Jason Axelrod

You know, 8WAYRUN was launched about 2 weeks after the release of Soulcalibur IV. The community's previous home was having issues and we didn't know how much longer it would be around. We were taking a risk with 8WAYRUN; since it was community funded, we had no idea if it would be self-sustainable. About 6 months after the release of SC4 we became the de-facto hub for all things Soulcalibur.

At first we struggled, but overtime, as real advertisers came in, this website became more than self-sufficient. In fact, it was doing well enough that we were able to get our own dedicated server in preparation for the launch of Soulcalibur V. SC5 launched and since then there has been little to no downtime. 8WAYRUN remains self-sufficient and won't be going anywhere anytime soon.

Well its been several months since my last update to my XSplit Panel Writer program. There have been quite a few feature requests since then as well, and I can tell you that none of them have been implemented in this update! Instead, this update is a full complete rewrite of all the internal code for the program.

Why the rewrite? Because this program was actually the first offline application I've ever written for public release; most of my work involves online programming and web-scripting languages. As time went on, and each update to this program was released, the code became more and more "hacky" and it was starting to produce errors. That being said, while no requests have been added, there are some interesting new features.

On the 3rd of August, Guinness World Record's officially tweeted their congratulations to Empire Arcadia for "Most tournament wins for a gaming team". Guinness World Record awards Empire Arcadia as "The most documented tournament wins for a gaming team is 1,111 achieved by Empire Arcadia."

Phillip Atkinson (aka KDZ) Soul Calibur 4 WCG National Champion 2009 and Sean Evers (aka LinkRKC) Soul Calibur 5 Winter Brawl Champion 2012 have contributed wins to the organization helping it becoming the all time tournament winning gaming team in competitive gaming world wide.

EVO has just passed... Usually, we wait till after EVO before we start making sweeping changes to the community ruleset, as EVO usually marks the end of the tournament season. Well its that time again and here we go. These changes have been in discussion for several months and these are the final decisions I have come up with based on advice from various community leaders.

Set Construction:

• 3 out of 5 matches in ALL SETS (even finals)

With the speed of Soulcalibur V and how quickly matches can end, it was determined that 2 of 3 in preliminary sets was a bit too quick. MLG has adopted a 3 of 5 in all sets system and the community has appreciated the lengthier battles. Because of this, the community has decided to adopt the MLG set construction. Naturally, we will not be adopting MLG's "extended-series" system.

MLG Spring Championships were this past weekend (as well as East Coast Throwdown 4) and the results are in! Congratulations to Keev for taking yet another MLG Championships (and Woahhzz for taking yet another East Coast tournament). With the results in the record books, the ranking ladder has been recalculated to reflect the new standings.

However, doing some research on the rankings, I'm seeing a few "quirks"; I wouldn't say they are "bugs", because the quirks are actually by design. They actually show not only the strengths of certain players, but explain a few "slights" people may believe exist in the current system.

Yesterday, the top 8 players from the MLG Winter Championships flew out to the MLG Studio in NYC to compete in the exclusive Fighter's Arena! In a stunning upset, Hawkeye (@iltokyoli) from Chicago, who came seeded in 8th place, defeated the 1st seeded player Keev from France in an almost completely one-sided 4-1 Grand Finals!

Congratulations to Hawkeye for retaking the Soulcalibur title for America! In addition to the top 8 players, Rod "Slasher" Breslau from GameSpot.com was on hand to conduct interviews with the top two players throughout the day.

The last patch, was just under a month ago and it already looks like we're getting another one this week! From talking with Namco Bandai, I was under the impression that the 1.02 patch added a few "network bugs" into the mix, and since Project Soul spent so much time bringing us the best online netcode ever, they were naturally upset about this.

Well it seems, in addition to fixing the new network issues, Namco has also included a list of various other fixes and balance changes. Be warned though, the patch notes I have been supplied with were completely in Japanese; so I'm doing my best to translate them.