(http://i.imgur.com/e3X2cNS.png)
Winterfest 2013 is a community event inspired by the concept of a holiday carnival. It is a drop-in/drop-out event where crews compete in a number of "carnival game modes", rolled at random from predefined ship compositions and loadouts, and earn points to redeem for items in the Guns of Icarus store.
Winterfest will take place over a two day period, with start times on December 28th at 3pm EST, and December 29th at 1pm EST. Each day will run for as long as there are competitors, to a maximum of four hours.
This event will use a queue system for signups. You can sign up as either a crew (4 players) or a team (8 players), and the games will be run on a first-come first-served basis starting at the top of the queue. The queue will open to registration one hour before the scheduled start time for each day (there will be a separate thread for this purpose). After you've played your game, you are free to requeue at the bottom.
The current status of the queue will be available on the Community eSports website (http://cesports.org/winterfest2013) during the event.
The mode for each game lobby will be randomly generated from these three components: 1) the map, from the full 2v2 pool; 2) the ship composition the teams will run; 3) a loadout framework pulled from several specific to that composition.
Example 1: Duel at Dawn, Galleon and Goldfish, Lumberjack/Flak left side Galleon and Hwacha Goldfish
Example 2: Labyrinth, Mobula only, Mine Launchers only
There will be a hard 30 minute time limit on all games. When the time limit is reached, the game will be a draw and the participating players will recieve the 1 participation point.
Games that takes place during Winterfest will award 3 points to each member of the winning team, and 1 point to the other team. Points are tracked on a per-player basis.
After the event, the points will be tallied and each player will be able to redeem them for various cosmetic items from the Guns of Icarus store. 1 point for a dye, 2 points for goggles/headgear, 4 points for a torso piece. A prize claim thread will be created for this purpose upon conclusion of Winterfest.
The entirety of the event will be streamed on Twitch (http://www.twitch.tv/cesports/). If you have any questions or comments, feel free to post in this thread or contact me directly.