While here in Yurp season 17 of ETF2L is chugging along nicely, the Yanks are in crisis mode. ESEA, the league of seasons past, is looking to implode as too few teams are signing up to support the Invite fat cats wanting to go to their socialized LAN.
The bitcoin scandal seems to be the final straw (or convenient excuse) for many teams to make the switch and it seems inevitable that ESEA NA will turn into the same joke as ESEA EU.
In typical American fashion, the league looking to replace it, CEVO, is also pay2play. The NA scene played on CEVO before switching to ESEA, a move remembered by the few players still in the game. The thread on teamfortress.tv has gotten pretty messy with arguments between these loyalists and seperatists. To give you an idea of the quality of some of the arguments, here’s one young man responding to our dear friend konr’s statement on European TF2.
konr:
[..] European TF2 is not dead to the few that said that. It isn’t dead by any means. People quit and come back in every league and always have. Top players don’t necessarily quit for any league reason either so that’s almost irrelevant to say in response to someone saying “we’re okay with a community league in europe”. On the flipside I think saying “we only have i-series” is a bit silly because we’re really lucky to have a big lan like i-series supporting our game so often. That being said I think getting a small place for LAN really should not be too hard for either top players or CEVO to arrange in the future.
Also one thing I think you should play for (however the funding to get here may be an issue) if you’re an invite player that needs an endgame is to come to one of our LANs and compete vs the best teams from all over! I’m not sure how we could possibly fund that on a constant basis but if we could how sick would that be? Don’t write off a game that you love playing just because a small LAN that you could easily replace is gone. I’d go more into detail to avoid people getting what I’m saying wrong as far as context is concerned but I’m tired man.
—:
- lans are much easier/cheaper to get to in Europe because US public transportation sucks.
- euro lans as an endgame is barely feasible for one team with community support, let alone four.
Many of the old school players have voiced their concerns about returning to CEVO, while many of the newer teams are happy to try something new. So what’s our take on this Europe? Should the North American have stuck with ESEA, or are they going to be better off in CEVO?
Originally published on VanillaTV (vanillatf2.org) on 2014-02-24 by Arie.
Recovered from the Internet Archive (archived copy) as part of tf2esports.com's preservation of VanillaTV's TF2 coverage. The original site is no longer online. All rights remain with the original author; reposted for historical reference.