This weekend the Level7 OpenCup took place, a Call of Duty 4 LAN event housing 18 Finnish Call of Duty 4 teams including big names such as Epsilon, Team Logitech and k1ck.fi. After Logitech and Epsilon both ended 9/16th last week at the Crossfire Devotii Challenge 4 a large part of the community was looking forward to finally see these two big names clash against each other.

The results in the group stage were pretty straightforward, in group A Insidae took first and Emprisa took second, in group B the first position was taken by Afterlife and F*Angry Policemen took the 2nd place, group C was won by Epsilon eSports and kooma247 took second and finally group D was won by k1ck eSports while Logitech took second. The most surprising result during the group stage was probably k1ck winning versus Logitech 13 to 10.

Group rankingGroup A:
1. Insidae
2. Emprisa
3. station57
4. Thunder.Gaming
5. ZenGarden

Group B:
1. Afterlife
2. F*Angry Policemen
3. dtekt eSports
4. TITANS
5. pelotomat

Group C:
1. Epsilon eSports
2. kooma247
3. konna
4. thrice

Group D:
1. k1ck eSports club (.fi)
2. Team Logitech
3. Random Gaming
4. WHOIS?

Now it was time for the playoffs, the tournament featured a double elimination bracket. Some interesting results took place such as Emprisa beating Epsilon eSports, Loitech bashing Afterlife 13 to 1 and also k1ck playing a losers bracket match of their life and winning 13-3 versus the Epsilon guys kicking them out of the tournament.

Playoff resultsWinners bracket round 1
Team Logitech [13:04] Insidae
Afterlife [13:07] kooma247
Eprisa [13:07] k1ck
Epsilon [13:06] FAP

Losers bracket round 1
Insidae [13:05] kooma247
k1ck [13:09] FAP

Winners bracket round 2
Logitech [13:01] Afterlife
Emprisa [13:09] Epsilon

Losers bracket round 2
Epsilon [13:09] Insidae
k1ck [13:09] Afterlife

Winners bracket final
Logitech [13:05] Emprisa

Losers bracket round 3
k1ck [13:03] Epsilon

Losers bracket final
k1ck [13:03] Emprisa

After k1ck comfortably beat Emprisa in the losers bracket final it was time for the grand final between k1ck and Logitech. In the group stage Logitech were surprised by a strong k1ck eSports side, would they be able to take down k1ck in the grand final? The answer is yes!

Later this week the Official competition mod for Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars created by SplashDamage will enter beta stage. Though its not 100% sure what kind of beta, a public beta is most likely the case. The mod touches various aspects of the game including some minor gameplay changes, though most features are controllable by the user.

The mod source code will also be released, this means mod designers can continue on working on improving the official pro mod with their own features!

SD community manager Badman has revealed some of the features this mod offers;

Quote by feature list

* Added cvar-based limits for classes, weapons, deployables, and mines.
* Added ability to permanently enable XP unlocks such as Faster Sprint, Grenade Launcher, Reduced Weapon Spread, Extra Clip, and Scoped Assault Rifle.
* Added pause functionality: Teams can call time-outs, and Admins can pause and unpause the game.
* Added ability to toggle camera between killer and nearby medics when unconscious.
* Added ability to automatically record demos and take screenshots of scoreboards.
* Added ability to scale pitch and yaw values for every vehicle to fully customize mouse sensitivity.

Team Svea Royale had a great career in Call of Duty 2 playing in competitions such as the EuroCup and even winning the major Wonderbase LAN. In Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare they continued their success as part of EYEBALLERs, however after having recently stepped out of EYEBALLERS because of issues with the management the team has now found a home in the well known multigaming organization fnatic!

The new fnatic CoD4 lineup:
Martin "mintR" Röjder
Daniel "tidde" Asp
Mikael "Zsilts" Smedberg
Markus "Odyx" Nilsson
Johnny "klanne" Wahlqvist
Rickard "zEm" Intveld (Inactive)

OVERLOAd Gaming is proud to announce its latest Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory team, one which will attend European's largest event; the Crossfire Devotii Challenge 4 under its banner. The team is well known for ending 4th at the last CDC3 and getting an direct invite to compete at the upcoming CDC4, it is composed of Dutch players.

You probably guessed who we're talking about already, however while the following names are probably well known for the players from the Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory scene we will shortly introduce them for those who are not. We thank BuLL for the great player descriptions.

Today SplashDamage is proud to release the beta version of the Software Developement Kit for their recently released title Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars. With this tool mappers and modders will find themselves in heaven being able to edit every aspect of the game.

As announced earlier the SDK contains the following:
- All the tools used to develop the game
- Game source code
- Example maps and reference maps
- Original game scripts and definition files, which can most likely be used to completely change the way the game is played
- A selection of models and example animations

Later this week SplashDamage will release a full development wiki which the company has been working on since they started developing the game. Here you will find everything you need to know to get yourself starting with the ET:QW SDK.

The full version of the SDK is still being worked upon and will include megatextures and game textures as well. Currently the game textures are already included in the game itself and can be loaded from there.

You can download the SDK from the following mirrors:
Filefront
PlanetQuakeWars
Internode
Official torrent

Happy modding / mapping!

SplashDamage have a special ET:QW modding and mapping board on the ET:QW Community Forums, if you find any bugs in the program or know some nice features to add you are welcome to post these.

SplashDamage has today announced they are almost ready to unleash the Software Development Kit among the code and design monkeys so they can start working on their very own ET:QW modifications and maps. The SDK will be released in beta state at first, which will exist out of the following components:

- All the tools used to develop the game
- Game source code
- Example maps and reference maps
- Original game scripts and definition files, which can most likely be used to completely change the way the game is played
- A selection of models and example animations

Some of you might have noticed the lack of megatexture media and regular game textures, releasing these has been delayed a bit but will surely be present in the final version of the SDK. However this does not mean there are no textures available, you can import megatextures and regular game textures which are used in the game itself.

The ET:QW SDK is currently going through some final testing and will be available for download very soon.

Source

After a nice performance at the CoD-Gamer LAN just a few days ago the former Call of Duty 2 top team and WSVG Dallas winners TeK-9 announced two players have dropped from the team. First is the German top player L-KiNG, who teamed up with TeK-9 at the beginning of this year after leaving the Call of Duty legends Team SPEEDLINK. His departure from TeK-9 is explained because of a lack in motivation for now. The second player is the Dutch Call of Duty 2 star haya, who joined TeK-9 in April this year after his former team suXus eSports fell apart. haya quits professional gaming to focus more on real life commitments.

For now TeK-9 have not announced any new players joining up with the team, so they will continue with the following lineup:
davy
knaller
OZWALD

www.tek-9.net

Another well known team which moved to Call of Duty 4 is Reason Gaming, however they too faced some lineup issues. Reason Gaming's player & former Team Dignitas sniper trainee as well as Reason Gaming oldskooler torsh have announced to have no interest in playing Call of Duty 4 competitively. To fill up the slots left by these two top players Reason Gaming have announced they will be adding former Team Dignitas powerhouse dales and former Team eSoureUK player vasquez. Last but possibly not least they will be adding a former Soldier of Fortune 2 top player, rzE.

After these changes the lineup of Reason Gaming becomes as following:
Karl
benz1ne
NiGGLE
dales
vasquez
rzE

www.reason-gaming.net

It will not be very surprising if other former Call of Duty 2 top teams make changes to their lineups, CoD4 is a new game after all and some players lack motivation, skill or interest in this new title. At the same time players from various other games such as SoF2, W:ET, CS(S) and Battlefield will get a chance to prove themselves worthy of playing among the Call of Duty 4 top.

This weekend the second big Call of Duty 4 LAN took place, the CoD-Gamer.net LAN
in the milk LAN centre in Paris, France. The competition is sponsored by Activision and offers the winner € 3000,- in cash while other teams have the chance to win products sponsored by Razer and QPAD.

Without many surprises but still a great performance winner bracket leaders H2k Gaming win the CoD-Gamer LAN taking down TeK-9 Networks in a very close grand final. The end result was 14:12 in favor for H2k Gaming.

Final ranking is as following:
H2k Gaming
TeK-9 Networks
oXmoze
4. The Last Resort
5/6 dRu
5/6 don'Touch

When you talk about W:ET in competition there is one major element which pops in your mind: StopWatch. The greatest gamemode a game has ever seen in my opinion, and possibly the reason why Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory have been such popular games in online competitions. Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars, the spiritual successor of W:ET, features this popular game mode as well, however in a soon to come out patch, SplashDamage will twist the game mode around in a way which could either be loved, or hated in competition.

The following quote was taken out of an article announcing the upcoming update to the game:

Quote by Locki, ownder of SplashDamage and lead developer on Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars

StopWatch mode now features a bit of added logic code to better deal with ties. If neither team wins the map outright, the team that progressed further through the objectives gets the win. While this is the only StopWatch improvement in this update, we have a separate push to add lots more features to tournament support overall. More on that in another Blog.

A great move by SplashDamage to improve competition, or a major hit in the face for a team which just got fullholded at the first stage of a map? Only time will tell.

Just a week after its release Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars is already shining as competitive game. Today ClanBase has announced to be partnering up with Activision to present the first Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars OpenCup. With the cooperation with Activision, a prizepot of € 4000,- has become available for the winners of the cup.

The prizepool will be spread among the winning team as following:
€ 2000,-
€ 1250.-
€ 500,-
4th € 250,-

110 teams have already signed up for the competition, among them are top teams such as Team SPEEDLINK, EYEBALLERS, Team Dignitas, OCRANA and Copenhagen eSport.