i49 is here!

[iridescentFUZZ 178]

After an impressive crowd-funding effort by the global TF2 community, the Australians, Team Immunity and the North-American-b4nny-team High Rollers Gaming have made their way to Telford, London for the biggest TF2 event of the decade at the Multiplay insomnia-49 LAN!

 

You! Yes, you, the viewers get to watch as five of the best TF2 teams battle it out over the 23rd, 24th and 25th of August for 5000 pounds in prize money, and more importantly, the title of international TF2 champions. Will HRG pick up where Classic Mixup left off last i-series and claim another NA victory, will Epsilon cement themselves as the new international super-team, or will Team Immunity, broder and infused overcome their past performances and cause a massive upset?

 

Be it SourceTV, mumble, casts, interviews and on-site coverage, watch all the action unfold live at:

 

http://www.vanillatf2.org/

http://www.twitch.tv/vanillatv

http://www.twitch.tv/vanillatv2

 

Tournament schedule(Times are in UTC+8):

Group stages 24/08/2013 02:00

Knockout stages 24/08/2013 17:00

Finals 25/08/2013 23:00

[Summer 180]

Just waiting for Immunity to show that not only the euros and yanks are the dominant force in tf2

If not iM then i hope broder can take it

[k1infran 20]

All I saw was Immunity bickering during boot camp.....

[iridescentFUZZ 178]

Unfortunately, from their scrims vs. broder, infused and Epsilon, it seems yuki is pretty much the only player on iM who can match the likes of Mike and b4nny.

 

They'll most likely be playing for 3rd, to at least be able to say they can beat the 2nd and 3rd best Prem teams in Europe.

[Summer 180]

only yuki? Sheep can probably beast most most other scouts but then i've been stuck in camp and haven't been following Yuki's twitch :|

[Biotics 45]

Bone's videos from iM vs Infused have been uploaded on YouTube. Sheep seems very frustrated when someone on the team does a mistake. Hope he can keep his cool during the actual group stages and such.

[korean 11]

iM beats HRG 3-2 during group stages.

 

/hype/

 

[Biotics 45]

Things getting real here, knockout stages tonight

[iridescentFUZZ 178]

Wow, that was spectacular; all the upsets, all the close games, the comebacks and all the ridiculous headshots. The Australians proved that they can compete with the best from NA and EU, broder finally took another close map off Epsilon, and Epsilon has had their revenge for i46.

 

Most importantly, for everyone in this community who is throwing in endless "helpful" suggestions while sitting on their asses, everyone who likes to bemoan the state of the community, everyone who likes to shout from the rooftops that TF2 or comp TF2 is dead/dying, take a tiny look at what John from www.twitch.tv has to say about statstics related to competitive TF2 viewership.

 

the peak concurrent viewership doesn't mean anything. There's tons of other metrics that are for more important. (avg time watched per unique viewer, total unique viewers, etc)

 

TF2 has grown a lot more than most anyone here realizes.

 

Basically, time watched per unique viewer for TF2 and the total uniques have skyrocketed over the last year and a half I have been obsessing over it. The content is really, REALLY sticky. This means that a lot of people are genuinely interested in competitive TF2. Conversion is the biggest issue right now, not gaining interest.

 

Think about how much bigger we could be if everyone got off their asses and actually DID something for a change. Or at the very least, if certain elements of this community stopped actively driving people away because they're too mentally fragile to handle a couple of meaningless PuGs being ruined.

 

/soapbox