With Christmas and New Year's Eve behind us, it is time to enter the last stage of the ESL Major Series for ET: Quake Wars. Two weeks after the group stage has come to an end, the best two teams of each group will now join the playoffs starting next Monday. In the upcoming weeks we will see the European elite fighting in a double elimination bracket for the € 2000 prize purse.

A vast number of teams joined our national and international qualifiers, where 16 teams qualified for the ESL Major Series Season I Group Stage. There we saw 16 teams devided into 4 groups of 4 teams, featuring 3 fascinating matchweeks. With the beginning of the new year we are going to make the last step:


Team-Dignitas vs. Team Pelit
Four-Kings vs. Random Gaming
Team SPEED-LINK vs. OCRANA
Frag-eXecutors vs. Kompaniet

ESL Major Series - Playoffs
ESL Newspost
ESL Major Series

The popular GUID matching website YAWn! has unfortunately had its database compromised, and as a result everybody is strongly urged to change all of their passwords if they are the same as their YAWn! password, should they have an account there.

Earlier today you may have noticed a couple of strange things on Crossfire, such as the 'Fusengate 08' article disappearing and the 'Cheaters' forum thread being defaced, among various other things. This was caused by a few of our members having the same passwords here as they do on their YAWn! accounts, and inadvertently allowing the individual to login to their Crossfire profiles and disrupt the website.

We have identified who is responsible, and it is some random peon from the recent bust, unsurprisingly. Despite what you may hear elsewhere this person is not affiliated with any cheat website, nC had nothing to do with this. The YAWn! admins have been informed, who have taken necessary steps to ensure that this does not happen again. It should be noted however, that the guilty party still has a copy of the old database and can continue to cause certain people problems if they do not change their passwords.

A general rule of thumb is to never use the same password on different websites, as obvious as that may sound it is surprising how many ignore it. You should also use an alphanumerical password with upper and lower case.

Unfortunately, this has already affected one of our members quite seriously, so we strongly urge you not to take this lightly. This will only affect those who have an account on YAWn!, with the same password to it used elsewhere. Despite that, this is a good oppurtunity for those of you with weak passwords to change them to better ones.

The YAWn! website is still fully functional and should be safe to use, provided any members have changed their passwords.

You can change your passwords here.

YAWn! newspost: http://www.yawn.be/

We already saw some surprising games in the still young Call of Duty 4 area and one of the surprising teams is eyeshow. They managed it, to get to the finals in the #1 and #3 Tek-9 Powercup. Even teams like eSuba ( 13-10 ), EDiT ( 13-06 ) or Legendary ( 13-05 ) couldn't stop the german/austrian team, which is currently looking for a new organization to be prepared for the upcoming lan events.
And for that case they recruited their new team manager Mike "sCARFACEEe" Long, well known from his time in Tek-9.
Still they have to replace the former captain neonrrr, who decided to go inactive after that great matches by his team.

sCARFACEEe (team manager)

mkz
gene
nikkzoN
aistrEEEy
Roken
neonrrr (inactive)

Quote

Mike Long:
I wanted to try something new, so I put my ideas into management, and eyeshow were an easy choice to take onboard my new role. The guys are great, all good fun and have the potential to do very well within the Call of Duty 4 scene. Instead of being stuck as a single "homeless" team, I decided to help them out, and one of our main objectives at the moment, other than doing well, is to find a well structured multi-gaming organisation to fall into, and with this, it opens a whole new bunch of routes for the team to take, to improve even further and progress well in Call of Duty 4.

Unfortunately, when I took the team onboard, neonrr went into inactivity. But that hasn't stopped the team from playing well and getting far in the TeK-9 Power Cup's, so hopefully we can continue this progression further.

#eyeshow
Tek-9 Post

With a strong background in Enemy Territory, vicious and evil over time has become one of the more known names across the scene. Today, we see the multi gaming clan return to recruit a new team, who have intentions of attending CDC4 and competing in the upcoming EMS.

The team includes players who have been ruling on the top of the scene for years, mainly coming from teams such as idle.ee & skit-evil. Due to the downfall of idle.ee and ping pong, the lineup is as follows:

Quote by twidi, VAE.ET player

First of all three of us had planned to go cdc4 with idle.ee and the other three with ping pong. However both teams faced some problems with their players and after some discussion with RELOAd we decided to merge with the remaining guys from both teams willing to go to cdc4.
Our team consists of very experienced players and we know each other pretty well already, which is why I think we should be able to get our team working very well despite the short preparation time we have before cdc4. Shortly after our team was formed, we asked for support from vae for the cdc4 and further tournaments and they got interested. So now with the support from vae we're preparing for cdc4, where we should have all the chances to fight for the first place, and other tournaments coming up like the ESL EMS II.

Some weeks have past since the ESL announced a regularly Cup Series for ET: Quake Wars and asked all of you for your opinion. Now, we are happy to present you the result of the vote and the first edition of our Cup Series. This Sunday evening the European ET: Quake Wars section will celebrate the new year with an ET: Quake Wars 6on6 New Years Night Cup as well as nearly all other ESL Games. Read on for details on the cup, for all information on the official result of the vote please check the ESL Newspost.

• Sign Up
• Cup Page
• Participants
• ESL Newspost
• All ESL New Year NightCups

2008 - A year to call it an end for ET? A year to make it final and to change to another game? We will do our best to keep you at your beloved Enemy Territory and to bring some competition to your Sunday evening to celbrate the "Happy New Year" together with your opponents in the upcoming cup. The cup will start at 18.00 CET with 16 participants in a knockout bracket (single elimination) at this Sunday evening. Every match will be played in Best-Of-3 while the first map is forced and the second and third maps are loser's choice.
:: Sign Up
:: Check In
:: Participants
:: ESL Newspost

War§ow has been picked the best free deathmatch shooter by Linux-Gamers subsequently the article appeared on Slashdot which caused the Warsow website to be hammered by incoming Slashdotters.

The game was competing versus mods such as Alien Arena and Open Arena but was picked due to its;

Quote

The high quality art direction, the implementation of some simple yet effective original ideas, combined with the refined Quake gameplay leaves War§ow the champion of the pack for free software shooters. Warsow was able to do what many free software projects strive for, take an established concept, clearly implement additional original ideas, refine the core of the project, and then present it in a very professional way.

This marks yet another moment in the recognition of the War§ow and the community that surrounds it, it also means that we can expect an influx of new players to join the scene.

In addition there is a passing reference to Crossfire.

Quote

Competitive gaming is a key part of wSw and there exists a very large competitive community, for example, an international LAN competition was hosted in 2007.

The full article from Linux-Gamers
The Slashdot page

After a high profile spat the 4kings roster had a quiet but successful QCUP placing third for the organisation. Now refreshed after the holiday period the side are ready to announce their new and improved line up with some familiar Call of Duty faces in the team.

Sam “corp” Peoples
Phil “palmz” Palmer
Lee “paina” Hannah
Ben “benz1ne” Bell
Andy “RcO” Hesky
Zack “Skipz” Jones

The side has a distinct Dignitas flavour to the roster with Palmz, skipz and ben all former team mates under the Dignitas brand. It is also a royal return for pain who was a pickup from supermen to 4kings back in Call of Duty 1, however he is also renewing his relationship with palmz and Rco who teamed up in Victum CoD2.

Corp outlined his plans for European Domination on 4kings website;

Quote

After the decision to change the original five members of the 4Kings team, Phil and I had to create a new lineup that would give us the potential and stability needed to succeed. Using the CrossfireQcup as a way to test the new lineup, and achieving a good 3rd place despite all problems, we decided that this was our best choice. Keeping the lineup fully UK was a hard task but the mix of old school players and fresh blood played exceedingly well together very quickly. CDC4 will be the first real test for the team so we have a good length of time to fill over any cracks and we look forward to dominating Europe.

#4kings - Four-Kings.com

:: Related

Palmz Interview

Today a new Call of Duty roster has come together for the new year featuring some familiar names from the games past. Looking to build and work the side have pooled resources from many games in order to find the best lineup, and this is what they came up with;

Clint "deppuh" van Os - ex TmG / H2k
Siôn "sion" Payne - ex syK
Piotr "reaktiv" Przylubski - ex FLS
Joonas "soppaj" Sorkio - KMC
Florian "gifty" Gunzenhauser ex zP / KiH

deppuh gave Crossfire this statement;

Quote

We decided to start something new, searching far and wide for a group of fat, eager and sexy gamers. After some photo shoots and interviews eventually it came together, it may be a complete mix of nations but the essential communication is still there accompanied with having fun! All of us have experience throughout the cod-scene, a few such as deppuh, reaktiv and sion have been playing this appalling game since cod-1. The only player lacking cod experience is gifty, but he has certain potential in skills and ability which he picked up while playing at a high level in ET. Achieving highly online and many LAN events including QuakeCon 2006 in Dallas. We still have a long way to go in terms of practice, which we will work on during this new year. If there are any super-model agents out there, we are ready and waiting, with thong experience.

You can find them in #iuro

Long time Call of Duty hotshots Roskilde were surprisingly quiet in the early month of Call of Duty 4, however with Christmas and New Year now out of the way the nation of Denmark has one more thing to cheer for and that is the return of Roskilde!

Team Leader Kenneth "fRiJeC" Jensen has produced this statement for the press;

Quote

For some time we have been trying to find a suitable lineup for our COD4 squad and tested a fair amount of new and old players, but finally we have found a solution we were satisfied with. After Trixy disappeared, Champ didn’t have COD4 and played WoW instead, we had some trouble fielding a team. The first player to present is Mik “Champ” Bødtker who has returned from WoW since he got us convinced WoW was over for him, we’re happy to have him back as he is a nice asset for the future. The 2nd player is a good friend of mine Mads “Hmz” Lauridsen, who’ve returned to COD4 with a great attitude and hunger to reach the top in this game. The 5 main players haven’t been selected yet, but it will be set over the next few weeks. I have no doubt we’ll cause some damage with this all Danish lineup. So far you’ll see us in action at Crossfire #4 and hopefully i33 too, besides those events we’ll participate in a few selected online cups. To prepare ourselves for the upcoming months, we’ll be bootcamping at our clubhouse 11-13th of January.

Kenneth “fRiJeC” Jensen
André “R3CoR” Jensen
Brian “woomzy” Bie
Lars-Michael “LM” Sydow
Mathias “adagio” Braun
Mads “Hmz” Lauridsen
Mik “Champ” Bødtker

Roskilde-esports.dk
#roskilde-esport