DOUBLE RAINBOW, OMG. CEVO AND ESEA RAINBOWS. IT'S SO INTENSE.
Right, now that the meme is out of my system, I do want to put some thoughts down on the imminent CEVO Season 6 and the questionable ESEA Season 7. While both leagues are in the sign-up stages still, I somehow feel super psyched up for this next season. Perhaps it has something to do with being able to help out TGBF.tv for this upcoming season, but perhaps it's just because I liek mudkipz—I MEAN—teh TF2. YOU DECIDE!
Hit the jump to get the low-down of the current state of affairs in CEVO and ESEA.
CEVO S6 Deadline This Sunday
CEVO TF2 manager CEVO|Clay announced last week, when signups were supposed to terminate, that registration would be extended one week so that teams who were considering to apply to the league's Main division would commit to an application. He also noted that the response for the league's Professional and Amateur groups were substantial enough to warrant praise in the same news post.
CEVO-M presently has nine teams registered, with five teams listed as not ready. CEVO-A has a whopping 158 teams at the time of this article, with plenty teams not marked as ready. CEVO-M comparatively has only eight teams listed with only two of them marked as ready for S6.
Teams interested in applying for CEVO-M need to have experience in the competitive scene and should be able to commit for the whole season. Prospective teams would need to create a CEVO-A roster, have at least five players join it, and complete the application in the CEVO control panel. If the application isn't showing up, contact CEVO|Clay via email (gclay [at] cevo.com) with a reasonable application.
I'm very hopeful that CEVO S6 will be a great success, especially with the raw number of teams currently registered in the league… which brings me to the sad state of affairs that is…
The ESEA Season 7 Dilemma
I'm not going to even attempt to beat the dead horse that is essentially ESEA's lack of faith in the competitive TF2 community, but I'll just stick to the facts at this point.
The fate of the entire league rests on wether or not its Open division can garner the 50-team ready mandate that ESEA owner lpkane gave with the announcement of S7. At present, this fate seems more overwhelming than it does possible. Compared to previous seasons, the requirement isn't that unreasonable, but the drama and subsequent flamewar between lpkane and members of the community hurt the relationship between ESEA and the competitive community as a whole.
With this understanding, and two weeks left until ESEA's deadline for registrations, only 16 teams have bothered to register for ESEA-O and none of those teams have met the league's requirements to play in the upcoming season. Making the whole situation more difficult is the ineligibility of teams seeded in S6's postseason playoffs to rejoin the Open division. Instead of bolstering the likelihood of S7 coming to pass, they are forced to remain in the newly-established Intermediate division.
Unless something picks up in the next couple of weeks, I think it's safe to say that what could be argued as North American TF2's premier pay-to-play league will be no more.
In summary…
ESEA's chances of being held for a seventh season are very slim, most notable by the sheer quantity of teams lining up to participate in CEVO S6. While some teams seem to be double-booking themselves for both leagues, the lack of interest in one of the cornerstones of NA TF2 appears to be all but departed already.
Do you think CEVO's massive amount of sign-ups valid ates that the community is over with ESEA? Do you think ESEA is bluffing about axing its TF2 divisions? Keep the discussion happening by leaving a comment below or via Twitter by mentioning @CommunityFT in your tweet. You can also find me on Twitter as @bcarr.
Comments
Seriously, this shit has got to stop.
42 in open + 8 in IM = 50, confirmed by killing several times now.
I could be wrong, but I understand it that invite does not count for the 50, so how many teams are expected in invite, remember last season there was not 50 teams even if you included invite, so it really will hinge on how big invite is planned to be.
50 teams = ESEA-O + ESEA-IM
So it doesnt really matter where the placing ESEA-O playoffs teams from last season end up, they're counted.
I've confirmed this with Killing.
No. basically that the pay-to-play means nothing toward the professionalism of the participants. A DBag who participates in a free league would still be a d-bag if we was in a pay for play league.
Quoting bcarr:
Yeah, the big issue with those type of organizations is the time it takes to reach maturity vs. the lifespan of your average game. Organizing something like that honestly is relatively easy, but I just don't see it coming to any fruition since after those post interest has already basically died off.
So, essentially you're suggesting that:
NA comp TF2 = douchebags
NA comp TF2 with conduct policies = douchebags
EU comp TF2 = gentlemen/snarky fellows
Am I correct?
And I believe Schetter has suggested the creation of a player's union of some sort, before—and even he's pessimistic about its overall effect, if I'm not mistaken.
I never bought into the fact that the key to professionalism was making players buy into it with money.. For eample:
TWL - Douchebag
CEVO-A - Douchbag
ESEA - Douchbag who spent money
If you want to enforce professionalism , you need to have rules in the books like ESL does about player conduct etc and enforce it, but frankly, it's not worth the hassle and not realistically possible in the current model of things.
You'd need a governing body and participating teams that elect to follow the governing body. (NCAA and the various colleges as far as relationship)
THen the leagues/conference can do their own thing, but there would be general guidelines to be held. Again, this model simply does not exist in e-sports that I am aware of.
The concept of ESEA was to have a profitable venture into TF2 within a reasonable amount of time. It simply didn't happen to their expectations, so they are giving the community a heads up saying this is what we need or we are done with it.
THe big issue is the premium money to get into ESEA and play for TF2 really doesn't buy you anything at all. The Scrimmod is barely used form what I can see based on the forums. The league fees are not bad but you still basically need your own server to scrim, practice as it stands for the majority of teams, so the added expense of premium is kinda meh for a casual style game.
My theory? Intermediate won't exist and they will combine it back into open to give us a season 7. Standard invite and open.
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