Finally, to wrap things up, ETS LAN in Montreal took place this weekend, so all in all not too bad. Now on to the real news…

With great sadness I unfortunately have decided to discontinue the regularity of this blog.  Now, I know what you’re thinking, WHY!?!?  I have made this decision not because of the amount, or lack, of the site’s traffic.  This has absolutely nothing to do with the declining state of competitive CoD4 nor does it have anything to do with gaming or eSports in general.  I will continue to volunteer my time with CEVO, so I will not be leaving eSports entirely.  I love eSports, I don’t think I could ever just walk away and never come back, but at this moment in my life I need to take a step back.  This blog will continue to stay up, however, its posts will not be the weekly coverage you are used to.

Until then, game on.

-Ted

CEVO-Professional Week 7:1
Pandemic > x3o
MoB Gaming > Hostile Faction 16-5
MoBdeep > ptL
Pure eSports > BackSlash Gaming -MOTW

Probably on any other given night I would tell you we have a number of exciting matches to look forward to, but tonight, I can’t. For starters, MoB Gaming quickly dispensed of Hostile Faction last night with a convincing 16-5 stomping. Although Hostile Faction had to play the match without CoCo, the result would have likely been the same with the only difference being more rounds won on Hostile Faction’s end as Crash is arguably MoB Gaming’s best map. Moving on we have Pandemic taking on x3o, which assuming the match even takes place, will be just a mess to watch as Pandemic advances to 7:2 with ease. On the side of MoB pond we have MoBdeep clutching desperately for their playoff position. Fortunately, their upcoming match against PtL should give them a much needed win after their loss to Pandemic on Monday as PtL is pretty much a sunken ship with the departure of former captain kun to backslash yesterday.

Closing out the night we have the only match really worth mention: Pure vs BackSlash. In all honesty I don’t see BackSlash winning this one, but it’s the closest thing we have to an interesting match. Although Pure may have looked shaky on Strike you might want to take a gander at their team page and their latest addition. That’s right kids, rob-wiz himself. Carter is taking a step back for more leisure activities and Pure won’t be content with any replacement, they need the best. Although BackSlash just picked up Kun from PtL, Rob and the rest of Pure will most likely come for blood and for tonight at least BackSlash will be a hemophiliac.

CEVO-Professional Week 7:2
Pandemic > Dynamic
PtL > x3o
Pure eSports > MoBdeep -MOTW
MoB Gaming > BackSlash

Closing out week 7 we have a few more interesting matches with finally one that should be quite interesting to watch. Pandemic should top Dynamic with relative ease while I’m predicting PtL to pick up their first win over a dying or by that time already dead x3o team. At the bottom half of the list we have our match of the week, Pure vs MoBdeep. If you recall, MoBdeep stomped Pure earlier in the season on Crash 16-9. Fortunately for Pure, it’s not earlier in the season now and the addition of rob-wiz is sure to give them a much needed boost in performance. Pure’s biggest problem in both their week 3 Crash losses against both MoB teams was their offense. They simply were unable to get into the bombsites or put any preasure on the defense. Pure will need to make MoBdeep’s defense work to get rounds so the rounds they do win don’t build too much momentum. If they can keep pick up a few rounds on offense, Pure should be able to hold out of defense and clinch the win.

Closing out week 7 MoB Gaming will be taking on BackSlash. From first glance this should look like a fairly close match that will most likely go in MoB’s favor. Unfortunately for BackSlash, MoB is nothing short of spectacular on Crash. In week 3, MoB was down 3-12 at half against Pure and switched to defense to eventually win the match 16-13. Enough said. Their offense is appropriately aggressive, rotates correctly, and generally makes the defense work to win every round. Their defense is nothing short of spectacular as getting into a bombsite is an accomplishment against MoB and if you actually get a plant off you should be given a cookie. Most likely if BackSlash starts on defense they will keep us entertained for the first half, but once MoB gets a crack on defense it’s pretty much game over and another W for MoB Gaming on Crash.

GotFrag ???
So apparently Pure is scheduled to play x3o in some best of three set. Cool. To be honest I really have no clue what’s going on in the GotFrag tournament anymore. First I thought MoB was playing versus Pure, and then they didn’t. Then, I thought x3o was forfeiting to Pure, but it turns out they did in fact play. So where exactly does that put us again? I’m personally thinking the grand finals with a best of three map set between Pandemic and Pure, but who knows. Maybe they will just call it and go bowling or something?? Seriously, for all the hype the GotFrag tournament got in the early rounds, things certainly have gotten boring, FAST. Hopefully, Pure vs Pandemic is actually confirmed a match and a date is set so I can make a prediction that will most likely be completely wrong.

CEVO-Professional Week 6:1:
Pandemic > PtL
MoB Gaming > x3o
Pure > Hostile Faction –MOTW
Backslash > Dynamic

Tonight we have an interesting set of matches with the exception of MoB vs x3o which will be delayed to Monday. At the top of the list, Pandemic should be able to move through PtL without too much trouble as their last match against Pure ended 16-9 in their favor. Needless to say, Pandemic looks at the top of their game, and it’s going to take more then what PtL has to bet them, especially on strike. This MoB vs x3o match is hard to call because it’s being delayed, but also because both teams haven’t really finalized their rosters yet. I’m going to give the edge to MoB, however, while x3o still tries to rebound. Pure vs Hostile Faction should be quite the interesting bout, especially considering where each stand at the moment.

On Pure’s end, they are sitting behind the likes of MoBdeep, definitely not a desirable place for such a talented and experienced team. On Hostile Faction’s side, a few more losses for them and a few more wins for BackSlash could easily send them down to 7th in the standings and out of playoff position. Whether or not kpwnage uses the scope is going to be a factor as in their past few matches on Crossfire, he spent most of his time without it. On Pure’s side, however, Carter will be busy causing all sorts of trouble for kpwnage and the rest of Hostile Faction, and for that reason, I’m giving the edge to Pure. Finishing off the matches tonight we have Backslash vs Dynamic, where both teams are currently sitting out of playoff position. Both teams really need a win to save face, but unfortunately I just don’t see Dynamic coming away with this one. Backslash’s latest victory over x3o might have been when x3o was down, but a win against the 2nd seed team is still a win and will be more than enough to move them past Dynamic.

CEVO-Professional Week 6:2:
Pandemic > MoBdeep -MOTW
MoB Gaming > Dynamic
Pure > PtL
Backslash > Hostile Faction

Thankfully, we have two very exciting matches on the plate for Monday, first between Pandemic and MoBdeep and a second between BackSlash and Hostile Faction. MoBdeep is probably turning a number of heads currently sitting 3rd in the standings, but their match against Pandemic could be a make or break for them to remain in that position. Unfortunately, even with their most recent additions, I just don’t see it happening. Strike is arguably one of Pandemic’s strongest maps and MoBdeep just won’t be prepared to handle the adapting style of Pandemic’s play. On the other side of the river, we have BackSlash taking on Hostile Faction. BackSlash already beat Hostile Faction once and while they claim it was simply an upset, I’ll roll against the odds and predict another win for BackSlash as jtf2 and company once again come out and surprise Hostile Faction. Unfortunately the remaining matches scheduled for Monday shouldn’t be too difficult to predict. Dynamic will put up a half decent match against MoB, but Andy and whoever is playing for MoB by Monday will be more then able to skate by with a win. Closing out the matches on Strike, Pure will most likely stomp PtL into oblivion.  Unfortunately for PtL it’s like trying to shovel snow while it’s still snowing.

GotFrag Tournament LB Semi-Finals:
Pure > MoB Gaming

MoB might have beaten Pure in CEVO, but in a best of three map set, I like Pure to win. Disregarding the importance of this match in advancing to the LB Finals, it also will serve as a good test of which of these two teams will get the unofficial #2 spots in North America with x3o dropping out due to recent roster troubles. My guess is Pure will try to keep the match off Crossfire and Crash where they lost to Pandemic and MoB respectfully on each in CEVO. Fortunately they are the higher seed, so it shouldn’t be too hard to steer clear of crash. Besides getting to eliminate a map first, Pure also will be able to pick the 3rd map of the set out of the two remaining maps left at the end. In a match between two teams as talented as Pure and MoB, the match is almost guaranteed to go onto a 3rd map where Pure will most likely pull through their victory.

North American Top 10

Via Fnatic.com:

Only a few days after announcing several roster modifications, the TCA staff of the North American branch decided it was about time to build a top 10 for this side of the pond since it’s hasn’t been done for almost a year! This will be the first of monthly sequel where the five members will be voting on their thoughts about who deserves to be in this prestigious ranking.

Our panelists are: Ian “ianLP” Tannehill, Ted “sang” Ottey, Kyle “HackettLP” Feeley, Tim “TimL” Lampman and I J-C “Se1Ko” Gaudet. These respected names in our community made their decisions and were able to build a reliable list for our top 10 teams of CoD4 in North America.

The result has been made by using the usual points system where the first place earns 10 points, the second 9 points and so on.

You can check out the full rankings as well as my breakdown over on Fnatic’s site here.

CEVO-Professional Week 5:1 & 5:2

The big news in CEVO-P at the moment besides Panemic narrowly hanging on to the 1st place standing with a higher CPI is the current mod situation.  If you haven’t heard, there are a number of people who don’t like DAMN mod.  In fact, Pandemic and MoB have threatened to forfeit their matches if they have to play on DAMN.  Cool huh?  I think the most interesting thing about the whole situation is the community as a whole generally wanted to try to DAMN and now there is this whole notion CEVO and CAL forced it upon them.  Anyway, it doesn’t really matter if they forfeit their matches or don’t play them, because that’s what they do anyway.  Seriously, for CEVO-P matches to actually be scheduled before 6PM EST on the deadline day someone must have parted the red sea, seen the second coming of Jesus, and finally played the released version of Dukenukem Forever!  I don’t know why professional teams can’t schedule ahead of time as it would make everyone’s lives a lot easier, especially the casting companies, but they can’t or won’t.  Moving on, however, these are the matches and my predictions pending they ever get scheduled and played.

Week 5:1
MoB > PtL
x3o > Hostile Faction – MOTW
Pure > Dynamic
MoBdeep > Backslash

We have an interesting 4 matches supposedly scheduled tonight whichwill probably end with Pure and MoB both claiming fairly comfortable wins over Dynamic and PtL respectively and two closer matches between MoBdeep and Backslash.  Starting with MoBdeep and Blackslash, I think we’re goingto see a close match on both ends with the advantage going to the more prepared team.  MoBdeep just came off a pretty solid win over Hostile Faction where Backslash narrowly managed to pull the win over PtL.  While Backslash could definitely pull out the win here, I think Gomez and the rest of MoBdeep will take it.  Moving on, the match between x3o and Hostile Faction would look to be a simple one to predict, x3o should take the win.  For some reason, however, Hostile Faction likes to play all over the place.  They go from beating MoB and narrowly losing to Pandemic to then losing to Backslash and MoBdeep.  I don’t care if you’re “underestimating” your opponent or not, it’s bad and it makes predicting matches harder.  I’ll go with my gut and say x3o still manages to pull out the win against a Hostile Faction team that will actually look on their game.

Week 5:2
Panemic > Pure – MOTW
MoB Gaming > MoBdeep
Hostile Faction > Dynamic
x3o > Backslash

Monday we will again see two relatively easy victories coming out, this time in favor of Hostile Faction and x3o while Panemic, Pure and the MoB’s duke it out.  Without beating around the bush too much, I’ll give the edge to Pandemic and MoB Gaming respectively.  MoB Gaming just recently defeated MoBdeep in the GotFrag LB semi-finals, and although this match will be on crossfire, the new addition of tm to MoB Gaming should prove enough to hold off their Italian counterparts.  Pandemic and Pure finally get a rematch from their Wk 1:1 match where Pandemic narrowly pulled out the win.  Sadly for Pure, however, I think Joe and company will do so again.  While Pure did manage to defeat x3o last week, Pandemic has the potential to be very deadly on crossfire given their preparation.  The key for Pure is going to be their offense, whether or not Carter scopes, and how effective he is.  If carter does pick up the scope, Pandemic will need to make it difficult for him to open rounds or keep him busy by allowing Prank to scope as well.  Either way, I see Panemic narrowly coming out on top.

GotFrag Tournament

UB Finals
x3o > Pandemic 2-1

I will be brave and predict the upset here.  Both teams will win their matches respectively, but I like x3o at the moment to win the tiebreaker map.  I don’t know why and I can’t explain it, but something tells me x3o will come more prepared, and when playing a best of three set, preperation is essential.  Expect to see close matches on all the maps, but x3o should once again narrowly squeeze past Pandemic into the Finals.

LB Semi-Finals
Pure > Dynamic 2-0

Dynamic did an excellent job making it this far in the bracket, but unfortunately they will be exiting this round.  Pure has way too much talent, experience, and momentum at the moment to be upset here.  It would be like Nalzy not trolling the CAL forums looking like an idiot.  It just ain’t gonna happen baby.  Anyway, Pure should win this in two maps and advance to take on MoB Gaming in the LB Finals.

x3o Media: state of the community

Via x3o-gaming.com:

The Call of Duty community has always had its ups and downs, but with the recent cancellation of NERV LAN 3, it is now becoming apparent that the competitive scene has come to a boiling point. X3O-Gaming.com has taken it upon themselves to investigate the recent events leading up to what amounts to be a time of crisis for the competitive Call of Duty scene.

Hosts Travis and Justin brought together prominent members of the North American CoD eSports community. Important topics ranging from the what’s and why’s of NERV 3 LAN’s cancellation (and a special announcement from Matt Gomez), to steps being taken by community leaders to right the sinking ship are covered in length with top personalities and players in North America.

Guests Include:

Stephen “Mav” Groat – X3O CoD 4 player, and creator of DAMN Mod
Matt “Chimpae” Gomez – Captain of MoB Deep, and organizer of NERV LAN 1 and 2
Ted “Sang” Ottey – CEVO administrator and writer of www.div3rse.com
J-C “se1ko” Gaudet – CoD 4 writer for Insider eSports and organizer of the upcoming LAN ETS in Montreal, Canada

Hosts/moderators:

Travis Hezel & Justin Knutson – On-Air Personalities for the X3O Professional Gaming Media Division

Download the roundtable here.

Upper Bracket Round 4 Preview

MOTW: x3o vs Pure E-Sports
Ted’s Prediction: x3o > Pure E-Sports
Se1Ko’s Prediction: x3o > Pure E-Sports
siMpLE’s Prediction: x3o <?> Pure E-Sports

Ted: Hey this looks extremely familiar! Although I have already predicted x3o to defeat Pure in CEVO, a best of three map set almost makes this a completely different ball game, maybe even a game not played with a ball. On both sides of the spectrum you have two teams that have not only beaten every team thus far, but done so without losing a single map. Keeping with this trend, I expect to see x3o and Pure win their respective maps in two very close matches, advancing to the final map. Although Pure will get the option of picking the final map from the two remaining maps left in the map pool, I will stick with my gut and once again give x3o the edge to win the set. The more x3o plays the better they seem, first beating Pandemic and then pulling off an amazing comeback against MoBdeep. This match will be all about those important 3v3, 2v2 and clutch situations we always talk about. Fortunately for x3o, Rob is a master clutcher, “1v2 no problem, 1v3 cake walk, 1v12 easy peasy.” (Quote via a comment on a GotFrag news post, not to be taken srsly.)

siMpLE: Another battle of the juggernauts here. x3o still undefeated in CEVO, and despite PURE’s poor preformance on crash, they are still a big contender in the leagues. I’m not sure what the map choices are but I see this matching ending 2-1 as well with an OT match where it can really go either way depending on how hard they have strated for the tiebreaker.

Pandemic vs MoB Gaming
Ted’s prediction: Pandemic > MoB Gaming
Se1Ko’s Prediction: Pandemic > MoB Gaming
siMpLE’s Prediction: Pandemic > MoB Gaming

Ted: Fortunately for Pandemic they are the higher seed, which means if they so choose, they can eliminate Crash, the map MoB beat Pure on, before they have a chance to pick it. Regardless of whether they do or not, I’m going to be gutsy and predict Pandemic to win in two maps. MoB might be riding the momentum wave, but once they fall and get caught in the riptide it’s almost like watching a different team. Pandemic should be able to take their map with relative ease and if the match does venture onto Crash, I don’t see MoB’s aggressive defense being anywhere near as effective because it is focused around an offense that pushes the A bombsite. This is because Pandemic is one of the few teams that can actually pull off repeated B bombsite pushes with success.

siMpLE: Here we have two of the better teams from CEVO-P this season. Pandemic barley won against HF, while MoB’s match, even though the score was decieving, had a rather dominating preformance on crash over PURE with a good comeback. I don’t know if pandemic is just not adjusted to this mod yet or not but I still see them winning this match 2-1, each teaming winning their own map and Pandemic taking the tiebreaker.

The Bottom Line

The best thing about the current situation in the upper bracket is it really doesn’t matter who wins. Even if my predictions all turn out wrong we still have an amazing match scheduled for the upper bracket finals between MoB who just beat Pure Monday. Of course, on the other side of the coin, if both my predictions hold up we’ll see the epic rematch of Pandemic versus x3o. Just saying it makes my skin crawl. We could be seeing the new North American rivalry building here folks!

(Note: this post is quite long, for the short version skip down to the leagues/tournaments/lans section as well as the predictions.)

Teams
X3o – Can anyone say “I told you so?” At the beginning of the season I wrote on Pandemic’s site x3o will be a team to watch this season as they could easily be a top contender. Rob and company must have read that and taken those words to heart because x3o is on fire. After an impressive start to the CEVO season with their most recent victory over last season’s champs, Pandemic, x3o looks unstoppable. In their match against Pandemic they were well coordinated and prepared, which showed as they managed to win important clutches and even rounds when they were down players. X3o has not had too much trouble in the GotFrag tournament either, but their match tonight against the European ATS team should be interesting. X3o eventually might pick up a loss this CEVO season as going undefeated is quite difficult, but I’ll stand by my claim x3o is still a top 3 team to watch.

Pandemic – Again, can anyone say “I told you so?” My boys over at Pandemic lost to x3o on Monday. Without sounding too much like fan boy Pandemic wasn’t at the top of their game. I know it and they know it. I’ve seen Pandemic play citystreets plenty of times and their match against x3o simply wasn’t the best they could have done, but that doesn’t take anything away from x3o. A win is a win is a win. They got beat. Joe and company have arguably the most talented and experienced roster in North America, but they need to get their heads in the game and get back to a serious practice schedule as a 16-14 win over PtL isn’t exactly where they want to be. I predicted a potential early season loss for Pandemic and indeed it happened. But again keeping with my prediction, don’t think Pandemic is softening up. Pandemic is still the top 2 team to watch throughout the season and leading into playoffs as their impressive beating against MoBdeep shows.

Pure E-Sports – For a third time, can anyone say “I told you so?” After their 12-16 loss to Pandemic at the start of the season, Pure has gone on to win three matches in a row against Hostile Faction, PtL, and Backslash (maingear). This week in CEVO they have two matches against both MoB Gaming and MoBdeep, however, their most interesting test will probably come in the GotFrag CoD4 tournament where they will be playing fnatic. Last month fnatic was fortunate enough to see the return of tidde, who is arguably one of their stronger players. Despite the fact the match will most likely take place on a North American server, I think fnatic should give Pure a tough match. The key for this match, and for pure in general, will be preparation. Pure has a plethora of talent but without proper preparation they could easily slip behind.

Hostile Faction- Hostile Faction, the team everyone thinks cheats, managed to pull off a narrow 16-14 win over MoB Gaming Monday, pretty impressive no? Interesting enough, they took a narrow loss to pure, no surprise there, but then get absolutely dominated by BackSlash (maingear) on the same map they beat MoB Gaming on. I don’t like to publically call cheats, especially when I have demo reviews to do, but something just doesn’t add up there. You do not go from losing to Backslash 8-16 and then an hour later beating MoB Gaming 16-14. It just doesn’t happen. To further complicate things Hostile Faction is the only team in CEVO-P with no LAN experience as a team and they made no effort or even potential commitment to attend the upcoming NERV LAN. It doesn’t matter if their demos look clean and CMN3 clears them every time, until Hostile Faction, all of them, participate in a LAN event I don’t think anyone will believe they are entirely 100% legit.

MoB Gaming, MoBdeep & Backslash – As for the rest of the group MoB Gaming, MoBdeep and Backslash really haven’t been all too impressive thus far with the exception of Backslash’s win over hostile faction and MoB Gaming’s narrow 14-16 loss to x3o. Hopefully as the season progresses and when these teams get a shot at the tougher competition we’ll get a better picture of where they all stand this season.

Frag Dominant – Maybe dead? Maybe not? Who knows. What is certain is this team is having some serious problems and needs to get them figured out or simply call it quits as a 1-3 start to the season is quite difficult to recover from when they still have matches against Pandemic and Pure ahead. Pretty sad turn of events for the only other team besides Pandemic remaining from last season.

Leagues/Tournaments/LANs
CEVO – x3o, Pandemic and Pure are raging through the competition, MoB Gaming and MoBdeep are dancing around the competition, Backslash (maingear) is happy to be in the competition, PtL is getting stomped on by the competition, Frag Dominant is almost out of the competition, and Hostile Faction is cheating through the competition. So I guess all is going well right? On a more serious note things seem to be going as predicted after the first two weeks in CEVO as the leaders emerge. Hopefully things start to heat up between the 2-2 teams to give us a better idea of where everyone stands.

GotFrag – After a few boring rounds to start the tournament we actually now have the good teams playing each other. What is probably the most exciting detail about the GotFrag tournament is each match is a best of three map set, meaning you get a real sense of which team is better despite potentially meeting only once. What is concerning, however, is the lack of Anti-Cheat within the event as anyone with hacks that can bypass PB are free to cheat. Fortunately, there are no teams competing that fit that bill, but it is something that people should be aware of.

NERV – What was to be a massive 3 day event now looks to be only a one day LAN. Not to worry though, the best teams in North America are still in attendance and with E-REV broadcasting live for the viewers at home, meaning this should definitely be an exciting event to watch. Additional good news comes to the note that the event will be held at NERV’s Allentown location and not in Kutztown, thirty minutes away.

Predictions
Normally these will be done in general CEVO & Gotfrag posts; however, I’ll throw them in this massive post to kick things off. Every CEVO & Gotfrag match night there will be standard predictions without scores attached, so basically who beats who. I’ll keep a record of correct/incorrect predictions throughout the season for bragging rights as well. I will, however, need 1-3 individuals to predict alongside me to keep things interesting so if you are interested just get in contact with me. I’ll keep these short for tonight, but expect them to be drawn out in the future.

CEVO-P Week 3-1
Pandemic > Dynamic
Hostile Faction > Frag Dominant
X3o > Pushing the Limits
Pure E-Sports > MoBdeep – MOTW
MoB Gaming > Backslash (maingear)

GotFrag UB Round 3
Pandemic > Dynamic
MoB Gaming > Imaginary Sponsor
X3o > ATS
Pure > fnatic – MOTW