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For those in the competitive gaming community, the place to be this summer is in Europe. The Old World is hosting the biggest and most lucrative LANs in CoD4 and some of the best North American teams are heading back to the land of their forefathers to compete for some of that very lucre.
To provide you with a preview of the LANs we have invited some of the best players in North America to talk about their upcoming trips.
Ted (w!$eGuY) from The Evil Geniuses and Joe (Nabore) from Team Pandemic are on the webcast.
As well, we have Call of Duty writer Richard Armstrong (_evan) who blogs about competitive CoD4 in Europe at SK-Gaming.com.
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As for the LANS, here they are...
1. Right off the bat is the Antwerp eSports Festival, AEF, held in Antwerp (Belgium). It takes place between the 25th and 27th of July 2008, with a total of €50,000 in prizes.
http://www.esportsfestival.com/
2. the-eXperience (Denmark) July31st to August 3rd with prizes upward of 25.000,00 €
An excellent article by Richard on this LAN can be found here. You can learn more about the-eXperience here:
http://www.the-experience.dk/
3. I34 at Stoneleigh Park in the UK takes place on the 8th to 11th of August, with a slightly smaller cash payout of €12,000 in prizes
http://i34.multiplay.co.uk/tournaments/cod4/
Finally, we add a Spanish touch with:
4. Palma de Mallorca Spain, from August 10th to the 16th
http://www.balearikus-party.org/
Sadly, we discover that the European pundits still have an anti-North American bias. Richard gives us a possibly stereotypical view of the teams on this side of the pond as ones that overly rely on aggression and do not match up to the patience and intelligence shown by the Euro squads.
Let's hope that EG and Team Pandemic will change that cliche' forever.
If you want to weigh in on the NA/Europe controversy, tell us what you think here: post here
How will the North American teams like EG and Pandemic do? What teams will vie for CoD4 supremacy? Find out by listening to the webcast.
BASH 71: SHOW NOTES click on the "read more" link below.
BASH 71 SHOW NOTES:
This week we're going to be talking about the competitive CoD4
community again, specifically, there are some very large European LANs
coming up in July and August and we thought we would invite a few of
the competitive guys to come on and discuss them and the European CoD4
scene in general. To help us do that, let me introduce two guys who
will be representing their teams and North America over there in Europe.
From Team Pandemic, a BASH show regular it's Joe aka Nabore and from
the Evil Geniuses, we just had him on a few episodes ago it's Ted aka
w!$eGuy.
Now, to help us understand the CoD4 landscape in Europe, we have
brought on an authority on the competitive community over there,
One of the contributing writers to sk-gaming.com he writes about CoD4
all the time, he goes by the handle _evan, we have Richard Armstrong on
the program.
BS: Where are you from Richard? I know you from sk-gaming.com
and gotfrag.com, tell us a little bit about yourself? How did you get
interested in competitive gaming and especially the journalistic side
of it.
BS: There are more than a few LANs in Europe this year. Let's find out which of them our guests will be attending?
BS: Discuss the locations of the LANs in some detail...
a) specifically the payouts.
b) is the importance of the LAN simply a function of the prize money?
c) which lans are BYOC (bring your own computer)
d) does the LAN spacing hurt the NA teams? Can you get over the jetlag to be effective over there?
BS: Nabore, have you been to a lot of Euro Lans?
BS: Ted, you were at I33, what's the difference between an I33 and a NERV for example?
BS: Why is the CoD scene is Europe so strong? It was strong in
CoD2 and now apparently so is CoD4 (judging by the prize money of these
LANs).
BS:
a) How many North American teams are going to Europe?
b) Why haven't European teams come to NA for CoD4?
BS: What rulesets will be used in Europe? How does this ruleset
differ from the NA rulesets in the major NA-ican tournies? Why has it
taken so long to achieve trans-atlantic agreement on rulesets?
BS: Ted/Joe,
a) do you like the European rulesets? what could be improved?
b) Are there any differences in the style of play between Europe and NA?
Richard, any noticeable differences in European styles?
BS: Is online gaming in Europe better than in NA? Discuss ISP fees/pings...etc.
BS: Richard, for the North American audience that does not follow the European scene.
Give us a little scouting report on the top teams that will be coming to the LANs (recent tournament successes, rosters...etc):
a) TOP TEN
From gotfrag.com (Take after I33)
10 United Kingdom EXABYTE
9 Denmark Roskilde Ravens
8 Belgium LowLandLions
7 Germany SK-Gaming
6 Belgium TEK9 Networks
5 France H2k.Qpad
4 Czech Republic eSuba
3 United Kingdom Team Dignitas
2 Sweden fnatic
1 United Kingdom Meet Your Makers
BS:
a) Who are the odds on favorite to win these LANs?
b) How will the North American teams do at the LANs?
Here is current television commercial for the Antwerp eSports Festival:
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