CPL's World Championship tournament is kicking off real soon, and AVault has done a pre-event inteview with Valve's Doug Lombardi, about Valve's involvement with competitive gaming, if Valve or partners like Gearbox will be showing off anything at the event, mod support, and a few other related things.

Looks like CPL has finally got their foot in the door with ESPN. A forum post by the CPL president announces that ESPN has confirmed that they will be coming to the event. Thanks ShackES. The CPL is also of course in talks with G4 Media, the upcoming TV network that will be focusing on video gaming. Seriously, did anyone really think this day would come?

The proof is in the pudding or something though, How much attention will ESPN actually give the upcoming $150,000 CPL event? Also, Will that G4 Media TV channel actually ever make it off the ground? I sure hope to get that G4 channel here in Austin, not that I imagine I'd be interested in watching it for more than a little while for the novelty value though.

note: Whining about having the word 'pro' or 'athlete' attached to gaming is so 1999. Get over it, this isnt the place.

The CPL has announced that all the spectator passes for the December World Championship event have been purchased by sponsor Logitech, and will be given away for free. Previously there was a $5 charge for these passes.

The CPL has announced that registration for the CPL World Championship has opened. Here you can register for the main tournament or the Aliens versus Predator 2 tournament. Advance registration fee is $50.

If you are interested in reading the rules for the upcoming CPL Aliens versus Predator 2 demo tournament, they can now be found on the CPL site. Thanks Blues News.

HomeLan has an interview with Angel Munoz of CPL fame discussing announcements like the AVP2 demo tournament and upcoming events... the $150,000 Intel CPL World Championships in December in particular.

In a strange turn of events, CPL has announced in association with Monolith and Fox Interactive, Aliens vs Predator2 has become a CPL "approved" game and will be featured in an upcoming tournament giving away a custom car. This was suspected earlier given a concept image that surfaced at HardOCP a little while back but now it's official.

SierraT, Fox InteractiveT and the Cyberathlete Professional League® (CPL) are excited to announce that Aliens vs. PredatorT 2 has been approved as an "Official Tournament Game of the CPL". To kick off this partnership, the Aliens vs. Predator 2 tournament, also sponsored by PNY Technologies®, will be included in a 30-city tournament at CPL qualifying centers, a worldwide online tournament with the Cyberathlete Amateur LeagueT and the upcoming CPL World Championship Event. The Aliens vs. Predator 2 finals tournament will have gamers from across the nation competing for the grand prize of a high-end customized 2002 Ford Focus ZX3 courtesy of the American Products Company located in Corona, CA.

A few days ago ShackES broke a story (and Shack story here) that CPL announced that a decision was made to make changes to the CPL version of Counter-Strike in cooperation with Valve and Intel. There was an intense amount of backlash about the changes, which were to rename the teams to Offensive and Defensive as well as changing the "bomb" to a "communications device". Well after deliberating some more CPL has decided to change one thing back. Here's part of the PR we got from CPL:

... the CPL has concluded that the version of Counter-Strike (CS) that will be used at the World Championship tournament will in fact have an explosive device, with the exact same physics, as gamers from all over the world have been using for their local and online competitions.

Keep in mind the references to Offensive and Defensive teams will remain. It all seems pretty clear to me... As everyone knows the videogame market has been under quite a bit of scrutiny by the press for a while now and getting blamed for all kinds of things that many of us dont feel is deserved. Now you take Intel, a multi-billion dollar company who is sponsoring this event. Now consider the recent terrorist events from last month. Ponder that.

Now... Intel sponsors this event as obviously a PR move. You think Intel wants press that has been historically critical of gaming and violence showing up at an event that has their name all over it where in the finals people are cheering for and glorifying a victory of possibly the "terrorist team"? It's a PR nightmare, and a simple change to the text of the game between rounds is all that is needed to avoid that.

This is not about protecting the sensitivities of gamers. Everyone competing is obviously fine with the game as it is or they wouldnt be playing. This is about protecting the video game industry from the mainstream press vultures who are looking for a hot terrorism related story. That is just about the last thing the gaming industry needs right now.

I dont applaud the decision because it does suck having to change the game, but I can completely understand why the difficult decision was made. I would be almost certain that Intel was a very very big factor in all of this.

Angel Munoz of the CPL posted a comment on ShackES, listing the changes in the Counter-Strike version used at the upcoming CPL World Championship. It was previously announced that the CPL version of CS would lock models and team names would be supported among a few other things, but it seems the changes are quite a bit more than that. In fact it's not really Terrorist - Counter-Terrorist anymore.

1. The words "terrorist" and "counter-terrorist" have been replaced with the clan's name.
2. In-game text files containing the words "terroist" "counter-terrorist" have been replaced with "offensive team" and "defensive team."
3. The text files containing the word "bomb" have been replaced with "device" and "communication device."
4. Sound wav. files containing explosion sounds have been deleted.
5. Models are now forced and the entire offensive and defensive teams can choose only one model per team.

The action of the game now gravitates around a team trying to activate a communication device and the other team attempting to prevent that.

Well this isnt something you see every day. Remember those Razer mouse guys? Remember when they went out of business and never paid up on that prize money they had signed on with CPL for? (CPL later found another company to take their place). Well it looks like Razer is back, at least in limited form. It also looks like Razer hasnt gotten in to optical stuff yet though. This quote should amuse you:

There will be lots of critics (aren’t there always?) to tell you that you need to use an optical or a wireless mouse for competitive gaming. But we all know what product has given the top gamers in the world THE competitive edge!

Yeah!

The Counter-Strike website is sporting four shots showing off the special Counter-Strike maps which will be used during the CPL World Championship tournament this December. Saw that on HomeLan Fed.

The CPL has announced that an altered version of Counter-Strike will be used for its World Championship Tournament in December. The CPL version will add the capability to enter clan or team names to replace general team designations. A few sound files and text strings will be changed as well to to support the new name feature. The CPL also announced the CT model will be French GIGN and the Terrorist model will be Leet Krew.

The QuakeCon Quake3 1on1 tournament has concluded with Zero4 taking the win and of course $30,000 for his efforts. ShackES has a bunch of coverage/wrap-up.. and hopefully comments will get fixed today. :) Matt also goes on one of his wacky tirades here:

Because at Razer CPL on a Friday/Saturday night, even when the tourney was over for almost all the players, the future was still wide open. Everyone was crazy serious about practicing for the next tournament. Razer CPL was early Q3. We all knew there were more, bigger! tournaments in our future, and everyone there was thinking how good a player they'd be next time. And you could talk about how good you were going to be next time with your friends, and sometimes even wake up in the morning thinking about it.

That was a fun time, but now there is no next time. There's online leagues, and maybe another online tourney from Cache, but really, what's out there for a Quake 3 player? We like the game, and we'll keep playing the game, but what is there to look forward too. Where's the reason to practice hard?

Havent gotten a chance to watch the interview and read more but a PR sent along from Gamecaster announces that they have formed a partnership with REZN8 to produce a series of nationally televised computer LAN tournaments. Gamecaster has been covering CPL for a while now although I didnt see a specific mention of them in the PR.

The CPL 4-Year anniversary tournament conclude this weekend. X3 won the Counter-Strike tournament and HarlsoM won the Quakeworld tournament. Judging by the headline... yes the event lasted 4 years.

SpyFx has scored some screenshots from the Half-Life TV proxy mode which will find it's way in the new Half-Life patch soon. The shots come from the CPL event that started on Thursday and ends today.

Valve Software sends word of a couple of patches to be released in the coming weeks. I would imagine these will also be shortly followed by the fabled Counter-Strike v1.2 release. Here's the deal:

Half-Life updates 1.1.0.7 and 1.1.0.8 will be released in the coming weeks.

Update 1.1.0.7, which contains Deathmatch Classic and introduces new update/downloading functionality, will be issued next week.

Update 1.1.0.8, which contains Voice and the Multicast Spectator technologies, and was previously referred to as 1.1.0.7, will be released in mid July. This update also contains a fix for the GL wall hack, and will be previewed at this week's CPL event in Dallas.

The Voice and Multicast Spectator features will be compatible with all Half-Life Mods, and Valve will be supporting the Mod teams to have these features working immediately in popular HL Mods such as Day of Defeat and more.

No word on when they are gonna drop the crappy version numbers for something like v1.7 and v1.8

The WorldCyberGames website has been updated with word on their upcoming professional gaming tournaments. They have an event lined up to go head to head with the $150,000 CPL tournament scheduled for this December.

The CPL is offering up some last minute free passes to the CPL four-year anniversary event scheduled for the end of this month. Just click "I have an invitation type" and fill in the word "spectator" and you're good to go.

The CAL sponsored by the CPL (Who works in cooperation with Valve) has posted word on Counter-Strike v1.2 that is due for release this month. We can probably expect changes as usual. The CAL page also has word on a new anti-cheat measure that is included in v1.2

Upon release of Counter-Strike 1.2 this month, the Cyberathlete Amateur League will require all match servers to be in the new "pure" mode during official matches. I wanted give everyone a nice advance notice so you can get used to playing with all the default player skins, weapon models and crosshairs.

Pure servers settings. That should cut down on at least some of the hacks. A pure server setting generally speaking will compare all the files on your drive to the server and if you're running any different models or skins it gives ya the boot. Keep in mind this doesnt have any impact on the wall-hack video drivers. (Unless of course the phrase 'pure server' also encompasses something other than how Q3 works)  Hopefully Valve has something in mind for the wall-hack too.

Speaking of cheats, CAL recently booted a team from their top league for cheating and banned a couple of the guilty player from ever playing in future events. Cheaters = suck.