
Posted by Myers at 08:15 10/9/2004.
Official leagues are a funny thing aren't they? If you call a cup The Official Hexer Cup the top teams will avoid it like the plague, but if you call it The Hexer PCW Cup many of the top teams will compete. Such is fears for reputation and giving away tactics today. The Swedish eSports League has been confronted with similar problems with many top teams chosing not to compete, despite the cash prizes, as not to give away their tactics. As a result SEL have reformed the structure of their league leaning more towards events than a consistant league.
For now one and a half years SEL has been played in a full league format, with gaming centres as match arenas in the elite division and online for the Division one.E-Sports have during the same period more and more developed towards bigger international events. The teams train intensively for all bigger tournaments and keep their strategies under tight wraps. In their event preparations the Swedish teams continuously keeps swapping players in a too rapid pace to keep the stability that is necessary for the development of a league with as high set standards as SEL.
SEL has therefore decided to reform the league from the next season onwards. From then on SEL will take on the same event format as other bigger events like the WCG and CPL. Through this SEL will give the Swedish top teams the possibility to compete in the internationally most dominant event format together with making it possible for lesser known teams to qualify into the SEL Events and making a name for themselves, which today is not possible through the league format.
The structure for the “new SEL” will look like following:
The first events qualifiers will start in the beginning of October. The Qualifiers will be arranged at the Fragbite gaming arena, which makes it possible for a vast number of teams to be able to compete. The final event is planned to be held mid November.
- Big online qualifiers will be played prior to each event.
- The finals will be played at LAN for 16 to 32 teams
- Each finals will have the total price sum of 100 000 SEK (aprox $13 200)
- The top placed teams in each event will be directly qualified to the next LAN event without having to go through the qualifiers.
Lets hope that this switch is the right move, for a league, which during its prime, pioneered competitive online gaming. Read the full statement.
Comments
09:12 10/9/2004
Anti-saviour of UKT
09:23 10/9/2004
60+ machine setup in rows of 5 to enable plenty of games to go on at once and room for people to hang around at when not playing.
Without a GREAT environment there'll never be GREAT tournaments [ Comment: Report | IP: Logged ]
09:33 10/9/2004
Saviour of UKT
UKTerrorist
09:39 10/9/2004
09:53 10/9/2004
Anti-saviour of UKT
10:52 10/9/2004
intensiveSports
11:38 10/9/2004
/$0.02 [ Comment: Report | IP: Logged ]
13:11 10/9/2004
Lan center = risky, often non-profitable and expensive.
Most cs players = students. Students have enough trouble as it is paying their uni/college expenses without having to goto some run down hole and pay to play games with fat sweaty geeks.
Most gamers have good connections nowadays from home anyway paying an affordable fixed monthly rate. Why travel 10+ miles to sleep with Phil Neville when you have a spread eagle'd Carmen Electra sitting at home?
Until a company or person comes up with a revolutionary idea to revatlise the lan cafe market, there is no hope for any kind of center being built any time soon [ Comment: Report | IP: Logged ]
Anti-saviour of UKT
13:26 10/9/2004
They need to offer something that people can't get at home, be that early release games, constantly high quality connection, decent atmosphere, decent setup; all at an affordable price.
Who's been to Sweden and wants to let us know how they manage it? ;-) [ Comment: Report | IP: Logged ]
13:48 10/9/2004
theb0g
14:37 10/9/2004
14:58 10/9/2004
15:26 10/9/2004
i don't think that makes sense :( [ Comment: Report | IP: Logged ]
16:01 10/9/2004
One example method to earn more cash would be to sell computer games and offer a trial on the game they desire to buy so they can test it out on a computer/console for a small price (something along the lines of £2 for an hour testing). Then you could market your "tournaments" seperately, i belive unicon have been pretty sucessful with this one :) [ Comment: Report | IP: Logged ]
Black Death Warriors
16:04 10/9/2004
Rage
16:22 10/9/2004
Anti-saviour of UKT
16:23 10/9/2004
And yeah, the quality of machines and the general environment are big let downs for UK lan centres. Should be done properly or not at all imo ;-) [ Comment: Report | IP: Logged ]
Atari.Crew
16:50 10/9/2004
09:12 10/9/2004 shame UK doesnt have more stuff like this :S [ Comment: Report | IP: Logged ]
Atari.Crew
16:51 10/9/2004
shame the UK doesn't have anything* [ Comment: Report | IP: Logged ]
18:23 10/9/2004
^^ ROFL As if you can talk you have been to more lans than most ppl on these boards. Also you were in the geekiest team in the uk 4kings....
Its a good point but your really not the person to say it :]
split between 5 that money isnt going to last much more than a month in the real world.. If your into expensive tastes that money would not last more than a week ;p
A good idea maybe but who cares about the swedish... [ Comment: Report | IP: Logged ]
Anti-saviour of UKT
18:30 10/9/2004
18:34 10/9/2004
Anti-saviour of UKT
18:39 10/9/2004
18:48 10/9/2004
20:04 10/9/2004
Atari.Crew
20:06 10/9/2004
21:01 10/9/2004
21:20 10/9/2004
23:33 10/9/2004
23:42 10/9/2004
ForsakeN
00:30 11/9/2004
So many cs peeps living in stockholm - only way something like inferno online cafe will work.
A saturation of competitive gamers is the key.
As morph said, no ones gonna travel 10+ miles for anything they can get so cheaply at home - its just not logical ;]] [ Comment: Report | IP: Logged ]
01:10 11/9/2004
01:40 11/9/2004
Anti-saviour of UKT
08:37 11/9/2004
15:02 11/9/2004
combat strike is just crap to small 15 inch ghosty tft's and could not fit more than 20 ppl in.
Nottingham is a good location for a decent lan though as its in the middle of everywhere and not hard to find :P [ Comment: Report | IP: Logged ]
Anti-saviour of UKT
15:27 11/9/2004
Atari.Crew
16:38 11/9/2004
17:59 11/9/2004
I was the geekiest in 4kings uk? lol excellent
Fact is, if people like you would commit suicide more often, the world would probably a much better place. We'd have masses of lan centers, pollution would drop and you'd be dead. Doesn't get any better than that... [ Comment: Report | IP: Logged ]
18:14 11/9/2004
20:07 11/9/2004
learn how to read you inbred retard :] [ Comment: Report | IP: Logged ]
20:46 11/9/2004
21:19 11/9/2004
22:15 11/9/2004