The End of a Great Era
Many of you know me as FooL, and that I that have been around for awhile. You may also know that our L4D team has had much success in the game's life span. None of that would have been possible without some of the great players that accompanied me for the ride to the top. What some of you might not know is that our team made a bad decision that almost cost us everything recently. In the end, we got off really lucky, and were very grateful to have got off the hook as easy as we did. This decision though, may have paved the road for an early death of what could have been, and already was, an amazing team.
With so many things plaguing the Left 4 Dead series, many argue that the game never would have become a top notch competitive game. At the start, the game had tons of people who came from other games to start off fresh and test the competition that L4D had to offer. For awhile the game had a great competitive aspect about it, and it was definitely one of a kind in its' approach. Unfortunately, the game never fully kicked off for many reasons which I will go more in detail with.
The thing that turned so many people off with Left 4 Dead is that it has always been a buggy game. I can recall so many times when we had to overcome a large deficit because of a game changing bug. Valve showed some early incentive to fix these bugs at the start, but slacked a lot throughout the months after its' release. We also had to play on two maps for 8 months because Valve stated that they needed to port the other two from Coop maps to Versus maps. The game was released November of 2008 and they said we could expect the other two maps around Christmas of 2008. For whatever reason, they were not released until Summer of 2009.
Another big reason why the game wasn't what it could have been was because of lack of interest by many leagues. I understand that a new game has to show that it can be competition worthy before anything major happens. CAL took a risk and released Season 1 early into the game, and it was an overwhelming success. The game had over 600 teams signed up, and seemed to be doing very well. Unfortunately CAL died after the second week of league play, and never resumed. After this, there were many tournaments formed by the community so that we could have some sort of competition, and many kept their faith in the game.
A huge factor in my opinion was that there were too many tournaments. CEVO had put out two tournaments with promises of leagues starting up shortly after. Newegg and Alienware also held tournaments of their own to show support to the game. All of these had great turnouts, but promises were never kept and many people lost interest because of it. There were no tiers because we had nothing but tournaments, and so many new teams never had the chance to develop thus leading to the same teams playing each other every day.
Probably the most significant reason of all was simply because Valve decided to release L4D2 so soon after its prequel. Many people thought this would be the breakout that L4D needed, but that was proved wrong after people began playing it. It simply relies too much on luck and not as much on skill. Had valve continued to update L4D, it could have been so much better than what it is today, and many leagues might have been attracted to it. What is sad is that so many teams left because of the reasons stated above, which leaves the game without much activity. I would not say that the game is completely dead as there are still players dedicated on making it a success, but it proves to be a task easier said than done.
In conclusion, I would like to thank
Vertigo, Jag, Ares, Skitch, OG, and the rest of 51 for all of the support that
you guys have shown us and for giving us the chance to be part of a great
organization. I would also like to recognize all of the former 51.L4D members
including Killatoy, Mata, Chris, Korn, Zael, Sensation, Vital, Dog, Ridley,
Visceral, Khamunist, Nautica, Princess Buttercup, Numbers, and Monztuh. Although some who I will
not name had attitude problems, they were all part of the reason that I can
write this up today and say that we have been a huge impact in the game of Left
4 Dead.
I will be taking a break from
competition in games and am very happy to announce that I will be doing staff
work for 51. I will be writing articles on the home page so if you want me to
write you something up, feel free to hit me up on Steam: fooloofy. As far as
the future of Area51.L4D, the spot is open for any teams interested. Feel free
to contact me or any of the other staff members if you are interested in
filling the position.
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