After a tumultuous first round of bracket play in the Digital Games, things are falling into place for the second round.
In Counter-Strike: 1.6 Europe, first-seeded emulate look to drop #16 peXg.young.cs, while #2 neP face off against #15 LowLandLions.cs. emulate are already world champions in a different tournament, so it should come as no surprise that they are heavily favored to have their way with this bracket. We will see, however, if a lower seed can upset them.
The North American Call of Duty 4 PS3 bracket sees #1 ONEARMYONELIFE matched against DeathB4Dishonor, while #2 Fear is Better Than Respect will fight#15 Hippo Attack force. I haven’t run into any idle speculation about who is best in this segment of the competition, so the field seems open to all! Continued…
After the disbandment of 4Kings’ Warcraft III squad and yesterday’s news that Grubby joined MYM, PGS announced on their official website that LiilD.C, Fury and Zeus are joining their roster.
Daniel “LiiLD.C” Claesson said to the PGS website: “I started some conversations with PGS even when I was in 4K. They offered me a very good contract which I had a hard time refusing…PGS was the logical choice for me.”
Along with the signing of these 3 players, PGS also welcomes the former 4Kings WC3 manager, Frederic “Trimble” Steinfeld, who will be in charge of managing the PGS Warcraft III squad. Continued…
The end of an era is upon us, and it’s safe to say the writing has been on the wall for over a year. 4Kings, one of UK’s foremost superteams, has disbanded its Warcraft III division, leaving Manuel “Grubby” Schenkhuizen and Daniel “LiiLD.C” Claesson clanless.
The official reason given for disbanding was “a lack of players and other things.” The squad has been steadily losing star players since Nov. 2006, when Dae “FoV” Hui Cho left the team.
FoV’s departure to Beijing E-ports Team signaled an inability for 4K to compete on the free market for its own players. According to Warcraft III superfan/expert and former GGL contributor Jos “Zerter” Buyvoets, this was the true beginning of the end for 4K’s WC3 squad.
Despite FoV’s absence, 4K still had a bevy of stars on its roster until Olav “Creolophus” Undheim decided to retire after winning WCG 2007. Undheim’s decision was right for him, but wrong for the team.
“Creo going inactive probably ‘did it’ as it put a lot of pressure on Yoan ‘ToD’ Merlo and Grubby who failed to qualify for the WC3L finals without him,” said Zerter. Continued…
The Warcraft player turnover continues with another chain of team changes and players finding new homes.
Following HoT’s departure from SK Gaming, Undead player XlorD also left the team. It’s quite an interesting move, since XlorD was the player that secured SK’s victory over MYM in WC3L. Rumors say he’ll be joining a Germany-based team and won’t be out of action for too long. With two players leaving SK, others may follow suit (Insomnia mentioned the Extreme Masters may be the last event he’ll be playing in).
In other news, 4Kings’ Warcraft III team faces another departure. After losing ToD to Mousesports, their other Human warrior, Ben “DeMusliM” Baker, has dropped off the roster. Initially recruited to represent Four Kings in the United Kingdom, Baker later played matches for the mainstream team alongside Grubby and ToD. An official statement from the 4Kings webpage reads:
“Today, 4Kings sadly has to announce that the organisation and the player were not able to agree on continueing the working relation, and therefore DeMusliM is released from his duties within 4Kings. “
4Kings hasn’t been putting up results like it used to. Let’s hope a revamped roster and some new recruits will continue the dynasty.
4Kings have returned to deathmatch eSports with the announcement of their new academy squad for Unreal Tournament 3. The recently created academy will train the squad under the 4Kings name, with all the support, but minus the salary. It’s nice to see 4Kings thinking of Unreal as having a good enough future to invest in. A quote from the 4Kings homepage:
After contacting Stephen “Stevo” Parker who used to be part of 4Kings back in 2002-2003 for Unreal Tournament we decided it would be great for him to rejoin with some new faces and create a 4Kings.UT3 squad. After a lot of hard work and head hunting he has come up with a line up that will no doubt make 4Kings proud.
4Kings.UT3 line is:
Stephen “Stevo” Parker (UK)
Samuel “Shaggy” Boult (UK)
Gaspar “Hypno” Machado (Portugal)
Nigel “Zkyp” Brik (Netherlands)
For more info on the players, visit the 4Kings homepage.
Get your mind out of the gutter. I meant that Koreans and Chinese dudes owned a bunch of white guys during this past WC3L season, as we see MeetYourMakers (1st) and World Elite (2nd) receive automatic qualifications to the LAN finals in November.
SK Gaming / MouseSports and We are Go / BET will face off in playoff matches to determine who amongst them will qualify for the finals.
Meanwhile, some familiar names must cope with playdown matches in order to actually stay in the league.
4Kings, surprisingly, must battle Fnatic Team in the first playdown match. The 4K lineup of Grubby, ToD, Fury, Creo (replaced by Lilid.C), DeMuslim, Trimble and Zeus19 couldn’t bring home the bacon, and now must play Fnatic Team to avoid relegation. mTw.PokerRoom battles DefiningStars.Kow3 in hopes that they, too, can avoid relegation.
