If you enjoy reading an opinion on a positive thing about ET and its community you might want to go ahead, otherwise you can go with the troll most likely.

Reading crossfire columns lately might let you think ET is still what it was ages ago: Some call it dead (in comments), some come up with new concepts about maps ruined only by high skilled and highly accepted ET players like Night or share their opinion on one of the many issues there are and always have been: The admins.

It is like the people you play with or against have never changed. Same goes for Comments, columns and articles: Their main headers have always been about the same. As this is not the full truth as a sneaky peak around the corner will let you find out the difference. Over the past years numerous games were released no matter what a big success they were many people actually considered switching over from ET to another game with more or less success: And of course no matter how good or bad many of those games were they took a little snap into crossfire's heart and took a few of our community for good - RIP.

Twister for example, an not so old school rtcw player, figured out how to surprise in Quake Live. With his win over the Russian player pavel in etourn's SteelSeries cup and his attendance at the Quake Live LAN Finals in Cologne later this year he proofed how far addiction to a game can bring you to, and what would he be without the background and dynamic game play we have here in ET and previously in RtCW as well of course: Timings, spawn killing, tactics on the fly - that's what brings you forward in most games.

Of course there are some sad stories like noorgrin not even closely reaching the Top 3 in CFs StarCraft 2 cup or humm3l making it to the Call of Duty 4 Pro Series Germany with not winning it - How dare him! But overall you have to face it: ET is way more professional than most of you think.

Back in the time when I was organizing Call of Duty streams it was hard: People didn't want to play late and didn't even consider offering their game to a large audiance to actually raise their names and clans flag sky high. ET has always been different: When it comes to events, shows and concepts ET is a pioneer and the players and teams do whatever they can to actually present themselves in best possible shape no matter what. [Of course I've been proven wrong on this topic lately but I'm not going into details on full sponsoring an ET team]

This continues if you look at what this community is capable of even without the support of ET mod legend bani: No matter if it's chapija with SLAC (let's forget about his past), Arni and skooli with their work on GamesTV and little or less involvement in Crossfire, hannes or ag0n who both might have or had regular fights against each other in numerous comment chains over here but they released test clips, movie tutorials, awesome tools and so much more that makes sure we actually enjoy watching the majority of toady's released frag movies.

Now back to the point of the column: Mentioning twister, noorgrin and humm3l might sound awful altogether as they left - in one case only for some time [sadly] - but those are just the few names that came to my mind or who's lines I have crossed lately.

The intention is not to make you think you should switch to another game and prove yourself over there: No, it is about the effort and dedication people came up with to make sure ET can not be anywhere near its death - Just look at what has been done. Of course many people disappeared for different reasons but the amount of time put into promotion years ago is what we benefit from today.

The huge amount and success that ET is still capable of even outside of it's own game: Being good in ET means you are good in every single other game - The only question remaining: Does it make you good in life? - That's on you most likely.

With reading a comment earlier this week I thought this column was necessary: Where would we be without showing our game to the main stream? Or better: What is main stream?

Starting with the content contributed by Cash to eSreality and later on to GGL to draw attention, continuing with the awesome shout casting and event organization by TosspoT, the streams on GIGA, GIGA2 and later on ESL TV with FlyingDJ or even the AEF with that Belgium guy (^^) - Where is that gone?

Let me tell you: It's still right here and with people such as Seanza and Merlinator stepping in the biggest foot steps possible and they are doing good with using their own and mostly modern methods to spread the word to the world: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Even the scene over the big sea seems to have some heartbeat again which wouldn't be possible without such a strong core within that community.

Even though some of us might have different opinions about the way they are doing it but this does not reveal anything about the quality or time they use for the hard work it is most of the times.