenti
4.
Netrunners
5-6.
Murso, cdap.pi
7-8. Rewind, 
helix
5/8 teams last EuroCup playoffs had a European lineup, and the top 3 consists of clans with a European lineup..
I am not saying a team like idle should kick their 3 non Estonian players and take 3 Estonian players resulting in a weaker lineup, I just hope sometime in the future the top players from countries will gather and form strong teams worthy of EC titles.
The second reason ET is not interesting for these large multigaming organisations is because this game is largely based in Europe, and the scenes in countries such as the USA are weak. In many games this is different, teams like Made in Brazil are strong competors in the Counter-Strike scene, but I don't know any good player from Brazil who plays Enemy Territory. For a game to be succesfull I think it should be played globaly.
Yet the largest LAN event for Enemy Territory, Quakecon, is located in the USA. A LAN where any proper European ET team can cut trough all the USA competors.. Have the USA given up on ET?
Anyway the third point why ET is not really interesting is the lack of LAN events, and the size of the ones there are. While for a lot of us the Crossfire Prizefight Challenge looks like a large event, an event where every ET team would like to participate in.. multigaming organisations look at it differently. For them, the CPC2 is an "okay" event, reasonable ammount of prizemoney, pretty good organisation etc. But can it be compared to the SHG Open CS competition for example? 127 Counter-Strike teams, 10 ET teams, € 48 715 to earn playing Counter-Strike, € 5 069 for Enemy Territory, with 12,7x more clans Counter-Strike got 9,61x as much prizemoney, so ET kinda got more than they deserved. Why weren't there more teams? Lack of top teams like aMenti, Netrunners, one4one really makes this game look weak.
Are there any solutions? I think ET teams should dare to ask, a team like negative image could make a big chance of joining a multigaming like insignia cadre for example, cadre has always been interested in WW2 shooters like CoD2, DOD:S etc.
Good national based multigaming organisations which might be interested in an ET team if you can present yourself in a professional way:
Team Logitech.fi
Insignia Cadre
Serious Gaming
Reason
Team Wilda
cubesports
Team Impact.TCI
evoplay
blank
eSuba
Team webOne
How to approach an organisation like this? Pming on IRC is irritating, so when you do PM make sure you sound professionaly and have a good story. Make sure you have a list of awards, upcoming tournaments and LANs ready. The best would be to have this in a powerpoint presentation as well. Treat a team application for a multigaming clan as if it was a job application. Instead of pm'ing on IRC I would send an email, and in case of no response within 24 hours send them a PM on IRC.
One of the reasons ET is not that interesting for multigaming clans is in my opinion that European teams own the scene, there are many disadvantages to a team with players from all over Europe for several reasons...
1. The team can't often bootcamp together
2. Traveling to LAN will be more expensive (lack of group discounts)
3. The team will only visit large events and no local events
To get an example of what I'm meaning, look at the last EuroCup season...
1.
Dignitas2.
zeroPoint3.
aMenti4.
Netrunners5-6.
Murso, cdap.pi7-8.
Rewind, helix5/8 teams last EuroCup playoffs had a European lineup, and the top 3 consists of clans with a European lineup..
I am not saying a team like idle should kick their 3 non Estonian players and take 3 Estonian players resulting in a weaker lineup, I just hope sometime in the future the top players from countries will gather and form strong teams worthy of EC titles.
The second reason ET is not interesting for these large multigaming organisations is because this game is largely based in Europe, and the scenes in countries such as the USA are weak. In many games this is different, teams like Made in Brazil are strong competors in the Counter-Strike scene, but I don't know any good player from Brazil who plays Enemy Territory. For a game to be succesfull I think it should be played globaly.
Yet the largest LAN event for Enemy Territory, Quakecon, is located in the USA. A LAN where any proper European ET team can cut trough all the USA competors.. Have the USA given up on ET?
Anyway the third point why ET is not really interesting is the lack of LAN events, and the size of the ones there are. While for a lot of us the Crossfire Prizefight Challenge looks like a large event, an event where every ET team would like to participate in.. multigaming organisations look at it differently. For them, the CPC2 is an "okay" event, reasonable ammount of prizemoney, pretty good organisation etc. But can it be compared to the SHG Open CS competition for example? 127 Counter-Strike teams, 10 ET teams, € 48 715 to earn playing Counter-Strike, € 5 069 for Enemy Territory, with 12,7x more clans Counter-Strike got 9,61x as much prizemoney, so ET kinda got more than they deserved. Why weren't there more teams? Lack of top teams like aMenti, Netrunners, one4one really makes this game look weak.
Are there any solutions? I think ET teams should dare to ask, a team like negative image could make a big chance of joining a multigaming like insignia cadre for example, cadre has always been interested in WW2 shooters like CoD2, DOD:S etc.
Good national based multigaming organisations which might be interested in an ET team if you can present yourself in a professional way:
Team Logitech.fi Insignia Cadre Serious Gaming Reason Team Wilda cubesports Team Impact.TCI evoplay blank eSuba Team webOneHow to approach an organisation like this? Pming on IRC is irritating, so when you do PM make sure you sound professionaly and have a good story. Make sure you have a list of awards, upcoming tournaments and LANs ready. The best would be to have this in a powerpoint presentation as well. Treat a team application for a multigaming clan as if it was a job application. Instead of pm'ing on IRC I would send an email, and in case of no response within 24 hours send them a PM on IRC.
The most retarded thing I've ever seen you post, sorry. Have you even seen them play?
Is this worthy or an achievement btw? "Made the most retarded comment ever by calling sublime the possible next 4Kings"
And yes, that's quite an achievement. :O)
http://www.esl.eu/eu/masters/
This is just one example how the first place can get about 10k, even if grubby and tod had no chance in the wc3 tourney, they could have win it.
Delete this post/user please, fucking idiot a few ^ would do!!!
The funny thing is, that in the beginning year of ET there was alot of national team, teams with players from the same countries. Then when people realised that the antilag was good and that you could actually find equally good players around in Europe, things started to switch over to more international teams... or something.
ET players have always been craving for LANs.
But I think it also has lots to do with the fact that without even the local smaller LANs there is no real need for a local team. And as you have said yourself, the communities in some countries started to diminish at some point, and putting together a one nation team became just that much more difficult.
I do not think that multinationality makes a team unattractive immediately, but I do agree that the pros get outweighed by the cons.
Give me 6 players from one country and compare them to a 6 players with absolutely equal individual skills, but from 6 different countires with 6 different natvie languages and if both of those teams were to put an equal amount of effort into this and luck would never be a factor the national team would probably do significantly better. I mean, I believe I speak decent english and am able to understand it aswell, and I could manage in teams that speak german and russian, but it is nothing compared to speaking your native language in comms.
But I don't think its the nationality issue in ET. The points you mentioned.
1. The team can't often bootcamp together - How many teams in ET have actually bootcamped together at all ? I know of u96d, modus operandi, the quakecon 2005 idle.ee, some qcon 2006 teams used the chance to bootcamp on site. There probably could be a few others who have just sat down together to play and drink beer, but I hardly believe any of those other teams have taken it as seriously as I believe you meant by mentioning bootcamping. Bootcamping or not doing so is not an issue in ET today. It is more of a result rather than a cause of the situation.
2. Traveling to LAN will be more expensive (lack of group discounts)
I don't have much experience with booking flights or whatever from anywhere else than Estonia, but as far as group discounts go, they rarely start at such low amounts as 6. If you manage to create an illusion that the team is a family, then perhaps.
And if you look at it this way. having 6 players from 6 different countries could often mean that you have to pay for just 5 flights per event because one of the guys is from the country the event is at.
3. The team will only visit large events and no local events.
There are not that many local events that would matter anyway. I mean, we are talking about decent organisations picking up ET teams. And for them a LAN event with 3 teams and a diploma to be won is not necessarily interesting. Even though the costs could be rather small it still wouldn't be for free. For the bigger and more established esport titles the local lans often mean the prizepurses that we have for important events.
I remember
I think that there are players in Estonia, who could replace idle's ( or dignitas ) foreign players.
No offence, it's just the kind of creative feedback I'm used to getting/giving :)
Games like Quake are attractive because if you know you will recruit a top player into your team (such as toxic that used to be with sk-gaming, ztrider with fnatic etc) you know you stand a chance to win a lot of money. While if you would recruit a random ET team in your MGC you might have a chance to finish fifth. most mgc's want the best team and if you can't show your top of the pops you won't be in the mgc easy as that
A lot of teams are just not willing to invest the work to find a proper organisation which could support them. A team history, pics of all players, player introduction, archievements, plans for the future, a little presentation of the et scene and this collected in a .doc or .pdf document sent as an email is to much work for most of the teams.
Writing to a manager of the clan in irc is mostly everything a team is willing to do - which almost everytime fails.
they all want to have much, but aren´t able to give sth back
i know couple of teams that already have prepared all those docs and sent it already to MGC´s. some with success (stofftiere)
;)
anyway gl for u too.. playing on <insert a randon pub name or oc clan name here>
argument 1. read galahad & arachon replys; cause we don't have much teams from 1 nation ET = shit? ; if amenti etc would have been from 1 nation they would even be weaker and don't think the nationaltiy changes much ; like ET would have been as strong as CS when we got teams from same nationality. bullshit ; dont even think it has an influence; in CS there are much teams from different nationalities
argument 2. maybe but in rtcw usa had also a few nice teams (1 of them won quakecon) and even on rtcw there wasn't that much enthusiasm and u could see rtcw and later ET weren't gonna challenge CS
argument 3. even before the quakecon's with ET u knew already ET weren't going to be the new CS; ET is also a free game u know why would a free game - dumped on the internet because they wouldn't want to work further on it - would be as large as CS; u can't expect that from ET... i think u may be happy it's THAT important like it is now
and your example about eurocup: just watch eurocup XI (parodia, u96d, junk53, esrael, bendit, helix etc...) => most clans were from 1 nation and was ET in that time so much closer to CS ? dont think so.
Counter-argument 2. In RtCW there were much more teams which could challenge the European teams, but I wasn't comparing the ammount of USA top teams between RtCW and ET if you read more closely.
Counter-argument 3. You are right, but the point I was trying to make is that we are all crying for LAN events, but once they come only 10 teams participate.
While ET wasnt closer to CS in the EuroCup XI we still talk about those teams now, the legendary parodia for example.
CPC2 is a different story, no BYOC means a limited ammount of computers which will lead to a limited ammount of clans able to compete
however I dont feel that people play ET for the money, at least I play ET only because it is fun and competative. More LAN events would be wonderful, seeing that shgopen was a really nice event, really enjoyed playing there.
but i guess no money means no LANs
so lets hope for the best possible future for ET ;-D
in cs/cod2 its simple, allies plant a bomb and win nothing more
on the maltese lans everybody enjoys watching the games with they help of the non-playing et players at the time but then suffer to follow whats going on alone
because search&destroy mode of cs and cod2 means one think, plant and destroy the bombsite
in et the objectives of a map are different, take supply. plant 1st gate, build cp, plant 2nd gate, escort truck, build crane controls, escort truck again...
besides many objectives, there are also the different guns/classes where in cs/cod2 u have an even balance of rifles/semi-automatic's/smgs/shotguns/sniper. This is the weapon range and thats it.
I was playing soldier smg for 2 weeks till i found out that i could change
ps this is actually a quote from u " hehe :P this kind of play for et is more interesting for me to play but if someone has never heard of et or never seen it in action, then it will be difficult to follow which is a pro and con at the same time :P"
this kind of play for et is more interesting for me to play but if someone has never heard of et or never seen it in action, then it will be difficult to follow which is a pro and con at the same time :P
btw sublime already dead, less than 2 weeks
For example, ESWC wants ET! and whats happens? there are national qualifiers and we have only mixed teams formed to gain some money...so ESWC thinks again.. and ok no ET, we take CoD. Same for WCG and others
alot of those mgcs have already been spoken to :)
I think we all can guess that most teams dont get any financial support to such great events. companies arent that interested in supporting an ET (free) game, which makes it even more difficult.
being a top10 team isnt enough to get financial support either, its like bo said before, you rly need to show yourself, who you are, what you've achieved, and what your (future) plans are of course.
and btw, some of the teams you mentioned which might be interested in an ET team...some of them (which I've contacted as well) are also saying they need time to do some 'research' about the game/scene, since its pretty new for them, and that they need time for several weeks/months? again..who can say where ET stands after 6 months?
so I think you rly need to do everything you can, and be serious
The reason why ET is not thriving in North America is a combination of that lack of commercial support, lack of new players trying out the game, old players moving on to newer games, lack of dedication from teams, and finally lack of competition. Take the North American competitive scene here with less than 50 teams, more than half of which are low-/low skilled. Compare that to the European competitive scene with hundreds of clans playing with similar time zones, low pings, and a potential to slowly improve against multiple med skilled and eventually high skilled clans. It's a lot harder to become good in the former atmosphere. A comment of "boo hoo 400 teams" for OpenCup/EuroCup is quite understandable.
As another example, if I tell the average gamer here about "Wolfenstein Enemy Territory" their immediate response will be something about RTCW which will then lead to a conclusion of "Meh. Those monsters really sucked." Obviously people aren't going to become good at the game if they don't try it out in the first place.
"Sponsors are only interested in the better games like CS and WC3" is equally as stupid. You think it actually matters for a company whether the game is good or "better" ?
Companies/sponsors are only interested in exposure.
ohh and btw look at this link and maybe also this one :)
no gimme some whine plz...
A .pdf with achievements, players and all the information about the team will look pretty professional. Azzor ones made one for kreaturen and it worked! [:
I laugh to everyone who plays ET or some other game to get money from it :D
And not in particular ET but for example Starcraft in Korea can provide you quite a decent living. Or someone like fatal1ty who set up a brand with his name aswell. I wouldn't laugh at them I would much more respect them for what they have achieved.
5? 100? 1mio.?
it´s like "a dream come true" for them - not to forget that its a game provides u of driving crazy and loosing the focus on the main things of life ;)
well, if someone wants to pay me when I play, I don't mind... but I don't respect such cups any more at all. Every cup is equal to me no matter if there is a prize or not..
ask them why :/