Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory has a long lasting existance within the world of online gaming so far; realeased as an uncompleted add-on to it's big father Return to Castle Wolfenstein it had a hard time developing to such a competitive and overall balanced game what it today without a doubt is. Five years have past since its birth and there is still a player base of about 10.000 people constantly playing this game. No other game could compete with such a stable player base which circles continiously around the 10k mark. Of course there are bigger games; Counter Strike might be a good example for that, with a still growing crowd of ten times more players than ET has got. What I want to say is; ET is still there. Other games like Day of Defeat, Soldier of Fortune, Tactical Ops and Unreal Tournament on the other hand were not able to keep their players.
The competitive scene had its ups and downs. After being praised to death when Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars was announced in early 2006 it was one of this moments in Enemy Territory life where the future didn't look as bright as before. But then again there was another highly prized tournament at QuakeCon for ET, the sHgOpen opened its doors to our community, the ESL featured ET in its very own IPS, Crossfire began with their LAN Challenges and ET was shown in German television by GIGA. The game which housed big names in eSports like OCRANA.ATI, Check-Six, Team9 or INfensus in the early days; was then again featured to the masses of online gamers by top class gaming organisations such as Dignitas, The Last Resort, Insignia Cadre and k1ck eSports Club. Written coverage at Cadred.org and sometimes eSreality made gamers of different games aware that ET is played competitive wise.
Now again, we reached a phase - starting in late 2007 - in ET's live time where people call it slowly dieing or even dead already. Many people have put their hope in future game titles like Call of Duty 4 and espacially the ET fans thought about giving ET:QW a shot. Quake Wars started with a hell load of prized competitions and the general ET player thought his favourite game's life period would find an end very soon. The number of about 270 signed up teams for the ever popular Clanbase tournaments Opencup and Eurocup underlined this trend. The big names from last season were just missing this time; nevertheless the EC was an exciting event again with great matches. These days the fourth establishment in Call of Duty series rapidly conquers the world of online gaming and an impressing number of more than 900 attending teams in this springs Opencup/Eurocup season just shows its big success; not to mention the number of professional gaming organisations like SK Gaming, Team fnatic and Four Kings lately entering the scene. The Crossfire Devotii Challenge 4 seemed to be the last gathering of ET interested players. The only professional ET team - if you can name it like this - has been Team EDiT existing for nearly two years now with a stable lineup. They were playing in almost all available cups and leagues before CDC; most of the other teams were just build for this LAN as a mix team or got rebuild. The guys from aMenti and Kreaturen returned to the scene only for this event and as quick as the teams were there for the LAN as quick you see them now disbanding again. Right before and now after CDC4 the future of ET was and still is unclear.
Enemy Territory dead? Well, not yet, I would say. Like no other game, ET is one of the best examples for being communities work. Starting with bani and the ETpro crew making ET to what it is today, FlyingDJ, kafux and Chosen three guys known to nearly every Crossfire reader having put a lot of work into ET to get it supported by GIGA and the IPS or our very own TosspoT also known as 'God of ET' organsising LANs for our community, sending the allstar crew of ATI.Crossfire to QuakeCon 2006 supported by the community or establishing a deal with gaming equipment seller QPAD to give us the CrossfireQCup. There may be hundred more examples for community work in ET and several more users contributing to our scene but naming all of them would be almost impossible, I guess. What I want to say is: It's you, you the community, you the player, you the reader of this column who can change something.
In his last column TosspoT revealed his plans with ET and his future LAN event coming in late summer this year. The idea is to make an even bigger event than all previous CDC's which also means more games than ET and CoD4. Games like Counter Strike could be added to increase the number of attending players, the support of sponsors and the attention of different gaming communities and clans. For us this would mean probably more possible ET teams attending (maybe without qualifiers) and maybe an even bigger prizepot than ever before. It would also mean pushing ET to the same level as CS and CoD. Giving all games an almost equal size of teams, tournaments and prizes would in fact give ET a boost. And when there is one guy in this community who I would trust in realising this plan, then it would be without a doubt Toss. Nevertheless, he can not make ET strong again on his own. Not even the whole Crossfire admin crew would be enough help for him. I guess you already know what I'm pointing at. It's again you. You the Community. And believe me it is possible. A total of more than 282 signups again for the new EC and OC should motivate us even more. 282 Teams mean almost as much players for ET as for CS:S, just think about that.
Nevertheless, the CoD4, CS and CS:S scenes are well prepared for this upcoming event. We are sadly to say not, not yet. Many factors make them more professional and more capable for this LAN. We are the ones which have to show that we are able to make this event a rebirth of ET. We are the ones to prove people calling ET just 'the little cheater game' wrong and show them that we are a part of the competitive online gaming scene, a little one in fact but a part!
So what can we do? A lot, I tell you. One thing the other big gaming communities have got, are the multigamingclans. Why should mgc's be usefull? Well, a lot of skilled teams were and still are not able to come to LAN events like CDC just because there is no financial support for them. megaProgaming would have made CDC even more exciting if they were able to attend. Teams like Cortana or an all Finnish lineup like Insignia Cadre once got, would make CDC at least for me two times more fantastic than it already was. This new LAN event, the ESL Major Series, the ET Masters by TheSGL and the upcoming Clanbase season should be some arguments for you to convince the managers of mgc's. Finding a good organisation is not impossible as some of you might think. Czech ET community hero smOke showed that getting ET to the big ones is realisable with bringing Czech top class organisations eSuba, inteRaction and NecroRaisers into the scene. Those names do not only make our scene look better to poeple looking from the outside at us, they do in fact support their teams for LAN events, NR at CDC3 was the best example. Tosspot already explained it once in a column how to get mgc's interested in having you as a team; and as this column is getting rather huge, I will not describe it in detail again. To make it short. Build a stable team, write a short presentation of your team, your goals and the type of support you expect in a .doc or .pdf document and contact a clan via email. I would take mgc's into consideration which are already housing squads from 'smaller' games. This doubles the chances for taking an ET team in.
The next thing to do is - Play official matches at Clanbase and ESL (TheSGL). All those one day cups are fine and nice but no manager or gamer from the outside of our scene can judge your skills and successes by those small cups without proper homepages and prizes. Clanbase and ESL are respected in every community and TheSGL mainly got big influence in the CS:S and TF:2 scene. Even if you do not really care about the ladders give them a try. Use it as practice and don't fear loses which wouldn't be a problem if you do not care about the ladder anyway. Activity within those leagues will show them that we are active and will make proper tournaments like the ESL Major Series and the ET Masters possible. eiM described in his latest column very detailed why playing in the ESL can only be good for us.
Another key factor is coverage. As mentioned before the ET coverage had its peak in 2007 with Cadred, eSreality and GIGA. Well, what's left? Not much when it comes to written coverage. The coverage by Cadred stopped when I left for the army and Insignia Cadre got shut down as a clan and the ET team with it. The time eSreality had a news about ET lays back for more than half a year if not longer, I guess. There has been a long period (atleast to me it felt long) of time when nearly no news related to ET could be found at the front page of Crossfire. It was the time where TosspoT focused more and more on CoD and no one else had the motivation to write anything ET related despite columns about how to save ET from cheaters.
The match coverage has become better actually. With GamesTV.org 2.0, more live matches via ETTV - together with more and more shoutcasters - were brought to the audience than before. So what's left to do? News! Yes it's this essential element of any gaming community page which should be still improved. Often I read well written scene news about new teams or refreshed lineups at smaller clan pages. So why the hack do you not post it at Crossfire? Crossfire lifes from contributers. Every single user is allowed to post news. And for me atleast, more news mean more entertainment and more reason to visit Crossfire. ET events like GGT2008 or this LAN in Paris with 16 attending teams deserve coverage. But I doubt that even five per cent of the Crossfire readers knew about the french LAN two weeks ago with - I say it again - a total of 16 teams attending. It's up to you to write about it if you are interested in it. It helps not only the community to get informed about what's going on, it also improves your English a lot. Crossfire should be more than enough as a platform for ET nowadays since almost the whole community is centered here. Now the EC and EMS is about to start, the news came back and this is how it should be in general.
Last but not least to mention is a 'ranking'. Every gaming community got their ranking system provided by different scene pages. DoD:S had its top ten ranking at zpgaming.net, CS:S has a nice ranking at Cadred.org, Call of Duty at Gotfrag and CS at ZoneRank. Those rankings are not as important as general news coverage but it is still a nice addition to articles, interviews and columns. Those rankings do always give potential for discussion which is again needed at community sites like CF where the comments make 50 per cent of the entertainment. And don't be afraid of the flame concerning your opinion or your system you've chosen to rate the teams. Even the ZoneRank ranking system critics consist of nearly 50 per cent nagetive feedback. Nevertheless, it is officially accepted by the G7 teams.
To bring this very long column finally to an end, let me once again ask this question: Is Enemy Territory dieing or already dead? I would say it is far away from being or becoming so. With this years spring season signups topping last years season once again, with a great LAN event coming up probably in september, with the ESL Major Series, the ET Masters and maybe further QCups waiting for us, with all the teams lately coming back again; ET really got this chance of becoming an all time survivor.
The competitive scene had its ups and downs. After being praised to death when Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars was announced in early 2006 it was one of this moments in Enemy Territory life where the future didn't look as bright as before. But then again there was another highly prized tournament at QuakeCon for ET, the sHgOpen opened its doors to our community, the ESL featured ET in its very own IPS, Crossfire began with their LAN Challenges and ET was shown in German television by GIGA. The game which housed big names in eSports like OCRANA.ATI, Check-Six, Team9 or INfensus in the early days; was then again featured to the masses of online gamers by top class gaming organisations such as Dignitas, The Last Resort, Insignia Cadre and k1ck eSports Club. Written coverage at Cadred.org and sometimes eSreality made gamers of different games aware that ET is played competitive wise.
Now again, we reached a phase - starting in late 2007 - in ET's live time where people call it slowly dieing or even dead already. Many people have put their hope in future game titles like Call of Duty 4 and espacially the ET fans thought about giving ET:QW a shot. Quake Wars started with a hell load of prized competitions and the general ET player thought his favourite game's life period would find an end very soon. The number of about 270 signed up teams for the ever popular Clanbase tournaments Opencup and Eurocup underlined this trend. The big names from last season were just missing this time; nevertheless the EC was an exciting event again with great matches. These days the fourth establishment in Call of Duty series rapidly conquers the world of online gaming and an impressing number of more than 900 attending teams in this springs Opencup/Eurocup season just shows its big success; not to mention the number of professional gaming organisations like SK Gaming, Team fnatic and Four Kings lately entering the scene. The Crossfire Devotii Challenge 4 seemed to be the last gathering of ET interested players. The only professional ET team - if you can name it like this - has been Team EDiT existing for nearly two years now with a stable lineup. They were playing in almost all available cups and leagues before CDC; most of the other teams were just build for this LAN as a mix team or got rebuild. The guys from aMenti and Kreaturen returned to the scene only for this event and as quick as the teams were there for the LAN as quick you see them now disbanding again. Right before and now after CDC4 the future of ET was and still is unclear.
Enemy Territory dead? Well, not yet, I would say. Like no other game, ET is one of the best examples for being communities work. Starting with bani and the ETpro crew making ET to what it is today, FlyingDJ, kafux and Chosen three guys known to nearly every Crossfire reader having put a lot of work into ET to get it supported by GIGA and the IPS or our very own TosspoT also known as 'God of ET' organsising LANs for our community, sending the allstar crew of ATI.Crossfire to QuakeCon 2006 supported by the community or establishing a deal with gaming equipment seller QPAD to give us the CrossfireQCup. There may be hundred more examples for community work in ET and several more users contributing to our scene but naming all of them would be almost impossible, I guess. What I want to say is: It's you, you the community, you the player, you the reader of this column who can change something.
In his last column TosspoT revealed his plans with ET and his future LAN event coming in late summer this year. The idea is to make an even bigger event than all previous CDC's which also means more games than ET and CoD4. Games like Counter Strike could be added to increase the number of attending players, the support of sponsors and the attention of different gaming communities and clans. For us this would mean probably more possible ET teams attending (maybe without qualifiers) and maybe an even bigger prizepot than ever before. It would also mean pushing ET to the same level as CS and CoD. Giving all games an almost equal size of teams, tournaments and prizes would in fact give ET a boost. And when there is one guy in this community who I would trust in realising this plan, then it would be without a doubt Toss. Nevertheless, he can not make ET strong again on his own. Not even the whole Crossfire admin crew would be enough help for him. I guess you already know what I'm pointing at. It's again you. You the Community. And believe me it is possible. A total of more than 282 signups again for the new EC and OC should motivate us even more. 282 Teams mean almost as much players for ET as for CS:S, just think about that.
Nevertheless, the CoD4, CS and CS:S scenes are well prepared for this upcoming event. We are sadly to say not, not yet. Many factors make them more professional and more capable for this LAN. We are the ones which have to show that we are able to make this event a rebirth of ET. We are the ones to prove people calling ET just 'the little cheater game' wrong and show them that we are a part of the competitive online gaming scene, a little one in fact but a part!
So what can we do? A lot, I tell you. One thing the other big gaming communities have got, are the multigamingclans. Why should mgc's be usefull? Well, a lot of skilled teams were and still are not able to come to LAN events like CDC just because there is no financial support for them. megaProgaming would have made CDC even more exciting if they were able to attend. Teams like Cortana or an all Finnish lineup like Insignia Cadre once got, would make CDC at least for me two times more fantastic than it already was. This new LAN event, the ESL Major Series, the ET Masters by TheSGL and the upcoming Clanbase season should be some arguments for you to convince the managers of mgc's. Finding a good organisation is not impossible as some of you might think. Czech ET community hero smOke showed that getting ET to the big ones is realisable with bringing Czech top class organisations eSuba, inteRaction and NecroRaisers into the scene. Those names do not only make our scene look better to poeple looking from the outside at us, they do in fact support their teams for LAN events, NR at CDC3 was the best example. Tosspot already explained it once in a column how to get mgc's interested in having you as a team; and as this column is getting rather huge, I will not describe it in detail again. To make it short. Build a stable team, write a short presentation of your team, your goals and the type of support you expect in a .doc or .pdf document and contact a clan via email. I would take mgc's into consideration which are already housing squads from 'smaller' games. This doubles the chances for taking an ET team in.
The next thing to do is - Play official matches at Clanbase and ESL (TheSGL). All those one day cups are fine and nice but no manager or gamer from the outside of our scene can judge your skills and successes by those small cups without proper homepages and prizes. Clanbase and ESL are respected in every community and TheSGL mainly got big influence in the CS:S and TF:2 scene. Even if you do not really care about the ladders give them a try. Use it as practice and don't fear loses which wouldn't be a problem if you do not care about the ladder anyway. Activity within those leagues will show them that we are active and will make proper tournaments like the ESL Major Series and the ET Masters possible. eiM described in his latest column very detailed why playing in the ESL can only be good for us.
Another key factor is coverage. As mentioned before the ET coverage had its peak in 2007 with Cadred, eSreality and GIGA. Well, what's left? Not much when it comes to written coverage. The coverage by Cadred stopped when I left for the army and Insignia Cadre got shut down as a clan and the ET team with it. The time eSreality had a news about ET lays back for more than half a year if not longer, I guess. There has been a long period (atleast to me it felt long) of time when nearly no news related to ET could be found at the front page of Crossfire. It was the time where TosspoT focused more and more on CoD and no one else had the motivation to write anything ET related despite columns about how to save ET from cheaters.
The match coverage has become better actually. With GamesTV.org 2.0, more live matches via ETTV - together with more and more shoutcasters - were brought to the audience than before. So what's left to do? News! Yes it's this essential element of any gaming community page which should be still improved. Often I read well written scene news about new teams or refreshed lineups at smaller clan pages. So why the hack do you not post it at Crossfire? Crossfire lifes from contributers. Every single user is allowed to post news. And for me atleast, more news mean more entertainment and more reason to visit Crossfire. ET events like GGT2008 or this LAN in Paris with 16 attending teams deserve coverage. But I doubt that even five per cent of the Crossfire readers knew about the french LAN two weeks ago with - I say it again - a total of 16 teams attending. It's up to you to write about it if you are interested in it. It helps not only the community to get informed about what's going on, it also improves your English a lot. Crossfire should be more than enough as a platform for ET nowadays since almost the whole community is centered here. Now the EC and EMS is about to start, the news came back and this is how it should be in general.
Last but not least to mention is a 'ranking'. Every gaming community got their ranking system provided by different scene pages. DoD:S had its top ten ranking at zpgaming.net, CS:S has a nice ranking at Cadred.org, Call of Duty at Gotfrag and CS at ZoneRank. Those rankings are not as important as general news coverage but it is still a nice addition to articles, interviews and columns. Those rankings do always give potential for discussion which is again needed at community sites like CF where the comments make 50 per cent of the entertainment. And don't be afraid of the flame concerning your opinion or your system you've chosen to rate the teams. Even the ZoneRank ranking system critics consist of nearly 50 per cent nagetive feedback. Nevertheless, it is officially accepted by the G7 teams.
To bring this very long column finally to an end, let me once again ask this question: Is Enemy Territory dieing or already dead? I would say it is far away from being or becoming so. With this years spring season signups topping last years season once again, with a great LAN event coming up probably in september, with the ESL Major Series, the ET Masters and maybe further QCups waiting for us, with all the teams lately coming back again; ET really got this chance of becoming an all time survivor.
lol? I didnt know this even existed. Anywhere I can read about it?
I would ignore the zonerank stuff, its accepted by the G7 because Zonerank wants to sell products using G7 team brands, money bought their acceptance :)
However its a great column with some very very valid points. Only you can keep your game alive, this is something I was going to write about for Quakewars actually becuase they need a hero more than ET does (although taken has got similar hair to that of Jesus and is doing a great job for them at the moment). However ET also must constantly be looking over its shoulder as to the day when it runs out of volunteers.
Ontopic: Some valid points and felt worth reading through it by far and I must say im admire the ET community for not wanting to die.
no ettv
no coverage at all
and I think CB can also help reviving ET by giving top 8 of ET 6v6 ladder direct invite for EC. The better clans will have to play in the ladder if they wish to play EC + the underdogs get a chance too this way.
And place 9-16 should get a qualifier and the other 8 qualifiers are chosen from the signups.
This way you force teams to be more stable and then we wouldn't have these EC only teams, which will fold again after EC and come back for next LAN then fold again and comeback for EC.
should solve a lot, and the ladder should indicate the real skill levels then.
Was this already announced? o_O
W:et needs ppl who are willing to get their 'hands dirty'
only 2 players of the krea team are still left in your overload team.
so I realy can't call the overload team, kreaturen
very nice written column.
so no ESL for me
And the website is more logical than the CB site.
I guess the CB website is for ET players like Windows: press the start button to shutdown the pc. But most of us got used to it.
and ESL website automaticly goed to dutch for me and I don't want that freaking bad translated page.
+ OC and EC are hosted @ CB
and its not all about EC and OC. bo and eiM already pointed out, that its also possible to have ESL Major Series etc.
moreover the ESL were the first league to give prizemoney for an online tournament. cb did nothing like that.
you should apprecciate what the ESL did for the ET community imo.
Recently i noticed that there have been more shoutcasters for ettv games and though wow cool maybe we can find a new one to tune in.
So i checked gtv.org and saw many casters but none casting in english.
Imo the community needs some more english speaking shoutcasters cause i personally think its the best language to cast.
There used to be the 3 TopCaster from the UK, splodge, mashed, toss. But while splodge is covering other games and mashed not casting anymore at all, its all to tosspot to cast in english. And one english caster that has tons of other stuff to do (not including real life) is not enough for such a big communitie with so many matches.
cdc3 had 6000e prizepurse for ET if I remember correctly, 'cdc5' gonna be bigger D:? doubt it.
http://evilterritory.com/league
Resource Page in the works
http://evilterritory.com/resources/
well said :)
And one more thing. Is there any possibility that the admins from clanbase and esl work together (with the community) about the maplist? It's better to have 6 stable maps than 2 more which won't get pracced at all.
Hopefully they'll let us know about it :)