YYoooo! eXtine here, proud to present another interview, this time with the fine folks behind TF2 Lobby. If you haven't been there yet, CHECK IT OUT. It's the easiest place to find a 6v6 competitive game and utilizes servers from all regions. Get in, get some game on, and help out those newbs!

eXtine: Hey guys! Why don't we start things off with some introductions. Who are you? And why are you so cool?

Mangy: I'm a custom mapper… some of my maps may be familiar (frontier, aurora, yukon, atrophy, seaside, wildfire…) I know floor through our community 2fort2furious.

FloorMaster: I run the 2fort2furious community. Outside of that, I've been heavily involved in promoting custom maps and have released a number of SourceMod plugins.

eXtine: What role is each of you responsible for in the development of and continued work on TF2 Lobby?

FloorMaster: Mangy's been one of the primary sources of development ideas, distilling feedback from the users into what features would best suit the broadest range of people. Flame and Mangy are more connected to the competitive community than I and use their contacts to keep that community's interests in mind as we make design decisions for the site. Mangy also leads our PR efforts, answering questions on forums or in chat.

Flame and Nineaxis deserve credit for creating the original mockups of what a lobby might look like, though their role in the actual development of the site has been limited.

Mangy: Floor's coded the whole thing, which consists of some ungodly number of lines of code.

When: Monday February 22, 2010 at 9PM EST
Where: www.tgbf.tv
Map: cp_freight
What: ESEA-Open Playoffs

As an exciting month of esea open playoffs began, tgbf.tv brings you the first of our many casts, a first round match up of Lore's Merry Men (12-4) against Area 51 (11-5).

Lore's Merry Men, the 8th seed in the playoffs, is having a breakout season. Once considered a low/mid TWL team, LMM made some statement wins against Gentlemen's Club, 50cal and Rusty Buttholes this season. Although they are carrying one of the easier schedules compared to the other teams in the playoffs, Lore's Merry Men are no jokes. Kayaws heads their team and is one of the more known players on the roster, an old school vet that has been in the game since season 1 of CEVO. Their unknown soldier/medic combo of Ghost, itisgreen and Lore shouldn't be overlooked, they have been together for over 3 seasons and their chemistry is through the roof. The focus area on the team has to be their scouts as their carousel of scouts keep rotating. They started off the season with b0t and f1re, then picking up smilie, killing in the name and djfivenine, who all started in a few matches. Now with the addition of yodogs, you have absolutely no idea who will be the starting 2 at the scout spot each match.

Area 51 has gone through a very rocky season, but recovered very nicely. They begun the season as one of the favorites in open, and they showed why by taking down another favorite in Detox and barely losing to Apocalypse Gaming. However, during the middle of the season, the team dropped 4 straight games and lost a few of their starting players. Their leader Alan, did not give up and recovered nicely by picking up Teto and Breather to replace those players. Their strong point still has to be their soldiers. Kayp and Teto are both great DMers with amazing accuracy. Moero and Breather are their scouts, while not above average in DM skills, they make it up in strategy and intelligence.

Look for a great match tonight on tgbf.tv!

That's right, it's time to submit your clips for the February TF2 Top 10 Plays. Remember to follow these rules:

- It must be from a POV demo (not STV).
- It must be from a league match.
- It must have ticks included either in the comment or in a zipped file.
- It can be uploaded to filefront, mediafire, or this site's files section; post the link as a comment to this article.
- It can be emailed to commft.top10 [at] gmail.com.

The final product will be posted on our YouTube channel.

I just wanted to remind all of the teams that are planning on playing in CEVO-P S5 that the early bird period ends tomorrow. From the news release:

The regular event membership fee for the Professional Division is $20 USD per player. However, any player who registers by midnight CST Sunday, February 21st will receive a discounted early bird rate of only $15 USD. Players may register for Season 5 without already being on a team.

There's a new BBall tournament in town that is coming up and a little bird tells me that if it works out then the company Novint might sponsor their next one (read: cash money).  So grab a partner and sign up together so that you can help to attract a new sponsor to the TF2 scene!

Here's where you can go to find out specifics and sign up:  Link

First off, please understand this is a blog, which means it's not commft's announcement for esea-open. This is coming from someone who is trying to state his own opinion, not someone who is trying to get his team a higher seed. I truly believe the ESEA admins dropped the ball on the latest playoff seeding and here's why:

I decided to interview some players from ESEA-I teams asking about their thoughts on the LAN, the new weapons and map changes for the upcoming season. The first person in the series is CB, the captain of MmM.

First, introduce yourself and explain how you first started playing tf2.
I'm CB, captain of Muscle Milk and Moolians. I started playing tf2 in the summer of 08. A friend told me I had to try the game out. Once I learned that a team could play together I was hooked. I'm a competitive person that really likes working with a team so that immediately drew me to the game. I really just worked my way up through the ranks starting at the low levels of play.

I guess a big question on everyone's mind is whether you'll be able to field 6 for the ESEA LAN happening in March.
We would love to be able to go to the LAN in March. Tf2 needs to grow and we want to help that happen. Unfortunately, as it stands right now we just don't have the money to send our players. Our former sponsor (i7) disbanded about a month ago and it left us in a very unfortunate situation. We have players all over the country as well as in Canada. They are students and just don't have the money right now. I have been busy contacting every top level North American and European sponsor I can to try to get some help. I guess now we just have to wait and see if any of them are willing to help.

Assuming that they go to the LAN...

Going into the LAN, what team do you think you’ll have the most trouble with?
For what reason?
I think our biggest competition as well as every top team in this game is Complexity. When they are in practice and all on the same page they may be the best tf2 team in the world.

What team are you least worried about?
We never underestimate any team, especially one of the top 4 in NA TF2. If I had to pick a team I would say Pandemic just because they have the least experience compared to EG and coL, but in saying that I think they have great talent and may surprise the competition.

A little later than planned, but eXtelevision is proud to present the finals of the unofficial TF2 tournament for PDX LAN 15! PDX LAN is a 500 person byoc LAN party in Portland, Oregon and the unofficial tournament was organized by eXtine and Team BONK! Big shout out to those guys. Format was 5v5, though with as many teams as we had we coulda bumped it up to 6v6. Finals were on Sawmill and was best of 3 rounds, so the video is pretty quick. Even though PDX LAN doesn't focus on big tournaments, it's a ton of fun with tickets for the next LAN selling out in 14 days!!! A great time was had by all! Check it out!

eXtelevision is on Facebook OMG