A Bleak Future for Competitive COD

After Infinity Ward effectively blind-sided the Call of Duty 4 competitive community with its No Dedicated Servers bombshell, we as a community were left in utter shock and turmoil. Call of Duty 4 was by far the most successful game of the series in terms of drawing in a large amount of players, sponsors, teams, tournaments, and LANs, and much of the community expected the same results with Modern Warfare 2 but on a much grander scale. We knew Modern Warfare 2 was going to be huge but it soon became abundantly clear that Modern Warfare 2 would meet no such expectations. Instead the community was left in limbo with an unplayable game directly in front of us, a stale 2 year old game behind us, and World at War in a far away corner where many of us didn't even want to look. Thus the question was raised. "What now?"

Many players advocated Modern Warfare 2 regardless stating that IWnet was indeed playable and all we had to do was simply wait for a patch to allow for the recording of demos, which is an absolute must for any competitive game. Others put forth World at War as a solution offering small positives such as a fresh game and how Treyarch had fixed many of the bugs and grievances we initially had with the game. Even more absurd was the movement to return to the "glory days" of Call of Duty 2. In short, the community was a madhouse until the CEVO|Tannehill announced the NZXT Holiday Tournament for Call of Duty 4 with a prize pot of $1500.

However this is nothing more than a small band-aid on a big wound. The NZXT Tournament only received 48 teams which pales in comparison to the previous season of CEVO which saw more than a hundred teams and a combined prize pot of $5000 between the amateur and professional division. Even right now community figureheads are attempting to keep the game alive by hosting another LAN in February 2010 for CoD4 called NERV 3 yet the team turnout is expected to be no more than 16.

Thus the future of the Call of Duty Competitive community is bleak at best. As teams become eliminated from the NZXT tournament what reason will they have to continue to play? There is an extremely small number of teams committed to NERV 3 but what comes after early February? There are other highly anticipated games which WILL offer dedicated servers and fresh gameplay which will definitely draw players towards it. One such game is Bad Company 2 which is slated for release in March of 2010. It is my belief that the Call of Duty 4 community will continue to be whittled away until there is simply nothing left. Players will continue to disappear in obscurity until there is nobody left to proclaim themselves as part of the Call of Duty community.

Pure Gaming Attending Cod4 European Lans in Summer 2009

Pure Gaming will be representing North America this summer as the only team to cross the Atlantic for the 2009 European Lan season. Pure will be attending two events, Outpost On Fire and The-eXperience for a total of 16,000 € and additional hardware on the line. The first event, Outpost On Fire, is located in Antwerp, Belgium and will take place on July 24-26 against some of Europes finest. Currently there are 28 teams pre-payed as of now and a cash purse of 6,000 €, but if the number of teams reaches 32 then the cash pot will be raised to 8,000 €.

The next event, known as The-eXperience, is the bigger of the two and is possibly one of the most anticipated European events of the summer. On the 29th of July "the eXperience" will start the cod4 tournament in Roskilde, Denmark. So far, over 28 teams from all over the world have signed up and paid for the event. On the site www.the-experience.dk you can see all the teams planning to attend with only pureEsports coming from the USA. With over 10,000 € and hardware riding on this event alone, you will be sure to see some of the best cod4 teams from around the world attending this event and giving it their all.

The current pureEsports roster is as follows:

Josh “Glad” Adams
Eric "Snatch" Brinkley
Alexander "Malex" Solis
Taylor "Taylor" Sheridan
Alex "flak" Lasselle

Call of Duty: World at War - A CoD4 Mod

With many people waiting in anticipation for the newest addition to the Call of Duty franchise known as Call of Duty: World at War, I keep hearing of just how great it will be with people talking it up like its going to be the greatest installment since Call of Duty 1.

The question I have to ask is WHY?

I recently wrote an article explaining that Call of Duty: World at War will be a CoD4 Mod and how you are going to be paying $50 for Call of Duty 4 with WW2 models. This new game will be using the Call of Duty 4 Engine (confirmed) and the majority of the perks are coming straight from its predecessor with only a few new additions. Sure they are adding vehicle warfare but one of the things I loved about the Call of Duty series was the intense, up-close and personal firefights that came with the relatively small maps. It just seems to me this game is trying to capitalize on us with anyway they can.

Another big complaint I have with this game is how its mimicking Call of Duty 4, and anyone who has ever played the game knows how noob-friendly it is. From the super-fast weapon firing rates, perks like martyrdom and sonic boom, regen, lack of recoil, helicopters, and m203's, the game caters to the player in every possible way that my grandmother could consistently frag me. Call of Duty: WaW will be exactly like this but with more bushes and grass for idiots to hide in and now they can also drive tanks.

Who knows, maybe I'm just putting down the game because I was disappointed with how Call of Duty 4 turned out. I mean, the singleplayer was amazing, and sure I had a blast playing multiplayer when it first came out, but the more you play it the more you realize that CoD4 was only made for the masses of ps3 and xbox players, and can easily be identified as such when you look at how the game actually plays. How any joe-nobody can kill you regardless of whether you are a veteran of the series or he just picked up the game yesterday. That's just how the game was made and its also what makes me disappointed about it.

NVISION 2008 and GeForce LAN

One of the biggest and most anticipated events this summer is the NVISION 2008 event which will feature not only just games but will be a first-ever visual computing mega-event. This even is gathering top visual computing professionals and specialist, professional gamers, product artists and designers, and cutting edge technological developers and researchers. Thousands of engineers, designers, developers, researchers, artists, enthusiasts, gamers, film makers, business professionals, and consumers from around the world are expected to attend and this is a 3 day event that any computer enthusiast doesn't want to miss.

I will personally be in attendance at this event for the GeForce LAN and the 5v5 Call of Duty 4 tournament that will be held. The turnout for this LAN is already looking to be larger than the previous NERV LAN in Pennsylvania which had 26 teams attend. There are already 16 teams confirmed for this event with many more interested in signing up.

Where: San Jose McEnery Convention Center
150 West San Carlos St., San Jose, CA 95113

When: Monday, August 25–Wednesday, August 27, 2008

How much: $50.00 on or Before June 1 (Early Bird Ticket)
$65.00 June 2 through August 27 (Standard Ticket)

Frag Dominant Back with New Roster

Due to Alec "s1refrosty" Zurek's return from Australia to the North American CoD4 competitive scene, Frag Dominant has decided to return to Call of Duty 4 to sponsor his newly assembled roster. This roster is comprised of two previous Frag Dominant players, myself and jestlolk, a few players from the old guardians roster and some new faces to the CoD4 scene. We hope to build a solid and stable roster that will be able to compete with the best and are in it for the long run. Check Gotfrag for the full story on this latest roster development.

Current Frag Dominant CoD4 Roster:

Brett "brett" Crick
Alexander "MasterAlex" Solis
Chad "jestlolk" Hansen
Alec "s1refrosty" Zurek
Zach "Holt" Holt
Mark "Benn1tt" Bennitt
Ray "rayZer" Sheehan

Frag Dominant CoD4 Division

The most recent team I have joined for Call of Duty 4 series to finish out the current Cevo-P season and to compete in future LANs is called Frag Dominant. We are currently the #3 seed in the Cevo-P Season 1 playoffs with a recent loss to MoB Gaming placing us in the lower bracket. Our next match is scheduled for April 24th and from the looks of it we will most likely play the winners of EG vs. MoB. This is a relatively new roster and we hope to finish the Cevo-P season strong as well as have a good showing at NERV 2.

Current Roster:

Charly "BUNz" Bun
Ryan "twmbly" Twombley
Casey "CaseMan" Garber
Alex "MasterAlex" Solis
Chad "jestlolk" Hansen

Call of Duty 4 - First Strike Xfire Event

Xfire is hosting the first officially sponsored Call of Duty 4 Tournament Called First Strike. This is a free tournament opened to all North American players and is scheduled for November 15-21.
I will personally be competing in this tournament with Team 50 Calibre and hope to go far in the tournament.

The prizes include a Voodoo Omen Gaming PC (priced at $7,400) for 1st place and a XFX NVIDIA Video Cards (specs TBA) for 2nd place. A Professional Series Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty will be rewarded to 3rd place and Fatal1ty Gaming Headset will be rewarded to 4th place respectively.

This is good news for the Call of Duty 4 competitive scene as it shows a bright future for the game seeing as it has been sponsored by Xfire within the first week of release.