What came out..

After 2 years, the upper executives discovered that some information the CEO stated, in their opinion is false. First and foremost, the XPL is not a LLC or any type of company (claimed to be registered in the state of New York), so the agreements with sponsers to a non-existent entity are a bit hard to swallow when it was finally discovered.

CoD Season 1 - Physical prizes that were booked to be sent out, it got to be about 60 days late and they were not sent out. Explanation given (at day 90), had a flood in the house where things were stored, ordered new prizes from the sponsor (Steelseries) to ship out, it will be delayed. This was about 6 months, we got a story about something being wrapped up in customs, which may or may nto be true, but it has been six months.

League of legends - Promised prizes, one of the staff at XPL put his own money in to cover 50% of the prizes. This money apparently has disappeared into the abyss.

CS16/CSS - Money prizes - these were not payed out or anything, stated "30 days" now its May 27th was the last day of game play, he just changed the rule to 90 days as you can see in the IRC thread above.

So, what does all this mean for TF2.. Well, one of the sponsors (MythLogic) as actually a friend of mine for the past 10 years and said he committed to getting things to the league so I know tangible prizes are in fact there for use by the league. So I felt relatively secure in thinking the tangible pieces were there will get paid out for TF2. However, as everything is coming to light, I have some concerns.

Putting it this way, I cannot guarantee the promised prizes in TF2 will ever be payed. Now will that stop teams from playing and so forth, not at all, the matches will hopefully be scheduled by someone, and you can play it with the assumption a prize may in fact never materialize. (I am kind of anticipating legal issues with some of the sponsor companies honestly) So that being said, I resigned from XPL effective about an hour ago.

No other way to put it, but I feel you were all misled with me as the mouth piece. And for that I deeply apologize to all. Not much more I can say.

How I found out all the information for those that are curious, I was watching the support tickets, then hopped into my teams match to basically get our clocks cleaned, dropped into IRC to see the staff channel actually having activity, I log into the forums to see most of the senior management has chosen to resign. I then spent the rest of the evening talking to everyone and basically comparing notes with the various other staff (now former) staff members. As I got some basic info, the public #xpleague channel was featuring the CEO basically being called out to the carpet on these issues by Dana. (Former CSS Manager) so I dropped into #tf2scrim and told people to hop in and see it as it happens. Dana took the IRC chat log and posted on her website which is linked above.

That being said, I have not had a chance to talk to the other TF2 staff so we will see how things go and if they choose to continue to work and get the matches scheduled and so forth. We had allt he matched mapped out for the rest of the season. Can XPL still be successful with TF2, yes it is possible, but not with me being part of it. It really will depend on what all the players decide. do you wish play some matches, have a good time, go for it, if you were in it mainly for the prize money, I would probably recommend re-thinking that.

Again, I apologize for all this.

Last Monday, the Cevo-A finals took place between 22d and Knockout Gaming. The match was a best of format. The two picked maps were Badlands and Yukon.

Badlands was… A quick match. 22d came out strong, wiping K0 gaming at mid. They easily captured spire and moved on to last. Knockout gaming seemed to wake up with a clutch last defence, but in the end it faded.
This pattern seemed to be the story of the game. 22d came out fighting and mid and Knockout was forced to retreat several times into choke, not even being ABLE to fight for mid. Goldy forced several early ubers, proving his worth on the new 22d roster.

It wasn’t all 22d, though. After losing 4 rounds straight, Knockout finally pulled something together. They won two rounds in a row, making the score 4-2 in favor of 22d. The rally was largely due to Novice’s great soldier skills. He played a very good match, even with 22d was steamrolling.

In round 7,  22d went back to basics and played to win. They wiped Knockout at mid, and made quick work of last, winning 5-2 in only 17 minutes.

Next the two teams moved to Yukon. Goldy for 22d came out with some MAJOR work as sniper. He got several kills during this match, and for most of the first half, was leading the team in points.

Knockout wasn’t done, though. They threw together a very good defense on last, in which Novice forced Tragic to drop an uber with some fancy rocket jumps. Knockout made a good push, but in the end, it wasn’t enough.

Yukon was sloppy for both teams though, and this primarily showed in the second half. 22d was leading 4-0 going into half, just needing one more win to secure the championship. Both teams dropped several players to sticky traps and the round became a standstill. Neither team could seem to get up uber, but when they did, they weren’t able to do much with it. After 11 minutes, knockout gaming squeezed out a win.

After the loss, Tragic pulled the team together and reconsidered their strategies. They played like a much better team going into round 6 and Knockout gaming was forced into submission. 22d are the new Cevo-A champions, winning Yukon 5-1.

Though Knockout gaming got beat, I’d like to say they did have several good moments and pushes as a team, often times coming back from a last defense to get at least mid. They took 3 rounds away from a team that has only lost 8 all season.

But 22d did prove why they were undefeated this season. They were a force to be reckoned with, and ALL of their players looked consistently strong. Especially Green with his sick-nasty Yukon jumps.

It was a great match, and I’m looking forward to seeing these two teams in the future!

Knockout Gaming is:

Noobina
Defiance
Broses
Bastard
DooG
Novice

22d is:

Tragic
Terminator
Green
Pt_
Flappy
Goldy