Sunday 14 September 2014

Final post

After 2 years and 8 months, it's time to call it a day. Henceforth there will be no further posts on this blog, though the site will remain open as a archive and the angerbox will be forever accessible at swatnews.freeshoutbox.net (however it's dead too anyway). For old visitors and rare new ones that come in the future, you can find the overall summary below:-

Facts and Statistics

Including this post,
there were 411 articles in total
 spanning over 975 days






- The post that received the most comments overall was: TWT clan is reborn (132).

There were 33 clan profiles published and 22 interviews. The most viewed profile was {|4U|}'s, while {FAB} had the most comments (85). The most viewed interview was with KoN's leader, while the most commented was with the «|US|» co leader (81).

- The most active visitors came from Poland (15%).  After that there was a large gap before the next level of countries with regular viewers, including India, the UK, Russia and Germany.

- The most downloaded (72) piece of media was: This image showing quality player recruitment.

Note that the above stats are not written to imply anything, but are just for those who like numbers.


Valuable/interesting articles (as agreed by editors)

History of Tournaments: from 2005 till the present day. Related to this are a few tournament summary articles since S4N started, including 2012 VIP League, 2013 JF RD, 2013 VIP World Cup2013 ESA VIP and finally, the 2014 GS4 VIP tournament.

SWAT4 Global Awards: with categories ranging from the greatest clan to the most embarrassing cheater, as well as the most popular maps for each specific game mode.

«|SoH|» Clan EXPOSED: the truth about (probably) the worst clan in SWAT history; some links inside there are broken now though. Look out for Raptor (ENO) in the comments.

Not to mention all of the various cheater reports that were made and can be found >>HERE<<.

Game related
Improve your computer performance: tips to help improve the smoothness of your game.
Controversial SWAT modifications: discussion on respawn timer, gas mask overlay and sound mod.
Crazy FPS = Crazy Gameplay: showing that too much of a good thing can be bad.
Unknown console commands Part I and Part II: alternative wallhack, ghostmode and more.
Why .45 should be unblocked: explaining the ammo replacement that is required.


Misc/humour articles
EA Games failed to deliver
a 2014 version of the game

SWAT4 Manager 2012: reality PowerPoint game based on the popular Football Manager series, simulating life of a S4 player.
SWAT4 University: earn a degree playing SWAT4 but be prepared for some heavy fees, especially if you are a Polak.
SWAT4 Stock Market: buy shares in your favourite clan and watch your wealth rise as your stock grows in value.


Final comments

It's been a pleasure doing this but its just a pity seeing the current state of the game. Hopefully, next year's release of Rainbow Six will provide SWAT players a worthy successor. But until then, it's about a choice of around 7 populated servers to play on, or alternatively move to another game. 

S4N has had many different writers who have all contributed with posts, so a thanks to those guys - James, PimpMyGun, Troczu & Actind, Dida, Linux and Ghost_Assassin.  This chapter is now finished and so on behalf of Mig and me, see you around!

Monday 1 September 2014

WM & qRage crowned joint winners of final tourney

After a closely-fought final that spanned nearly 3 hours, |WM| and qRage drew 10-10 and agreed to share the GS4 tournament trophy. Congrats to both of them. You can find the full summary of the major tourney events below:

Group Stage

Semi-Finals
The first SF pitted Cartel against WM, a fixture that is usually seen in the final of recent VIP tournaments. WM won quite comfortably 8-1, but there was more drama in the second semi-final as ESA drew 6-6 vs qRage, before some communication errors lead to the two teams having to play a winner-takes-all round to act as a decider. The event was slightly farcical but there was little other choice and qRage eventually wrapped up the victory to secure a place in the final.

Key to success
For qRage, the preference was (understandably) to choose smaller maps (Qwik Fuel x3, Food x3). In 5 of the 6 matches, they won the six-round mini-game on their chosen map, making the task of playing on the opposition map - that was maybe unknown - far more manageable. As for WM, it was about the experience shining through, as a team that seemed quite rusty from CS:GO still managed to navigate through to the finals.

A big thanks to:
-All the referees, who were much harder to employ this time round. Most notably ||ESA||Sex, who was prominent throughout, as well as Dida, Alien, Braveheart, Actind, Mig, Reverend, Unna, Yazan, Edward and Innocent.
-Rugi for providing complementary server hosting facilities.
-All the teams for taking part and fulfilling their matches (bar the Trilogy of Noobs) 

Note that the end of this tournament also signals the end of S4N. There will be a final summary article next week before this chapter closes in SWAT4.