So today the news broke surrounding cZar ET's transition to the Zerobarrier name, following cZar Gaming's merger with Logitech.fi, leaving their sponsors and players alike bar the warSow side which will make the transition. But this we already knew.

As ever there's another EuroCup season approaching, and with the invited and qualifier teams being announced yesterday, its time to look forward into the dusty crystal ball and have a gamble and what could be in store for ET's premier competition.

Clanbase. EuroCup. NationsCup. OpenCup. Hosted Cups. CBooky. LAN Finals. GGL. Clanbase is without question a powerful body with a rich heritage and reputation to savour, but the question still prevails, and never more so in terms of ET: is the magic still there?

Listening to my Oasis albums this morning and reminiscing over the glory days of Whats the Story..?, I tripped across the question of the power struggle. Back in the early 1990's it was Oasis vs Blur, Blackburn Rovers vs Man Utd, and things today are just as feisty. Clanbase, undoubtedly the dominant force in ET over the past years are suddenly facing stiff competition from the ESL and their prizemoney competitions.

While the transition you will have seen from xfire 2 to xfire 3 was a swift one in terms of being one site one day and another the next, behind the scenes and as aluded to in a previous column, the site has gone through some pretty drastic changes of skin in the past few months. With the new site not live back in September, I was purposefully guarded and skimmed a lot of details in my [url=http://www.crossfire.

It is the stuff of legend. A myth in its own right. However, the web's very own version of Duke Nukem Forever is, unlike it's mysterious counterpart, just around the corner, so we at [flag=0] Crossfire Towers thought it just about time to give you non-uber citizens a taste of what's been happening these past few months, and what we have in store to come.

In a matter of hours, or days, the ET community will receive one of the most important pieces of information of the year. No, it isn't what the new-look idle lineup will be, nor is it a press release on the forthcoming GTV.ORG2. It is one which will affect all echelons of the game, right from the top level EuroCup sides to the to the teams who play purely for fun. It is the announcement from ClanBase on who will become their newest Enemy Territory supervisor.

As I scythed through Ronner's front door to meet amoung other people the Idle.ee team, I had no idea of some of the bombshells of information that were going to land right in front of me that very night. Perhaps it was knowing that here were players who had won a EuroCup and Quakecon twice; a team with nothing to prove and nothing left to win.

Here are my photos from the lan, hopefully I didn't annoy too many people because I have it on good assurances that my flash was the most blinding of everyone's! Sorry about that...

So here we go:

[*] unblind laughs at the dutch metro
[*] levi loves his metro
[*] TosspoT breaks the first pc of the weekend

...the tough get going. And if any one of these teams want to win they're going to have to raise their games to the next level. We have 6 games to play today, including the grand and consolation finals, which can mean only one thing: teams will be eliminated for good. Gone is the safety net of yesterday where a single loss would only result in relegation to the lower bracket, and in come to the pressure games where money is won and lost.