Hey guys, I know that with the huge number of leagues opening up right now, that you might have your focus on CEVO or ESEA, but there is another league, an old friend that has risen anew from the ashes left by inactive admins. That league is TWL.
That is right folks, now you too can experience one of the longest running totally and always free community run leagues ever created. TWL is run by players, for players, with no budget motives and no bottom line, just gamers looking for great competition. TWL is starting its seventh season already and I, along with Speedy, Sinister and Sway are our new admins for this season Don't hesitate to contact us on gamesurge at #twl_tf2 or by email (mine is
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
). Signups have been open for a while, and though we only have 25 teams as of this morning, I am confident we can get more.
I and the rest of the admin team look forward to working with you guys, the TF2 community as we get ready for an awesome season, please tell us what you want to see so we can make it happen. Voting for items, rules and maps will begin very, very soon, so keep your eyes out for more information regarding that.
Easily affected by the winds of fancy, the young ones are blown to and fro without self-control. Since they lack the strength and experience of their elders, they are unable to find firm footing in the brown and earthy soil of the meadows. Saplings, they are, green and soft. They have not grown to the height of their elders. Indeed, their vision is limited as a consequence of their very nature.
It seems that the community is suffering from an unusual case of hindsight bias. Defined as an inclination to see past events as being more predictable than they were at the time of their occurrence, hindsight bias is commonly found in individuals that regret a decision or wish to belittle another’s decisions. In the case of the TF2 community, certain individuals seem to believe that blackfoger’s past grievances were easily foreseeable. Furthermore, they believe that these grievances were so readily apparent that only a fool would be duped by blackfoger in the future. This is troubling given that he is actively duping many of the community’s members as this very article is being written. Certainly, the wholesale payment of numerous teams’ ESEA league fees seems to have influenced many players to see blackfoger in a different light. It is a dangerously positive light and one whose glare obscures problems beyond its source.
The summer light that begins to filter through the canopy is a welcome sight for the saplings. They feel its warmth and stretch their slender leaves upward in yearning. Yet after a few months of absorbing this beaming reassurance, they have not grown. Their stalks are drooping and their leaves furling as if they lacked nutrients. Something is wrong.
For those of you interested in participating in Season 7 of ESEA's TF2 league, the deadline for team registrations is tonight at midnight EST. Teams that want to play are required to have seven people on their rosters and paid for by tonight's deadline.
Currently the ESEA Open division stands with 17 teams readied up and paid for, with an additional 20 or so teams signed up but not fully paid for. Intermediate, on the other hand, has a total of 23 teams currently registered, with 5 readied up.
It's looking like whether or not this seventh season of ESEA happens or not is going to come down to a bit of a buzzer beater. Hopefully enough teams can get it together by midnight to make the season a success.
UGC TF2 Season 5 is underway! Having played their preseason game and a match on Badlands, many teams are looking forward to their next match on Viaduct. This season the UGC League is split into two brackets, Platinum and Steel. Platinum is for teams with past UGC experience while Steel is an open bracket. Another exciting detail is that Valve will be awarding merchandise from their online store to the top 3 teams.
This season of the UGC consists of many solid low/mid teams and I am excited to see how the league will unfold. I believe there will be a lot of close games based on what I have seen so far in the Steel bracket. Team Rogue had a very competitive preseason game against Systematic Gaming. Then Team Rogue won their first game on Badlands against the Exodus Society by a sick double scout backcap on spire and last. Even Team Legion and Camonna Tong had a very close first game, Legion securing the victory in an overtime round.
Besides these two games, I have noticed there were a lot of 6-0 games. Avoided and Enigma seemed to have breezed by their first match on Badlands, it will be interesting to see how they match up against each other in tomorrows' game on Viaduct. These matches tomorrow are critical to analyzing which teams are going to be top dog and I am anticipating the results.
A TF2 update was released today. Check out the notes:
Source Engine Changes (CS:S, DoD:S, TF2)
- The mat_hdr_level, r_rootlod, and r_waterforceexpensive settings are now saved in the user’s config file. - Fixed clients being able to connect to servers with spoofed SteamIDs. - Fixed a bug where some video configurations could get reset by restarting the engine. - Fixed materials compiled into a map not being loaded correctly if they're in the root materials folder. - Fixed a case of uneven performance on multicore machines. - Fixed point contents not respecting detail brushes. This fixes a bullet penetration bug in some community maps. - Fixed clients being able to spam servers using the ai_set_move_height_epsilon, mission_show, and sv_querycache_stats commands.
Audio fixes:
- Reduced overlap in the sound timing code. - Fixed a case where audio could skip. - Fixed voice communication getting corrupted while playing on a Mac. - sv_pure 2 now protects the game_sounds files in the scripts directory.
Team Fortress 2
- Added server ConVar "sv_max_usercmd_future_ticks" which prevents clients from running usercmds too far in the future. - Added missing Mac intro movie for cp_coldfront. - Fixed "Hit '%disguiseteam%' to Toggle Team" string and code so they're not hard coded to 'e' and '-'. - Fixed servers trying to validate backpack positions in inventories. - Fixed clients validating inventories other than their own. - Fixed item selection HUD elements showing un-acknowledged items, which resulted in items in invalid backpack positions. - Fixed players not always getting "recent damager" credit for player suicides. - Fixed the weapon selection menu not displaying properly when using hud_fastswitch and lastinv at the same time. - Updated Engineer startup music. - Updated localization files.
Updated Pl_ThunderMountain - Clipped off sticky outcrops for smoother movement - Clipped various exploit ledges - Increased environment ambient exterior light level Stage 1 - Fixed hole in respawn room brushes in RED spawn - Shifted respawn times to favor BLU by two seconds Stage 3 - Clipped rocks off by BLU's spawn exit that leads to building B (allowed Snipers to snipe the entire area) - Removed embedded displacement (building B interior roof) - Removed rogue clip brush from building A balcony
Updated Plr_Hightower - Fixed players building in the RED spawn room. - Fixed players building on the back window decks of the barns. - Fixed players getting on the satellite dish platform. - Fixed players building on the elevators. - Reduced the ammo packs in the barns down to small ammo packs. - Increased the hill speed modifier to 1.2 (up from .95) - Fixed explosion particle effects playing in the skybox. - Mine cart "window" collision fixed. - Upped Scout-loop health to large.
Updated Pl_Upward - Fixed respawnroom entities not reaching the floor of split-level spawns - Fixed griefable fence facing BLU spawn near RED base - Added BLU high flanking route at RED base - Added health & ammo along BLU flanking route at RED base - Sealed BLU base left exit with block bullets brushes - Extended clip between C and BLU spawn to prevent sticky jump spawn camping - Fixed non-clipped non-solid railing in RED base - Fixed kill brush in middle spawn not extending to the ceiling - Put a block bullets brush on grate below middle spawn - Fixed some high micro-ledges accessible to sticky-jumpers
Community Request - Added "item_pickup" game event for ammo/health packs.
This week is the first week of preseason for CEVO TF2 Season 6 and with 120 teams (as of the time of this post), it looks like it will be a stellar season. Although CEVO has a ton of teams this season, many of them are new to competitive play. As such, I felt like it would be good to answer some basic CEVO TF2-related questions in a news post in the TF2 section of the CEVO site:
With preseason beginning this week, CEVO TF2 Season 6 is finally underway. Since many of the teams playing this season are new to competitive TF2, I thought I would provide this post to clarify any general issues regarding CEVO. Some of the questions that I get from new players are listed below. Be sure to check them out if you are new to the league.
"How do I schedule a match, and when am I able to schedule a match for my team?"
After CEVO matches teams up each week of the season, your team's captain and A-captain will receive emails that the match has been added to the system. There will be a link in the email to the match scheduling thread where they can work out a day/time with the other team. They will be able to see in the match scheduling thread what the deadline day is for that week.
"Does CEVO randomly place teams against each other and both captains decide on a time?"
Matchups are based on CPI rankings and so they are not random. Both captains decide on a time with the proposal/confirmation system. Teams must log in to CMN at the confirmed time and then join the server to play the match.
"Do teams play until they lose? Or does winning matches give you points and the team with the highest points are proclaimed the winners?"
No. This is not a tournament, it is a season. That means that all teams are guaranteed a total of 10 matches (2 preseason + 10 regular season) in addition to a few more if they make playoffs. Only in playoffs can you be eliminated for losing.
"Do preseason matches matter for my team's overall record?"
No. All traces of the preseason are deleted once the regular season starts. The preseason functions as a way for new teams to learn the system before the regular season begins.
"My team isn't quite ready to play...we need one more player. Can we join the season in the second week of preseason?"
Yes. Teams can join the league until the weekend before the regular season starts. Teams must email me at gclay [at] cevo.com if they want to be added to the event after preseason begins.
"What does it mean for my team to be @ready?"
In Amateur, @ready means that you have at least 6 players rostered and all 6 have their Steam IDs entered in their account. In Main and Pro, @ready means that you have at least 6 players rostered and all 6 have their Steam IDs entered in their account in addition to their payments for the season submitted.
If you are confused about any aspect of this upcoming season, feel free to email me at gclay [at] cevo.com. Have fun!
Really, though, we need writers to cover all of the upcoming league seasons. I've gotten a few volunteers for CEVO but I could still use 5 more for CEVO and a couple more for UGC. I am also looking for general writers to cover general, non-comp TF2 news for the site. I feel like we should post more general information since many of our readers have expressed an interest in seeing that in addition to our competitive coverage.
Smart readers surely read in between the lines of our previous shout out from TheGameStation and shouldn't be too surprised at the news that the CommFT YouTube Channel has now officially joined TheGameStation!
What does all this mean? It means that TF2 has just joined the ranks of YouTube's fastest growing coalition of video game channels. The Game Station guys are a good group, with the likes of HuskyStarcraft, HDStarcraft, and NextGenTactic. Nothing has changed in regards to our channel itself, except for the fact that we now have partnership status and advertisements!
Check out our announcement video, which is also a thank you video of sorts due to the overwhelming support we've received :) Thanks to the viewers and supporters! Stay Tuned!
TotalGL is going to be extending our registration (aka pushing everything back) UPDATED: till the week following ESEA's registration closing to give teams a bit more time in deciding what leagues they want to compete in as ESEA's situation unfolds. Over the past month or so TotalGamingLeague has had tons of new players and teams sign up on the site leaving me optimistic about an exciting upcoming season but there is a concern I just want to put out there -
I've been going day by day checking the TGL site to see how many teams are loading up and registering on the site as well as for the event and as of 7:00pm today we have plenty of teams on the site but just a few actually ready to go...
We have only 9 teams readied up in the event competition for the upcoming Season. That's not to say there's only going to be a few teams that compete but as of right now we don't really have a bunch signing up for the event itself. Instead I have over 45 teams signed up on the site with varying numbers of readied up players. I just want to make sure everyone understands the process of signing up for the competition as well as clarify a few questions about future plans so that I can have everything as transparent as possible starting with the sign up process...
Damn you PC GAMERRRR! ... ... Actually I always kinda had a soft spot for those guys, something to do with a coconut monkey...
Anyways, they're teasing us about their upcoming Valve issue which comes out on September 1st. They say the next update will be out next month sometime, include trading, a brand new game mode, and around 20 new weapons/hats from the polycount pack! They secretly picked one more winning pack, and have been diligently working out the new ways in which the polycount weapons are gonna work.
DOUBLE RAINBOW, OMG. CEVO AND ESEA RAINBOWS. IT'S SO INTENSE.
Right, now that the meme is out of my system, I do want to put some thoughts down on the imminent CEVO Season 6 and the questionable ESEA Season 7. While both leagues are in the sign-up stages still, I somehow feel super psyched up for this next season. Perhaps it has something to do with being able to help out TGBF.tv for this upcoming season, but perhaps it's just because I liek mudkipz—I MEAN—teh TF2. YOU DECIDE!
Hit the jump to get the low-down of the current state of affairs in CEVO and ESEA.
They made a nifty TFBlog style splash page, although the more important details can be found in their front page post. The tournament will be conducted through a group stage format (think World Cup!) among a variety of undisclosed maps with all unlocks allowed (Wrangler OMG, but only 1 engie and constant spy harassment should even things out). Here's the most crucial snippet:
Schedule deadline for week 1 matches: Sunday the 5th of September
Week 1 start: Sunday the 12th of September
There is also a High-Ladder being organized. Valve has created a series of medals that will be given to not only the top 3 teams, but also any player that plays a match in the competition! Good times!
CommFT's Highlander tournament is still gestating...
As the title states, CEVO has decided to extend Season 6 registration for one more week until Sunday, August 15th at midnight CST. We have managed to get enough teams in Professional and definitely enough in Amateur (holy cow guys, great job!) but Main still needs more teams. Since the mid-level teams are still contemplating other leagues, we want to give them enough time to join before the regular season starts. Therefore the Main application deadline has been extended until Thursday, August 12th. We will adjust all old posts to reflect these new dates.
Despite this delay, CEVO will go ahead and post the weekly schedules, the new maps, updated configs, etc this weekend. Stay tuned to the TF2 section of CEVO.com for updates and announcements.
One thing important to note is that this extension will push CEVO's preseason beyond ESEA's registration deadline. So if ESEA ends up not having a season, teams can join CEVO before the regular season begins.
