Brink is just over 3 weeks away, with a shipping date of 13th of May for some the game cannot come soon enough for others the 13th of May 2011 will be just like last years 13th of May...uneventful.

The EMS underway and the Clanbase Eurocup right around the corner online competition for ET is in a healthy position, the question is are the cups enough to make you care to tune in or has interest in online competition faded?

One thing the ET community can take great pride in is its achievements, the fact this game is even alive today is because of what the community has done in its past. However, those are yesterdays achievements the question of the column is what are you going to do today?

Recently there was a newspost about Quakewars Online and it was met with utter distates because of the word Quakewars, however the prospect of QW Online as a Massively Multiplayer Online First Person Shooter is something that makes my mouthwater.

You see Crossfire right after RTCW, ET and Quake my fourth favourite online PC Game is actually PlanetSide. What is Planetside? Well Wikipedia sums it up nicely:

Today marks a new dawn on the Internet, The Johnston Press have started charging for written content on their websites. Though hardly a world known printing press the company make newspapers in the North of the UK and their move is set to the be the first of many. Newscorp, the Rupert Murdoch owned empire is going to follow suit by next Summer and the question of this article is whether such a model will ever succeed?

The title are some of the truest words ever spoken by the great prophet Homer Simpson. Though he may have been talking about the secret of silky soft hair, his words are a far fetching statement to game designers that change can quite often be a bad thing. Modern Warfare 2’s release and near instant collapse amongst the competitive community has left me puzzled as to where competitive gaming goes from here.

Online Multiplayer Gaming has since its inception been dependent upon another multi million dollar industry, the Game Server hosting industry. Something of a niche within a niche, Game Servers companies have been around since day 1, making eSports possible but for how much longer?

Tonights Eurocup match between asd and sublime had all the ingredients needed for any game to be compelling viewing, however they are ingredients that in order to replicate require fundamental change in the way in which gaming communities as a whole operate.

Crossfire is launching a series of ‘Top 5’s’ a subjective look from the admins at what their personal Top 5’s have been across the wonderful game of ET. Whether its the top 5 ET moments, the top 5 matches or perhaps the Top 5 flame wars we’ll be dropping them down in the columns over the coming weeks, do feel free to submit requests for your own Top 5 topic too!

You know what really grinds me gears? The natural born cynics here on Crossfire - A Pessimism Community.Sometimes it would be nice to see people liking what others are doing, but those occurrences are few and far between! On sites like ESReality the users are bread to hate everything that is not CPM but elsewhere there is a vague sense of optimism, however on Crossfire the pessimism clouds are growing darker and I can never understand why.