As you likely already know, there are a lot of sites going offline tomorrow, in protest of SOPA/PIPA. These sites include the likes of Reddit, Wikipedia, imgur, and hundreds more. We’re still a growing site, so any loss of traffic hits us pretty hard. However, the potential effects of SOPA, PIPA, or any similar bill could be far worse. That is why we have decided to take ourselves offline tomorrow from 8am until 8pm EST. During this time you will be greeted by a banner that states our opposition of the proposed bills. For more information about the blackout, see here.

Since the site will be offline for half of the day, we will not be making new posts. However, we will be back on our regular schedule on Thursday. We apologize for the outage, however, we hope that you will stand with us in the name of internet freedom.

Will a Korean take the tournament that matters the most?

Gamers, sports fans, and everyone in between, this is history. We are living at an age where technology has propelled video gaming to actually legitimize as not only a competitive sport, but more importantly for the industry, it has become a spectator sport. Streaming companies such as Justin.TV, now referred to as Twitch.TV, as well as Streamworks who provides the infrastructure for all of the Major League Gaming live events, have really been a crucial facilitating factor.

The historic national championships will be held in Providence, Rhode Island – impacting the community so powerfully that the mayor has declared November 18th official MLG day in Providence. Prize pools have reached all-time highs with Starcraft II featuring a whopping $120,000 prize pool that will be given away in cash at the event. Halo remains as the largest prize pool game with $280,000 to account for, Call of Duty has $140,000, and the new circuit game League of Legends will be paying $40,000 as well. Yes, I’ll do the math for you. We are talking over half of a million dollars given away… for eSports.

First Place Trophy

GamerFront will be in Providence live at the event to provide some in-depth coverage of the event. Just as any of the 20,000 live spectators that are expected to attend, we are extremely excited to follow all of the many storylines at MLG Providence. In Starcraft II, the biggest question really is who will take the crown. Since the MLG and GSL Korean professional player exchange, Koreans have won every single time, except the last one where EGHuK made an incredible run. Additionally, we have our previous MLG champions such as IdrA and Naniwa who are looking to prove themselves once again. As always, the open bracket is always filled with intense surprises, such as a relatively unknown player goswser taking out the likes of TSLPolt, a full Korean professional gamer.

League of Legends is a must-watch game, as now the competitive landscape has expanded from the original four teams. Will the previous champion be able to repeat? You can bet that we’ll be in the front row following very carefully. As always, the first person shooter staples won’t disappoint. Being the national championships, not only are more teams signed up, but teams have been preparing specifically for this event. Expect to see tremendous games from both the Halo and Call of Duty scenes.

GamerFront is live at BoilerFrag 3.0, the semi-annual gaming event hosted by the Purdue University Gamers Group. With roughly 200 attendees, it’s shaping up to be the best event to date.

In addition to the usual tournaments and givaways, we’ve brought some interesting gear for everyone to check out. Be sure to stop by our table next to the giant NOS bottle to get some hands-on time with gear from NZXT, Playseat, Optoma, ThinkGeek, SplitFish, and more!

We will also be giving out some prizes of our own, from some of the companies listed above. Here is a tentative schedule of events:

• 11:00pm – iCade winner announced. Until 11pm, stop by our table and play Asteroids on our iCade. The person with the highest score at 11 will take home the iCade, courtesy of ThinkGeek.
• 1:00am – Duel to the Death! – We will be hosting a NERF sword fighting tournament. Single-elimination, winner receives a HAVIK 140 CPU cooler and Avatar S mouse, while the runner-up receives a HAVIK 140 from NZXT.
• 2:00am – Ugliest Case Contest – We pick the three ugliest cases, you pick the worst. The winner will receive a Tempest 410 Elite from NZXT.
• 12:00pm – PSYKO Audio contest closes. – From now until noon tomorrow, tweet @gamerfront and mention PSYKO Audio for your chance to win a Krypton headset from PSYKO Audio. (Note, prize will be shipped to winner the following week.)

Please be sure to thank our sponsors via Twitter and/or Facebook and mention BoilerFrag. Doing so lets them know that you’re interested in their products, and that you enjoyed having them at the event.

NZXT: Facebook – Twitter
Optoma: Facebook – Twitter
Playseat: Facebook – Twitter
Psyko Audio: Facebook – Twitter
SplitFish: Facebook – Twitter
ThinkGeek: Facebook – Twitter

And don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter as well. Enjoy the event!

I had the opportunity to visit MLG Columbus, which happened this past June. With record breaking stream viewers and also close to 20,000 people actually at the event, there was no way I would pass up on the opportunity to go to MLG Anaheim while school was still out of session. At the helm of e-sports, Starcraft II currently controls one of the largest movements in the history of gaming. Anaheim will be a spectacle that you should not miss out on.

MLG Columbus marked the first trial of the Major League Gaming and Global Starcraft League (GSL) LXP, short for League Exchange Program. As a result, players in the United States finally received the opportunity to meet some of their most inspiring heroes. These heroes, of course, were the Korean professional gamers, where Starcraft has grown from just a hobby to a living and lifestyle.

The format of the event is a bit complicated. Being as Anaheim is a Pro Circuit stop, the past players who have performed very well on the circuit are awarded points, which play a direct role in to seeding for future events. There is a championship pool play as well as an open bracket. Essentially, the top 24 players will be engaged in some gut wrenching pool play to determine their seeding for the elimination tournament, while new and amateur players will be forced into a lengthy open bracket. On Saturday, both of these groups will meet in to a final championship bracket.

This weekend, watch as players from North America, Europe, and Asia compete for another chance to be considered gaming royalty. Alongside Starcraft II, you will be able to watch live game play of the Halo Reach and Call of Duty Black Ops tournaments as well. For more information on MLG Anaheim’s Pro Circuit Stop, tune in to GamerFront, as we will be providing pieces and recaps of the event. The MLG website (www.mlgpro.com) will also be providing live streams and updates.

As we mentioned in a previous article, Raptr is holding a summer promotion through which they will give away over $25,000 in prizes to loyal fans. Well, this was such a great idea that we decided to get in on the action! What does this mean for you? Well, free stuff of course!

Raptr will be giving away a Logitech F710 Wireless Gamepad to a lucky and loyal GamerFront reader! All you need to do to enter the contest is head to our Raptr page here, and hit that follow button. This will gain you entry into the promotion, and you’ll be able to stay up-to-date with all of the most awesome gaming news. It’s a win-win! The winner will be chosen and announced by the time the promotion ends, which is on August 31st.

You’ll need to make a Raptr account first, if you haven’t yet. If you don’t know what Raptr is, then we’ll catch you up. Raptr is a social networking site for gamers. You can create a profile, post links, track your gaming achievements and playtime, and much more. It’s a great tool to have if you’re a social gamer, not to mention that it always keeps you in the loop with that’s happening in the gaming industry. So, head to our page on Raptr, hit that follow button, and you can win this sweet controller for your gaming PC. You can find out more about the contest here. Thanks to Raptr, and our loyal readers for getting us to where we are.

E3 has been a wild and crazy ride over the last week. We’ve seen a lot of announcements and gotten our hands on a number of upcoming games. We’ve done our best to keep you up-to-date on everything, and you guys have been giving us a lot of feedback on the content. So now it’s time to reward you, our faithful readers.

Seeing comments on our work lets us know that not only are you reading the pieces we put together, but that you feel strongly enough to share your opinions on it. This lets us know that we’re providing the content that you want to see, and for that we thank you.

As promised, we have some awesome gear tao give away from our friends over at NZXT. They’ve been kind enough to put together a prize pack consisting of a Phantom, Sentry LXE and Bunker. We went through our ever-growing list of comments on our E3 articles, and chose one at random. The article picked was here, and the comment was made by Alan Tong (Omega Doom). This means that he is our winner! Congratulations to him, and thanks to everyone else for reading. Keep those comments coming!

As we all know, next week is one of the most important weeks in the gaming world. Press conferences will be held, new games and hardware will be announced. That’s right, E3 is coming, and GamerFront is going to be right there in the thick of things, bringing you the latest news, right from the show floor.

These days the show is closed off to the general public, which means that most of you won’t be able to attend. That’s why we’re going to be bringing you coverage all week. What’s more, we’ve teamed up with the people at NZXT to bring one of you a special prize for tuning in to our coverage.

One lucky winner will receive an NZXT Prize Pack, which consists of a Phantom, Sentry LXE and Bunker. This means that you’ll not only have a great case, but also a nice LCD fan controller, and a set of locking USB ports, which ensures that no one can run off with your keyboard or mouse when you’re at a LAN event.

So how do you enter? When you’re reading through our coverage of the show (they will all be tagged as E3 2011), just drop a comment on one of the articles. At the end of the week we will select an article at random, and then a comment from the selected piece. That means that you’ll be able to enter as many times as we post. So stop by often, and comment frequently!

Disclaimer – The contest is only open to US residents.

We’re just getting things packed up to head to the 20th LAN War over at IU. This time we’re not just going to be gaming with the rest of the attendees. We will also be packing a bunch of swag from NZXT and G8. Want to win something? We’ll be raffling off everything you see in the picture above throughout the course of the event. See you there!

Hey guys, we’ve got some pretty exciting news today. We have a new guest contributor here at GamerFront. You’ve probably seen (or heard) him lurking around the internet before, but we’re happy to have him working with us! I’ll let him introduce himself:

I’m Nick Landis better known online as Lanipator, co-creator, co-writer, and co-star of TeamFourStar’s DragonBallZ Abridged.
I am a movie and game lover and want to spread my love to all of you (Sparkle shiny rainbow eye beams).
Seriously though,you can expect some Lets Play videos from me and maybe a video editorial here an there.
You can find more of my work on the fillowing sites:

lanipwned.blogspot.com
teamfourstar.com
tgwtg.com

Hope we can all be friends!

-Lanipator

Now this isn’t something we do very often, but we wanted to take just a moment to give some recognition to the new year, and what it will bring.

All of us here at GamerFront want to thank you all, the readers, for making us what we are, and for helping us get to the point at which we are at right now. We know that if it weren’t for you readers out there sourcing, pointing out, and reading our material then we wouldn’t be where we are now.

The new 2011 year will bring some changes as well as new steps forward for us. We intend on continuing to bring you the news of the gaming world, reviews of software and hardware, as well as cool and interesting things we’ve found in the world of gaming.

There will be a lot of new and exciting changes to come this next year, and we’re glad you’re all on the ride with us. With some amazing new titles emerging this year such as Dead space 2, Marvel vs Capcom 3, LittleBigPlanet 2, and more, we’re going to be here stronger than ever.

To all of you readers, gamers, and fans alike out there, we here at GamerFront wish you all a safe and happy 2011.