In the next few hours the grand final of the Antwerp eSports Festival will be taking place and then we will finally get to know which team can name themselves the champions of one of the most competitive events for W:ET this year.

Still in the run are Dignitas and Impact Gaming who will face each other in the upper bracket final, while Team Rockit will be facing Belgian Fraternity in a match from which the loser will end fourth at the AEF.

AEF Upper Bracket Final

Team Dignitas versus Impact Gaming
Maps: supply, frostbite

AEF Lower Bracket round three

Team Rockit versus Belgian Fraternity
Maps: frostbite, radar

Also taking place today is the Consolation Tournament for the remaining teams who ended third and fourth. We will not be allowing any mercs in the tournament so teams not fielding their complete and official lineup either play with a man down or drop out of the tournament by forfeit.

Thanks to Potty and Krosan, the crew has decided to allow a Consolation Tournament beeing played as of tomorrow at 9:30 AM.

The loserbracket will hold a double elimination between the 3rd and 4th placed teams from each group.

This will also allow us to get a decent top 10 list !

The bracket looks as follows :

Round 1 ( Round Start at +/- 9:30 AM ) :

A zeroE vs SAIKO

B FAMAS vs myRevenge

C CBZ vs Forward

D Team Genuine vs ALMIGHTY.ET

Round 2 ( start at +/- 11 AM ) :

1 Winner A vs Winner B

2 Winner C vs Winner D

3 Loser A vs Loser B

4 Loser C vs Loser D

Round 3 ( start at +/- 12:30 CET )

Winner 1 vs Winner 2

Loser 1 vs Winner 3

Winner 4 vs Loser 2

Loser Bracket Final ( start at +/- 14 CET ) :

TBA R3 vs TBA R3

TBA R3 vs TBA R3

Grand Final Consolation Tournament ( start at +/- 15:30 CET ) :

TBA vs TBA

Richard Lewis brings you one of the first ever reviews of the hugely anticipated Starcraft 2.
The sequel to one of the most populated games in the worldhas finally arrived on the shelves, after a huge amount of publicity leading up to its release.

Gamingheaven have been one of the first sites to get out a review of the game, taking a detailed look at this game. The reviewer is none other than the Editor-in-Chief of Cadred, Richard Lewis, who has given the game plenty of praise.

You can read the entire review over at GamingHeaven.net, but here is a small snippet of part of it:

Quote

Hell, it's about time" growls Tychus Findlay in the opening cinematic. The poster-boy for bad-ass pretty much echoes the sentiments of every real time strategy fan the world over.

Finally, the sequel to 1998's game of the year has arrived and promises to bring all the glory and all the horror but it is fair to say it has a huge weight of expectation resting on it. Competitive players seem to worry about the game mechanics changing, a dumbing down of the metagame that they have spent years perfecting. Equally newcomers who may have found the old game inaccessible and the community too demanding have their hopes pinned on this incarnation being more forgiving. In addition to all this, any developer of a real time strategy title faces the reality that base building and troop stacking is considered "old hat" by the new-school, and previous attempts by other franchise's to reinvigorate the genre have been met with mixed reactions at best.

Read the entire review here and find out what Richard has rated the game.

Meet the Antwerp eSports Festival playoff bracket. The first two rounds for both the upper and the lower bracket are scheduled to be played tonight.



Stream

Gallery's
AEF day 1, part 4
AEF day 1, part 3
AEF day 1, part 2
AEF day 1, part 1
Building up
Match previews
Impact vs Zero Empathy
Dignitas vs Belgian Fraternity
Overload vs Acsi-eSports
Impact vs TAG.AEF


00:00




22:22




21:37




21:00





20:55


17:02





16:09





15:28Overload and SPEEDLINK are now eliminated from the tournament respectively after losing against Belgian Fraternity and Rockit.

Impact were on fire against Rockit and secured a position in the upper bracket final. Rockit will be facing SPEEDLINK later tonight.

The AEF says goodbye to TAG.AEF and Acsi-eSports dNan who respectively lost against Team SPEEDLINK and the Belgian Fraternity in the lower bracket.

TAG.AEF, Acsi-eSports dNan, Belgian Fraternity and Team SPEEDLINK are fighting for their life in the Antwerp eSports Lower Bracket, as two teams are about to meet elimination.

For comforts sake, TeK-9 will be hosting the brackets. Click here to visit them.

We're steamrolling towards the AEF playoffs with four matches remaining to be played. Remember that the playoffs will be starting very soon after all group matches have finished.

TAG.AEF and gZcon are currently battling it out for the second position in group B in one of the final deciding matches of the group stage here at the Antwerp eSports Festival.

Scheduling update: We're gonna try to get more matches played so the playoffs can commence sooner. We hope to play both the first two rounds of the upper bracket tonight and are aiming for a final on the big stage starting at 12:00 tomorrow.
Links
Brackets
Groups
Schedule (excel sheet)
Upcoming / live matches

Confirmed stars such as Av3k, Cypher, Cooller, strenx, noctis, k1llsen, Z4muz, fazz, spart1e and many more. Thirty two names, do or die single elimination rounds, three winners will be invited to the Beijing LAN tournament and the Champion to be flown on behalf of FnaticMSI.


PRIZES

1st Place
$600 and trip + hotel for lan in Beijing covered

2nd Place
$450 + hotel costs covered

3rd Place
$200 + hotel costs covered


TOURNAMENT SCHEDULE

30th July:
19:00 CET - Round of 32
20:00 CET - Round of 16

31st July:
19:00 CET - Quarter Finals
20:00 CET - Semi Finals

1st August:
19:00 CET - Consolation Final
20:30 CET - Grand Final


LIVESTREAM

www.levelupyourgame.net
#lvl^ @irc.quakenet.org




Related: http://play.fnatic.com/news/69/Quake-Live-Finals-This-Weekend.html

Day one of the Antwerp eSports Festival is commencing.



Gallery's
AEF day 1, part 4
AEF day 1, part 3
AEF day 1, part 2
AEF day 1, part 1
Building up
Match previews
Dignitas vs Belgian Fraternity
Overload vs Acsi-eSports
Impact vs TAG.AEF


23:02







21:12









19:32The first day of the Antwerp eSports Festival is nearing it's end with the few remaining matches starting soon. For any late night match watchers I recommend the match for the second place in group D between Acsi-eSports dNan and Almighty.

Overload versus Acsi-eSports dNan was a match between the fourth and the fifth seed, and it showed with sparks flying off as the match evolved into a double fullhold on radar and a very close match on adlernest in which Overload ended up victorious. The next major match is coming up with Dignitas facing the Belgian Fraternity.

With a new batch of teams starting their AEF adventure the first match here at the AEF between two top eight seeds is about to commence: Overload versus Acsi-eSports dNan. Read the preview here.
Links
Groups
Upcoming / live matches






News archive17:45


16:36


16:03

13:55

13:30


13:00

11:10


10:42

10:26

08:53Impact didn't seem to have much issues putting TAG.AEF down, even though Impact started of with pansy replacing hayaa.

Soon starting is a creator versus creation match with Team Genuine starring Impact manager eVo facing the team he himself manages.

A promising match between Impact Gaming and TAG.AEF is about to start. Read the preview.

aestas are currently absent from the event and it looks like they're sadly our third dropout from the tournament.

We seem to be on schedule once again with the second batch of teams starting their first matches. One of those to look forward to is the match between Impact Gaming and the Dutch TAG.AEF, scheduled to start at 16:00.

Results are being added to the group pages.

TAG and unpatched unit will not be starting at the tournament, respectively because of a car accident and lineup issues. Meanwhile the first results are in and should be updated on the site shortly.

karnaj is playing for CbZ against Dignitas?

Several matches are now underway.

There seems to be a short delay, but teams are setting up and the first matches should commence shortly.

Few expected this project to still be alive today, but here we are again. The game project formerly known as Axis Revenge currently undergoes renaming. Nevertheless this post is not all about the rebranding of the project, but publication of yet unreleased media. Our secretiveness is for a reason, yet still without further ado what this is all about:


We aim to bring regular releases alike these to our followers in the future in order to show atleast a fraction of our work. Furthermore we present to you a first bit of the games backgroundstory. Anyone who wants to propose a new name for the project and the game is free to contribute either here or on our forums:

Quote

The year is 1954; the Fuhrer is dead, the Allies are in disarray, and the Second Great War still holds sway over the destinies of millions. On 20th July, 1944, the German High Command successfully assassinated Adolf Hitler at the Wolf's Lair, generating chaos on both sides. The Soviets, full of vengeance and momentum from the turnaround at Stalingrad, simply could not be stopped; they perceived Hitler's death as a weakness in the German ranks and pushed forward with even greater vigor. The Americans initially contemplated a propaganda campaign to win over the disunited German public, but quickly abandoned it upon realization that if they did not act now, the Soviets would beat them to Berlin.

Readmore...
Neither event would come to pass. In a devastatingly effective use of propaganda, the German High Command made Hitler's death appear to be an Allied assassination--during a secret peace treaty, at that. Making it appear as if Hitler was negotiating a cease-fire in which the Allies would have retreated to their respective borders and accepted Germany's new boundaries, the new masters of the Third Reich both secured the public's loyalty to Hitler and dispelled wavering doubts as to the righteousness of the Nazi cause. The backlash was more fierce than the Allies could have ever anticipated; while German soldiers engaged them on the front lines, German civilians fought them in the streets, from the forests, and anywhere else they could conduct guerrilla warfare.

Tomorrow the Antwerp eSports Festival is going live. Today however we're setting stuff up.

Getting up at 6:30 was nothing short of torture if you ask me, but it's paying off. The venue is looking more and more like a true eSports-festival site.

If you want to have a quick glance how it's going, head over to the tek-9 coverage to check out some pictures!

http://www.tek-9.org/gallery/aef_build-up_photos_part_1-140/

Check out the Favourites Preview by Killerboy.

According to the recent poll there is no doubt Dignitas will give this away, but the players themselves are not so sure yet. With everything still up for grabs, head over to the article section to make up your mind:

http://www.crossfire.nu/?x=article&mode=item&id=224

SLAC (SpeedLink Anti Cheat) comes to all ET ClanBase Ladders.

Good news for Enemy Territory, SLAC USER ID has now been implemented within the ClanBase system and ClanBase users can now enter there SLAC USER ID on there guid properties.

All players/clans have to register their SLAC User ID on ClanBase as from now Speedlink Anti Cheat is LIVE on ClanBase.

Speedlink Anti Cheat is MANDATORY and must be run in every match that's played on ClanBase. The only exception to this rule applies ONLY to Linux players (read below).

The rules for SpeedLink Anti Cheat are as follows:

With the Antwerp eSports Festival just around the corner the time has come to release a bit more information about the event schedule and some side activities on site.

First of all we would like to point out that the final tournament schedules, seedings and groups will be released shortly on the AEF website. The groups for Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory have already been released and can be found here.

AEF Shop by SteelSeries

In cooperation with SteelSeries, we will be opening up a shop at the event that can be found near the entrance. At this shop we will be selling various gaming peripherals, many at discount price. The full list of the products and prices can be found here:



As you can see it also includes limited edition items and the new 7H headset which has just been released and can only be described as one of the best gaming headsets out there. Beware that some items only have a limited stock available so if you want one you need to be fast! You can reserve an item by sending an email to steven [ a-t ] gamevibes.be mentioning the item you would like to reserve, your name and when you will be picking it up.

Opening party

On Friday we will also be hosting an opening party for all the players, press and several VIP's. Starting from 18:00 CET, DJ Airforce will be playing his tunes, followed straight after that by DJ ESP (Resident DJ from one of the biggest clubs in Belgium, Versuz). The party will go on until 01:00 AM, which means that even the teams who need to play on Friday evening should fine some the time to enjoy the music and a couple of drinks at the party in between the matches or straight after.

We will be serving alcoholical beverages throughout the entire Antwerp eSports Festival and we will also have a special Belgian Beer corner in cooperation with Alken-Maes where you will be able to find a wide selection of specialty beers from Belgium.

Enjoy yourselves in Antwerp!