CEVO-P for parity

Teams have only matched four times through two weeks of CEVO-Professional and yet just two of the original sixteen remain unbeaten. And wouldn't you know, the combined opponent's record of those two undefeated teams is 3-29, quite an achievement. It's already become commonplace for an entire panel of predictors to be unanimously wrong just as frequently as correct. In CEVO-P for CoD2, at any given time there were three top tier teams and then everybody else was second class. Much to my excitement, and I'll even admit, to my surprise, in CoD4 there is a legitimate struggle taking place for top tier superiority and it has heretofore been thoroughly entertaining.

Case in point, Nexus grabs wins over EG and Pandemic but loses to a PHG team that has since fallen victim to 20id 15-9 and to ptX 18-6. Furthermore, Finish the Fight champions Guardians have gotten off to a rocky 1-2 start with their only win coming 13-11 over a Mirror iMage club that just last night lost to Nexus 19-5 on the same map. Where does this leave us? Well besides having an admittedly confused recreational predictor, the CoD4 community has a lot to look forward to in the coming months. There is a level of parity never before seen in this community and it will only help to propel top competitors, side by side, to bigger and better things.

Making the grade

Now I want to talk more specifically about teams that are either not living up to their preseason expectations or greatly exceeding them. Starting with the positive, I'd like to extend congratulations to team 20id for demanding that the CEVO-P community recognize them. Rob "rob-wiz" Kennedy questioned half jokingly in a week 1:2 prediction "20id has a CoD4team? What the hell?" All kidding aside, somewhere near half of the people I had talked to at the time felt the same way. To their credit, 20id is starting to get the attention they deserve. They're yet to face some of the stronger teams, but wins against 50cal, makeSHIFT, and PHG aren't exactly handed out.

I briefly alluded to The Guardians early season shortcomings earlier but I think it's worth discussing some more. Guardians won the CEVO-P FTF tournament by going undefeated. They eliminated 50cal, sinister, RiVE, j1n, and others along the way. Fast forward one month and you see a team with losses to Pandemic and EG, and a down to the wire win over Mirror iMage. My heart goes out to MiiM, it really does, they've been through a lot, but Guardians need to start to show some signs of life if they think they're a championship threat. In the wake of the 47 situation, Guardians have acquired a new difficulty in the form of questionable activity. Perhaps between appointments, Havax could find some time to sort his team out and get them back to the level that we are comfortable seeing them on.

Nerv LAN

At the time of this writing, Matt "Chimpae" Gomez would have you believe that 29 teams have at least four members prepaid and prepared to attend the Nerv Games LAN Tournament on March 8 in Pennsylvania. With projected prize pots shooting close to $6500, this would be the largest North American Call of Duty 4 event to date. If memory serves me, this would also be substantially greater than all previous non-WSVG tournaments for CoD2 in North America. That's a lot of cake and quite a few teams, so everything is on the up and up, right?

Not exactly. Leave it to the litigious factions within this community to raise hell over any and all possible issues and concerns. Let's start with something as simple as seeding. As best as I can tell, the seeds for the Nerv LAN were decided upon in an entirely objective fashion by the most qualified and respected community arbiter, Chimpae himself. Instead of random groupings or arbitrary seeding, these selected seeds very directly impact the tournament as they fully dictate who gets to play who and in what round on what map. Who's to say if the seeds could have been done better, but perhaps this custodian of public opinion might submit that random seedings simply make more sense, especially when considering the game's youth and fragility of many of its teams. In any event, more of a ruckus was raised when the idea popped into somebody's head that the seeds were being altered in accordance to complaints being levied by neglected teams. According to the LAN center tournament director himself, "The seeds didn't significantly change, the maps are not changing…"

Oh right, maps. Apparently it's fashionable to protest LAN tournaments because of their proposed, key word, map list. To the criers, I grant you that it is entirely a terrible idea for the director to up and change the map list of his own accord with only two weeks before the event, but dab your eyes long enough to catch the part where they're asking for your opinion now. Team leaders have been requested to weigh in with their thoughts regarding the pipeline/vacant situation and majority will rule. If something about casting a ballot to reach a consensus bugs you, then you're just going to have to get over it.