Good evening crossfire!

Very confident about the latest development of the 6on6 comeback, I thought it would be time to start finding a solution for the lan problem togheter. Building my own opinion, while facing the problem of the obviously easier organisation of 5on5 events, I took a look back to the situation in 2006:

The eurocup just came to an end in the summer and after idle.ee's major victory, the arrangements for the quakecon began. Teams began praccing 5on5 hard in order to improve the own chances of winning the in 1 month upcoming quakecon2006!

New teams were found just for this tournament, including xfire! xfire was a team with players that were chosen by the community 2 weeks before the quakecon, but within those 2 weeks they managed to adapt themselves into the 5on5 gameplay well and improved their teamplay enough, to even reach the 2nd place by losing to idle.ee in the final.

But, what does all the quakecon 2006 5on5 story have to do at building my opinion?

There have always been teams playing 5on5 cups from time to time as a funny variety, may it just be the summercup or all those other small cups between the 6on6 ones. A few teams surprised by showing remarkable results in 5on5 while beeing easy to defeat in 6on6. The quakecon 2006 confirmed this in a few cases. Or let's take the first 5on5 crossfire lan as an example : CIC7! (which was probably the turning point to 5on5 becoming the main format :x ) Polagz, actually a bunch of people that were inactive for a while, came back, and became 3rd under the sponsor's name to Make odds even.

But apart from those surprises we got the problem that a lot of players, that are fed up of playing 5on5, only play 3on3 matches anymore. But if they would only had to play 5on5 from time to time... wouldn't it even start to make fun for them?

Then we have seen a lot of teams searching a 5th in the last few days before a lan event. If a team got a 6 man lineup anyway, what would be the big deal in 1 player not beeing able to play then (which happens at almost every lan, to every team)?

So my opinion is: 6on6 lans would be awesome! But... we all know 5on5 lans are way easier to organise! 5on5 lans are a good variety to the 6on6 format (in case it really becomes the main format this time!). The not so well known teams got a better chance to surprise (as every team got individual gamestyles etc), the 5th player problem is (in many cases) solved and multigaming organisations wouldn't have to sponsor a 6th player, which makes the financial afford at least a bit less. And remember! Less players, more teamslots!

I hope I inspired some of you to not instantly flame people that want to create a 5on5 lan in the future!

Greetz,
Galiathus