We've developed a new feature to the GameCreate ladder system this week that goes a very long way, (as did last weeks feature) to improving the overall feature intergration of teams and competitions.

The new feature is a team email system.
How it works: Teams usually find it difficult to contact each other, this becomes more apparent where the team is a collection of pickup players using the ladders automated recruiting feature. You may not know who the new team member is so thus find it hard to communicate such things as prefered nights of play, game tactics and prefered maps to challenge. The new team email system removes that by dynamically building a mail list of all members of the team and providing one email address to send information that the whole team will get.

For example, I create a team on the ladder, say team mammoth, then add 8 players from the automated join feature to my team, since I dont know much about these players I can send an email to mammoth@teams.gamearena.com.au which will email all members in my team the info I want to advise them of, which they can in turn reply to that will agian go to the whole team. The team email address can be changed at will by the captian of the team at any time. The email address will work if other teams would like to contact you or you would like to contact the other team, allowing you to send one email to all the team mates of the team you are challenging (if they have told you their address).

This is a very powerful feature that can be a fantastic help to assist captains in the management of their team, and promote competition within the ladder system by improving the communication between the teams within the ladder. As an anti spam messure, we will not publish the team email address, if teams wish to publish it they may, or if its been published by someone else they have the facility to change it to something other than the published address to avoid getting emails. For those familure with the power of traditional mail lists, this is practically identical so you should feel right at home. Captians can find and change the email address that has been generated for you by visiting the teams properties page for your team, for other members you can quickly look up the address by visiting the Team management page, you will need to be logged in to view this information.

We're releasing a little tool tonight for teams that are in any GameArena Ladder competition so that they can play with it on their websites. The new IFrame team status tool is designed for teams that want to show visitors of their website their current position on any Ladder. It includes the teams current rank, next game (or last game), and their win/loss ratio like this:

For info, and the code for your team, simply visit the MyTeams section of the ladder you play on, which will give you all the info you need, including how to edit CSS to change the look and feel. To view this for another team check out this team's info page. For those teams that do impliment this, post your url in the comments, the termy gold star will be awarded for the best implimentation of the new Ladder info iframe on a team website!

Update: There is now an XML feed available; check your team management page.

In response to player suggestions in regards to how results are entered on the GameArena Ladders, the following changes have been made:


- At the completion of a match, *both* teams must visit the 'View Challenge' page and enter (or dispute) the match result.

- Results are entered independently - the defender is not required (and should not) wait for the challenger to enter a result.

- Both teams have up to two hours after the completion of the match to enter the result.

- All match results will now be processed the day after the match at 4:00AM AEST, regardless of when the teams enter results.

- The defender will not receive an email when the challenger enters a result; as the defender must enter a result indepedently of the challenger.


These changes are designed to alleviate the practice some teams have engaged in of deliberately confirming match results at a particular time to try and gain the next right to challenge.

As we were unable to give prior warning to teams currently involved in a match-up, we will give all teams one extra day to enter their match result for all matches played before or on Sunday May 2nd. Starting Monday May 3rd, all teams will be required to follow the schedule detailed above - that is, a result must be entered within 2 hours of the completing the match.

The soldier of Fortune II season 2 ladder has come to a close. The ladder is now in freeplay mode till the start of season 3, planned for mid January with Demolition being the gametype.

The season 2 finals will start on Monday December the 1st, after a short break for players to finish up with their end of year exams.
Check forums for more details.

A big thanx to everyone who participated in the ladder and we hope you all enjoyed this season and you'll be back for more action in season 3.

Due to the time being taken on Rule changes, I've moved the ladder into free time, allowing all clans to challenge each other without any win or loss effecting their rank.

Once rule issues have been corrected, the ladder will be moved back into standard play with all outstanding games being deleted. Until then enjoy freeplay mode!