Inspired by one of Meez’ comments I decided Crossfire needed a review of 2007 because it was one heck of a year for this wee community, and it kicked off with a bang from the off!

On January 5th Crossfire beat all of its traffic peaks when Sherlock Fusen unravelled the mysteries of the netCoders establishment, their saying ‘cheaters always win’ was proved wrong as numerous cheaters were exposed for their wicked ways. There were many stories of how some of them found out, which to this anti cheat fundamentalist were quite heart warming, though it was when the netCoders mob were convinced Fusen lived at No .1 Communications house that took the cake. It sparked mass hysteria about who else might be cheating, when the reality is that actually cheaters always don’t win, and the high profile cheat bust the community has always wanted has never come.
image: DignitasshG
ET and Call of Duty were confirmed at the shGopen 2007 which was a major honour for both tournaments as the shG event is held in high esteem amongst eSports circles. The event which opened the 2007 calendar saw Idle make a fitting move to gaming giants Dignitas. When Dignitas last had an ET division they were but a mere spec on the radar of multigaming clans, by the time they returned they were powered by Intel and won in Copenhagen from zeroPoint. In the Call of Duty tournament big names would roll as Logitech and Dignitas failed to live up to expectations and digitalMind would destroy the field with an unforgettable performance from Solz. The roster had been plagued by troubles and for that reason this would be their last event under the dM tag, they had little difficulty overcoming a TeK-9 squad who had Trigger playing for them.

Come April it was time for the Crossfire PrizeFight Challenge 2, the second instalment from the Crossfire Challenge LAN events and an unforgettable tournament. Dignitas without Night would see their 14 month unbeaten run come to a crushing end at the hands of both The Last Resort and Impact Gaming. The side would never recover to their former crowning glories and it would be TLR who took all the plaudits from this event. The Call of Duty final went right down to the wire but it would be that dutch army now called Serious Gaming (formerly dM) who defeated Logitech.FI in a classic final. For Call of Duty all the stars came to Enschede and it was an excellent test of the field, and CPC1 stars Dignitas and Speedlink fell early in the competition.

The summer came and Quakewars was all the hype for gamers, the next installment from ID Software had an expectant audience awaiting and that audience managed to destroy FilePlanet an impressive feat by any games standards. The public hype was capped off by the many competitions to a win a Quakewars Key. Meez provided the most memorable entry into the competition on Youtube he has 150 comments (or badges of honour) from people who cant comprehend wit which are good reading.

TeK-9 won WSVG Dallas in July with a convincing performance in the States. They say everythings bigger in Texas and the prizepurse certainly was, CoD2 finally getting the pot it deserved and TeK-9 took home the biggest slice of that. The side would later host the second instalment of their own LAN event, which they duly won in an epic final against H2k.

Quakewars took the place of the team game at Quakecon this year whilst still in Beta. The special closed Beta struggled to provide very many exciting matches until the final. Digntias and Team HOT went head to head with HOT having beaten Dignitas in the Winner Bracket final. To beat HOT it was going to require the unblocking of Valley, HOT’s strongest map. In truly spectacular fashion the Europeans were able to overcome the Americans and win Quakecon, in a final that lasted several hours. This year Quakecon also featured the save Urtier campaign!

[img|left]http://images.filecloud.com/655140/1CDCTLR.jpg[/img]In September it was the turn of Enschede once again and 21 ET teams descended into Holland for the biggest ET LAN yet. It was perhaps at CDC3 where the Crossfire ET community finally got to mingle at its best. Everyone who attended has a story to tell about moments of crazyness with fellow players. We tried to capture that somewhat in the closing ceremony of the event and really these stories are what make people want to come back. The Last Resort won a tournament that really didn’t have the most exciting games, CPC2 had the games CDC3 had the stories. Warsow debuted on LAN at CDC and was an exciting addition.

After that it was the turn of the online world to provide the closing entertainment in 2007. The Eurocup season was in my opinion the most exciting to date, I saw 11 matches this season and maybe 2 were boring the other 9 were gripping at least to shoutcast. It was drago who took the headlines for his Eurocup saving panzerfaust on Frostbite and taking for me one of the most memorable moments of the year. The Crossfire QCUP saw the communities collide once again in a tournament that saw 1000 new Crossfire members descend onto the site in search of glory.

That in a nutshell was 2007, if this were any other year this review would probably be twice as long talking about all the online tournaments and their points of interest. However 2007 was the year of the LAN for the Crossfire games, and suddenly if its not LAN people aren’t a fan! The dwindling regularity of the CS 1.6 LAN community has allowed games such as ET, Call of Duty and Quakewars to rise to prominence across Europe and steal the headlines and the memories.

What does 2008 hold? Well, The next instalment of Wolfenstein is coming with Raven and Threewave the developers. Call of Duty 4 is set to grow and grow the two ET games don’t look likely of growing beyond their current size however that’s not to say in the mean time they’re not sustainable. And here in our little corner of the Internet, FusenGate 2, GTV 2, CDC4 and much more is coming your way!

2007 in a nutshell - It was bloody brilliant

What were your best memories of 2007 and what are you looking forward to in 2008?