Intel Extreme Masters World Championship is one month away.The tournament will be held on 6-10th of March in Hannover, Germany.German-based company today announced the participants and groups in the tournament.Unfortunately only 10 teams have confirmed their attendance out of 12.

Each group have six teams.The group winners will move on to the semi-finals, while runners-up and third-placed side will play the relegation stage, for the last two places in the playoffs.

Group A	Group B
SK Gaming	WinFakt
Natus Vincere	fnatic
mousesports	Moscow Five
Anexis	Lions
TyLoo	semXorah
TBA	TBA

Dear members,

Here are some statistics for the past year:

-) PRIZES

Overview of Gather-Network (including the new  BINGO! ladder) prizes delivered in 2011:
- Hardware: 92x
- Free premium activations: 196x

Among our hardware prizes, you were able to win:
-> SteelSeries Professional gaming gear (www.steelseries.com)
 -> Eee PC Seashell 1001PXD - 10.1in - Atom 1,66 GHz - 250 GB
 -> Camera Samsung ES9 - 12.2 Mpixel
 -> PSP 3000 Slim&Lite - Black
 -> MP3/MP4 Player - Memup K-Star - 4 Go - Screen 1.8
 -> Portable DVD player - 7in (18cm) - DivX - DVD - MP3 - JPEG
 -> Webcam LifeCam VX-2000
 -> USB Key Verbatim StoreNGo Micro Color - 4 GB
 -> SONY XPERIA Play R800
 -> SteelSeries Pro-Gamer pack: Siberia V/2 headset + Kinzu mouse

-) SUPPORT

Our Help & Support staff did a good job again last year and answered as much as 1 095 tickets individually !
Our Anti-Cheat Team did a great job aswell again last year, 1 031 new cheat bans were added!

-) CHANNELS

Our channel leaders also performed well, there were 100 646 SUCCESSFULL gathers organised on the Gather-Network in 2011 !

Not less than 1 041 670  players participated in those gathers.

#cs.gather.tr with 35 802 gathers, channel leaded by ENG1N and sponsored by www.WASPGameHosting.com
#cs.gather.ro with 25 235 gathers, channel leaded by Z3US1 and sponsored by www.Krond.org
#cs.gather.uk with 13 544 gathers, channel leaded by Maverick2k and sponsored by www.KillerCreation.co.uk
#cs.gather.nl with 9 651 gathers, channel leaded by styleeee and sponsored by Rennie
#cs.gather.be with 3 229 gathers, channel leaded by Larosse and sponsored by www.beservers.be & www.ghq-serv.com
(... And some channels that are at the moment closed. Channel application here.)

-) SPECIAL THANKS

I would like to give a special thank to:

- News crew, who keeps us all up to date.
- Help & Support crew, who helps our users every day and solves the majority of the problems.
- Anti-Cheat Crew, who keeps us away from cheaters and gives us the opportunity to play a fair ladder and competitions.
- Channel leaders, managers, admins and players without who the Gather-Network would not exist.
- Steelseries for the nice partnership that we were able to conclude with them.
- NGZ for the trust they put in the Gather-Network since all those years.


In the name of all the Gather-Network staff I wish you all a great year 2012

Dear members,

First i want to wish u all the best for 2012! Happy new year!

Last weeks have been very turbulent for the dutch gather channel. We got a lot of complaints (not always correct) about admins and managers who abused power. Another a lot of players think of us as 'the ghost channel' because we have a group of players always on ventrilo (although we are not ghosting). Everybody is free to join our ventrilo server, as long as there is no ghosting and no trolling.

IP: ams1.ugt-servers.com
PORT: 30762

Then there is the loss of one of the most respected staff members of our channel: #Ntrr

Ntrr told me that he has other stuff on his mind these days and wont be able to spend
time playing and managing #cs.gather.nl. I just want to thank you for your work here and i can speak for all of us when i say that we hope to see you back on GN, better sooner than later.

Well, now to the good news! I have recruited new managers, all dedicated and experienced with gather-network:

#alexxx
#MindIessjoy
#KarelBatswaffel

So our current staff team is :

Leader:

#Styleeee

Managers:

#KeviNNx
#rennie
#zasad
#alexxx
#MindIessJoy
#KarelBatswaffel

If you have any problems feel free to send one of us a personal message on the site or contact us at irc #cs.gather.nl.help
We are also still recruiting dedicated admins so if you want to become part of our team join #cs.gather.nl.recruit

We are working on a #cs.gather.nl cup, so if you have any good ideas about it feel free to share them with us!

Kind regards,

#styleeee

Dear members,

After a quick poll and an internal discussion with the staff, we decided to give a try to 'Fade to Black' on any gathers with players from the top 20.

The goal is of course to avoid ghosting and guarantee that our ladder prizes are really given to our best players.

The update is already LIVE on all member gathers but also on the german premium servers (the other servers will be updated after a short beta phase).

We may still adjust the conditions for fade to black in the future if the community wants to, for example by increasing it to the top 50.

All the best for 2012 and enjoy playing with the Gather-Network !

Cheers

PS: a little update to make it clear, when we enable fade to black to a gather it applies to ALL players of that gather, not only to the players who belong to the top 20