The Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) has announced details on the 2007 CPL World Tour. Spanning four continents--Europe, Asia, South America, North America--across its eight month duration, the competition will start with a three day event in Verona, Italy beginning May 11. Future dates and locations have yet to be announced, though the final event is tentatively planned for New York City.

A total of $500,000 will be offered throughout the various tour events, with $300,000 of that representing the grand prize.

Sponsored by Sierra Entertainment, the 2007 CPL World Tour will focus on the competitive play of two Sierra-published titles: the Xbox 360 version of Monolith Productions' FPS F.E.A.R. and Massive Entertainment's alternate history PC RTS World in Conflict. F.E.A.R. originally hit the PC in late 2005, followed by the October 2006 Xbox 360 iteration and a PlayStation 3 edition due this week, both handled by Day 1 Studios. Meanwhile, the PC-based World in Conflict is slated for a Q3 2007 release.

"The CPL is proud once again to break new ground in e-sports by partnering with Sierra Entertainment and selecting both F.E.A.R. and World in Conflict as our featured games for this year's four-continent $500,000 World Tour," noted CPL founder and president Angel Munoz. "We are making a long-term commitment to these exciting and highly competitive new games and are working closely with Sierra to continue to raise the profile of professional video gaming and to enable increasing numbers of gamers to enter the professional ranks."

Despite a variety of professional gaming organizations, such as the CPL and Professional Gamers League of America, the majority of the worldwide competitive gaming circuit has yet to obtain the level of popularity such events garner in South Korea, where Starcraft tournaments can fill stadiums with tens of thousands of attendees.

There is an article format interview with Tom Mustaine on 1UP, asking the former Ritual Entertainment VP about SiN Episodes and episodic content, as well as his upcoming CPL game.

In what appears to be the first major pro gaming victory for an all-female team, the Ubisoft-sponsored Frag Dolls won the CPL's Rainbow Six Vegas finals in Dallas this week. The team took down previously undefeated clan The Unknown in what was according to Nelly "Psyche" Morel a six-hour tournament. "There were a few good teams that we were worried about especially with the team compete team but we were confident about our team work," said Morel. "I kept counting down the clock, we were up by a good amount of kills and after we won it was such a relief--it was an amazing feeling."

"We have been getting more experience with competition and playing under pressure by playing in pro-circuit tournaments like MLG and WSVG over the past year," said team captain Morgan "Rhoulette" Romine. "Being able to come here to play Rainbow, always our favorite multiplayer series, and bring our experience with both online and live event competition made for an ideal combination. We played as a team, communicated well, stuck to our strategies and won."

More On CPL's Plans For Severity is a FiringSquad article, offering some additional details on the competitive multiplayer game announced during the weekend. According to the article, there are about 10 people working on the game at the moment, with the team expected to expand to about 20 people eventually. Severity is powered by the Quake 3 technology and netcode, though it will feature an enhanced rendering engine so that people with the latest and greatest hardware will get new graphical features. With plans to bring the game to PC as well as console systems, team lead Tom Mustaine hopes to have the game support Live Anywhere so Xbox 360 and PC gamers can battle against each other.

Mustaine isn't revealing much about the game itself at this stage but he did tell us that the game will be a mix of modern day and futuristic themes in terms of weapons and level settings. While the game will not have a lenghty single player experience except maybe for tutorial levels, he did say they did plan for AI bot play for people to practice offline. Mustaine said they have already spoken with a number of publishing partners for Severity but that nothing has been signed yet. One thing they are looking for in terms of a publishing partner is a way to support a game with new features and content well past the game's release to stores.

The article also touches on tournament features, and plans by the CPL to use the game.

According to this PDF format press release on the CPL website, former Ritual Entertainment studio director Tom Mustaine will head up an effort to create a new multiplayer game called Severity. The game, to be released on PC and console systems, will focus on team-vs-team and 1vs1 modes, and will feature extensive support for live and online competitions. The CPL expects to start testing the game by late 2007.

"Severity will be the first videogame conceived from the ground up to ensure the growth and appeal of multiplayer game competitions worldwide," said Tom Mustaine, Director of Game Development at the CPL's new studio.

Severity is built on technology created by developer id Software and includes enhanced tournament support, spectator modes, as well as detailed player and tournament statistics tracking. By leveraging the enthusiastic community and practical experiences of the CPL, Severity is uniquely positioned to set new standards while raising the bar for competitive multiplayer games.

Earlier this year, Major League Gaming announced that it would be airing its competitive gaming tournaments on national television; currently, its Halo 2 2006 season is currently being run weekly on the USA Network. Now, another competitive gaming organization has announced it is joining the televised fray. The World Series of Video Games, which describes itself as "the first international video game competition circuit for multiple game platforms," has announced a deal with network and digital television channels to broadcast tournaments and other content.

On December 30 at 3:00pm, CBS will air a one-hour special entitled They Got Game, focusing on various prominent figures of the competitive gaming world, including well known gamer Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel. CBS subsidiary channel College Sports Television plans to run a five-week series covering the first World Series of Video Games Finals, to be aired at 9:00pm ET on Sundays starting January 21, 2007. It will include games such as Counter Strike 1.6, Quake 4, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, Halo 2, Project Gotham Racing 3, and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. Finally, in December and February, the DISH Network-hosted GamePlay HD channel will run various World Series of Video Games tournaments.

With a somewhat more accessible broadcast schedule than the Saturday morning MLG series, as well as its presence across multiple channels, it seems that CBS has greater confidence in the potential mainstream appeal of competitive gaming than USA has with MLG, relegated to Saturday morning broadcasts. Still, as coverage of competitive gaming even among the established gaming community has waned in recent years, it remains to be seen if that confidence is well placed.

In other pro gaming news, TwitchGuru reports that in 2007 the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL), a major player in competitive gaming, will potentially begin conducting drug use tests among its players. "The potential for [drugs] being an issue absolutely concerns me," said CPL founder Angel Munoz. "It should concern anybody in eSports, because as the stakes get larger, as in any sport, people will look for an edge." Substances such as crystal methamphetamine and Ritalin are among those said to have been used to give participants a physical advantage in CPL events. The CPL has banned specific substances among its players in the past, but has never before conducted mandatory drug tests. Both illegal and certain prescription drugs will be prohibited. Caffeine-based products such as coffee and energy drinks will not be restricted.

It's not very surprising considering there are only a few weeks left in 2005, but fan site Ritualistic is reporting that SiN Episodes has been delayed and is now due early 2006. Ritualistic also mentions that the game will be shown at the latest CPL event in Dallas tomorrow.

The Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) is holding its Grand Finals tonight in New York, with $250,000 on the line for the top two head-to-head Painkiller players. The event will be covered live by MTV, of all outlets, by way of the network's online Overdrive video streaming site. Highlights from the event will be broadcast Saturday on MTV (the actual TV channel, that is).

Speaking of pro gaming, the Associated Press has a story up on Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel, who is currently the most ubiquitous name in the sport/game/whatever. He is described rather ominously.

Johnathan Wendel's blue eyes stare raptly at the computer screen, his long, thin fingers gliding the mouse side to side as he moves through dark corridors of a video game where a lethal opponent lurks. Before long, seemingly without effort, he has annihilated his foe.

Time to punch out. Another hard day at work.

Wendel makes a six figure income for fragging people all day long, which may go some way towards explaining why MTV is suddenly interested in the whole competitive gaming thing.

In other related news, the United States took top honors at the World Cyber Games last weekend, narrowly beating out Korea. The United States won two gold medals and a silver--for Halo 2, Counter-Strike, and WarCraft III respectively--while Korea scored two golds and a bronze for Starcraft, Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War, and Dead or Alive Ultimate. The Netherlands, last year's overall winner, came away with only a bronze.

New at GameCloud this morning is a Q&A with Angel Munoz, head of the Cyberathlete Professional League. There are questions about the CPL's World Tour, games used at the events, and competition from other pro gaming leagues.

A CPL quickfix patch for Painkiller has been released, updating v1.62 to v1.63. The small patch fixes a dead bodies bug and invisible gold armor bug. A Linux server update is available as well.

DreamCatcher Games sends along a massive new patch for Painkiller, which updates the People Can Fly shooter to version 1.61. The 338mb download adds all the new content and features created for the Cyberathlete Professional League (which will be using the game in its tournaments), along with a few other changes/additions.

Within the largest Painkiller update released, players can look forward to the new CPL dueling maps from Ritual Entertainment, over a half dozen specialty maps and numerous CPL-ready network features. They will also enjoy access to two additional multiplayer modes, Capture the Flag and Last Man Standing, as well as carnage-creating power of the exclusive weaponry offered in Painkiller's Expansion, "Battle Out of Hell." The update also includes Battle Out of Hell's graphic enhancements, the reworked networking core and a number of fixes for outstanding issues. Utilizing the impressive Havok 2.0 physics engine, Painkiller continues to achieve new heights of physics-based game play while version 1.61 of the proprietary PAIN Engine pumps out an unbelievably high polygon count, and awesome visual effects like heat and haze distortion, per-pixel spectacular mapping, support for NVIDIA's Shader Model 3.0.

An updated Windows dedicated server is available as well.

In a post by Angel Munoz of The CPL on cached.net, responding to comments about the CPL deciding to use Painkiller as their 2005 World Tour game over UT2004 or other games, he mentions this about Unreal Tournament. Thanks BeyondUnreal.

People wondering why we did not pick UT 2004. First realize that Epic is a huge supporter of CPL. The CEO Mark Rein is a friend of mine and Cliffy B is on our advisory board. A wide range of aspects were taken into consideration, including publisher/developer support for the entire tour. Unfortunately, Epic is transitioning to a new publisher and it was not expected that their current publisher would help us in marketing the game/tour through the end 2005. Additionally, there is a new UT in the works, but it was not going to be available in the time frame we needed.
Mark and I are still in conversations about the 2006 World Tour.

One of three new features on HomeLAN Fed this morning is this Q&A with Angel Munoz of the Cyberathlete Professional League. Munoz is asked about the upcoming summer event, the lineup of games there, plans for the Winter Championships, using console games for tournaments in the future, major challenges for growth, plans for their own year-round facility and a few other things.

Over at the Adrenaline Vault you can find an edited Halo PC chat log, offering all the relevant Q&A's from last night's IRC event with Gearbox Software president Randy Pitchford and Michel Bastien from Bungie. There's questions about text typing limitations, the FOV, SDK plans, lack of coop, and lots more.

New on the CPL website is this Q&A with Gearbox Software president Randy Pitchford about Halo. Pitchford is asked about the game itself and special features for tournament play at CPL events.

The guys at Gaming Horizon have posted their impressions of the two Ubi Soft titles on display at the CPL event this past weekend, XIII and Far Cry.

Also on GameSpy today is this preview of the tropical island shooter Far Cry. Impressions are based on playing a single level demo at the recent CPL Dallas event.

GameSpy's preview of XIII is online, offering impressions of a build of the game that was shown at the CPL a few days ago. A singleplayer demo of this game will be out very soon.

According to Computer and Video Games, Microsoft's Chairman Bill leaked a few details about the next-generation Xbox that's in development to a French magazine. So what new info is there? He says it will feature video and photo editing in addition to game playing, and he says it will feature WiFi support as well. WiFi's kinda cool if you're into that thing, but those other "features" just make me roll my eyes...tell me, honestly: how many times have you been sitting, playing Halo and thinking to yourself, "gee, you know, I'd really like to edit home movies on this thing." I don't get it. After fighting so hard to convince everyone that the Xbox wasn't anything more than a kickass piece of gaming hardware, they're going to turn around and try and convince everyone of the opposite. That's very dangerous, and it could come back to hurt them. Just look at some of the things that were supposed to play a big role in the PS2 as proof that this hasn't worked before. See that iLink port on the front of the system? That was going to be for video editing as well, but it hasn't happened yet. Remember when Sony showed off a PS2 ZIP drive? And let's not forget the downloadable movies that we're all supposed to be watching on our PS2s. I don't doubt that both Sony and Microsoft are planning on throwing in all kinds of silly multimedia features in their next systems, but I seriously question how likely anyone is to actually use these things. Let's not forget that the Dreamcast shipped with the ability to browse the Internet and check e-mail right out of the box (actually, so did the Saturn NetLink). How often did you use that? Hopefully Nintendo will take their own minimalist role again and put out a pure gaming system.

	Tenchu Impressions, Media GameSpot got their hands on a new build of Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven, and they have posted their impressions of playing as the third playable character in the game. Along side that piece are new movies and screenshots.
	Splinter Cell GBA Connection While no details are available yet, Ubi Soft announced today that their GameCube port of Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell will feature the ability to link-up to the Game Boy Advance (most likely in conjunction with the version of the game for that system).
	Splinter Cell PS2 Trailer Speaking of Splinter Cell ports, PS2.IGN has a new trailer up showing off the PS2 port of the game.
	More Amplitude Artists Revealed Sony has revealed five more artists who will be contributing music to their upcoming title Amplitude: Blink 182, P.O.D., Mekon, Freezepop and Dieselboy join the already announced bands David Bowie, Garbage, Weezer, Quarashi and Logan 7. And yes, I've actually heard of a couple of those. I'm not a total square, you know. Oh wait...yes. Yes I am.
	Angel of Darkness Pre-order Bonuses GameSpot reported today that people who pre-order Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness from GameStop will receive a Lara Croft "bobble head" figure, and those who pre-order the game from EBGames will get a special "Making of" DVD. On a related note, GameSpot has also posted new screenshots from the game.
	New Miyamoto Game at E3? According to Games Are Fun, the latest issue of Weekly Famitsu talks with Shigeru Miyamoto, who says he'll be showing off a "remarkable" new game at E3 that will take advantage of the GBA to GameCube connection.
	Metroid Prime Interview Computer and Video Games has posted a transcript of a press conference that featured various people from Retro Studios and Nintendo Japan, including Miyamoto himself. The questions deal with Metroid Prime's use of a first person perspective, lack of multiplayer, and other related subjects. It's a good read.
	EverQuest Online Adventures in Stores Along with Capcom vs. SNK 2, there's another big online console game in stores this week, namely Sony's EverQuest Online Adventures. GameSpot has their initial impressions up, and IGN has their full review online, although it's for subscribers only (they give it an 8.0 overall, with the high point being the 10 for lasting appeal and the low a meager 5.5 for sound).
	CAL Xbox League The Cyberathlete Amateur League (a division of The CPL) has announced that they will be launching an Xbox division this June. This is pretty cool, although things will really get interesting when The CPL starts a console league. Thanks PlanetXbox for the tip.

Console Game of the Evening: Resident Evil 3: Nemesis for the PlayStation. I think this is the game where I finally decided I was tired of the survival horror genre, and I haven't been able to pull myself out of that funk since.

GameSpot has posted a Halo PC update, based on the Gearbox workshop at the CPL event this past Saturday. They describe the work involved with porting the engine and what Gearbox is working on. The Adrenaline Vault has a brief article of their own.

Pitchford said that the project is about 40 percent done, much of which includes a successful port of the graphics engine. The port required Gearbox to move to supporting DirectX 9 and completely rewrite all the pixel shader effects. Part of what that rewrite means is that the PC game will have some enhanced effects for PCs with the latest graphics cards ...