Top 20 NA CoD players of 2011 in earnings

Submitted by csn_jerett on Sat 1/21/12 12:13pm EST

Top 20 NA CoD players of 2011 in earnings

Call of Duty: Black Ops was a major milestone for the competitive CoD scene. With an ambitious community and steady support from developer Treyarch, this game was poised to make a huge splash in the e-sports industry.

The game did not disappoint and the first major event of the year, Gamestop's XBOX Finals, was a huge success. An EnvyUs/OpTic combination took home the finals and pocketed a first place prize of $13,000 USD. The team consisted of Hastro, Stainville, Merk and BigTymer. Along with the XBOX finals, a PS3 final was held which pushed Proofy to the top ten and allowed TeePee to just make the top 20. The tournament was a precursor for what we would see throughout the season: players wanted to compete, fans wanted to watch and, most importantly, there was money to be made.

Top 20 2011 NA Player Earnings
1. BigTymeR $115,950
1. MerK $115,950
3. VeNGeaNcE $113,900
4. NaDeSHoT $102,550
5. eGo $30,500
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Major League Gaming picking up Black Ops as a major title helped propel the CoD scene to new heights. With six events in seven months around the nation, everyone had their shot at hundreds of thousands of dollars in prizes. Players and teams practiced daily to give themselves the best shot at the $10,000 first place prize for each individual MLG event. However, these events were no more than a drop in the bucket for what XBOX 360 would bring us in September.

The announcement of Call of Duty XP sent players and fans alike into a frenzy. It would be a tournament unlike anything ever seen before. 32 teams would get a chance to compete in a brand new game that had never been played before, not to mention the prize pool stood at an unprecedented $1,000,000.

Optic Gaming conquered the field of over one hundred other players, and each earning themselves a share of $400,000. With this being the biggest payout of the year, those four players easily found themselves atop the leaderboard for player earnings. In fact, CoD XP was such a lucrative event that the next four players on the list (Ego, Terror, Killa, and RJ), were the third place finishers, each receiving $30,000...

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