Greetings!

I'm really excited to announce the updated Leagues United website that has some new features! It's been just over a year since our last update but here we are. I'll go over some of the biggest new things but to view a more detailed release, read the release notes.

Player Elos

Conceived by llrr, with feedback by the community, the biggest feature in this release is the support for new match types and Elo ratings tied directly to players. With this, there is the introduction of new official match types:

• Team vs Team (TvT)
• Team vs Mixed (MvT)
• Mixed vs Mixed (MvM)

That's right! Official matches no longer need two teams to happen. Official matches can now occur with 4 different players from 4 different teams. What's in it for you if you win? Bragging rights and an Elo boost. For each official match you participate in, you risk lowering your Elo but you also could get an increase. If you don't want to gamble, that's fine too! Fun matches aren't going away and haven't changed.

What does this mean? You can now run the /offi command on league servers with incomplete teams or teamless players on each team! Player Elos will be kept on a seasonal basis. What are the seasons?

• Winter: January - March
• Spring: April - June
• Summer: July - September
• Fall: October - December

We'll be adding some new pages showing the top players of each season and some more information regarding competitions; this'll happen before the start of the Winter 2018 season.

This has been one of the largest features introduced and probably one of the most difficult to create/test, so please bear with me as we get kinks/technicalities/calculations worked out!

New UI

Don't worry, I heard you about wanting a dark theme for the website. Sorry that it took so long, but the dark theme you've all been asking for is here and it's the default! Liked the light theme? Don't worry, go to your preferences and change it.

I'll be introducing more color themes, especially for those players with a form of colorblindness. If you'd like to create your own theme, documentation for how to do so will be coming soon!

Player and team profile pages have been completely redesigned and have some neat graphs and statistics so be sure to check those out!

Accessibility

Web accessibility has been drastically updated and has become a top priority for website navigation. What does this mean? Website elements have been updated to use semantically correct tags and keyboard navigation has been improved. You can now browse the entire website with just your keyboard. Additionally, screen readers should have an easier time with navigating the website.

Accessibility support isn't where I'd like it to be, but it will continue to receive more updates in the coming releases.

Thanks

This release could not have happened without the help of the following players. Thank you for your artwork, suggestions, thorough help with testing. I would not have been able to get to this release without your help.

Listed in alphabetical order

• asinck
• llrr
• orbit
• Zehra

Pleased to announce leviathan was added to cop status in LU!

Pleased to announce the addition of Hogfish to cop status in LU!

We thank ahs3 for his willingness and dedication to host for Leagues United. However, all good things must come to an end as we bid farewell to our Georgia servers. For players in that region, while lag may increase a tad bit, the New Jersey servers will continue to remain available.

What's going to happen to the replays?

All replays have been relocated to allejo.leaguesunited.org:5195. There were no naming conflicts, so all replay filenames remain the same as listed on our website.

What's going to happen to the matches that occurred on this server?

Match results are not affected, so all your FMs and official matches still count.

I would like to introduce a new idea. Team FM Day! What this will be if the trial is successful is a scheduled FM day where the actual teams' members are on the same teams for the FMs. This will allow the teams to practice and learn to work together in a non-official capacity, and perhaps improve skills as a unit. I have suggested the following times and sent a forum pm to the active team captains:

Team FM Day Trial Thursday August, 10th with three times: 1:00PM EST/ 17UTC, 4:00PM EST/20:00 UTC, and 7:00PM EST/23:00 UTC

Please let everyone know and get as many team mates together as you can and attend. This will also spur some official matches if attendance is good.