Num News: 20

The Electronic Sports League wishes everyone on the planet a great celebration of the end of 2006 and we are sure 2007 will bring all gamers a lot of fun and great competition. We wish you all a happy new year, have a blast and do not forget to respawn in 2007!

Almost another year has passed, time for the last week of the year enjoying the festivities starting with Christmas. As we are the international department of the Electronic Sports League we will of course wish everyone a merry Christmas in their own language! Read the full news to see how "Merry Christmas" is said all over the world.

We have added a little feature for the Playersheet, with which you can sort your awards. This option was needed because of two reasons.

It was expected, awards are wanted and some people would rather abuse the system to get them then to play for them. But we wouldn't be ESL if we don't have a countermeasure for each act of abuse.

As the temperatures drops, the action in the IPS gets hotter. With only one week to go before the winter break the final IPS matches of 2006 are being played. So far TRIAD.INT, ALTERNATE aTTaX, raccoons and Team SPEED-LINK are leading their respective groups and are dominating the competition.

You asked for it so you shall get it: Awards for playing ESL Gathers. To get these awards you will not simply have to play a lot of gathers as this would be too simple. So we came up with something else.

Extreme weather has caused severe power problems in huge parts of the United States. The region around Seattle is for the biggest part without power and thus also the Steam login servers, who are located in that area. Further updates will follow but for now you will not be able to log in into steam.

The international Premiership Series have brought us already a lot of excitement with a lot of great matches. Now it is time for the community to select what game will earn the 1000 EUR prizemoney for their game that is hosted on ESL International. We have four competitors entering the ring. Who will claim the prizes? Find out more in the full news.

International top events live on GIGA2 during the winter period. Do not miss out on this unique experience. eSports at its best, live and direct on your screen. Extreme Masters, WC3L and many many more. Check the full news for all the details.

Length: 45 cm, weight: 12 kg: These are the dimensions of the official Turtle Entertainment mascot. It's a "Köhlerschildkröte" who lives in the Zoo Cologne. As from January of 2007 we take on the godparenthood of our new buddy and welcome him as our mascot. And now we're looking for a name!

On 25th November all users had the chance to chat with Jan-Philipp "TheFly" Reining and Alexander "MadDog" Albrecht in the Xfire ESL Chat. The whole log is now published with interesting questions and answers around the topic ESL.

Last weekend our Russian partner, the National Professional Cybersport League (NPCL), started with a large Kick-Off event in Moscow. A showmatch between the Meet Your Makers Counter-Strike team from Norway and the Russian team Virtus.pro was the highlight of the event. For more information and some photos, check this news.

Updates to the Source Engine have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The specific changes are included in the full news.

In the night of Thursday (7.12.) to Friday (8.12.) the site will be unavailable from 0:00 till 4:00 CET because of a planned downtime. Some hardware changes will have to be made, which means the site will have to be taken offline for a while. We apologize for any inconvenience this might cause.

Today we are proud to announce the official partner of ESL in Russia: The National Professional Cybersport League (NPCL). The Opening Ceremony of NPCL Regular Championship Season 2 seems to become one of the biggest eSports events 2006 in Russia. Three main events are on the agenda in one evening.

We are very proud to announce the next step for the International CS:Source 2on2 ladder. The ESL Amateur Series are the prime ladders where only the best teams play and with different divisions, teams need to perform in every match or they risk dropping to a lower division.