After one day of setting up and bootcamping, the venue is getting crowded and ready for action. Tomorrow the groupstage will kick off with teams like YYT and Jungle Brothers for ET, and Reason and fnatic for CoD4. Don't forget to set your alarm, cause at 9 am, it's on! We're going to provide you with full coverage, including match reports, interviews, pictures and more behind the scenes of the biggest Crossfire LAN yet.

With only 3 days left until the start of CIC7, we would like to announce some more details on the Quake Live community cup. These are the seedings for the CIC7 QL tournament:

• supreme
  
• butchji
  
• revoltz
  
• dallow
  
• mAus
  
• feruS
  
• Lettu
  
• n00n
  
• owz0
  
• jo0f
  
• Ati_
  
• eiM
  
• sinner

We will hold a 16-player Double Elimination system without groupstages.
The format will be best-of-three for all matches. The final will be the winner of the winners-bracket versus the winner of the losers-bracket, in which the latter player will have to win a best-of-three match twice. We will be following the basics of the IEM ruleset. The map list will be dm6, dm13, t7, t9, ztn.

Admins - eiM & Krosan

The first games in the playoffs of the Crossfire Intel ESH Challenge Seeding tournament have been kicked off with no big upsets yet. These are the matches played with their results as of now:

• H2k vs. mTw - [2:0]
  
• Reason vs. OX.Enermax - [2:0]
  
• NCE.i3D vs corgz - [2:0]
  
• TLR vs. Tt' - [2:0]
  
• pwr/ vs. `PGS - [2:1]
  
• inf vs MOUSEFX - [2:1]
  
  
• YYT vs. fnatic - [2:0]
  
• dignitas vs. SPEEDLINK - [2:1]

Seems like YYT were able to beat one of the favourites fnatic in only 2 maps! This will surely upset a lot of people as the LAN is ever so close!

The rules for CIC7 will be announced later tonight or first thing tomorrow!

Ever wondered how it is like to play with the most achieving team in ET history? Now you can find out yourself with Blight's next community contribution! One of the fans will be able to play within their ranks alongside of Night, RELOAd, feruS and company during one of their practise matches in the coming weeks. You'll be talking to them on ventrilo, following their tactics and hopefully experiencing the rush of bashing some of the world's best teams.

What do you have to do to win this? Simply show your motivation why you should be picked. There are a lot of possibilities here, so make sure you're original. You could for example bring back memories of the good old times where you remember the Blight players from proving you're an all-time fan, or if you're a girl write BLIGHT GAMING across your bare chest, that would sure be motivational to me! But I'm drifting off. Blight is also looking for a new tag, so posting your idea of a great Blight tag (ingame screenshot for example with colors) will also be considered. Lots of options for all you Blight enthusiasts.

The winner will be announced on Sunday and will be the fifth of Blight during one evening in the upcoming week.

Update: The winner has been chosen, and goes by the name of Fraggle!

The Crossfire & ESL Intel Seeding tournament has drawn to a close. Yesterday we witnessed the playoffs where all competing teams fought for a more beneficial position inside their respective playoff tree. With this system we were able to obtain a complete seeding of all teams, be it high or less high skilled. But we also took the opportunity with this tournament to send out a message to all players that wish to compete on a Crossfire LAN that all participating teams get a decent chance at playing a considerate amount of matches, even if you're only going for fun, instead of having to drop out after two or three games. Another reason for this tournament was to get teams active to raise the skillbar for CIC7 in order to get the most competitive LAN possible. With amazing performances on ETTV yesterday, we can conclude we're on the right way to achieve this.


The biggest upset came from the Polish side Perception. With having an infamous collection of ex-cheaters, they managed to turn some heads by winning their group without losing one single map, while being pre-seeded as a mid-team. They couldn't continue this winning streak in the playoffs where they faced Rockit, but nevertheless this performance is at least interesting, as they will most likely be judged on their LAN achievements in Enschede. This goes for all teams though, it will be interesting to see which teams can live up to their online seed. Expect a nice "online-only?" review of the teams after CIC7!

Also logiX.et put up a rather strange performance, as they were seeded amongst the high seeds (and almost got a top seed), but only ended fourth in their group. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the playoffs of the fourth division were a walk in the park for them, but nevertheless they only were able to obtain seed 25 (as that is the highest possible seed for division four).

Others on the other hand did just what people would expect from them. Blight took home the best seed as they won the final against Rockit. Perhaps Rockit were underperforming, or perhaps it was squall that added the magic ingredient, but whatever may be, I think we can all agree the best two teams were in the finals. And not to forget, on the entire opposite end of the seeding, we can rest assured, WCTNCTCPI and TEMR did exactly what they predicted, lose all matches and get lowest seed. If it weren't for them some serious team could get last spot, and we wouldn't want that now, would we?

Expect a recap newspost of the entire CIEC cup tomorrow!

The first matches are a go! Right now you can tune in to ETTV to watch the following top matches:

• blight vs. rockit - [4:2]
  
• YYT vs. tMoe - [4:0]

These were the matches of the first rounds:

• blight vs. YYT - [4:0]
  
• rockit vs. tMoe - [4:2]
  
  
• perception vs. rockit - [0:4]
  
• blight vs. P&P - [4:0]
  
• YYT vs. pstarZ dNan - [4:2]
  
• nOu vs. tMoe - [0:4]

You can tune into TosspoT's shoutcast for rockit vs. tMoe! There will be about 3 matches shoutcasted, so grab a cup of tea or whatever you like to drink and settle down for an evening of hot ETTV action!

www.gamestv.org
www.quadv.com

Matchweek 3 of the CIEC groupstage is well on its way. This is an update for all the people who haven't checked ESL for a while. It's also a reminder for all teams to schedule your matches as soon as possible!

[0:4] - myRevenge FIF vs. perception
[0:4] - oceans6 vs. famas

[2:4] - trial&error vs. Nothing is Impossible
[0:4] - Team reVeal vs. nkNn - angelDust

This week all the matches between the top seeds and the high seeds will be played. These matches are the most important ones as they mostly decide who will be in the top 8, and who won't.

Yet another practise session coming up with Blight Gaming! Check out ETTV to check out how they're pulling it together.
This time the schedule is following:

20CET - Polagz
21CET - Rockit
23.30CET - phantoms eSport (official)

In order to get the ETTV ip's make sure to idle at #blight 10 minutes before match time.
Also stay tuned as Blight will release 2 more features this week.

The Battlefield : Bad Company 2 PC beta launches today, and our friends at I3D have 10,000 beta keys to give away inside 48 hours!

BF:BC2, due to be released March 2nd 2010, is the sequel to EA's 2008 FPS Battlefield: Bad Company, and brings the spectacular Battlefield gameplay to the forefront of next-gen consoles and PC.

But you don't have to wait until March to try out this game - there are four easy ways for you to get a beta key from I3D today!

After winning last year's Nationscup, Team EE had to defend the title this year without the support from Night and RELOAd. This way definitely a big loss, resulting in not even getting a spot in the top 7 predictions of the community! The Blight star players probably wanted to focus more on their LAN team than on the Nationscup.
People blamed them for not caring about this cup, but not anymore! That's right, today we witness the comeback of Night and RELOAd to our dearly beloved Nationscup!