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In just two days, all the qualified players of the world will attend the opening ceremony for this year's installment of the Electronic Sports World Cup in Paris, France.
A day later, Thursday the 5th July 2007, the games will begin, with the Trackmania Nations competition running for three days.

Three of H2k's Trackmania Nations players will be attending this year. We took a few moments of their time to ask them a few questions regarding the competition.

Trackmania Nations, released in January 2006, is a technical racing game developed by Nadeo, with the ESWC in mind.
This year will be the second time Trackmania Nations is used as an official ESWC game.
With the community growing bigger every day, with more big LAN events having TMN competitions with big prizes, and with there being many online tournaments every month with players training hard and doing their best, things are looking good for the TMN community.

Although the community grows in strength, the prize money for ESWC has not.
Last year the total prize money allocated to the TMN competition was $40000, distributed among the top 8 competitors, and this year it will be $19000 distrubuted among the top 3 competitors:
1st Place: $10,000
2nd Place: $6,000
3rd Place: $3,000
That is still great money for the players able to take those positions, but unfortunate for those who were aiming for a top 8 place, which was a "money spot" until recently, when ESWC reduced the prize money.

In contrast to ESWC 2006, where the Trackmania Nations tournament was run in a 1vs1 Rounds mode, this year's races will be done in a 1vs1vs1vs1 Rounds double elimination mode, with seedings determined according to the positions of players' times in Time Attack mode. That is to say, four players will be racing simultaneously on the tracks, trying to get a top 2 position overall to move on to the next stage.
Each stage will be played on three tracks, each with a point limit of 30, where the total points are added up at the end of those races, and the two players with the most points will move on, whereby the two slower players will be eliminated into the loser bracket.

ESWC 2007 will have 36 qualified Trackmania Nations players attending, with the notable absence of

H2k.Sandder and

H2k.Frostbeule, both of whom are regarded by the community to have had the biggest chances of success at ESWC 2007, but who's countries have not held qualifiers for Trackmania Nations.
Those two are not the only great players who will not be able to attend due to many countries not holding qualifications this year, and some countries having terrible organisation with regards to the qualifiers.
Even though this is a dark point, the show must go on, and many of the world's best drivers will be attending, so this competition will be sure to be a tense and exciting one for the spectators, and for the players.

Two very interesting developements have come up with regards to Trackmania Nations at ESWC:
Firstly, the developement of Trackmania:TV which will function as a HLTV for TMN, and will allow streaming of the ESWC matches to the public.
Secondly, Nadeo have accounced that they will make a very big announcement regarding the future of TMN at ESWC 2007. The entire community is anticipating that with bated breath.

Next, we take a look at the qualified players attending this ESWC:

Page 1: ESWC Preview
Page 2: A Look at the qualified players
Page 3: Interview with H2k.tK
Page 4: Interview with H2k.Rask
Page 5: Interview with H2k.Moriah

Posted by Nathan "Zell" Eitelberg

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