Once again, the Brood War community is getting the chance to improve it's e-sports status. The Electronic Sports League is one of the largest, if not the largest esports-league with about 100000 Euro as a prize every season (Counter-Strike, Warcraft III, FIFA 2005 and Live for Speed combined).
Weeks ago, the ESL announced, that they would add another real-time strategy game to their ESL Pro-Series (EPS) (that's where the big money is involved) and StarCraft is one of the contestants. Instead of doing a simple poll, they measure activity (Players x Games played) and give points to the games.
After a period of 6 weeks, the most active game will be chosen to be in the EPS and have a huge tournament with prize money involved.
The first week of the qualification has already ended and Brood War only came in 2nd! It's a shame, but Command & Conquer: Generals has won the first week with only 7 games more and also leads in the second week, even closer, though.
It is obvious that the ESL is a huge opportunity for Brood War and we need more games to win this competition. In Warcraft III the ESL became one of the most important leagues, the korean Pro-Gamer
SK.Zacard even moved to germany to participate in this league. So far mostly german players are playing in it, e.g. 
x)Q.SchniblOr, Methos[pG] or 
razZ.Cope.
You can find your opponent on europe in channel "op esl" or use the Instant Challenger, a JAVA-based program that automatically finds an opponent with similar stats who also uses the Instant Challenger when you do. The ladder itself is ELO-based, but has the disadvantage that you have to challenge an opponent before playing him and uploading the replay is a must or the game will not be counted for the qualification! BUT this is only a small obstacle to overcome, since this would mean one more great event with Brood War in it.
| #1Command & Conquer: Generals12 points #2StarCraft: Brood War9 points #3Dawn of War6 points #4Empire Earth 23 points |
To have Brood War in the EPS we will need every player possible, so » please register yourself! After you did that, you have to subsribe to the SC 1on1 ladder. To do so follow these steps:
- Under Hi yournickname, select Command Center, select Edit personal info and type in your ICQ number or any IRC-channel you want
- Go back to esl-europe.net select Games & Leagues under the menu point Navigation, a dropdown-menu appears
- select StarCraft:Broodwar
- now select SC 1on1 Ladder under Navigation
- on top of the left menu there should be the option Signup now, select this
- you will get an error now, saying you have to enter your battle.net-ID, do so by selecting add
- now select Signup again - Finished
Links
esl-europe.net - Electronic Sports League
