My fellow teammate @Skyzyn released his 15th Episode of his Gears of War 3 Lessons Series today!  This week’s Episode discusses how to effectively use the Lancer in most situations in Gears of War 3.  Skyllus discusses the following:

Lessons Episodes will be released every Tuesday, so make sure to check out his Episode next week.  Oh and don’t forget to leave feedback on the new intro we’re using!

I decided to ask for some advice before making any type of response to Jerry.  As I previously stated, I have no intentions of speaking to him in this lifetime, but I was advised to make a response and see how he reacts — if he continues with personal assaults (which I’m sure he will)  just write him off.   Jerry has made personal attacks and insults as a “leading figure” in the gaming community for quite some time at a wide array of people.  His latest personal shot at me and those in the competitive gaming community is in reference to my “sarcasm” in my video about the Sawed-Off shotgun  – sounds ridiculous  I know.  This sarcasm and that of others is a “protest to the weak.”  And goes on to very briefly denounce “many” of the players in the competitive community as “weak” individuals as well.  The direct quote, mind you I was contacted by some of the people he presumably thinks is on his side (who also disapprove of his continued mixed messages), is below:

To be honest, I feel bad for Epic and MLG. They set up certain people like Arctyc to be a commentator, and in some way added credibility to his position. Now, his “contribution” is to make videos that drip with cynicism and sarcasm whining about the sawed off shotgun. If this is the best the “MLG” community can provide, I highly recommend that MLG distance themselves from this group. Sorry, but I have often found that sarcasm is the protest of the weak. I suppose that many in this competitive community feel weak, though . . .they are trying to recreate Gears 1, while the rest of us have moved on.

Jerry, the video that you speak of was a joke is, I admit both cynical AND sarcastic, but a joke nonetheless should be taken as such.  The tweet you took from one of the developers (all too seriously) was also a joke — you know how I could tell?  I’ve spent more than 1 hour trying to get to know those people.  Not reading an article, watching a video, or trying to decipher the meaning of a 140 character tweet.  Rest assured those people know who in the competitive community are striving to improve their game — I don’t think they think too highly of your message though.   Resorting to personal insults with people half your age, literally we’re not even in the same generation (why are you even bothering with it?), is outrageous and the only people who don’t seem to think so are the people you continue to influence — I believe the word you disliked that I previously used was “brainwash.”  I dislike you, not because of what you’re doing with your organization — I’m grateful you are giving youths a positive atmosphere to develop and enjoy gaming.  I dislike you because you continually give off a mixed message to those same young minded people and then reinforce negative behavior in gaming with your attitude and approach towards situations where you have little-to-no prior knowledge.   I really want to know what is it you want to see from me as a representative in the community?   AmazYn promotes sportsmanship, we definitely don’t go on forums attacking other players in the community, we’ve interacted with the developers on multiple titles to balance games and we try to put out content that people enjoy viewing to bring in more people to the community.  I’m failing to understand why, albeit ever so briefly, you continue to belligerently have this negative tone with various people in the community?  I dislike you, so I steer clear of you, but I’m not making it a point to bring down your organization or you as a person?  Just an odd dude my man.

A partial to the message that I received to even get wind of it play “who’s who” on who sent me that:

“…descends into personal attacks for no reason. Guy needs to chill out a little.”

Today starts the first official online tournament that our team will be participating in, however I must caution some of our supporters and fans —  should we advance to next weekend we will be forfeiting our matches.  One of our teammates, @Calinorth will be out for that weekend and we have no intentions of filling in a substitute for Round 3 of the tournament.  We apologize in advance for anyone that may have hoped we were going to play out the tournament.  The good news is that we will be streaming the matches played today on Calinorth’s live stream — http://www.twitch.tv/calinorth. Calinorth regularly streams so if you’re not following the stream, I would kindly recommend taking a gander over there over now and again.  Additionally our first match will also be featured on the GoW Nation Live stream to kick things off for the tournament.

The brackets and tournament information can be found here: link

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This is Quick Match Team Deathmatch gameplay from Gears of War 3 on the map Dry Docks.  Dry Docks is currently my favorite map from a design standpoint.  I think it will play out very well on Execution and KoTH.  It is fairly easy to set up Spawn Traps on Team Deathmatch, so I think it won’t be too great for that gametype.  Some viewers have already taken notice to my “updated” sensitivity settings from the Beta which are currently at 13 – 10 – 10.   I haven’t found a comfort zone yet for my sensitivity settings, but I specifically changed them because I they feel better for the Longshot and Torque Bow.

Now that the Gears of War 3 Beta Series has concluded with Episode 28, I’ll be working on several new projects and the Gears 3 gameplay footage will be rolling out on a daily basis!

There are no formal rules to scrimmaging or practicing in the competitive gaming scene.  It’s more like a wild, informal, lack-of-structure type of atmosphere where consistency is an afterthought and players change teams like a baby changes diapers. At the beginning of the 2009 MLG Season our team adopted a set of guidelines to follow when preparing to practice against other teams in this inconsistent atmosphere.  These self-imposed guidelines were a driving force behind our Scrimmage Mentality because they reflected the experiences and troubles we previously encountered as a team, but wanted to avoid and rectify in order to improve our “game” each and every day we practiced.

One of the earliest rules we adopted was the “first come, first serve” policy.  Our reputation as one of the “weaker” top teams usually meant a lot of other top teams would leave in the middle of a scrimmage against us in order to practice against, what that team perceived as a “better” team.  I am sure that the mentality of playing “better” teams equating to “better” practice still exists, but it just didn’t fly with us.  Perhaps in some instances it truly is better practice, but for my team that simply was not the case.   It became a little difficult to practice consistently against other top teams so we decided to shift our priority and focus on defining our principles and goals of practicing as a team.  We wanted repetition, we wanted consistency and we wanted to play against teams that felt they needed to improve as much or more than our own team.  That’s when things got really interesting; the moment we said “screw” trying to play “the best,” and instead working on perfecting our game and practicing in an environment that benefited our work ethic and dedication to improvement.

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This is simply a video expressing my thoughts on the Weapon Skins with information about the Season Pass for Gears of War 3.  I like the concept behind the Season Pass because it genuinely seems like an opportunity to save some money on the additional DLC content that will be available for the game.  The majority of Weapon Skins as Paid Content, on the other hand, aren’t that appealing to me for a number of reasons stated in the video.  I’m not against Microsoft’s and/or Epic’s decision to provide them as DLC content, but I’m a little disappointed in the manner that it was presented and disclosed.  It’s also worth noting that the prices for the Weapon Skins, to my knowledge, have not been revealed!  I’ve listed the Weapon Skins information below:

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I received word on this pretty cool event from “BoZack.”  Some of you may remember that gamertag because Zack is the brains behind eBash, but he loves Gamerscore challenges and 360Voice is the best place for it.  The Brotherhood Challenge has $10,000 in prizes and seems like it could be a nice change of pace for some of the strictly multiplayer gamers.  If you’re looking to play BoZack is looking for participants on his team (I should note I’m in the group)!

Detailed information on the event can be found after the jump.

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I like this song for two reasons: