As the clock struck twelve and we raised our glasses we promised things would change. We said we would work towards a better future, that we could rebuild the ruined, come together as things fell apart and make CS:S the game it always should have been.

That was January 1st 2011, a time when the future looked brighter than Simon Cowells teeth and richer than the company he owns. Since 2008 our beloved game had been in steady decline, with what was left being sucked try by swindlers and scammers and a scene content to watch it fade into obscurity, like a man watching his estranged father take his last breath; on the one hand it's sad, but meh, I didn't really know him that well.. We saw tournaments scale down gradually, some of them disappear completely and the vast majority of major sponsors pull out faster than a teenager after sex without protection.

It wasn't until the adrenaline shot that was DSRack LAN that people began to sit up and take notice. The man behind the DSRack, Thomas “qdk” Hjorth had been invested in the CS:S scene for a number of years, providing game servers for much of the Danish and European scene. After a while he decided to delve deeper, he began to pick up Danish teams and players and fund their LAN events. After enjoying moderate success with one Danish team they chose to part ways and join up with XAYA Gaming, after the disappointment of losing his most successful team Thomas chose to concentrate on other things, namely LAN events.

The first of his DSRack tournaments came at a time when he was still supporting a CS:S team and went without the European scene paying much attention, with most considering it to be a community event. It was won by the number one team in Denmark at the time and they received their winnings without any issues - all good so far. Event number two brought slightly more publicity to DSRack and what they offered, with some of the best teams in Europe showing up to fight it out for a very healthy prize pot. In the end it was won by the insurmountable VeryGames after a hugely successful event.

DSRack 3 was a very different beast to the previous two. This time the organisation would be doing things big, they would be hosting a week long event in Denmark with CoD4, CS 1.6 and CS:S as the main titles. The event was the biggest that CS:S had seen in years with a possible prize purse of €25,000 should all slots be filled and the buzz it created was instantly felt. Within days there was talk of teams making the trip from across the pond and it wasn't long until we found out that two American teams would indeed be flying over to compete against the best Europe had to offer.

It was the biggest spectacle since the CGS and the thousands of people tuning in weren't disappointed thanks to the brilliant performance of Team Dynamic, arguably the best team in America - I know they are Canadian. The team made it all the way to the grand final and pushed their opponents all the way in the final, alas VeryGames once again proved too strong and the Frenchmen walked away as champions, taking the title as the worlds best team back to France with them.

In the months after the event the CS:S scene seemed revitalised and ready for one last crack at the big time, and for good reason. Most of the people involved in the scene were eagerly anticipating the next DSRack event and with rumours that TeX - with a promise of guaranteed prize money payouts - making a return things were looking good. This was helped by the news that the 30P organisation - perhaps excited by the success of Thomas “qdk” Hjorth - had decided to host their very own LAN event, this time in the beautiful Nordic country of Sweden and once more featuring a potentially huge prize pot.

After a weekend of intense action and in the absence of VeryGames it was team CKRAS who came out eventual victors and, despite the prize pot being not nearly as big as it could have been, the event was another huge success. At the prize ceremony of the Swedish event the man behind it all promised that we'd see more events in future, eager to pick up where he left off. Since then though things have been, well, quiet. DSRack seems like a distant memory after 10 months of white noise and the words "The eXperience" seem to be springing up more than Peter Andre, yet with even less substance - have you seen Peter: Here 2 Help? Genius.

I don't really want to delve into the ESWC thing as my colleague published an article just the other day, I will however say that as time goes on I'm beginning to think that the hope of a CS:S tournament at the ESWC was just a cruel joke being played by the men in charge, probably made whilst taking a break from playing the superior Counter Strike title. It's strange really that the only glimmer of hope for European CS:S teams is the up-coming i-series. Hope and i-series has proven a bit of an oxymoron these past few years but with the help of a few knowledgeable people the guys over at Multiplay seem to be finally pulling their finger out of their behinds.

For the first time since i34 there will be a CS:S tournament at i-series for people to get truly excited about, and the online qualifiers were another stroke of genius in the sense that it not only gives AiN.unu a chance to attend (a chance they wouldn't have had without the qualifier) but it increases publicity and gets people buzzing months before the event is even underway. Two LAN events then, that's all we got from all of the newborn faith, drive and dedication to the scene?

DSRack came along like a working class lottery winner, spunking their cash up the wall before disappearing - with rumours that there will never be another event. TeX stills haunts the scene like the bad guy from Casper, cropping up everytime people think it's safe to say it's gone. Niklas "Fiskoo" Fischier, the man behind the 30P LAN seems to have turned into a mute with regards to future events and the ESWC will almost certainly be an untold disaster. From the looks of things we're in the same boat as the American economy and on our way to a double-dip recession.

And while we're on America, what the hell is going on over there? Last year was the first in many that the European scene began to pay attention to their brothers across the Atlantic. Although the ESEA LAN has given a constant and steady stream of events since the scene imploded nobody outside of America paid much attention, but things were different when another regular event sprung up. The silver tongue of sole shoutcaster LazerJesus - a panelist on our American Top 10 - attracted Europeans in their thousands to the spectacle that was LANChamp.

The format was simple, online qualifiers featuring the best America had to offer would be played and the best four teams would progress to a LAN final, held in cities across the country. In total four events were run with success and things were looking bright, sadly though the LANChamp legacy came to an acrimonious end after a few well publicised problems. Firstly was the revelation that their anti-cheat didn't actually work and was nothing more than a placebo - news first broke here in an article by Richard Lewis. Shortly afterwards a split in the management saw the main investor pull out, leaving the name to wither and die.

So what does the future hold? Well in the States teams can depend on ESEA for their LAN needs whilst the ETS LAN is another that is trying hard to add to the scene with events springing up regularly. In Europe though things seem to be much more hit and miss, what we know we can look forward to in the coming Winter months is another i-series - whether it will be as big as the August event remains to be seen - the ESWC (if it actually happens) and the larger yearly SLAP Live event. It doesn't seem like much, does it?