Tuesday 29 January 2013

Where are the active bombs? RD tournament ahead

RD tournament in the time when there are no more active servers in this mode? "Why not?!" say the guys from JF clan and here it is - a new event is open for registration of max. 8 teams till February 3rd. Rules need some improvements in my opinion and the event itself demands a portion of luck to attract enough participants. But let's believe there are enough teams out there capable of doing some under pressure bomb-defusing. Bombs are located here.

Monday 28 January 2013

Exodus from ||T3||», clan remains practically dead

Third Echelon VIP clan has lost 4 members in the past few days. The main reason is said to be the double-clanning of one of the T3 leaders Whelen and subsequent loss of trust resulting from this. Because these four were probably last active players there, we dare to say the clan dies with their departure. Some of the leavers already applied to Forever United, another VIP 1.0 clan.

Saturday 26 January 2013

One BS tournament finished, another one opens up

«|PGÖ|» clan announced a sequel to their BS 2vs2 tournament on 1.1 version. Unlike the one that ended this month, which was held in "Polak" language, this time they go more international and English tries to be the event tongue. All relevant info incl. rules and registration form can be found at tournament website. The first tournament saw <|OPP|> taking gold, «|PGÖ|»#1 team achieving silver and wtF^ gaining bronze position.

Tuesday 22 January 2013

Will the last player of SWAT4 be a cheater?

Player formerly known as Styxer has achieved his 3rd cheat account on UAC. On the same day he created a new xfire Stanec. He was shortly in B3STofSVK&CZE&EU^^ team. Btw, all UAC-caught cheaters from Slovakia are or were members of this team (other two are Titan/Tomasek/Undersound and Jozoo/Free).

Zeidorf (xfire: artkrasav4ik), who was accepted to <RUS1> recently despite of warnings about his dubious past, is now a confirmed cheater. And though he was playing undercover he is not amongst the lucky who have highly dynamic IP, so it was easy to identify him. I made these two videos today - one where he was using long-arms and one with no-recoil.

«|T3F|»Digital_Eyes (xfire: waheebalnoty) is the latest addition to UAC cheaters list. You can remember him with name Dr_Mega in T3 clan, where he got a kick for - what else - cheating as we informed here.

I hope you noticed a new a list of current "threats" present on the right side of the blog. It contains cheating players who are active on servers these days so you can range ban them or at least stay vigilant. Maybe you find it useful.

Sunday 13 January 2013

S4N's Birthday and post shortage

Today SWAT 4 News completed it's 1st year of existence after initially starting on Jan 13th, 2012. The site has achieved nearly 200,000 views and is on the verge of publishing it's 300th article! However, with SWAT on it's last legs, it's important to note that the regularity of posts will henceforth start to decrease. The blog has averaged 5 posts every week since it was born and this figure should now be expected to decrease to around 1-3 a week depending on the circumstances. Keep it up with S4N!

Saturday 12 January 2013

Earn a degree in SWAT 4 Community knowledge



Don't forget to write your test result in the comments section! Important Note: you will not really gain a degree for passing this quiz.

Thursday 10 January 2013

{FAB} absorbs {TWT}

{TWT} clan was closed yesterday and its leaders joined {FAB}. Other members of the closed clan were encouraged to make an application to FAB and follow their example. While the previous {FAB} merge with |Fs| was more natural - both clans prefered America-based servers, had also Spanish-speaking players and played VIP mode - here we see some discrepancies in merged clans. {TWT} is from Europe, recently was experimenting with BS mode and Spanish language is all Greek to them.

Wednesday 9 January 2013

Effective fight against cheaters in {|GA|} clan

Rarely we praise here for attitude towards cheaters, but seeing the actions taken in Guardian Angels clan to prevent cheating we do now. Apart from UAC check these guys go further. Their usual methods include checking of players during game play, they take seriously cheating reports made by other players and even use TeamViewer to find cheats on applicant's computers which has proved to be especially effective several times already. Last prey of this hunt was a player from exotic Sri Lanka named LKwarrior (UAC: LKwarrior, xfire: ravinath). In the past, they were similarly successful in catching other applicants Winter, Hunter, MarrY and Farid (who was later accepted to SH community).

Question every clan representative should ask himself: Is there something that attracts these losers to join {|GA|}, as they represent around 50% of all their applicants? Or the situation is likely to be similar in many other clans, but due to insufficient or completely absent precautions those cheaters remain veiled?

Monday 7 January 2013

Mini-RD tournament on Sirens Den map finished

Yesterday the tiny RD tournament played on Sirens den map finished with its last (3rd) match. 4 teams - imo the ideal number for this kind of event - signed for the tournament, unfortunately MG team left due to lack of members. The new night-club champion is the Swat4News team created from authors of this blog, members of FoX and an ex-WRS player, to be more precise: PimpMyGun, Sun alias Carl, CriS, Mati, reverend and Mig.

All results can be found here, while the final "table" is the following:
1. place - Swat4News - 3 points for 1 victory 1 tie. Round score 6:2
2. place - JustFrags! - 2 points for 2 ties. Round score 4:4
3. place - EPIC - 1 point for 1 tie. Round score 2:4

Regarding possible continuation of this tournament on other new maps - my situation changed, I have almost no internet at home so I cannot play nor host a training server. However, if your team would like to experience a clan-war on an unknown territory (next map would be probably Desert Ops Village), let me know in comments and I can organize it.

Saturday 5 January 2013

SoH-TWT relations quietly deteriorate

In the past month, you could argue the spotlight has been on the S|H community for their admin actions, recruitment and their server getting crashed as a result. However, legendary VIP clans SoH and TWT have also been having their fair share of "drama" in recent weeks. First of all a player by the name of DanishHunter (or 'Daddy' as he is known to friends) left SoH, claiming he has no time to play anymore. On the same day he went on to join TWT with a slightly different nickname. Although this is old news now, with Danish having since left TWT, it proved to be a starter for which the main course was to follow.

TWT leader Emmeken then applied to join SoH with an undercover nickname Katja, and was duly accepted. She lasted a couple of weeks before SoH eventually found out what was happening. Both these events can be summed up by one word beginning with R, which we will leave you to guess. Thanks to the anon xfire user for the original supply of info.

Wednesday 2 January 2013

2012: A SWAT Summary

As we approach 2013, let's have a look back on the major SWAT events that occurred during the year that just passed:

January of 2012 saw the completion of the RD 1.1 Tournament after a long delay. It also saw the beginning of this blog, which was starting to get noticed after an opinion article criticising some 1.1 player's arrogance was published.  Attempts were also made to organize a SWAT "Version" war, but unfortunately nothing of note happened, although the choice of organizer from the 1.0 side could have been the problem.

February was a slightly quieter month - although a few new clans were opened, including Wanted Heroes, Zambezi Mambas and Forever United (and it seems the latter is the current sole survivor). It was also in this month that UAC developer DExUS confirmed that UAC4 is "95% ready".

In March we witnessed the beginning of the ViP 1.0 Premier League, consisting of 1.0-based rules on the Courthouse map. The month saw several clan closures, including {B4E} and {|UFF|}

   
The period from May to August was the quietest in the SWAT calendar year. The 1.0 ViP Tournament had been concluded by the end of May, while a new BS 2v2 tournament started in early August after much planning with originally 45 teams.  A clan called Tuga Warriors Team was opened in late August and described on here as "SoH's twin" due to the obvious similarities.

In September {KL} clan proposed a new VIP tournament with 1.1-based rules. To this day the tournament has yet to be complete, and it seems it never will be. The month also saw the closure of |DWMT| clan after a co-leader was caught cheating on UAC, but a new clan with virtually the same members (including another member who has 3 cheater accounts) was opened with tag JF||.

It is October 2012 that will surely go down as the worst month in the game's history. GameSpy shut down their services of providing a SWAT 4 server list for all multiplayer lovers. Not only was this bad news for active gamers, it also meant that growth of the game would severely stagnate as new players would see an empty list of servers and simply presume that it's a dead game.  However, many server list alternatives quickly came to the fore, the most popular ones being DExUS's Alternative Server List, and MarkieBoy's client-sided fix, both of whom's download links can be found on the side of this site.  

On the 1st of November prizes were handed out to the winners of the BS 2v2 Tourney as the 3-month tournament had finished. In reaction to the server list disaster many clans started to merge, with {FAB} and |Fs| joining together towards the fag end of October/start of November and exotic latino clans SAM, FLV and FBI merging as one and wearing tag «GWLU»

Finally, in December we saw the true after-effects of the empty server  list - a maximum of 10-15 active servers online across both SWAT versions. Some people leaving the game for CoD, others waiting for the supposed sequel TAKEDOWN - while the dwindling die-hard's among us still playing this legendary tactical shooter at any limited opportunity available.

On that slightly sour note, we conclude the summary of SWAT 4 2012. The year saw many tournaments (some not mentioned here), many clan formings and breakups, but ultimately the lasting impression is that 2012 is likely to be last full year that this game will remain alive. Happy new year folks - and remember, DON'T SHOOT THE VIP!