Since we have been covering TWL's Global Crisis 2005 European Theater, a lot of you may be wanting to hear from the admins of the tournament. Well today is your lucky day, as I have an interview with Beaver for you to read through. I'm sure he'll answer a lot of the questions you have about the tournament and its setup.

Would you first please introduce yourself and your position with Global Crisis 2005.

Beaver: Hi. My name is Ian 'Beaver' Craven & I'm the European Tournament Director for the Teamwarfare BF2 Global Crisis 2005 [EU Region] Tournament. I'm also the European Competition Director sponsoring Battlefield 2 & Counter-Strike: Source European ladders & leagues at TeamWarfare.

With Global Crisis, you guys have gone with a 8v8 style of play, is there a reason you chose this over a 12v12 style?

Beaver: We discussed at length the size of teams ranging from 6v6 upto 15v15 in the intial brain storming for the tournament. The reason we went with 8v8 was because we expected alot of new teams who have never played the BF series of games before to come into this 'new' game, and we know how difficult it can be to get a large team together. We didn't just want established BF series teams competeing, we want new teams to come & enjoy the fun of competing.

With this being the first Battlefield 2 Tournament that TeamWarfare is doing, was it difficult in coming up with a set of rules to govern the tournament?

Beaver: Yes & No. We've run a good few tournaments for various games in our time, CoD ATC 1 & 2, BF: Vietnam & ET, and we draw upon those experiences & set-ups to guide us. Thankfully we have a nice backend set-up that allows us to set-up the tournaments easily. Because EA released the demo early, it gave us a good insight into what the full game would offer & how it would work for competition. Although I do still think that the dedicated server package has alot of work still to be done on it to make sety-up easier for competition.

You have also made the tournament single elimination, do you think this will discourage some teams from signing up?

Beaver: We looked at both Single & Double elimination & decided that the single elimination format would be easier for new teams to deal with & give us the shortest running time, so hopefully it wont put too many teams off. This also allows us to focus on getting our BF2 European ladders & leagues set-up & running in tandem with the tournament. In the future, we'll look at doing a 2nd tournament once the game has had time to mature & the teams have become familiar with it, hopefully running with the double-elimination format.

In your rules list, it states that the sever-side demo is to be submitted to an admin after the match, are you planning to review each of these demos or are they strictly for handling disputes?

Beaver: No, we are definately not planning on reviewing every single demo from every match. They are purely there for dispute purposes. We may pick 1 or 2 matches each week to randomely view. If enough people want it, we may also make them available to the public. I'm sure someone somewhere will want to make videos from them.

How do you feel the turn-out for Global Crisis is going so far, do you expect to get more teams to sign up?

Beaver: So far, I think it's gone pretty well. Thanks to sites such as Gotfrag running articles about it, interest has been stirred up within the European BF2 community. We have some top teams such as High-FiDelity, Dignitas, Cloud9, Mousesports onboard, which brings a smile to my face. We had hoped for over 100 teams, but realistically, 50-60 is probably going to be the final count.

Did you have a hard time coming up with sponsors and prizes?

Beaver: Actually, no I didn't have a hard time - I was pretty lucky in that department. Each of the 3 sponsors (Rackage.com - University Of Gotland: MoDEd - Trinity Gaming) I know their representatives well & they all pretty much said yes immediately.

Thank you for answering my questions, is there anything else you'd like to tell us about Global Crisis or TeamWarfare?

Beaver: You're welcome & thanks. To all those teams taking part in the tournament - Good Luck & Have Fun! Spectators should be able to listen/watch to select matches that will be casted for us by TsN. We'll be sure to post details of those matches in the tournament forums here & they should also be posted on the TsN website. I'd also like to let everyone know that we are pushing into Europe this year & with games such as America's Army & Counter-Strike:Source already up and running, we hope that Battlefield 2 & upcoming games such as CoD2 & GR3 will feature heavily in European Competition. TeamWarfare BF2 EU is taking off & we're currently running with an 8v8 Open League, 5v5, 8v8 & 12v12 ladder.

I'd like to thank Beaver again for answering my questions. Great work with the tournament, its turning out very nicely. We'll continue our coverage of both the European and the North American Theaters of Global Crisis 2005. Good luck to all the teams involved!