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.

The EMS Grandfinal of Season V is up next. It will happen at the Crossfire Intel Challenge 7, Friday at 22 CET. The two teams who have proven worth to challenge each other in this great final are well prepared and eager to take home victory!

DH are the clear favourites of this final as they dominated the playoffs until now and only gave away a map versus TAG in round1. nOu way! on the other side had a very unfortunate start vs Guarana but fought their way back and deserve the grandfinal spot!
Supply, a very solid map, was chosen by DH and nOu will have a hard stand against their line of defense with star player Night. nOu way decided on Radar. This map always ensures a thrilling round!
nOu way! have to beat DH twice in order to safe the victory!


nOu way!

zMk
filuS
zak
lettu
Nonix



DH

Matias
Night
abortji
drago
butchji


Date: 5/3/10
Time: 22:00 CET
Maps: Supply, Radar
Livestream: QuadV by TosspoT

Without warning, a number of security guards turned up at the Infinity Ward offices yesterday afternoon. Information was hard to come-by as they would not disclose why they had arrived at the offices.

Apparently Activision had held talks with the top 2 at IW, Vince Zampella & Jason West, that morning. This following accusations that the business relationship between the 2 companies has been "tense."

A source claimed that the atmosphere & mood around the IW offices is that of one which is confused & freaked out. That same source then went on to say they "only want to make [their] games", possibly implying that Activision may pull out of their deal with Infinity Ward.

After an exciting seeding tournament and much careful deliberation, we are proud to present the groups for Crossfire Intel Challenge 7. Now that the groups have been announced we will be releasing schedules for all the groups later today.

UPDATE The CIC7 Draft Schedule is available for download here
[h3Call of Duty 4 Groups[/h3]]

Group A

Next Century
Thermaltake
Team-Impact
Insenia
ManiaX
Sublime


Group E

H2k-Gaming
mTw
NCC eSports
Hostile Faction
DOK Gaming
Lan PiratesGroup B

Infinity Skills
D-Link PGS
1stCav
Validus
n!faculty
Empathy


Group F

Reason Gaming
fnatic
Team Infused
Gamelimited
mSpire
4SypherGroup C

Team Dignitas
Corgz
to make odds even
Infernal Gamers
Fear Factory
BYE


Group G

Power Gaming
MouseFX
Playground Avenue
GFO Gaming
MCA
LoadedGroup D

TheLastResort
OX-Gaming
Team Infinite
Universal Soldiers
eSuba
Reclusion


Group H

YoYoTech
Speedlink
Hardware Arena
dfine
rodcad
BYE

The CoD4 admin crew: Kleineman, Karko, Morg, Messioso.[h3Enemy Territory Groups[/h3]]

Group A (09:00 CET)

Blight*
nkNn aD
inteRaction
Validus
WCTNCTCPI


Group E (14:00 CET)

tMoe
dESIRE
Boondocks
enLANcedGroup B (09:00 CET)

nOu
FiF
The Cube
Lost Soldiers
TEMR*


Group F (19:00 CET)

pStarz dNan
Phantoms
Plasa
logiXGroup C (09:00 CET)

YoYoTech
nI*
Famas
section9
EU


Group G (22:00 CET)

Rockit
HighBot
e-Wave
NormalityGroup D (09:00 CET)

Perception
Jungle Brothers
Infused
aGu



Group H (22:00 CET)

Plug & Pown
AoW
reVeal
overlo6d
*starting at 14cet

The ET admin crew: Anaconda, eiM, Killerboy.
We wish all teams the best of luck and we will see you in Enschede!

• CIC7 ET Lineups by stib

Drop all of your 'other plans' for this week, stock up with food and drinks ... and get ready for the Intel Extreme Masters World Championship Quake Live!

Expect mind-blowing Quake Live duel action brought to you by the charming ESL TV commentators James '2gd' Harding and Joseph 'Joe' Miller most likely alongside of great interviews by the head of the Intel Extreme Masters Michal 'Carmac' Blicharz.
Can the probably strongest among the underdogs fox, surprisingly the only swede who made it to the event, or the long-time lone representative for italy in terms of quake stermy, convince and make it out of their groups into the playoffs?
Will the eastern european star-players av3k, Cooller and Cypher along with the overseas competitors DaHanG and rapha dominate as expected or will strenx be able to exceed his performance at the European Championship Finals a couple of weeks ago?
Did Jibo prepare at all this time and what about chance, dkt and griffin, who are not to be underestimated?
Find all the answers and a lot more, this week!

To keep track on all the action ahead, be sure to bookmark the following links during the course of the event:

• official event schedule on ESL (including ESL TV links)
  
• Quake Live event schedule on TEK9 (including ESL TV links)
  
• ESL Radio schedule (including additional videostream link)

pre-coverage:

• Live on Three pre-IEM special with DaHanG and crow on djWHEAT.tv
  
• Interview with dkt on fnatic.com
  
• TEK9 preview by crow
  
• Interview with strenx on helloliefje.com
  
• Interview with av3k on frag-executers.pl
  
• Interview with DaHanG on fragster.de
  
• Interview with fox on fragster.de
  
• Interview with link1n and madix on fragster.de
  
• Interview with rapha on fragster.de
  
• Interview with av3k on sk-gaming.com
  
• Interview with Cooller on sk-gaming.com

other links:

• twitter.com/IEMtv
  
• twitter.com/carmac
  
• #masters.live @ quakenet
  
• ESL TV A - alternative host
  
• ESL TV B - alternative host
  
• Fragster (German)

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

A late addition to the ET tournament for CIC7 will see Jungle Brothers en route to CIC7. After an ever so slight increase in capacity we were able to offer the spot down the ET waiting list and Jungle Brothers who had certainly made their desires clear are headed to the magical arena that is the WZZRD gaming center in Enschede this Friday!

Their lineup is as follows:

Lightning
abort
butchji
snoop
zerender

The dutch german mixture provides a great deal of CC experience with 4 of the former H2k champions from CC5 along with general star status from ET's history. Their experience will overrule their inactivity to make them one of the most feared teams in the tournament.

Lightning made the following statement:

"As you can see we pulled some brothers from the jungle to attend the upcoming CIC7 lan. We have had a long line of problems to come to this moment, where the biggest problem was getting all these players to attend which resulted in signing up late for lan and missing it due being full. Pracs stopped during that period as team, yet we did mix with all players in TAG games to keep our activity up. Few days ago we got the word that there was a spot available and here we are annoucing the team that needs to compete for the top 3. If this is possible due to less pracs then other teams, is something you will see at lan. For now we are happy to attend lan with the lineup we wanted. Cu at CIC7."

We are proud to present the signups of our upcoming leagues. Naming them the ESL Major Series VI featuring 750 € as prizemoney and the 1on1, 2on2, 3on3 and 5on5 Spring Leagues. As last season the 5on5 Spring League will be linked to the EMS Qualification system.
The top seeded 32 teams who sign up for the 5on5 Spring League will get the chance to proof worthy in the qualifier cups. Furthermore 4 teams will be directly invited to the EMS groupstage based upon teams' activity and skill.

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!

What is the Spring 2010 Cup Season?

The Spring 2010 Cup season in which ClanBase hosts a mixture of OpenCups and EuroCups (often abbreviated to OC's and EC's respectively) starting in March and ending mid summer (towards the end of June).

EuroCups are invite only cups, with only the top teams from the communities being invited. OpenCups are open to everyone and we encourage those who can to signup. This season we plan to run 7 EuroCups and 64 OpenCups spanning a total of 24 games. This season will include our 21st edition of EuroCups - The EuroCup XXI season.

Schedule

• Sunday 28th February Open Signups.
• Sunday 14th March Close Signups - Start creating Groups for OCs/ECs - Decide on EC invites/qualifiers!
• Sunday 21st March EC Invite night on IRC/other media! - All EC qualifiers published
• Monday 22nd March - Saturday 28th March Make groups and schedule qualifiers. Rules being added to the cups. Request rule-changes before the 28th.
• Sunday 29th March Announcement on IRC! All OC / EC groups published.
• Monday 4th April - Sunday 11th April All EC Qualifier matches played.
• Monday 12th April Add Qualifier clans to all ECs/OCs.
• Mon 12th April Match week 1 for OC's
• Mon 19th April Match week 1 for EC's
• Mon 10th May Match week 4 (OC)
• Mon 24th May Match week 6 (OC)
• Sun 11 July All Cups Finished.