It's been another amazing year here at epic, despite the sad ending of epic.RADIO yesterday, and as Santa begins his journey around the world, we take a look back at 2012.

Our community continues to grow, with over 4000 registered users on our new forums and our LAN events growing in popularity, with epic.TEN already on track to be our biggest event yet. More and more of you are turning to our Facebook and Twitter channels to keep an eye on what we have going on and we're going to try to keep those even more active in 2013. We've had plenty of great community games too, including our regular games nights and our permanent servers, such as Minecraft, we hope to do even more of that for you in 2013.

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Some time ago, we ran an online Q&A session with the epic.LAN boss man, Winbar. Things have moved on loads since then, so it's time to run it again. So if you have any questions about anything here at epic or pretty much anything else (almost) then send over your questions either by email, on our forums, Twitter or Facebook by 5th January, we'll then collate the best and fire them at our leader in January.

We are extremely pleased to confirm that our friends at Intel will be returning to providing our Turn Up & Play (TUP) area for epic.TEN allowing a limited number teams from all over the world to take part in the event.

So if you want to attend, but can't get your PC to the event, then now you have no excuses.

Oh, and make sure you give IntelUK a like on Facebook as a thanks for their support.

The TUP area will be located in the Competitive Hall (Fair Isle), and as this is a Turn Up & Play arrangement rather than rental, all PCs must stay in that allocated area and the PCs may be required for a number of teams depending on scheduling arrangements.

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Now that the Portland room is full and Pendeen has just 4 seats left, we've had a few requests for space in the competitive hall for people that don't play any of the tournament games, so a new 'other games' area is now open for those who don't play Dota 2, CS:GO or COD4 and weren't sure where to sit.

Once you have paid for your seat, you can now select a seat in this area.

We're very excited to confirm Dota 2 as the third of our competitive tournaments for epic.TEN next February with a potential prize pot of up to £3000.

Obviously the game is still evolving and we're keeping an eye on how the game and competitive community develops between now and the LAN, but we've had so many members of the UK Dota community getting in touch with us over recent weeks asking us to host one of the first UK LAN tournaments for the game, and of course we really wanted to introduce a strategy game for the event!

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We're pleased to welcome a number of new members in to the epic.LAN team:

• Beej & LZ_Stealth - Both familiar faces to epic.RADIO listeners, they will be joining the Event Team for epic.TEN, helping you out with all of your event queries during the LAN.
• Orcl - A name that many of our competitive players will recognise as a former Cadred writer and currently working with Reason Gaming, Orcl joins us to add to our tournament coverage during the events.
• And finally, another epic.RADIO face, and also well known in the competitive CS community, Gumpster joins the LAN team to work on our new CS:GO tournament.

We are still looking for tournament admins particularly for COD4, CSGO and possible MOBA titles for the event, if you're interested and have experience in these areas, then please do get in touch. Also if anybody is interested in helping out purely on our shop/helpdesk then let us know, though we would ask that you have some experience of attending our events before you apply for these areas.

We've now created the seating plans for the new venue, which means it's time to go and pick your seat for epic.TEN, once you've booked your ticket of course!

Here's a little bit about each room (by the way, the names are all UK lighthouses and are the names used at the venue, so we've decided to stick with them so you can follow all the signs when you get there):

• Fair Isle - The tournament room (or 'Hall 2' from our old venue), so if you're playing in our prize-winning tournaments, it's best to grab a seat in here.
• Portland - One of our casual gaming halls, with the music playing (like 'Hall 1' at the old venue)
• Pendeen - Another casual gaming hall, but without the music and a smaller room.
• Clan Rooms - Our smaller private rooms for clans/communities, but you can only sit here if you have the appropriate ticket.

Don't forget, you can save £10 on your ticket if you book before the end of September, so what are you waiting for, book now!

With a new venue comes a new game for our tournament series at epic.TEN. It's time to put CSS to bed and welcome the latest incarnation, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive to our events with a potential prize fund of £3000!

We've supported CSS for the last two years, but having seen numbers decline over more recent events, it's important for us to move with the times and look forward to hosting what's likely to be one of the biggest competitive FPS titles in the current scene.

Full details of the tournament will be made available closer to the time, but for now check out our Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Tournament pages for more details. If you're in a CSGO team, then make sure you book before the end of September to take advantage of £10 off the next event!

Grab your diaries, as we can now pretty much confirm the 2013 LAN dates for the year. The only date we're slightly unsure of is whether there will be an October main LAN event, and before we decide on this, we need to see how the numbers go for epic.TEN in the new venue and then see if it is viable, as previous October events have been fairly quiet.

Event Dates

• epic.TEN | 15-18th February 2013 | Kettering Conference Centre (400 Players)
• epic.lite 9 | 24-27th May 2013 (Spring Bank Holiday) | Moorlands Village Hall (32 Players)
• epic.ELEVEN | 25-28th July 2013 | Kettering Conference Centre (400 Players)
• epic.lite 10 | 27-29th September 2013 | Moorlands Village Hall (32 Players)
• epic.lite 11 | 6-8th December 2013 | Moorlands Village Hall (32 Players)

Bookings for epic.TEN are now open with a discount of £10 if you book before the end of September, other event bookings will open in 2013.

After some fantastic support from the Call of Duty 4 community at our last two events, fielding over 20 teams each time, we're very pleased to confirm our continued support for COD4 at epic.TEN.

Details about our Call of Duty 4 tournament are now available including revised prize triggers. As always, prize money will be paid out immediately.

If you're looking for a team to participate with, then head over to ptER's Tek-9 thread of awesome to speak to the other COD4 community members attending.

So that's the first of our tournament announcements for our new venue, more coming soon!