Regardless, things are always coming and going, and I know from past experience that with online gaming for anything to last over a year is an accomplishment.

I fully agree with leaving a community open to whoever wants to join provided they’re not the “angry 13 year” types that James speaks of. Everyone in .:iE/ has great fun together with our mixture of Irish, English, German, and Dutch members. While the majority of people are Irish it always adds great diversity to a group when you get people from different backgrounds.

Clans are a little bit different, there is an advantage to having all your members in Ireland, or in one city, or ideally one house – it allows you to communicate more effectively, mostly through play together on LAN. However, the ‘clan’ referred to in the Irish ISP Test forum is more of a community of what we in the industry like to call ‘noobs’. While the Irish gaming scene hasn’t quite stooped to that entirely, like in all countries, this is an element that will always be present and cannot be ignored, because it is a reservoir of potential. Organisations blurring the distinction between clan and community, led by angry 13 year olds, usually with the word “Ireland or Celtic” in the name, spring up very regularly and usually don’t last long. That is why I like to see Irish e-Sports portals growing – it helps to direct the hordes of angry lost Xbox live heroes onto a more enlightened path.

On another note I just noticed on one of blacknights many forums a post about a new Irish clan. While this is all well and good you might come to question the wording: “im in the process of building a clan – eire only….. If ur in a clan and arent happy…..” (http://www.irishisptest.com/forum/gaming/1249-all-irish-gamers.html)

I’m just wondering what kinda of level has social gaming in Ireland stooped to? I know this is one isolated occurance, however it doesn’t paint a nice picture.

At the moment we’re more looking at the community approach. The problem with clans is they usually have to remain a small close nit community of highly dedicated players – something like that can be really had to achieve and that’s why so many clans come and go. Your average clan formed today won’t be around this time next year because people fall out with eachother & other things come up.

What we’re trying to do with Irish E-Sports at the moment is to create an Irish community of gamers who can come on whenever they want & play with other like minded people. We do have a competitive aspect, but that’s kept separate and we don’t view it as serious competitive gaming (we don’t have a “match team”, it’s more if you want to play then play.) Originally when .:iE/ was setup about a year ago it was a competitive bf2142 clan which was quite successful, however that game has more or less died and as a result .:iE/ has changed.

Looking forward over the next year Irish E-Sports has invested in their own dedicated server which is due to come online in November. The unofficial details for the new server are as follows:

* Counter Strike Source 20 slot 100 tick public
* Counter Strike Source 26 slot GunGame server 66tick
* Counter Strike Source 12 slot match 100 tick match
* Call of Duty 2 20 player Rifles only
* Team Fortress 2 16 Player Server
* One other server from the following – QW:ET, UT3, Crysis
* 64 Person Teamspeak Server

The server is going to be hosted in Ireland allowing Irish players to get extremely low pings. Hopefully these servers will become a play for Irish (and other) players to come and play for fun.

If anyone has any recommendations please feel free to email me at polarice /at/ irish-esports /dot/ com