After each event, we spend a lot of time gathering feedback via the forums, surveys and generally chatting to participants.

We don't just do this for show! We gather your comments so that we can continually improve our events for you!

There are still some final details to confirm for epic.FIVE yet, but we've tried to address some of your comments from the last event (particularly around the bar pricing) and we are now able to let you know what we'll be doing better. The list isn't exhaustive, we've just picked up on some of the key issues from last time.

Sometimes we can't fix everything though, or we already do something which works for the majority, if that's the case, we hope that you appreciate our honesty in telling you so. 

Read on to see how epic.FIVE will be even better than the last...

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In July 2010 at epic.FOUR, we announced that we were going to make some changes to the events in order to secure them in the long term. While we're still a long way off where we need to be for epic.FIVE (and that means we need all of you provisionals to book your places ASAP!), we passed two significant milestones this week.

Firstly, we topped the 100 player mark for epic.FIVE, and secondly when we hit 101 participants that made the event officially the biggest epic.LAN so far!

Thank you to everybody who has supported the event to this point, we look forward to seeing you at Uttoxeter Racecourse in a few weeks for not only the biggest event so far, but we hope to give you the best epic.LAN so far!

With £1000 up for grabs at epic.FIVE, and promises of an even bigger tournament at epic.SIX in July, the Counter-Strike: Source tournament is now really shaping up. A good number of teams have now started to confirm their places, with Rasta.Xd and eMpathy leading the way and many more finalising their arrangements.

Teams interested in attending can find full details of the tournament, including the new rules at www.epiclan.co.uk/epic5/css. The map pool for the tournament will consist of:

• de_contra
• de_dust2
• de_inferno
• de_nuke
• de_train
• de_tuscan

epic.LAN Tournament Manager, Kevin ‘Nivek’ Wilson explained, “We’re aiming for a good, traditional CSS tournament at epic.FIVE, nothing too fancy or controversial, just a high quality event run by a professional team. As always though, we’re running the events for the gaming community and we would value any input beforehand so that we can make sure we operate a LAN to remember for all the right reasons!”

More and more of our participants are looking at ways of managing group bookings. Whether it's a competitive gaming clan, or just a group of friends who want to make sure that they're sat together and leave all of the organisation hassle down to one person in the group, (harsh, but fair).

So to help with these group bookings, we have a number of tools available, including the ability to pay for an entire group all together, sit the group members and then hand out the tickets. Alternatively, everyone can buy individually and then hand the control of the seating to a more responsible member of the group, well...maybe responsible or just have the short straw!

Anyway, the processes are quite self explanatory, but if you need any help, we've produced some handy guides below, or you can ask any member of the team in our IRC channel #epic.LAN on Quakenet.

• Group Bookings
• Picking a Seat
• Seating Manager
• Vouchers (transferring group bookings to the members)

We're very pleased to confirm that GamerFM, the radio for gamers, will be attending epic.FIVE this February as one of our coverage partners.

The team will be presenting live from the event to their online station, giving listeners the news and interviews from epic.FIVE as well as all the latest tunes.

Billy Howard, GamerFM Manager said about the event:

"Gamer.FM are really happy to be working with epic.Lan, providing event coverage, music and also interviews with some big names! If you want to listen to great music and great personalities, tune in to us at http://gamer.fm! A big thanks to everyone at epic.Lan for their support! We look forward to meeting with everyone in February"

Participants aged 15 & under are reminded that they are required to bring a signed and completed parental consent form to the epic.LAN events in order to participate.

The current form has been updated and is now available to download:

• Word Format
• PDF Format

Participants are also reminded that they will be required to bring proof of age to the event when they check-in to ensure that they are issued with the correct wristband, particularly for those aged 18 & over who wish to purchase alcohol from the bar.

For a change to our TF2 night during the holiday season, this Tuesday (28th December), we're going to be playing the new Medieval Mode.

We'll start off with cp_degrootkeep. specifically designed for the mode, and then move on to some normal maps with the Medieval Mode enabled.

About Medieval Mode - TF2 Blog

When wars were waged with fists and steel

In this old-tymey Controlle Pointe map, players will battle through an ancient castle. How did the menly men of Team Fortress appear at a tenth century battlement? Simple. The Soldier angered a magician.

Team Fortress creator Robin Walker recently watched The Terminator, and so demanded that weapons could not be brought back in time. That's right: it's melee-only! Against Robin's strenuous wishes, however, clothing can go back in time, which is one way that Medieval Mode is different from The Terminator.

So grab your swords, and keep your clothes on, because things are about to get clothing-non-optional Medieval on your fully clothed ass!

See you in the server!

The epic.LAN management and staff team would like to wish all of our community members a very merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year.

This is the second Christmas for us here at epic, and we'd like to think that we've had two very successful and fun years of organising LAN events and activities for our gaming community and we hope for many more.

We look forward to beginning another exciting new chapter in 2011, beginning with our new tournament series at epic.FIVE, and we hope that you will all be a part of it at our future events.

Enjoy the holiday season, stay safe, and we'll see you in the New Year!

The epic.LAN Team

Most of you had probably heard whispers anyway after a lot of interest on Cadred, however we can now confirm that we will be adding a £1000 Counter-Strike: Source Tournament to the Hall 2 event activities at epic.FIVE.

The team members are no strangers to running CSS tournaments, with experience in running a number of previous competitive events, and we look forward to giving the CSS community a professionally operated gaming tournament.

Tournament signups are now open for both the CSS and TF2 tournaments. As soon as you have confirmed your place for epic.FIVE you can either create a team, join a team or sign up as a merc. Note that you can only participate in one of the main tournaments, though there will be plenty of other activities taking place throughout the weekend for you to enjoy.

If you haven't already, then go and grab your place now for epic.FIVE, and make the most of all the money from your Christmas cards!