Brackets online - challenge your opponent!

As previously announced the first Intel Sunday Night Cup will take place today. To signup just paste your lineup, teamname (including a tag) and the irc nickname of your teams captain in a comment. The brackets will be up just before the first round starts and the captain of each team must join #crossfire once signed up and will be invited to the private cupchannel.

The Global 5on5 config is to be used in every match. General ESL/CB rules apply and playing with a banned player results in disqualification. The rules can be changed by the admin staff at any time. For results or any problems query ESL|eiM on #crossfire.

The first round will either start at 17:30 CET (32 teams) or at 18:30 CET (16teams). So prepare to play from 17:30 CET on.

The admin team will decide which of the teams who sign up will be selected as top 32 and thus play in todays cup!

The pioneers of CTF in first person shooters, Threewave Software, today announced they will be cutting staff members as they move into a reorganization phase. Threewave were responsible for the Return to Castle Wolfenstein ports on the Xbox and the PS2, worked on the Jedi Knight and Soldier of Fortune franchises, and did some early work on the MP mode of the critically panned latest entry in the Wolfenstein franchise.

Not long after the release of Wolfenstein, a list of the features Threewave apparently implemented in the Wolfenstein MP was posted by Wolf1337. Many Crossfire users have expressed their preference towards the Wolfenstein release Threewave had in mind, while disliking the version released by Endrant.

Read more over at Gamesutra

After 15 matchdays the ESL Pro-Series Season 15 comes to an end. The top 4 teams gonna face each other in the playoffs and will be fighting for the 5000€ prizepool.
Playoffs are held online, and will be played on the upcoming tuesday, 08.12.09, 21cet. And will be covered by ESL TV.

mTw.Mindfactory vs. Tera-Gaming
Team SPEEDLINK vs. TBH.MSI

Big favorites are the unbeaten mTw.Mindfactory who managed to do a 14-0-0 streak this season (Competo.ZYKON systems dropped this season, so only 14 matches were played).
On the other hand, TBH.MSI lineup features the "invisible king" and well known crossfire member humM3L. It definitly will be some exciting matches!

The Group Stage of the ESL Major Series Enemy Territory is coming to its end. The last matches will determine which team will join the Play Off stage directly and which team has to go through a knock out relegation match. Some matches were wildcarded and still waiting for a final appointment in the following week. The relegation stage will start directly after the last match was played.

On this sunday we'll again bring two matches of Europe's top to your favourite ETTV broadcaster.
Lately struggling Sublime face current 2nd placed european elite in the last match of Group D. Due to Celsus' dropout both are sure of a spot in one of the four upcoming relegation matches but the winner will for sure have the easier draw!
Statements:
[flag=de s1lent]

Quote

Since this match will decide who will into the next round this match should be very interesting.As far as i know sublime did not play much the last weeks and also we have had some problems which stopped us from practising. I still hope for the best :) My prediction: 4-2 e2

To aid the transition from 6on6 to 5on5 at the Crossfire Intel Challenge 7 we're running some 1 night cups to get teams playing 5on5 together. The format is very much like the old ingame.de cups, one night only, max 32 teams, 1 map, Best of 3 SW Rounds on that 1 map, Single Elimination. Only the strongest will survive! Rumour has it that a number of the CIC7 oldschool top teams will be returning to activity during these cups!

Sunday December 6th

Signups Open: 16:30 CET - A new thread will be made where you'll need to post your lineup
First Round (Round of 32): 17:30 CET - Goldrush
Second Round (Round of 16): 18:30 CET - Supply Depot
Third Round (Quarter Final): 19:30 CET - Radar
Fourth Round (Semi Final): 20:30 CET - Goldrush
Last Round (Grand Final): 21:30 CET - Radar

Changes

AntiPro - Beta 4 Build 3

• added support for ETTV ( 85.25.9.82:28960 is broadcasted on gamestv.org:30000)
  
• fixed several internal bugs
  
• ...

GamingHeaven.net is organizing its yearly Game Of The Year competition.

Prizes for this years Game of the Year Awards are going to be awarded to members participating in the voting and discussion in GamingHeaven's GOTY forums section. To be a member all you have to do is register for a free forum account, and then follow the links in the game categories to the voting area.

Here's what's up for grabs!

• HIS Radeon HD 5970
  
  
• Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X
  
  
• Intel Quad Core i7 950 and DX58SO Motherboard, NZXT Avatar Mouse, Cooler Master Hyper TX3 Cooler
  
  
• Enermax 850W Revolution 85+ PSU, Razer Carcharias Gaming Headset, Razer eXact Mouse Mat and Razer Deathadder Gaming Mouse
  
  
• Crucial 6GB BALISTIX TRACER 1333mhz DDR3, Steelseries Ikari Lazer Mouse and Steelseries Merc Stealth Keyboard
  
  
• NZXT Panzerbox Chassis, Corsair TX950W PSU and Cooler Master Hyper TX3
  
  
• CoolIT Domino Advanced Liquid Cooler, Gigabyte P55 motherboard and CM Storm Sentinel Advance Gaming Mouse
  
  
• Ultra 850W PSU, Zotac Geforce GTS250 and CM Storm Sentinel Advance Gaming Mouse
  
  
• Zotac Nvidia Ion platform and Corsair 8GB Memory for i5/i7 Lynnfield with fan kit
  
  
• Cooler Master Silent Pro M700W PSU and NZXT. Sentry 2 performance touch screen fan controller
  
  
• 6 copies of Lavasoft's Ad-aware Gaming edition
  

Heaven Media, publisher of leading websites for enthusiast PC hardware, gaming and esports, today announced the acquisition of EnemyDown, including its propriety X-Ray Anti-Cheat software.

EnemyDown launched seven years ago and made its name as one of the first sites to facilitate online tournaments and leagues.

Today EnemyDown supports titles ranging from popular console titles such as Fifa 2009 to some of the biggest games in esports, such as Counter-Strike.

Included in the purchase of EnemyDown is X-Ray Anti-Cheat and Mixes. X-Ray is of course the highly used anti-cheat software used by many leagues and tournaments around the world, and Mixes, while currently offline, is a formerly popular service that gives you an easier-than-ever way of getting into a quick game!

"EnemyDown gives Heaven Media another dimension to its media offering. Within the group of sites a visitor can read about the top gaming hardware, the biggest game releases, the teams and players in the professional field and now they can themselves play in some of the best run tournaments and leagues in the world." said Heaven Media’s Managing Director, James Reed. "In addition this supports our move this year into events, following the success of the Game Zone, run by Heaven Media each year at the Gadget Show Live, in Birmingham’s NEC."

"Heaven Media purchased this group of sites as we felt it would compliment what we already had in our portfolio, and it gave us a chance to grow our group, and at the same time support the community in rebuilding what was once a great set of websites," said Heaven Media's Corin Cole. "Given the choice of allowing these brands to fade and die or purchasing them, as gamers at Heaven Media it was a no-brainer. If we hadn’t purchased them, there was always a risk that they could disappear forever, and we couldn’t let that happen."

You can read a full set of Questions and Answers with Corin Cole on this page.

After Team CoolerMaster added german player reflexzR today, another "uk based" team announced they will add a german player to their lineup.

Former TBH.MSI, Team-Celsus and Tera-Gaming player lukz decided to join up with Team YoYoTech.AMD after the end of the ESL Pro-Series Season 15.

With their new lineup ready, Team YoYoTech.AMD plans on attending at the Crossfire Intel Challenge 7 and other upcoming offline events.

New Team YoYoTech.AMD Lineup:

Reggie "BaTzoR" Morgan
Marc "DeAtH-" Hardwick
James "smithiE" Smith
James "scorp" Long
Lukas "lukz" Berens

Statement from lukz:

Quote

"Im very happy to join YoYoTech. After getting in the EPS Finals with Tera-Gaming i decided to join an eu Team again cos its actually more fun. Im looking forward to upcoming Events like EPS or Lans. It's great to be back in an international Team. They are a great bunch of guys and i'm proud to play for them. I hope i can fill in philzors gap perfectly. "

Team YoYoTech Webpage

The Intel Extreme Masters for Quake Live European Championship (now that's a mouthful) has reached the group stage. Three matches have already been played but today and tomorrow some of the favourites will show what they're made of in their first group matches.
Cooller, cypher, Z4muZ, fox, k1llsen and madix will be amongst the competitors tonight, so you will surely see some thrilling matches!

ESL TV will broadcast four of today's matches, starting at 22:00 CET:
cypher vs. Z4muZ
fox vs. linkoo
Cooller vs. zsx
k1llsen vs. dem0n

These are all the duels that will be played today and tomorrow: