Alienware Arena just announced an online TF2 tournament with over $2200 worth of prizes.  Check out the press release:

Alienware Arena hosts the Bigfoot Killer Edge Challenge, sponsored by Bigfoot Networks™. The tournament is the latest in the ongoing Alienware Arena series presented by Alienware®, Dell’s premier, high-performance PC gaming brand representing premium power and performance for gamers and technology enthusiasts alike.

The Bigfoot Killer Edge Challenge will feature the PC version of Team Fortress 2, the critically acclaimed first-person shooter. Gamers will form teams and compete online from across the United States and Canada, starting November 23rd.

Teams with the sharpest game play tactics will advance through two phases of double-elimination brackets, leading up to the Championships on Saturday, January 23rd. In addition to their share of the $1,500 cash prize pool, the Champions will win a set of Killer Xeno Pro Gaming Network Cards.

“Online gaming is one of the fastest growing segments of the entire entertainment industry,” said Michael Howse, CEO of Bigfoot Networks. “And competitive online gaming is at the bleeding edge of this phenomenon. Bigfoot Networks hopes that more events like these will pave the way for the growth of professional gaming leagues here in the United States, now that pro gaming is so popular in the rest of the world.”

Registration for the Bigfoot Killer Edge Challenge is free and open now at www.alienwarearena.com/event/killeredge. Teams will be accepted on a first-come first-served basis while slots remain available.

For more information about Bigfoot Networks or the Killer Xeno Pro gaming network card, including where to buy one, go to www.bigfootnetworks.com.

You can check out the tournament home page HERE, the prize distribution HERE, and the official rules HERE.  Notice the first rule (a rule that is in place for all Alienware Arena events):

"The Tournament is open only to residents of any state of the United States of America, the District of Columbia and any Province of Canada (other than Quebec) that are 13 years of age or older as of November 22..."

The tournament schedule will be as follows:

Initial registration for teams closes on Sunday, November 22nd.

Double-Elimination Preliminary Schedule (Nov 26 - Dec 17)

In the opening phase, teams will be scheduled to complete two matches per week – with deadlines on Mondays and Thursdays.

Using the communication tools available through the Alienware Arena control panel, it is up to teams to negotiate their exact match time, which can be any day or time prior to the deadline.

Match 1 Deadline: Thursday, November 26 -
Match 2 Deadline: Monday, November 30 -
Match 3 Deadline: Thursday, December 3 -
Match 4 Deadline: Monday, December 7 -
Match 5 Deadline: Thursday, December 10 -
Match 6 Deadline: Monday, December 14 -
Match 7 Deadline: Thursday, December 17 -

Final 2 teams per bracket advance to the next phase.

Tournament Finals (Jan 7 - Jan 23)

Match 1 Deadline: Thursday, January 7 -
Match 2 Deadline: Monday, January 11 -
Match 3 Deadline: Thursday, January 14 -
Match 4 Deadline: Monday, January 18 -
Match 5 Deadline: Thursday, January 21 -
Matches 6-8 Deadline: Saturday, January 23

The final teams that remain will play out all remaining matches during the Championships on Saturday, December 5 starting at 2:00 PM eastern time. It is likely that the final Match may not end until around or after 11:00 p.m. Eastern Time on that day. The brackets will specify the exact order of the maps.

Be sure to get your team signed up for this event as soon as possible since the 128 spots will undoubtedly filled quickly.

What does competitive TF2 need most? The short answer is “all classes as viable mains.” Members of the community, especially those in the TF2 Beta, need to agree on this and work together from there in order to make the most of TF2. I’ll explain in an excessively long fashion...

The TF2 competitive scene has two significant participatory groups.
- Current participators
- Future/potential participators

The “current participators” include all those who are part of the competitive community: the competitive players, their fans and spectators, and active league and sponsor organizations. The “future/potential participators” include all people who could be a part of the competitive community, including most TF2 pubbers, but have either never considered it or have already decided against it. Both of these participatory groups are important for the vitality of the TF2 competitive scene; the former determines the stability and knowledge base of the competitive community while the latter determines the growth in players and spectators of the competitive community.

Community Fortress needs more staff, plain and simple.  We have been trying to cover the TWL, ESEA, and CEVO playoffs over the course of the past few weeks and it is a challenge with the number of writers that are currently active.  Aside from event coverage, we need writers for blog and community-related content. If you are interested, please contact me on the forums.

Twitter

If you use Twitter, feel free to follow me: http://twitter.com/CommunityFT.  I post links to most of the articles on the site as they go live so you can stay in touch while you are out and about.

 

The Community Wiki remains open to public registration. Follow these steps to get involved:

- If you are already registered on the site or on the forums, log in to this Joomla page with your site or forums credentials.  This will create your wiki account with the exact same credentials.  You will receive shop points from working on the wiki.

- If you are not already registered on the site or the forums, register on this Joomla page.   This will create your wiki account, your site account, and your forums account with the exact same credentials.  You will receive shop points from working on the wiki with this account.

Since the MediaWiki template has some navigation issues, we are currently working on getting all the pages interlinked and fleshing out the home pages.  I have been working on the TF2 home page and you should bookmark it if you plan on helping out with the wiki.  Anyone can edit any article (except for the major home pages) so be sure to update things that are incorrect or expand on any topic that you are knowledgeable about.  The wiki does have an approval system so if you negatively edit any article, the admins can easily revert it to its previous version and IP ban you.

TF2 Forums

We have added sections to our forums and we are looking to host quality discussion on competitive TF2.  After we have added the new European and Australian sections to the website, we will have region-specific sections of the Competitive Recruitment, Lo3, and LANs sections of the forums.  If you are interested in having troll-free discussions on competitive TF2, be sure to check out the forums: 

http://commforums.com/communityft-f13.html

TF2 Mentors Program

The TF2 Mentor Program is a program set up to help bridge the skill gap for players new to competitive TF2. One of the main problems with getting into competitive play is how different it is compared to public play, so the mentor program has been set up to help ease the transition. The community should not be divided between seasoned players and newer ones, so the program is made to help the community grow, thrive, and live within a positive atmosphere - rather than look down on players new to the community.

http://commforums.com/tf2-mentor-works-t1828.html?t=1828

 The first round of the ESEA-Invite Season 4 Playoffs finished up last night with the match between EG and Strickland Propane, who were sporting their new name and tag, C3H8. C3H8 is the chemical compound also known as Propane, a clever shift in name for a clever team. 

 Last night's match between the two on CP_granary was a well fought affair, but EG certainly displayed their skill and class. Things swung back and forth multiple times, and as granary is prone to there were also several drawn out standoffs. EG opened up a 3 round lead before C3H8 was finally able to pull one back. Propane was looking very good though and held their own against EG. The final score was 5-2 with even a Spy backstabbing an uber-holding Caseey unable to stop EG from winning the final round.

 Tuesday night's match between Loaded and 20ID took an unfortunate turn for the worse when both Glue and Animeman were unable to make the match time for team Loaded. Loaded ended up playing the match with 5 men, and losing 5-0.

 These results mean that EG will be facing 20ID next week in the very important upper bracket match on cp_yukon while C3H8 looks like they are in good shape to provide Loaded with a serious fight in the lower bracket. Both matches should be very exciting. 

With TWL playoffs in the books and Cevo almost done, all eyes are on ESEA playoffs. The regular season is over and now the true battle begins. Records are forgotten along with upsets, comebacks and unnecessary losses.

All in all it has been one crazy season with 200 point performances (Felraiser and Banjo, (sorry delirium), a euro invasion and evacuation (Slaughterhouse Gaming and Terribles), 70+ frag nights (Gremaud and Mesr) and a 4-0 comeback (NoGrid over Businessmen) with much more to come in the playoffs. With just a single win, the team automatically gets 100$. In playoffs, as Vince Lombardi put it “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing”.

In order to get a better perspective on the teams and their structure, I asked each leader/captain from each playoff team in ESEA-O on their thoughts on the season and their team. Enjoy.

Click "Read More"

A TF2 update was released today through the Steam system:

General

• Added "+quickswitch" command, which brings up a small panel allowing you to rapidly change the loadout of your current class & active weapon slot
• Added server ConVar "tf_teamtalk" to allow alive/dead teammates to talk with each other during a match (default is 0)
• Added 1/2 Bonus Point for healing a teammate with a dropped sandvich
• Updated the class menu to show the local player's current class
• Updated server ConVar "tf_playergib" to have 3 settings for player gibs: 0: never, 1: normal, 2: always (default is 1)
• Updated "player_hurt" game event to include "damageamount" and "crit" values
• Fixed a rare crash in particle system
• Fixed being able to eat your sandvich (via taunt) and drop it in the same frame
• Fixed not correctly remembering the last weapon if you're using "remember active weapon" and the last weapon was the weapon in slot 0
• Fixed Medic not being able to release his ÃœberCharge if his team won the previous round and the Medigun was his last active weapon (while using "remember last active weapon")
• Fixed not remembering the last active weapon correctly if the player didn't die before the next round restart
• Prevented servers from using steam:// commands in their MOTD text
• Fixed using the regen cabinets to get more health than you should when you switch between weapons with/without max health reduction attributes
• Fixed friendly-fire/spectator exploit using projectiles
• Fixed disguised spies not getting ammo from enemy dispensers
• Fixed thrown sandvich traveling through players before being activated
• Fixed sandviches sometimes spawning inside walls, or being thrown through thin walls
• Fixed fire overlay drawing on hats in DX80
• Fixed an exploit that allowed servers to corrupt client's item database
• Fixed full packet updates showing cloaked Spies for an instant
• Fixed a prediction error resulting in mis-predictions of crits

Community requests

• Added new "func_flag_alert" entity that fires an alert when a player carrying a flag starts touching the entity
• Added server ConVar "bot_crouch" to make bots crouch
• Added model override for item_teamflag entity
• Added ability to turn off particle trail for players carrying the item_teamflag entity
• Updated team_train_watcher to support 8 cp/track links (was previously 4)

On Tuesday, October 13th. Pandemic announced the revealing of their new TF2 team. If you missed the article, here is the link.

This is the 3rd generation of Team Pandemic, with their original team leaving for Complexity and the 2nd team moving to Loaded early this summer. Pandemic.TF2 has been one of the most recognizable organizations in TF2. Their roster has dominated the top divisions since the release of the game, a who's who of TF2 have wore the Pandemic tag, from the Godfather of competitive Soldier Reptile, to two of the best demomen in the world in Solidsnake and dummy, to the inventor of the Meatshot and the new "aggressive" style scout, Carnage. It is no surprise that Pandemic has decided to return to the TF2 scene with a new team. 

The most surprising part about this news was that Pandemic decided to bring in a brand new team. Their last two teams have been previously formed and proven teams (The Experiment and iDemise). I'm sure the Pandemic staff have plenty of confidence in the team with previous Pandemic members jmitchell and TheFragile, along with former MoB gaming sniper extraordinaire justin, young and rising stars TLR and kermit, and one of the top soldiers who disappeared from TF2 for a season, Wonderwall. However, this is the first time the TF2 community is questioning the Pandemic.TF2 team and wondering if they will be able to keep up with the "big 3". 20id, EG and Loaded....or will they fall into the 2nd tier group with teams like Point and Click, Vicious Gaming, Strickland Propane, etc.

TheFragile was gracious enough to speak to me tonight and we talked about the new team and his thoughts.

Click Read More to :3

The fourth season of ESEA’s TF2 Invite league is drawing to a close and it’s almost playoff time! There are only two matches left to be played, with Point and Click having to play against 20ID (on cp_waste) and Loaded (on cp_gravelpit). These matches however will have no effect on final standings or playoff spots, so it’ll be interesting to see if they actually happen, or if they’re taken seriously.

 In last week’s match between Strickland Propane and Vicious Gaming, Strickland Propane grabbed the final spot with a 4-3 overtime victory. Their prize: a match up against the league’s top team, Evil Geniuses. The other opening round match will be between the #2 and #3 teams, 20ID and Loaded.

 Click read more for a full analysis of match ups and predictions...