A couple of weeks ago, Valve Cooperation released several games on their Steam network, which are all free to play; you download the game, via steam, and play the game.
During this week, several announcements has been released about Team Fortress 2 and the "Uber-update". It all ended today, with the release of a brand new patch, with several new items/weapons to obtain, a brand new mini-movie in the "Meet the..." series and most of all the fact that Team Fortress 2 is now free to play, just like Enemy Territory.

For those who do not know the game, it is a class-based first person shooter with several and different types of game modes, ranging from CTF (Capture the Flag) to Payload (a sort of goldrush-type of game play)

Links:
- The Uber-update
- Meet the Medic
- Team Fortress (official website)
- Team Fortress Wiki

ButtonBashers a new up and coming Multigaming organisation have picked up the former TLR ET team. The side that took first place at CPC2 & CDC3 are to join the dutch based organisation this evening now that the ink has settled on their move, this just hours after leaving TLR.

The sides talisman Winghaven gave the following statement:

Quote by Winghaven

We're really happy to join buttonbashers, we got an offer we couldn't refuse, we haven't been so lucky finding a good sponsor who can cover all of our costs, but finally it seems that our luck has totally changed. Anyway, we'll do our best in Eurocup and of course we'll prepare to cc5 to take the victory home, Also I want to thank buttonbasher to trust us, and Thanks to TosspoT for recommending us to bb

This weekend the ButtonBashers Call of Duty team attended and won the Maxlan in France and are one of Europe's top teams, this latest edition gives ButtonBashers a high probability of a double podium finish at CC5.

ButtonBashers ET roster
Clown
Winghaven
Lightning
Matias
dAv1d
mAus
doktor

#ButtonBashers

At the end of August TEK9 Networks were happy to announce that they had found their replacement of haya, who decided to leave due to personal motivational problems; the replacement was the former mYm player Mark. Unfortunately late Sunday night the organisation announced that the Call of Duty 4 team will be splitting up.

The reason for the split up is the lack of motivation by some of the players, Davy and KNALLER, both players will probably be quitting Call of Duty 4. Another reason is a problem in the private schedule of the players, which makes them unable to attend upcoming events, like GAMERLAND. The remaining three players: OZWALD, Stevy and Mark will hopefully be in another team in the near future. The following two statements are taken from TEK9s page, for the full statements, please check their site:

Quote by Davy "Davy" Sysmans

"Sad to say but we've been put in a situation that only leads to us splitting up. Since we were inactive for most of the time since cod4 came out we never got to the point where we were in cod2. Also the fact that not everyone enjoys cod4 enough to come up with the right dedication is a big part of our somewhat lesser results.
We were still able to hang around the top5-6 in the world with all our problems but this isnt enough with the potential we have..."

Quote by Alexander "KNALLER" Shulepov

"Due to the combination of personal schedules we do not have sufficient time to prepare properly for the upcoming lans. Our priority was the lan in Rome, but unfortunately it probably wont be happening (atleast not a cod4 tourney). People want to attend lans of course and the only solution hereby is to let everyone go their own way.
Maybe we'll reunite in the future, maybe not. Time will tell..."

As KNALLER states, it is possible that the team will reform as TEK9 in the upcoming title Call of Duty 5, depending on how successful the game will become. It is sad though, seeing one of the best teams in Call of Duty 4 splitting up. The, now previous, lineup of TEK9 was:

Davy "Davy" Sysmans
Alexander "KNALLER" Shulepov
Antonin "OZWALD" Grenier
Stevy "Stevy" Verheyen
Mark "mark" Horner

Sources:
- TEK9 Call of Duty 4 splits (TEK9 Networks)
- Tek9 COD4 folds (Team Dignitas)

Monday night the Italian multigaming organisation Cubesports.AMD, which is mostly known within the Counter Stirke, CS:Source and Warcraft 3 communities, announced their newest squad; Call of Duty 4.

The squad, which is now under Cubesports, began when the two Team Impact players George and Shade decided to leave the team, after some disapointng results at AEF and TEX. They managed to seduce 4 players from Inferno into joining them in this new squad, under the banner of Cubesports. On LowLandLions's website George made the following statement:

Quote by Amir 'George' Hajar

"After a long period of "nothing" finally in Italy we can start to create some competitive teams.
Shade and me decided to move out from Team-Impact to create something different, I know all the potential of my new m8s and I'm sure we can do a really nice job.
We are very glad to join this big italian multigaming. They give to us all the support that we need. Thanks to all our sponsor they know us for our hard work and in real life.
So stay tuned for all the Europeans Lans! We are ready for show all our strength."

This newly formed team will most likely be seen at upcoming European events, a huge question arises when it comes to the likes of CC5. The question is not whether or not the team will attend the event, but rather, if the former CPC ET winner and local Crossfire celebrity XyLoS, who is a part of the lineup, will be playing CoD or ET at the upcoming event.

The lineup of Cubesports is:
Amir "George" Hajar
Michele "goofy" Siffredi
Frederico "Shade" Seri
Fabio Filippo "papadok" Conigiu
Stefano "snake" Marrucci
Dario "XyLoS" Azzarelli

Sources:
- Cubesports Back on Duty! (Cubesports)
- Cubesports.AMD reventures into CoD (LowLandLions)
- Cubesports.AMD adds COD4 team (Dignitas)

It is time for an update for one of the biggest CoD4 events this year and with a little under 2 months to go, the number of teams confirmed to go is rising by the minute. The event, which is spread out over 12 days, at Gimle in Roskilde both has an A and B tournament for CoD4 and the list of teams which are confirmed is evermore growing.
The list of teams for the A-tournament has 32 spots, with 4 of those are reserved for the top teams from the B tournament, looks like this:
Confirmed and paid
Roskilde Ravens
Team Infinity
fnatic
Oslo Lions
Meet Your Makers
Reason Gaming
esuba
H2k.Thermaltake
Team Impact
LowLandLions
Team Speedlink
Team Dignitas
Tek-9
Team Zetta
Evil Geniuses
Pandemic
Nexus Gaming

Confirmed, payment under way
Frag Dominant
4Kings
SK-Gaming
The Last Resort
ancients
Druidz
Ministry of Defence
Epsilon
DOK Gaming
Zero Toleranxe


The A-tournament has a woopin' 25.000 euro in total prizes whereas the B-tournament has 2.500 euros in total prize-pot. As stated before the 4 best teams from the B-tournament will be granted access to the A-tournament. There are still 17 spots left in the B-tournament where the list of teams so far looks like this:
Confirmed and paid
aSHOCK
Flawless
Team Check.it
Digital.Revolution
Begrip
Tenax Gaming
Afuture
Ephix
Necroraisers

Confirmed, payment under way
wegame
Prototype
CCDK
Aalborg eSport
Team Enigmatic
Back Street Hontas


There are still teams which are unconfirmed for both tournaments, but already this looks to be one of the biggest CoD4 events, that will take place this year. The event kicks off the 21st of July but the CoD4 tournaments starts a few days later, with the grand final being played the 2nd of August.

Sources:
- CoDGaming.dk
- The eXperience

There is still about 4 months till the-experience kicks off in Roskilde, but already the 18 teams which is directly invited has been announced. The event is running for 2 weeks with CoD4, CSS and Fifa2008 tournaments. The CoD4 tournament is split into two, A and B, where the B-tournament will be played first and 4 teams will proceed to the A-tournament.

For the A-tournament, with the mind-blowing pricepurse of 25.000 euros, 18 teams are directly invited, there will be 10 "buy in" spots and 4 teams will come from the B-tournament. The 18 invited teams has already been announced:

Roskilde Ravens
fnatic
Oslo Lions
Meet Your Makers
Exabyte
4Kings
Dignitas
Tek-9
Serious Gaming
esuba
H2k.Qpad
Team Impact
Low Land Lions
SK-Gaming
Speedlink
Evil Geniuses
Pandemic
Nexus Gaming

The A-tournament will be running from the 31st of July till the 2nd of August. For information about the CSS and Fifa2008 tournaments go to the-experience website.

*EDIT*
I just had a small chat with Sarabande, who is manager for Roskilde eSport and one of the organisers behind the event. The north american teams is confirmed to show up.

Sources:
- the-experience
- CodGaming.dk

One of the best CS teams in Germany, TEAM ZYKON which houses renowned players like Roman R and madferret, announced last night that they will be represented in Call of Duty 4. The core of the new CoD4 team is maYer and croX, who has been playing together since Call of Duty 1. The lineup of the new ZYKON CoD4 teams is:

Jens "JAYGEE aka souX" Grothe - team manager

Stephan "eqkl1pse" Rohrmeier
Max "m4x" Pape
David "kalle" Rüger
Jan "croX" Pretzel
Eugen "maYer" Mayer
Tomas "eLo" Post

A part of the statement from ZYKON GAMEWARE:

Quote

Team ZYKON welcomes a new team into its nest. Our new acquisition, formed around Team-Captain Eugen Mayer, will support us in the Call of Duty 4 territory. Already during Call of Duty 1 times they fought against teams, such as OCRANA (currently known as Team SPEED-LINK), for the supreme reign. Although a late appearance in Call of Duty 2, they managed to make a name for themselves by attending several events (EuroCup for example) and placing in front of SPEED-LINK as the 2nd team to qualify for the IPS.
Because our new team is hungry to finally achieve their big break-through we, at ZYKON GAMEWARE, will do our utmost best to support our guys in the newest release of ACTIVISION and to allow them as many successes as possible.

The CoD4 team won the final of the ESL hosted Call of duty 4 Opening Cup last night over legendary 21-14 on mp_strike and mp_crossfire. On the way to the final they beat FiNEST5, featuring the King of Panzerfaust aka humM3L.

Sources:
- News on ZYKONs homepage (in German)
- CoDGaming.dk (in Danish)

Tonight the seven leagues of the upcoming season of OpenCup has been revealed. Some people might feel that they have been let down by the admins while others feel they have en over rated by the same admins; it is however not enough for people to start the up flaming the admins trying to run the OpenCup here and there. In the Premier League the following groups has been made (The following is of the news-writers own opion and does not reflect Crossfire.nu's opinion) :

Group A
artificial
Dharma
venue - Multigaming OCTENse
Reliably.et

A group that looks rather one sided, towards the former EuroCup clan artificial, but the other 3 European clans hold much potential to make an upset to win the group.

Group B
Porn Star Babes
SaveMeGod
el Vigorz
team-violence

This is a group that already seems doomed, since it hold CPC qualifier el Vigorz (former vib), I cannot see anyone else in this group making a worthy adversary for the former violence is bad squad.

Group C
Beaver
FBI-Team
suXus esports
PowerMaurerClanGermany

This is one of the more interesting groups, suXus is the 3rd place from previous season of OC, while Beaver and FBI has proven alot of skill in the past time. My personaly experience of PMCG dates back to one year ago playing against this team in WarLeagues winning against them; so I foresee them being the loosers of this group.

Group D
Grave Guardians
e-Srael.org
Thunder Force - multigaming
Polewka Team

Another interesting group, but I see GG coming out of this group as victories. T4ce and eSr is in the shade of shade of what former teams with these names prove. Finally it will interesting to see a polewka team without the dominating kot.

Group E
advanced Gamers united
ESVKA
Vicious & Evil
Team 0verRated

This is by far one of the most exciting groups in OC, since there is an uncertain factor of an American team; I really do not see a clear favorite in this group.

Group F
2 EZ for uz
explosionC4 Multigaming
Team infrag
sYnod5 Gaming

I see this group as being a battle between the mix team 2EZ and EC4, not saying that infrag and sYnod5 being bad clans, but they have not shown any great results withint the last couple of months.

Group G
iNf!N!tY*SkillS.ET - HaxXers
#luger
PrIde
shidima

If Group E was exciting, then what is Group G? Who will win this group is a matter of personal skill and peaking of skill on the exact day, when these four teams collide. I do not dare to say who will be the winner of this group.

Group H
dark and beyond
silentium
snd multigaming
Voodoo Gaming

There are two teams standing out from the crowd in this group, which is seek and destroy and Voodoo Gaming, both made of old school players wishing for more. I predict one of these two teams to be vitorious in this group.


This season is maxing out at the same amount of leagues as the previous two seasons of OpenCup has presented, so who ever is saying ET is dead, well they might be wrong. You can ofcouse see all of the groups by clicking the source link in the end of this news.

Source
- ET 6v6 OpenCup Spring 2007

During last weekend the yearly event shgOpen, hosted by shg.dk, was held at the Bella Center in Copenhagen. A grand total of 13.000 people visited the exposition and LAN area during the weekend, people from 22 different countries participated in the event and 20 companies displayed thier products at the expo.

These are all great numbers and would make you think that it has been a good deal for shg.dk, however the CEO of the company, Thomas Falborg, was interviewed this monday by the Danish IT-newspaper Comon. During this interview he came up with some other numbers that put everything in perspective.

- The prize pool was 500.000 DKr. (67.064 Euro)
- The rent of the Bella Center was 3 million DKr. (402.387 Euro)
- The income from the gamers was estimated at 500.000 DKr.
- The income from the expo-companies was estimated to 1 million DKr.

By this you can already see that there are more money going out from the company, than there is coming in. I do not know how shg.dk came up with the number but they have estimated that they need to sell products of the value 40-50 million DKr. (5.365.166 - 6.706.458 Euro) before they will have all thier expenses covered from this event. It puts everything a bit into a perspective of how much money it takes to host an event as big as shgOpen.

Source:
- Comon.dk (in Danish)

Year 1992 AD.:

Quote

This years Eurocup in football was held in Sweden, and one of the late teams to join the tournament was Denmark, who joined because Jugoslavia was not eligible to go, because of the war.
These finals was won by the Danish national team, who surprised all by beating The Netherlands in the semifinal, and the mighty squad of Yermany in the final.

Enough with the history leasons...

The Danish Enemy Territory community has become alot smaller since the previous nations-cup, but that doesn't prevent the community from creating a team representing the Danish flag. The lineup for this season is:

Squash (captain) - (Sleeperz)

Bamze (nSens)
bLAZ3R (coitio)
Fisken (Sleeperz)
Freezer (nSens)
gyzr (ex-SpreadingDeath)
Xcn (Sleeperz)

Arachon (backup) - (coitio)
Goscinny (backup) - (Sleeperz)

We hope that we are able to make some upsets during the entire season of ClanBase NationsCup. Who ever thinks different will be brutally raped by ze mighty vikings of ze north :)

Contact:
- NC.EnemyTerritory.dk
- #ET.dk