Ten players from around the world will meet up at the CeBIT expo in Hannover, Germany for the Extreme Masters Season II Global Finals this weekend. Eight European players have qualified through a grueling online season. Joining them are June "Lyn" Park, and Jae Wook "Lucifer" Noh from Korea, who qualified from the Extreme Masters Los Angeles event towards the end of October.

Among the qualified is the defending champion, Yoan "ToD" Merlo. While he's been pretty quiet since the beginning of 2008, a first place victory at the International e-Sports Festival in December shows that he still has what it takes to win. Last season's runner-up, Mykhaylo "HoT" Novopashyn is in a similar boat, having not competed in a LAN tournament since his 5-8th finish at WCG 2007.

All eyes will be on the Koreans to perform well. They dominated the Los Angeles tournament with a first/second place finish, and head to this event looking to do the same. Lyn has been on fire all year long, and will be trying to add Extreme Masters champion to his long list of impressive titles this past year. Lucifer is coming off an excellent NGL-ONE performance, where he propelled his team, MYM, to victory.

One can not count out Manuel "Grubby" Schenkhuizen however, whose recent team change has sparked some life into veteran Orc player. Going undefeated in the regular season Grubby looks to continue his dominance at the finals.

The tournament will feature two groups of five, where players will compete in a round robin format. The winners of each group will automatically advance to the double-elimination playoffs. The players who place second and third in their groups will play a relegation match with the opposite seeded team in the opposing group to advance. The remaining four players will compete for their shot at a $20,000 first place prize, and title of Extreme Masters II champion.

Group B

ToD
Lucifer
elfittaja
Paladyn
Happy