My state of the union(call of duty) speech for this week

My fellow Call of Duty Players, I sit before you today a worried man, trying to set forth what is right and good in this world.

Around this time last year, people were steadily growing tired of CoD4. Modern Warfare 2 was on the horizon. A sign of new life, a sign of hope. We as a community were stoked. The thought of a new game, fresh tournies, a fresh breath of life and outlook on CoD. In the end, we were greatly disappointed, getting a 60 dollar single player "movie" and something that was useless to us as competitive players. We opted to stick with CoD4 as a necessity; we had no choice. With the exclusion of record and no private servers MW2 was not a viable competitive choice for those of us that don't like to settle for less. Our entire community was shunned, and we were left with a bitter taste in our mouth for infinity ward.

Fast forward a year. CoD4 is on its last leg again. We're lucky to get 60 teams a tourney when we were once getting 100+. Announcements are out about blackops. We will be getting record function, dedicated servers, and an awesome cinema/theater mode for watching match playback. What a sweet victory for us. We rejoice, hailing treyarch as the saviors of our community and hoping there is still a chance for CoD.

And then we get the game. Holy hell it was a shock. Our little competitive car had just been rammed in the side by a semi-truck known as treyarch. 60 fps for majority of the community. major issues with lag and stuttering and the server rate. No ability to access anything server side by gameservers (they said treyarch would not let them.) The developers at treyarch have basically built us another 60 dollar single player movie and are insulted that we would want stable fps to play online competition. They scoff at the idea, the game was set to run at 60 fps and how dare we try to screw with their visual masterpiece. We manage to recover a little bit. We find a way to config around and get 100 fps (at least some of us do. The quad core gamers. The game STILL rapes people on dual core.) Sigh of relief. Lets start seeing what happens.

You'd think the sun is fixing to shine through on this ugly storm but no. From there we find out about glitches to 3rd person and radar. No sound on the plant for SD. Whats worse is one team has already used said glitches in radar. We're in disarray. We're worried. I'm worried. The state of things for this game is starting to not look good.

Fast forward briefly a bit to yesterday.(odd choice of words fast forwarding to the past. Anywho.) A new patch is out. YES! they've listened to an extent. We can now hear the bomb jingle for sd. They've fixed the radar and third person glitches. The stuttering is not as bad. The game still rapes dual core players though.

We're now 5 weeks into the game. We've had one ctf tourney go off, one multiple gametype bo3 tourney, quad's tourney coming up, and alienware arena has announced their tourney.

And honestly, sitting here looking at it, I'm concerned. I really am. At this point of the game during cod4 we had a roughly 400 team tourney (xfire) going on and the cevo finish the fight tourney signups flourishing. CG's tourney struggled to have 32 paid. (For the record after deadline time they did have a couple more teams wanting to sign up, so more like 40) ESL's free tourney (notice how i bolded free for emphasis) got 32 teams. I'm not sure if they capped it at 32 or what but still. And to be fair those have just been small test tourneys for settings, not a full blown one like it should be. Unless I'm not looking at the right thing quad has 32 teams signed up. On a plus side newegg wanfest has 150 + signed up @ready, and 170 or so more signed up but still trying to get five. (but its a 4v4 event and I question how well it will run, I feel sorry for the headaches its going to give keyhunt. and lets be serious, how many of those teams will actually play and not be forfeits.)

Thats where we're at at this point. To say I'm worried would be an understatement. The community is currently split between gametypes. A lot are lobbying for CTF. And yet last night after the patch all I could find were SD scrims. I'm hoping that people were just playing sd to see if the game was fixed in any shape form or fashion. I mean sure, I like SD but lets be serious here there's not even a point in planting the bombs. Its slightly ridiculous. I still think CTF should be the way of the future for the game. But I digress, I'm not ready to get into that arguement just yet. We'll put that on the back burner and touch it later. As I said I'm concerned about the number of teams showing up for the tourneys currently. And as a head of game and so called "community leader" (I know some of you scoff/use that term loosely with me) I take it as a challenge to myself to see how we can improve on that. The other heads of game out there should be taking it upon themselves too. I'm sure after talking with both john clark and chris hill that it is something on the back of their minds. How do we get more teams signed up and continually playing?

We need to find those community hubs out there. The "codsources" of other games if you will. I know CSS uses netcodeilluminati. TF2 has a few places. I honestly have no clue about mw2, where there competitive communities thrive at, but we need to find them to and alert these teams to whats going on with our community as a whole, and get those teams to start playing here and leaving their games. We have to do something, or else I'm worried about the competitive future of this game. And I actually LIKE this game so that worries me. We as "community leaders" need to take that upon ourselves to start getting out there, spamming for and finding these teams and alerting them to our tourneys. If anyone knows where these community hubs are I'd encourage them to enlighten me so I can go out there and find them.

Ok, now thats certainly not all thats wrong. And certainly probably won't help totally. Treyarch is in the middle of slipping us a roofie and taking us to a dark corner and raping us. The gametype argument is hurting us too. Some people want SD, some want ctf, a minority want domination. (Lets be serious domination while fun is like that one cousin at family reunions that nobody wants to play with)

We need to be making a decision on the gametype stuff soon in my opinion or risk causing more of a split. My ballot has been marked for ctf. We'll see what this brings for everyone else. While I'm certainly open to change if need be (if the vocal majority of the community still wants sd, I suppose we'd go with it, although it hurts my heart to say that.)

Ok I'm to the point in this blog where my mind starts wondering and I can't keep focused. That generally means that I'm coming to an end of my rant. Few quick updates - BAMF in hardcore twl finals tonight on e-rev.tv. Make sure you watch it! Hopefully we'll be playing promod finals sunday or monday pending dispute results (no we didn't dispute we got disputed.) Cliff Lee is a philly. What a helluva starting lineup. Its a good punch line. How many cy young winners does it take to win a series? lol. I'm disappointed that he's not a ranger but two things, I'm happy he's not a yankee, I'm happy they've been screwed on every free agent they've went after, and I'm happy we didn't put 6 years towards him. I've got trans siberian orchestra tickets for saturday night in little rock. Christmas and bowl season are the two single greatest things about the month of december. So I leave you on those notes, excited but cautious. Here's looking towards the future everyone. =)

You can rest easy, the great ones are here.

On Thursday, Dec 16th the TWL HARDCORE season will end in a finals match between BAMF and w!seguys. This match is the end all of end alls as the final culminating act of the hardcore season. Everything went as it should, as the #1 and #2 seed face off in this battle for the title of champion. This epic showdown has been waiting in the wings for some time now. Thinking of some of the greatest showdowns of all time, this one definately ranks up there. Lets take a look at some of those great matchups:

Rocky Balboa vs Ivan Drago

In this story, Ivan Drago beats Apollo Creed to death before Rocky's eyes. Rocky blames himself for this mishap, and promises to avenge the death of his friend by beating Drago in the ring. One of the most epic battles of all time, Not only was it about revenge and loyalty but also a metaphor for the battle between democracy and communism, the evil soviet reds and the good ol' U.S. of A.

Daniel Larusso vs Johnny Lawrence

In this great battle, Daniel Larusso has been shamed once by the Kobra Kai. They've bullied him around, insulted his woman, his sensei, and tried to chase him and beat him to a bloody pulp had it not been for Mr. Miyagi. Injured by a cheap blow to the leg, Daniel continues when all others say he should not, showing true courage and sacrifice. Daniel takes back his honor, defends his friends, and sets forth all that is right in the world in one final swift move.

Ali vs George Foreman

In one of the biggest upsets in boxing history, Ali regained his title on October 30, 1974 by defeating champion George Foreman in their bout in Kinshasa, Zaire. As one friend of mine put it, Foreman at the time looked like he could "1v1 an effing bear." Hyped as "The Rumble In The Jungle", the fight was promoted by Don King.

Almost no one, not even Ali's long-time supporter Howard Cosell, gave the former champion a chance of winning. Analysts pointed out that Joe Frazier and Ken Norton had given Ali four tough battles in the ring and won two of them, while Foreman had knocked out both of them in the second round. As a matter of fact, so total was the domination that, in their bout, Foreman had knocked down Frazier an incredible six times in only four minutes and 25 seconds.

Not many single athletic events ever have introduced so many names and phrases - "Rumble in the Jungle," "Ali, bomaye!'' and "Rope-a-dope" - into the everyday vernacular.The "Rumble in the Jungle" was much more than just a boxing match. The scale of what was happening on Zairian soil was overwhelming. Ali and Foreman, legend and reigning champ, were two black American stars making the connection to Africa and its people for the bout. Don King was the money man. An international array of black music stars supplied the beat, and the president of the still-newly-free nation of Zaire oversaw it all. The entire scenario did, in fact, shake up the world as everybody knew it.

Greatness. Pride. Revenge. Glory. All of these things are on the line in this matchup for the ages. W!seguys, the proverbial big dog, has all of the experience. They've been there and done that. Hardcore is their bread and butter. And it certainly helps that they already have a win over bamf this season. And I'm sure that win is in the back of the minds of everyone on both teams. Will it give w!seguys the mental edge needed to take this match?

BAMF, the self proclaimed legends of the world, are coming in as the underdogs here. Newcomers to hardcore as a whole, they've managed to find a way to win in every match but the one that matters, against w!seguys. Will they be hungry with a desire to exact revenge?

Only time will tell. Tune in for this legendary event - shoutcasted by http://e-rev.tv on Thursday December 16th as BAMF takes their shot on their map, mp_backlot, W!seguys stand up and claim that they're Tony Danza(whos the boss for the younger generation) on mp_overgrown, and both teams come to battle on a final map, mp_strike if needed.

Nothing but greatness will come from this matchup, and you, the twl viewer, should watch as it will not disappoint.

insert random title here.

Random. Thats my thoughts today. So random are my thoughts that I can't even come up with a clever or witty title for this one. Random. it describes everything around me. My teammates. (sup sixx, lets spam bathroom on vacant and get kills out our asses.) My work and social life. Random. No routines. It also describes everything I've seen in cod black ops so far. Random.

Or maybe the word I'm looking for is cluster fornication? I'm not sure. Wait, I know, that's two words. My bad.

A couple of blogs back I said we shouldn't rush into competition. We've all agreed not to but are having our little test tournies for settings. Low and behold, I was right about something. Thanks to jock yitch from bashandslash.com some major glitches were exposed in the community as of recent. One team, who won the esl ctf tourney, even had a teammate rat them out, get exposed and admit to using it (like we could have caught you, lets be serious. its the word of bf2 cheaters vs cod4 cheaters, no credibility on either side.)

What I don't get about that command is how they justified it. "Well everyone is doing it." "It wasn't specifically stated in the rules, so it must be legal." Now, I'm going to use cevo as an example here, because honestly I know their site the best, and don't have to hunt down rules. However I'm almost positive that every league has the same set of rules for their C.Y.A. (cover your ass) clause.

9.10 Game Exploits

It is illegal to intentionally utilize any game exploits. Specific game exploits will be included in the game specific rules. For any exploits used that are not explicitly covered, officials have discretion to determine the intention and extent of the violation. The default penalty may be a reversal of up to three (3) rounds and possible suspension of the offending member. Officials have full discretion to modify the exact penalty to suit the offense.

Holy hell. See that? I do believe that specific command falls under a game exploit. And yet people are still arguing the cause. And I can assure them, that not everyone else is doing it. But go ahead, if thats what it takes for you to justify your actions, you do that. The rest of us will have a very hearty chuckle at your expense.

Congratulations though, You somehow managed to get caught using a near undetectable advantage. How smart are you? I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.

On a positive note, treyarch is supposedly fixing this glitch in their upcoming patch, along with a lot of other things. Some (myself included) kind of think this is the make or break patch. We need this one to fix a lot of people's problems for the game to be successful. Anywho, now people see why I was an advocate of nothing happening before the new year.

Played CG's proving grounds tourney tonight. That was interesting. Falls under the giant cluster fornication category. I really loved the tourney brackets.(See here: http://www.cybergamer.org/tournament/69/) That was really cool and I loved it. I liked getting to use my tomahawk in a knife round too. Tomahawking onexia in match is something I'm never gonna let him hear the end of. I wasn't a big fan of the three gametypes, three maps idea that juve promoted for "keeping the game fresh". Newsflash. The game is still new, how can it not be fresh? Stupid idea. I've said that over and over and I'll say it again. Got to partake in some summit ctf (everyone plays it) and some crisis domination (was interesting.) Congrats to TOPMEN for beating us. Well played, sirs. I really enjoyed the ctf as usual. We played a domination match too. I gotta admit, this was my second time playing domination organized. My first time was against eMg... which lets be honest, that team can make you hate any gametype. They're just too good. I thoroughly enjoyed myself against topmen though. a bit closer to our level. I'm seriously starting to think I'm leaning towards CTF being the primary gametype. Have a few more test tournies to run through, but I like CTF the most out of them all.

My ideas for clearly defining a ruleset are getting more and more specific as well. Being the no aim loser that I am, I like having steady am. However some of those perks just shouldn't be there. If we had the ability, I'd love to leave in perks minus pro perks. Since we don't though, I'm currently leaning more towards no perks, but leaving in attachments (minus rockets/tubes/grip/rapid fire, no nova gas/stuns) And I believe that makes for more of a competitive ruleset as of now.

This game has managed to disappoint me in so many ways. The idea of the cinema/theatre mode is pure brilliance. But we all know there are plenty of problems hindering the game from being competitive.

ON a side rant, I don't think switching back to cod2/4 is the way to do that. Anyone that knows me knows how much I love cod2. While I will partake in the tournaments, its not the way to go, and switching back for a month will do nothing but hurt cod:blackops even worse. So as much as I would like to see it, I strongly urge against it.

Oh and BAMF is in twl hardcore finals, and semi's of promod finals. Str8 reppin, foo.

COD wise thats all I have. I think my rangers are out of the running for Lee with the yankees offering seven years. Freaks, they are. Can't beat him so we gotta have him. Werth was overpaid. I'm not scared to say it, suck it nats/phillies fans. Greinke here we come. And no Brice, Boston is not the team to beat in baseball right now. Suck their testicles all you want but they're not.

BASH 170.

Ted Ottey and I were talked to on BASH 170 about our thoughts for the competitive future of blackops. Check it out here : http://bashandslash.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1171&Itemid=69 Thanks to jock for interviewing us =)

My day 5 rant

Holy hell. Did the community go crazy on esl or what? I think they got your message guys. Judging by the post on esl's website, i'd say they did at least.

Everyone bashed them pretty hard over a lot of things the past few days. Whats funny is that the person posting the ruleset stuff wasn't even an esl admin. (although i do agree some of his ideas were borderline stupid)

I don't really have a lot to rant about , just a quick few things to point out.

The patch I think actually made my gameplay worse. Thankfully Jock of Bashandslash.com came up with a config which is helping some gamers. You can check it out here.

There's been a few ideas out in the community now in regards to rulesets. After talking to Matt "PhearLP" Rogers this morning I'm sort of starting to question our judgement of thinking bo3 format will work. We're looking at at least 3-4 leagues all doing bo3? Giant Headache. Besides a lot of great ruleset ideas Phear proposed we do a 9 week season. 3 weeks demo, 3 weeks dom, 3 weeks ctf. You'd still be playing all gametypes. I'm still not sold on taking SD completely out as I've heard some people saying its fun to scrim (note i said scrim, not pub! If you're talking about pubbing gtfo my blog.) I almost want to propose 2 weeks sd, 2 weeks ctf, 2 weeks demo, 2 weeks dom.

I value input from people, what can I say. Phear isn't the only person that's spoken up to me. Jock Yitch has suggested barebones ctf/sd as the way to go. I got to admit, I played barebones ctf with him in his server and really enjoyed it. While I'm for keeping most of the perks in(except the stupid ones) I don't think stripping the perks out is whats going to kill the community. I think us changing shit so damn much and a lack of a free league for the pubbers to start in and play is whats hurting us. I'm open to the idea of barebones. As jock put it, just you and your gun vs the world.

Hill published his team's ctf config. I'd encourage people to check it out. Kanguh is preaching the virtues of dom and his settings. Check em out, give input. Thats what we need more than anything else right now. Well, anything else except treyarch actually fixing the game. But thats another story.

Anywho, I appreciate any input that anyone gives. Keep up with the ideas guys. Except for those of you saying tdm. Just stop now. Focus on something else.

a quick side note

Stop being dicks to newfags too, encourage them to stay around. Encourage our community to grow, in any way we can, damn it.

my day 2 rant on black ops and the community

Sigh...

where to begin. I'm not even sure. I sit here more confused than a baby in a topless bar. Its mind boggling some of the things I've heard lately. I guess before I call the front desk to see if reality has checked in to the hotel yet, I should go over what I do like about the game.

• Demolition - Its fast paced modified version of SD to me. And I haven't been a fan of sd so far in what I consider a fast paced game.
• Domination - Possibly the most fun I've had in this game so far. This gametype is a blast.
• CTF is ok, but in a pub environment turns into TDM.
• Killing people with a tomahawk is possibly the best thing ever.
• I really like the options of letting you choose your unlocks. I'm sporting a galil with a nade launcher, with the clan tag representing on the side, the revolver for the side arm, tomahawk, the sprint perk, the hip fire accuracy perk, and who knows what the other one is.
• I am a fan of a bo3 gametype....for now.

Please note. As I've said previously good things come to those who wait. Just because I say that I like those gametypes so far does not necessarily mean they're the best for competition. I'm still a firm advocate of waiting until treyarch at least fixes the lag/fps issues before we make any brash judgement. Sure, people want to go ahead and host the first league ASAP for street credit? Take a deep breath, stop, step back and look what anyone out there with a brain is doing. We have time, community, no need to rush it. Theorize, idealize, hypothesize, but set nothing in stone.

I think the game is fun and has potential if the lag is fixed.

I'm upset because there's no ftp access or access to the fs_game path. Upset because not only does this screw our mod maker from making a promod, but upset for my good friends like joker, who modding is a passion for, and now he can't get into it. However I find myself thinking how will they put up mod tools if we don't have access to these things.

Where there's a will there's a way: Thanks to the efforts of some people like hill , ted, swiftshot, davep and others, we've been casually developing some sort of rulesets and sharing them with each other via fileshare. We've yet to find if they save to the computer anywhere but we have our ideas of what we can do and where we can go from there.

After hearing some of the things proposed over the past few days, I have to ask, did I fall asleep in a spaceship and suddenly wind up in a world where apes rule, and humans are but slaves for entertainment?

Leave kill streaks in? Yeah, great idea. (not) hey, lets leave the rc car in too. Stuns, ehh I could argue for or against that. While I'm all for the idea of a little car going airborne crazy and blowing people to kingdom come this isn't a brilliant idea too. Or, OR, wait even better. Lets leave claymores in and put TDM as a gametype. Raise your hand if you ever played bhd. A tactic invented by this team called DFR comes to mind. Lets claymore every corner, camp and lean, then suicide if someone gets close enough to kill us. that'll show those socialist pigs! I'm not sure who got the memo that ctf should be no halves either but clearly they did not play cod2. TDM should in no shape form or fashion ever be used as a competition game type. I'm not necessarily for or against SD being left out yet. I'd like to see what people think after the lag issues are taken out.

There's this great tool out called Call of Duty Black Ops - remote console available on steam, which I have hopes for to be able to edit our appropriate settings we want for our gametypes. Hopefully we can get it working. Since you know, we won't have shit for mod access or ready up mods. I'm disgruntled about no timeouts either but i guess you do what you can right?

And then I stopped for a second, as a ray of light shined through the darkness and hit me like a cold bucket of water. Its only the second day. Why are we making stupid nonsensical ideas? Again, I'm of the good things come to those who wait way of thinking. I don't like running bad events and as such, I think waiting is the opportune thing to do.

So there you have it. Here's the tl;dr of it: wait until we fix the lag to decide shit. test as much as possible, set nothing in stone. Screw tdm. Screw no half ctf. Gun balanced. Me likey demo/dom. so easy a caveman can do it.

Thats all for now folks.