First of all, I really don't want any stupid comments about my English. I am not in school anymore, hence neither speaking nor writing English texts frequently. Well, I've thought about whether I should write such a text or shouldn't ( as noone cares anyway ) and decided that it might at least make some think about the current situation.

ET actually is a game which guarantees lots of fun, as long as you simply don't care about what's going on in nowadays clanscene. Well, some might ask themselves who the hell I am and especially who the hell I am to write all these things you are going to read in this column. The correct answer to this quesion might just be „it doesn't matter“, I am just one of those who have been playing Enemy Territory since the demo's release – and therefore have noticed how and in which ways the community altered all over the time. Altered might still be the wrong word, let's just say, how the bad aspects got the upper hand.

First of all we got the famous „med+“ or even „high“ crossfire skill level. I have no problem to say that i started at nothing else than the „real“ low-level. I've actually played RTCW, but never competitively as my computer just sucked at that time. So after the demo's release many RTCW experienced players dominated the clan scene or at least had the best chances to be invited to good teams. Back at that time I decided to just play on public servers and decided to form a team with guys I knew from public servers and mainly guys I talked into trying to play ET too ( for example the ultracool Austria Bruzl4h. Back at that time ET, at least for me, was a whole different experience. It was a rather new game, teams and players first had to establish themselves. As the whole game is about teamplay, teams happened to stick together for a longer time, at least the most squads' half-time period was not just some days. It took some time to increase one's own skill-level and more seemed to accept this.

What I am trying to say: Most people who decided to start playing ET competitively lately ( lately might again be the wrong word, as this state is far from being any „new“ to the community ), just don't want to take that time trying to get their own skill up. This splits the whole pot of new players in two groups: There are those who just seem to totally overrate themselves ( well those guys have ever existed so far but not in that quantity ). I'll talk about how these harm the Enemy Territory scene a bit later.

And there are of course those who just pick up a hack ( which unfortunately is very easy nowadays ) and mostly seem to merge with some fellow hackers to create some uberpwnzer team. Noone has ever heard of them, still they keep owning several cups. As long as there are no bullet-proof „busts“ which allow to link them to using cheats, there won't be any chance to get rid of them. Sad but true, but this is something noone can do anything about.

But there are other things we could do something about! Especially the busting of well known and highskilled players tore the whole community apart ( referring to opinions ). Just remind yourself of the „fusen case“. Almost everybody cheered at him, it seemed to be the first thing everyone agreed: WE HAVE TO GET RID OF CHEATERS. Everyone agreed that busted cheaters have to get globalbans asap. Well, but then there was the zeropoint / pro5 / whatever case: From then on the opinions about busted cheaters just happend to be very different. There was a huuuge party claiming that kerAn is a lan-proofed player and should not even be banned. Comparing lan-results to online-results there have always been teams who just seemed to play offline as good as online and of course those who just sucked at lan ( or at least played on a skill level which cannot be compared to their online level in any way ). Now I want to ask you whether anyone of you has ever thought about the following: Humanized Aimbots don't neccessarily need to be used by bad players! There might be players around who actually play pretty well and have no problems to live up to a bot's aim if they'd just have a good day. Some undetected bots could just give „good“ players the possibility to play aimwise perfectly steady online. That was the first possible case, still most likely the rather rare one. But now think about a player who uses an undetected wallhack online. Combined with good aim it would just make him an even more powerfull player. On LANs he'd probably still play „Ok“, showing off with his aim, though he actually uses hacks online.

A bad thing that is, but what could we do about it? We, or actually YOU, dear community, should first of all completely stop supporting cheaters. KerAn and shy_ have even been supported by influential persons in our community and JUST because of the lan-proof thingie.
Back at the time when fusen hacked the nC database everybody raged about cheaters, now they just seem to get more accepted from day to day. With bulldog clanbase finally got a good guy who tries to get his busts through. Some weeks ago clanbase was flamed because of a plain stupid anti-cheating policy. Nowadays clanbase is flamed because they are actually banning people ( just because some of them happen to be „known“ ). As long as this madness won't stop and as long as there are just plain stupid fucks like the whole pro 5 team around, who are willing to play with busted cheaters, the whole game will NEVER be clean. „No tolerance“ - that's the only way. Instead of a no tolerance attitude we are currently heading to a „we tolerate everything“ attitude, letting guys like Mbudget ( who actually claimed that he does not even code cheats – which just decreased his virtual cock's length for about the last possible inches ) are allowed to write content on crossfire and are allowed to join the crossfire irc channel.

Asking every non-cheating enemy territory player about what should happen to a cheater will most likely result in an answer like „ogm rolf ban them fckr!“. And if some of their fanboyed players get busted by some definite proof, they just happen to change their opinion.
So why is that? Actually I think this is just because of our kiddy community. Least guys are man enough to take one specific point of view.

And not only considering cheaters. From the one to the other day players just seem to change their opinions about players just because of getting the possibility to open up a new squad with them. Realiabilty is a word which does not exist in their heads.
I've always been one of those players who spend a lot of time with just one squad. I can take losses, I just stay with teams no matter if they got a bad time or are running superb. Unfortunately I seem to be one of the few guys who actually would do that. I've played in a huge number of teams, which just happened to be disbanded by the leader because of a loss, teams which just had to fold because players just thought about joining up with a team which they honoured with the words „sucky, bullshit, lowskilled“ just the day before, and so on.

A huge part of our community consists of players who just want to profit of the team they are in. They suck the essence of it, increase their reputation and leave it for the next better team they can get in order to climb up the „skill-ladder“ as fast as possible. Those who are loyal to their teams and take it a little more serious suffer from that, actually I am really wondering where I'd be nowadays if I would have just dropped my teams just like that in the past. No wonder that many of the loyal ones retired and left those behind who like to fuck up teams or just acted totally immature ( just remember the vib match when the players were first not even showing up, afterwards flaming everyone and then disconnected – and all that during a broad and shoutcasted match! ). This is why we ended up in a 2 weeks clan society controlled by kids.

Unfortunately I don't see these things changing in the future. ET will die sooner or later, maybe because of the „tolerate everything“ attitude or maybe because of a one day clanscene. My hope relies on ET: Quake Wars.