CEVO has just received word from Valve's TF2 development team that the Amateur division champions will get to play against a 6-man Valve team as their prize for winning the division. After the Amateur finals match is completed, the winning team will suit up one more time to take on the makers of Team Fortress 2.

In the communication to CEVO, the Valve TF2 development team claims that the match will be a slaughter but we can't reveal who they think will be slaughtered. Indeed, CEVO-A TF2 soldiers, take this as a challenge! The pride of the community rests on the shoulders of the CEVO-A champions.

http://www.cevo.com/?page=forum&func=viewthread&id=10615&forumID=2

I accidentally destroyed my first draft of this post (Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!), so this will be a little more brief than before. Then apparently didn't publish this correctly, so there goes my section bout that Euro match yesterday.

If you haven't seen the TF2Lobby Champ thread over at GotFrag, take a second and read through it. Huge props to CB for organizing it and everyone who assisted in making this happen. Amazing dedication from some of the players, especially the 3 who made it 37 Hours (Loronix, Brute, and Arizona). I'm glad nobody died.

Speaking of dying, there's gonna be a lot of virtual deaths this weekend at the ESEA-Invite LAN! #1 seed Complexity opens against #4 Nexus Gaming while eMg faces Blight.Fanom. Shit's gonna be huge. I'm really excited for it, although I'm not sure how much I'll be able to watch/cover it. TGBF will be trying to get casts going, with people at the least rocking out in their mumble (mumble.tgbf.tv:64742)

Wow. I just got some exciting eXtv related news, and now I'm all jazzed to do a bunch of work on it. I gotta finish this up. I've actually had some free time recently, but throwing up 4 times Monday kinda slowed me down. Lots to talk about (Engineer update, PolyCount, eSports, Community Run League), hopefully won't keep you guys waiting long.

Ad Space? In my TF2?

Otherwise known as jumping the gun.

In lieu of Schetter's recent and riveting articles, I thought it may be a good idea to hammer some things down.  I do apologize if it seems like I'm stealing your thunder.

First, I've taken it upon myself to catalog each of the maps that are found commonly in the competitive scene.  As of yet, I've completed cataloging CP_Bandlands, CP_Granary, and CP_Gravelpit. The point?  We may need a clean and organized system of referring to each of the ad spaces that Valve so conveniently left us with. Thus, instead of Red Valley Mining or Gray Gravel Co. sponsoring our beloved game, we can have real sponsors putting up their posters/sprays/billboards all around our competitive scene.  So long as their color scheme isn't too off (like incandescent rainbow), I don't think that the viewership will be too distracted.

One important note is that besides Badlands (and possibly Granary), the amount of pre-existing advertising space is quite limited.  Badlands by default has 28 spots (including some that are rarely ~ never viewed, such as within spawns), while Granary (26) has VERY few in the mid area, and those in the yard are often too high to see.  On the other hand, Gpit has an astounding 13 spots (again, including those spots that are rarely ~ never seen).  Thus, I’ve taken the liberty of highlighting certain spots around the map, which I believe would be alright for advertisements as they’re flat areas with relatively boring texture.  So long as the ads aren’t too intrusive, it shouldn’t provide too much of a distraction to the players.

General Information on CEVO S6:
http://www.cevo.com/?page=forum&func=view..

Pro Placement Tournament:
http://www.cevo.com/index.php?page=forum&..

Pro Placement Bracket:
http://www.cevo.com/playoffs/bracket.php?..

Main Invitations/Applications:
http://www.cevo.com/index.php?page=forum&..

Community Meeting on Maps/Weapons:
http://www.cevo.com/index.php?page=forum&..


Important Information:

- Three divisions: Professional, Main, and Amateur
- Professional is invite-only but teams can apply to the Pro Placement Tournament. CEVO is aiming for 16 teams in the division and 6 spots are already filled by the 4 CEVO-P teams from last season and the top 2 CEVO-M teams from last season (if they decide to play P). The remaining 10 teams will be filled through the Pro Placement Tournament.
- EG, Purple Cobras, Apoplexy Industries, Vicious Gaming TF2, Team neXzil, and blight-fanom are invited to compete in the Pro placement tournament. The other 10 teams in the Pro Placement tournament must apply.
- Main is invite and application-only. CEVO is aiming for 25 teams in the division and 7 spots are already filled by the top 4 CEVO-M teams from last season and the top 3 CEVO-A teams from last season (if they decide to play M). The remaining spots will be filled by teams that apply.
- Both Main and Professional are pay-to-play and have large cash prizes.
- Amateur is open to all participants and is free.
- Weapon bans and the map rotation will be decided through the community meeting.

Important Dates:

Registration opens: Sunday, July 11th
Community meeting: Tuesday, July 20th
Pro placement application deadline: Friday, July 23rd
End of early bird entry fee reduction period: Friday, July 23rd
1st round of Pro placement tourney: Monday, July 26th
2nd round of Pro placement tourney: Thursday, July 29th
3rd round of Pro placement tourney: Monday, August 2nd
4th round of Pro placement tourney: Thursday, August 5th
Main application deadline/Main move-ups: Thursday, August 5th
Registration closes: Sunday, August 8th

So, now that you are most likely treading the forums like a champ, probably need to know what kind of games you should be playing competitively - because believe me, no professionals would ever set foot on a payload map (unless it were say, a pubs vs. pros match), but I digress; there are actually a few different types of games that are competitively acceptable such as King Of The Hill, Attack and Defend, and the ever-so-popular 5 Capture Point maps.

As a lot of us have been waiting months for what is to be the upcoming TF2 Polycount Pack by the community over at the Polycount, they managed to confirm that the July 12th date for the announcement of the winners of the 5 week long community scramble of items has in fact been hit by the infamous "Valve Time" saying:

We found out in the 11th hour that Valve & Polycount will be announcing the Polycount Pack winners later this week, not today as previously planned. Robin gave me his word that we'd have them announced this week, since today isn't possible for them for unknown reasons...

Looks like we're stuck at the edge of our seats to see what this update will not only contain, but how it'll affect us in the competitive scene for just a little longer.

Live on July 13th at 10:00PM EDT, Pwnage.TV will be broadcasting the ESEA-Open TF2 Season 6 Lower Bracket Finals matchup between Vicious Gaming against Purple Cobras on cp_badlands. Both teams getting themselves knocked into the lower bracket Team neXziL earlier during the playoffs will be scrapping off against eachother for a rematch against neXziL in the Grand Finals.

Casting and video by Leonardo "leogeo2" Gonzalez.
#pwnage.tv on irc.gamesurge.net to get your shoutouts and predictions in live on air!

Edit: Vod is up. Check it out here.

I dont know whether to attribute this to an admin decision or just improperdancing's incessant complaining and ranting (<3 u bro) but all the playoff brackets for TWL have been changed to a more... standard one.

Now, instead of an epic fight between GGG and c.h.a.r.l.e.s. in the second round, they both have a chance at getting to the finals.

You can take a look at the brackets and read Prince's thread.

Note that all first round pairings have stayed, but their order in the brackets have changed, so all my predictions hold (big congrats to GGG beating what! on freight and granary. GG guys). Good luck to all the teams playing this week.

Tonight the CEVO Season 6 registration opened at 7 pm CST. If you are new to CEVO, you can read the below information to find out how to register (the original post on the CEVO site can be found HERE):

How To Register:

All players will need to register a personal CEVO user account to participate in CEVO events. If you do not already have one, click "register now" under the CEVO Members section of the website and follow the instructions.

Team Captains:

The Team Captain or Manager is responsible for registering their team for the event. Captains who have already created a team for another CEVO Team Fortress 2 event do not need to create a new team - you can simply join this event with your current team. To sign your current team up for this event, login to your personal user account then go to "teams"->"view my teams" (or click "Manage My Teams" on the main account page). Click on the "manage" link corresponding to your team and then click "Sign Team Up for a CEVO Event".