We have finally released the Community Wiki to the public.  This project got delayed innumerable times but is now open to public registration.  Follow these steps to get involved:

- If you are already registered on the site or on the forums, log in to this Joomla page with your site or forums credentials.  This will create your wiki account with the exact same credentials.  You will receive shop points from working on the wiki.

- If you are not already registered on the site or the forums, register on this Joomla page.   This will create your wiki account, your site account, and your forums account with the exact same credentials.  You will receive shop points from working on the wiki with this account.

Since the MediaWiki template has some navigation issues, we are currently working on getting all the pages interlinked and fleshing out the home pages.  I will be working on the L4D homepage and you should bookmark it if you plan on helping out with the wiki.  Anyone can edit any article (except for the major home pages) so be sure to update things that are incorrect or expand on any topic that you are knowledgeable about.  The wiki does have an approval system so if you negatively edit any article, the admins can easily revert it to its previous version and IP ban you.  Do not waste our time.

With the final days of August quickly approaching, Graham decided it was a good idea to throw together a summary of all the competitive events that took place in the L4D Community this summer.  Summer has been an eventful time for L4D, with multiple tournaments, surprising announcements from VALVe, and an uncountable number of roster changes all taking place in the past few months.  With all of these things that have happened, there’s a lot to touch on, but I’ll try my best to get everything.


The summer kicked off with the L4DDER tournament, a 32 team tournament that boasted the first ever cash prize for an online L4D event.  Registration for the event opened on April 11th, with play starting about two weeks later on the 25th.  The tournament started off smoothly, with teams completing the first few rounds of play without incident.  However, shortly after the Semi-Finals match-ups of Area 51 vs. Team TwoSixOne (now RageQuit) and Exigent. (now Eximius) vs. Depraved, the tournament website disappeared.  The sites disappearance left the community confused about what was going to happen to the finals match, and especially the prize money that the teams had been competing for.

After about a month of delays from scheduling difficulties, the final two teams, Exigent. (Excello in the match, currently Eximius) and Area 51 faced off on No Mercy, playing out the dead tournament, regardless of whether or not they would get their prize money.  Eximius won the final match, beating Area 51 with a score of 7200 to 4711 and taking their spot in the community as the #1 team.

CEVO announced their free L4D tournament two days prior to L4DDER’s announcement, but CEVO registration lasted for about a month, allowing many more teams to sign up.  The tournament was originally limited to the first 128 teams that signed up, but a few days later CEVO changed the format of the tournament to accompany the overwhelming number of team sign-ups that they had received.  As a result, teams had to compete in seven rounds of group play with the winners of each group (along with a few wildcards determined from CPI) advancing to the playoff portion of the tournament.  After about a month of playoffs, the tournament was finally down to the finals with Eximius Sports and Depraved going head to head for the large prize pot.  Both teams had faced off in a previous round of competition, with Eximius beating Depraved in round four of the upper brackets, but Depraved fought their way back into the finals through the lower brackets of competition to make it to the finals.  When the dust had finally settled in the final match, Depraved had clenched the victory from Eximius Sports for the CEVO L4D crown.

Newegg decided to include Left 4 Dead in their Summer Wanfest competitions this year, with about 280 participating teams and a $5000 prize pot, it was one of the larger tournaments we’ve seen so far.  Even with such a large number of participating teams, however, it was one of the fastest tournaments I’ve ever seen.  Registration for the event closed on July 10th with competition beginning on July 13th and lasting until July 30th. Teams played nearly every night moving from group play to the final brackets very quickly.  vVv Gaming and Eximius Sports faced off on the 30th of July, and after some controversy, finished their match on August 2nd.  Eximius won the tournament, beating vVv twice (double elimination finals) on No Mercy and Blood Harvest.

Earlier this year, Alienware came out of the blue with their Alienware Arena tournaments.  Team registration for the Survival of the Fittest closed on August 6th, with competition for the tournaments $1500 cash prizes (the first ever tournament to offer crash prizes (that won’t dissapear)) beginning on the 10th.  Currently, the tournament is advancing into the seventh week of group play, which is the last week of group play.  The tournament finals will begin on the 7th of September, and will last roughly two and a half weeks, with the final matches between the top 8 teams taking place on Saturday, September 26th at 2PM EST.

1. VALVe announced Left 4 Dead 2, which is set for release on November 17th.  Lots of information has already been revealed for the game, leaving the competitive community wondering what will happen to competitive L4D as we know it... and what competitive L4D2 might look like.

2. #l4dpug was released in late April to help the community get together and help new members get into competitive L4D.

3. The community has gone into a sort-of ‘rebuilding’ state in anticipation of Left 4 Dead 2.  Things have been quite slow since around mid-August, with multiple teams breaking up, changing sponsors, reforming, and swapping members.   The community will, most likely, keep slowing down until November, when I hope the community will get an injection of new & old talent, coming back due to a new game.

If you guys are Twitter users, be sure to follow me for the latest competitive L4D tweets: http://twitter.com/communityl4d.  If you don't have an account, you can peep the scroll on the left side of the home page here on CommL4D.

Valve has announced a new L4D DLC, “Crash Course” set for release sometime in September.  The central objective of the Crash Course campaign will be focused on Versus gameplay, providing a shorter campaign in an attempt to streamline Versus mode.  Below is an excerpt from the Press Release.

Entitled "Crash Course," the latest DLC delivers new single-player, multiplayer and co-operative gameplay to both platforms. Targeted for release in September, "Crash Course" bridges the gap between the end of the "No Mercy" campaign and the beginning of "Death Toll" in the original game, expanding the game universe with new locations, new dialogue from the original cast, and an explosive finale

While containing both Survival maps and a Co-operative Campaign, the primary goal of "Crash" is to deliver a complete Versus mode experience in just 30 minutes, resulting in a streamlined version of the game's existing Versus campaigns. A recharge timer for infected teammates has also been added, and item spawn behavior has changed for more balanced gameplay.

Left 4 Dead: Crash Course is targeted for release in September and will be available free of charge on the PC and for 560 Gamer points on Xbox Live.

Summer has been explosive for the L4D community as far as tournaments are concerned.  The Newegg Wanfest L4D tournament just finished this Monday (August 3rd) with Team Eximius beating upper bracket finalists vVv.Gaming 2-0 in the double elimination tournament.  vVv had previously beaten Eximius in a previous round, but Eximius stepped it up for the finals and took home $2,400 in prizes.  

While one tournament may be finishing, there are plenty more coming up!  Registration for Alienware’s Survival of the Fittest tournament ends August 6th (tomorrow!) with the tournament beginning on August 10th.  The Survival of the Fittest tournament will be the first in L4D history to offer a cash prize to the top 3 teams, so make sure you sign up!

In addition to the Alienware tournament, our partners over at Pwnage.TV are going to be hosting a 128-team L4D tournament starting soon™.  Signups for PTV’s tournament have already concluded, but the action is going to be intense with over $1,500 in prizes up for grabs to the top performing teams.