Finally, a Cyber Evolution Day of Defeat division has arrived. The community has put in a lot of hard work to get there - from mIRC tags to mass poll response to written appeals - and at last it has all paid off. However, being given the opportunity to play in CEVO is only one step, and beyond that there are still many questions to be answered and much activity from OUR end to be done. This is a great chance for us, and I, and most others, definitely believe that we can produce more teams and players than we have thus far. If it's not too much to ask, those of you who have not yet signed up should try to take on some responsibility and realize that strong, early registration is VERY valuable. The earlier you go up, the more it shows to CEVO, and the more it helps others who may be on the fence to decide that the $15 would be well spent.

With that said, there are many questions floating within the community regarding CEVO, and Ryan "WickedPete" Stockson, Day of Defeat Head of Game, took the time to address many of those. His answers put many worries to rest as well as re-assure anybody and everybody of CEVO's commitment to making this league work well. As if CEVO weren't a very attractive option before, read on to see CEVO Stockson's comforting responses, as well as more detail surrounding the many things CEVO offers.

---

Hello! Thanks for taking the time to discuss more details with us about the league. First, could you introduce yourself and briefly detail your experiences in both Day of Defeat and CEVO?

My name is Richard Stockson, affectionately known to the DoD community as WickedPete. I have been playing Day of Defeat on and off since its conception. I have been competing in CAL since 3.1b with notable teams such as Da NiNjA/iLLicit, d(o)nuts, thats a paddlin, irawr gamers, mafia and now reside with GIMP/eMg.

As for my CEVO experience, I served as part of the Counter-Strike staff for nearly two seasons. I originally joined CEVO with the intention of leading the DoD Division that you see before you today.

In the past there have been multiple efforts to get Day of Defeat into CEVO, but none were successful. What changed CEVO's mind?

Well, CEVO has always had an interest in Day of Defeat. It is a strong competitive game with an even stronger community backing it. There was a lot of interest in starting a DoD division shortly after Summer CPL 2005, but due to the release of Source the community became too inactive to move forward with it at that time. DoD has finally begun to grow itself back to where it was in its glory days and shows potential to go even further. We feel that DoD has reached its point of stability and professionalism to have a place inside CEVO.

In the rules (section 1.3) it states that there will be twelve teams invited to the Professional division. Is that number set in stone or just a placeholder?

We feel that twelve is the minimum amount of teams that we would like to see in the Professional division. That number is by no means set in stone. If there are a greater number of registered teams than expected, there is room for the Professional division to grow.

There have been a few numbers floating around regarding minimum, expected, or maximum teams. Can you clarify what CEVO expects, or at least hopes for?

We’ve been hoping to be able to reach 50 fully registered teams by the start of the event. If we can get more, and we certainly think we can, than that will be even better. What the actual turnout will be remains to be seen, it is really hard to forecast because there are no other pay-to-play style events out there that we can base expectations on.

What are the implications of the community signing up only, say, half of the ideal team count?

An ideal number of teams is probably in the range of 60 teams. It is fair to say that half of that amount (about 30 teams) would be extremely disappointing. It is difficult to properly run a league style event with that low of a turnout. A certain implication would be a merging of the Amateur and Professional divisions into one larger single division. A long-term implication would mean no future events for Day of Defeat.

Fortunately, I’m confident that we will not be faced with that kind of a problem. As of right now, shortly into the registration period, there are 32 teams at least partially registered. The DoD community has assured us that they are big enough and willing to support this kind of event, now its up to you all to deliver on that promise. We can’t hold an event without teams, so please get your teams fully signed-up. We’re not making a profit on this, so join us in investing a little into your community and we’ll also ensure you have a good time while you are at it.

The anti-cheat system is definitely one of the most intriguing aspects of CEVO for the community. Could you give a brief definition of what the CEVO Match Network (CMN) client is and what it does?

The CEVO Match Network (CMN) is a proprietary cheat-detection software program that runs in the background while you play your CEVO matches. It has been developed by professional programmers with over 20 years experience in the corporate world and has proven remarkably effective. It has come a long way since the first release, but nonetheless we encourage you to read GotFrag’s independent test of the program (CMN1) back in March 2005. We are currently on CMN3 v. 2.0, a build now compatible with Day of Defeat.

Will CEVO be releasing an official list of legal and illegal commands, or has it?

The staff is currently working on this issue right now. We are taking our time to comb through user configs in order to determine what are reasonable limits to the user settings. Hopefully we will have a full list of allowed and illegal settings out by sometime next week.

Are there any specific rules or processes in CEVO that you would like to underline? Given that CAL is the only previous standard we know, is there anything for which you would like to say, "Make sure you understand this. It is not what you're used to."?

Well, first and foremost this is a pay to play league. With that comes a great deal more customer service and care from the staff. Competitors in our league are customers, and that makes a huge difference. CEVO has support staff available to help around 16 hours per day, every day of the week. Support can be reached on IRC, live on our Ventrilo server (provided by Nation Voice), or via our website. Also, CEVO will have a number of game servers available for competitors to reserve for their matches, if needed.

The other really important difference is our focus on professionalism and sportsmanship. Players must be reasonable and respectful to other members of the community. We take this very seriously and will not hesitate to remove teams that are behaving out of line. We’re all looking to bring eSports into the mainstream as a professional sport, and that means professionalism needs to be engrained in competitors at the earliest stages.

Thanks again for your time. Do you have any final shoutouts or comments?

I'd like to thank you for sitting down with me Brendan so we can get more information out to the community about CEVO. Hopefully this is the start of much more great CEVO coverage from the GotFrag DoD staff. We’d like to thank all our corporate sponsors: LayeredX, Nation Voice, Hype Energy, Aim2Game, Thermaltake, and Sennheiser. To all of you out there, thank you for reading and if you ever have any questions do not hesitate to visit us in #cevo-dod and #cevo-support on GameSurge, or stop in at our Ventrilo (texas.cevo.nationvoice.com port 4000). Finally, remember to get your teams signed up, we can’t run a successful event without the community to support it. Thank you.