As everyone knows there are lots of people out there spending time on the internet. A great part of it just to play. Many sites have created ICQ-based conferences in order to gather the players and let them play their favorite games. Some websites are specialized in administrating groups which they call "leagues". Players are free to join these in order to play tournaments and to compete. We wanted to have a closer look on these administrations just to see what they offer, knowing that their income is generated by sponsors advertising on their sites and leaguepages, we also wanted to see if they share their revenues with those who create it. The table below will make a direct comparison of their services in an objective manner, in order for us to determine wether the service is seriously user-oriented or just yet another way to make money. We have chosen 3 systems by now which are CASE's ladder (calling itself the greatest in the world), GREATLEAGUE (calling itself the best in the world) and finally Int-League (calling itself the best on the internet). The term "league" might be confusing though since they actually only administrate "clubs". Only the association of many of these clubs would make them be a league. We keep this in mind, since this is very important as we will see later.


CASE's LADDER
 GREATLEAGUE
 Int-League

On the first approach we'll have a general look.

Begin of activity:

Sep.1996

Oct.2006

Nov.2007
CASE's ist the first. It began with the administration of players playing Command and Conquer.
Greatleague has been created to cover what CASE's obviously missed.
Int-League has, as we will see later other motivations.

Administrating clubs?

Yes

Yes

Yes
CASE's and Greatleague call these clubs "leagues" which is wrong.
The competition between single players never makes it a league.
Only the association of several clubs competing together makes it a league.

Slogan

The world's largest gaming league!
(???????)

Better leagues, better servers

No Limit

Administrating leagues?

No

No

Yes
national
international
See above.

Programming language(s)

20% PHP, 10% HTML, 70% Javascript

CFML

90% PHP, 10% HTML
CASES's main aspekt is to have as much advertisements as possible on each page. They are all generated bei javascript, while they have more than 70 differents types of advertisements.
Greatleague try to do about the same, fortunately CFML does not offer much options.
Int-League does not advertise at all.

Used technique

none

N/A

Context-sensitive
and ergonomy

Costs for the user

none

none

none

Standard language

US American

English

English, French, German, Turkish, Netherlands
(set automatically)
It's the least one can do, if they integrate the word "world" either in its name or slogan, they should consider that only a few really do understand english. Talking about "english", only Greatleague and Int-League do, CASE's is pure united-states-american (not to say 'slang').

Procedure for creating a club

6 screens

2 screens

1 screen

Individual clubpage?

Yes

Yes

Yes

Is the clubpage editable?

partially

partially

entirely

Can the clubpage be redirected?

No

Yes

Yes

Is the system stable?

No

No

Yes

Stability of the system

5 shutdowns/week

1 to 2 shutdowns/month

stable
No shutdown ever yet

Responsetime of the system

very slow

acceptable

very fast

Script errors

many

acceptable

none

Timezone of the system

ALL East-coast USA

ALL East-coast USA

irrelevant
since the system respects the individual timezone-settings

Browser-preferences?

Netscape-based browsers

Firefox

no preference

Navigation

99% per a-tags

99% per a-tags

99% per buttons

Advertisements?

average 5 per page

average 3 per page

NONE

Revenue sharing?

No
Although it is written in the policies

No

Yes

conclusion:

 As we can see above CASE's has been created in 1996. At this time the administration was about 2 years old. This means to say, that until today none of the modules had any evolution. This explains why the same IP-adress is considered as a fraud and all coresponding accounts are just being deleted on and on. In the early 90's noone of them was able to foresee that accessing the internet via a router would be as normal as it is today. Let's suppose that two players not knowing each other and never spoke to each other, play in the same internet-café, in the same club (league) (it's not as rare as one could think); well CASES's would just delete them after a while since they have the same IP-adress (although they have nothing in common besides playing in the same club). Another fact is that ISPs deliver exactly the same IP-adress to different users on different days, which leads to the same IP-adress again. Consequence? CASE's "cleans" them away! Greatleague does about the same.
Int-League obviously has other criterias to prevent frauds.

In this CASE the saying is wrong! it should say: "Oldie, but certainly NOT goldie!"
As we will see further, Greatleague is just being a cheap copy of CASE's. two conclusions are allowed to this: either it has been created to keep the leagues (and their users) in order keep on having many advertisements (which they are payed for), they just made other more simple pages, pretending that it's another system by insulting themselves; or Greatleague really is another system, but than, instead of insulting the oldie, they should at least try to make it better!

Int-League has a brandnew approach to a very old problem, which is administrating a league. Their options are multiple and yet very flexible. Since they are polyglot it's very easy for any new user to get along with the menus.

Myleague as it is is in fact owned by eUniverse Inc., known as an advertising hijacker; that's the reason why eUniverse is nowadays selling the complete department of entertainment, in order to make there relations even more opaque as it already is.

There are two options for Greatleague, seing how insulting they are towards Myleague and Cases's ladder:
  • Either they're owned by Myleague themselves, in order to keep the users, who were disappointed by there services, or
  • Greatleague is really an alternative solution while they still don't administrate leagues, as they pretend! Gathering users in single clubs does not make it a LEAGUE-administration.
Greatleague does in fact exactly the same as Myleague, just worse. The only thing they do very well is insulting the company that they vainly try to copy!

Int-League never ever had a system-shutdown in 2 years (testing phase included). Their services are totally oriented to user's matters. They are multilingual, which makes it really world-oriented. They respect accurately the club's timezones which can be set individually, the club's pages are presented though respecting the user's browser-language.

Let's have a look on the clubadministration.

Distinction of the menu

51 Links (often unnecessary)

see left

Tree-based menu

Can the userdata be edited?

entirely

entirely

partially
"Entirely" means to say that any data on user's account can be edited including password, skill, e-mail-adress and so on. This offers a great choice of possible manipulations. Curiously the IP-adress can't be edited and everyone knows that this is the only thing which changes for sure, unless the user has a fix adress.

How many administration-levels?

4
(Head-administrator
Co-administrator
Head-Tournament-director
Tournament-director)

4
(Head-administrator
Co-administrator
Head-Tournament-director
Tournament-director)

3
(Creator
Administrator
Tournament-director)
At CASE's and Greatleague each level has its own login.
This shows an absolute hierarchical thinking which leads to tournament-directors and administrators behaving like gods.
At Int-League only ONE login for all. The system automatically recognizes rights and duties.

Timezone of the club

Servertime (EC USA NY)

Servertime (EC USA NY)

individual
At CASE's and Greatleague every club has to convert their schedules to their respective timezone since CASE's and Greatleague only regard on themselves.
At Int-League each club lives in the timezone set by the club's administrator.
That much to "world orientation"!

Date and time editable?

No

No

Yes
CASE's and Greatleague only know their respective servertime and ALL clubs have to convert their schedules if they are outside New York-timezone.
Int-League gives the admin the opportunity to change the timezone in order not to have to convert anything. He can even change the format of the time shown, either to military-time (24 hours), or to AM/PM. Depending on this setting the date will also be shown in respective format dd.mm.yyyy or mm.dd.yyyy.
By the way, a look a the tournament's calendars will show that CASE's week starts on sunday in spite of international convention that the week starts on monday, as Int-League shows. Noone will ever understand why Greatleague starts on Tuesday.

Can tournaments be held?

Yes

Yes

Yes

Minimum players to start a tournament

4

4

3

Procedure to create a tournament

15 screens

2 screens

1 click
At CASE's if you happen to set anything wrong on either screen you'll have to start the whole procedure all over again.

How many types of tournaments?

3
(single
double
True swiss)

3
(single
double
True swiss)

5
(Cup-system
Catch-up
Round Robin
RR with Play-offs
Pool based Tournaments
and many others!)
none of CASE'S or GREATLEAGUE was able to explain where the term "true swiss" comes from (this term in fact does NOT exist at all! as a matter of fact this type of tournament is called "Round Robin" and only if this tournament is limited in terms of rounds it might than be called "Swiss", THAT'S IT!), which shows on one hand that they have absolutely no clue what they're talking about and on the other hand GREATLEAGUE remains loyal in copying CASE's, even in their stupidities.

Teams possible?

Yes

Yes

Yes

Maximum players per team?

Yes / 2

Yes / 2

No / unlimited

Opponent's options

1 vs 1
2 vs 2

1 vs 1
2 vs 2

1 vs 1
many vs many
1 vs many

are there special tournaments?

No

No

Yes
(gender oriented
status oriented)

Can the tournament be edited?

partially

partially

entirely

Tournamentpage editable?

main page only

main page only

all pages

Individual tournamentpage?

No

No

possible

how are the tournamentstandings oriented?

horizontal
left to right

horizontal
left to right

Pyramid
down to up

and

horizontal
At CASE's the standings are shown from left to right. a closer look on the standings in double-elimination will show that in some cases CASE's just ommits complete games. As a cheap copy of CASE's GREATLEAGUE does the same. Int-League leaves it up to the user himself how he/she wants the plans to appear, by a simple click!

Procedure to close a tournament?

13 screens

2 screens

1 click

Is there a maximum-amount of players?

Yes

Yes

Unlimited

Are the player's skills calculated?

Yes

Yes

Yes

Are there different systems of calculating skills?

No

No

Yes
At this moment it is important to state that CASE's pretends to use the formula used at the FIDE (Fédération internationale des Echecs (international chess association)), but a look on the formula reveals that that is just not true. Calculating a skill shows that they don't even use their own formula for calculating tournament's results, or something is wrong in the program, but noone ever controled it.
As a copy of CASE's Greatleague does about the same.
Int-League offers a formula recommanded by the FIDE, and they improved it since the FIDE sets the skills all in ranges from-to, while Int-League respects every single point. In their next version they will offer more calculating systems such as for Poker, Go Ban and Bridge. The system will than be chosen by the admin in the administration-menu. Standard will be the FIDE though, which they call ELO.

How does it look alike for the users

Costs?

None

None

None

Can anyone sign up?

depending

depending

Yes

Procedure to sign up

7 screens

3 screens

1 screen

Multiple accounts allowed?

No

No

No

Accounts are controlled by IP-address?

Yes

Yes

No
Again this shows how obsolete CASE's is. Controling accesses by IP-adress was quite right in the early 90ies, but since routers and multiple accesses are "state of the art", it still happens that at CASE's and GREATLEAGUE users will see their accounts deleted nevertheless. Int-League obviously has other criterias.

TO BE CONTINUED .........