Hildreth — It wasn’t too long ago when the exposure of our great game was stagnating, it was as if competitive TF2 was a lonely child in the world of e-sports crying out for someone to notice him, give him a cuddle and a glass of warm milk whilst cradling him in their arms whispering ‘it’s okay, we still have Resupply.eu’. Certain events in our games history have shaped the way the scene has grown, there is now a lot of great coverage in our TF2 scene today with the emergence of VanillaTV, Admirable becoming the ‘Irish Jimmy Breeze’ covering more gossip than the entire cast of Loose Women and more people than ever willing to put in a little effort and time to coach newbies or video stream their pcws.
With the biggest LAN event in our history just finishing with great success, the state of our community is one of a stable, recuperating marriage; albeit with some arguments about unlocks and maps but healthy and stable, not the stagnating mess we were in a few months ago. But there has always been in my opinion, something lacking in general for our great scene – there has constantly been help for the middle and lower levels of TF2 but there has never been enough coverage of their matches, never enough recognition for their dedication or simply enough interest from higher division players in how these people are progressing through the ranks. This is something I aim to try to change with a weekly addition of interviews and some news regarding the low level, frag chasing ‘div 7 shitnerds’ with scouts getting 30+ deaths a match and Soldiers wasting 3 rockets on an impossible airshot opportunity, where you would have more success trying to reach the moon with a step-ladder.
All Leagues are going Vanilla this season - how the lower level of TF2 react will decide the future of our game.
Signups
But why should we care about mid/low teams? There are so many of them, how can you cover all the news or teams floating around at the bottom of the European scene sink? Well simple answer is you can’t, still there is no reason not to try and get some interviews out, let the little guy get his walk in the sun before the big boys crowd the park and steal all the benches. Besides there are SO MANY of them, let’s steal numbers from ETF2L Season 10:
Division 6 – 110 applications
Division 5 – 96 applications
Division 4 – 60 applications
Division 3 – 41 applications
That is 307 teams in total all that consider themselves to be ‘low/mid’ and that is excluding the teams that applied for 1 or 2 skill divisions too high. With over 2000 players fighting it out down the rankings, we have potential superstars of tomorrow raping Division 6’ers of today. We have the backbone of the competitive community who if they didn’t exist would make TF2 mean absolutely nothing up in Prem. What would Byte be without his legions of fanboys (and fangirls), who would there be left to admire MGE Mike’s airshotting if there wasn’t a thousand gamer kids looking to emulating his performance in the i43 final versus Epsilon . Yes they may be terrible, disorganized and lacking a brain cell or two in the TF2 section of the grey matter but I still pledge to put up one article a week covering some of these teams with an interview, a little look at certain divisions and some shoutouts to those TF2 warriors who play only for the fun and pure sport of the game.
Yoyotech were an unknown Division 5 team this time last year, if they can make it into the cadred Top 10 who is to say you can't?
Official games
Since ETF2L has only just begun to place teams and the 88 team strong Wireplay league having only just started this week, there isn’t really any news in terms of games other than the pre-season cup from the excellent Excello. For the low/mid teams I give massive credit to those who signed up knowing they will not likely pass the first hurdle, if more Division 3 and below teams swallowed some pride and tried to see what they could do verses the better teams then we would have a lot more positive happening to the games. 350 teams sign up for ETF2L, I know many of you have your reasons but I will grovel pathetically at your feet and urge you to try your luck at one of these sponsored tournaments for the sake of TF2 if nothing else! Help the game grow and who knows you might cause an upset, I mean my team did it back when we were in Division 5 in an ETF2L one-night cup, beating Team Vertex – Soviet Edition then Division 2 (we just love to beat Team Vertex, don’t tell Pledge he denies it ever happened).
On the subject of upsets; my team of the week will be Punchline!, in Season 9 they were a Division 4 team and have caused a bit of an upset in the Excello Open cup by beating the established n2o gaming who themselves have a new roster, still not a bad feat for the Frenchies, one to watch out for in the coming season. Sadly I don’t see Punchline! entered in Wireplay season 9 which I already mentioned had 88 teams participating. This is a real shame as I feel Wireplay is a great league with a lot to offer to the lower end of TF2 with a more relaxing ruleset than ETF2L and ESL although the decision to go Vanilla may have turned a few heads from the unlock fanclub, it certainly didn’t make a difference with Prem (Division 1) level with Yoyotech the only established big name entered in the league. I urge those 200+ teams from the low/mid-level that signed up to ETF2L to give Wireplay a chance, some teams have their reasons but perhaps many of you out there just don’t know the league. Check it out here.
Interview time!
For those that have dragged themselves through this wearisomely written article waiting for this promised interview with some low/mid team, now is the time to get off Terraria and read the thoughts of one of TF2’s most dedicated leaders. Since season 7 I can only think of a few other teams than my own that have had the same name and most of the same lineup without folding or disappearing. I am talking about Division 3 team Continuity who recently underwent a massive lineup change which would usually see most teams fold but not any team run by the Queen of Slovenian TF2, Datenshi. I caught up with her with the aim to discuss the history of Continuity, their recent team shuffle, their thoughts on the new maps/unlock rulesets and their hopes for the season.
Good day to you panda. Shall we start this interview with a quick introduction to your team and a brief history?
Continuity started out in January 2010. Originally I got friends from the Ubercharged community and managed to get a team together. At the start we were completely awful, failing our first season in etf2l (season 7). After the season we got some problems within the team and ended up having to replace some people. After that we started doing better advancing up a division every season. However right now there’s only me and BELLSPROUT?! left from the original lineup, and we are still searching for a new demoman and pocket soldier (hint hint).
UPDATE – Continuity recruited their newest Demoman, Ash after this interview was taken.
On that subject, you have recently seen the departure of Pipe machine Zethzio (now with Elemental Violence) and the man responsible for my drinking at i43, Turbomonkey on medic. Not to mention rumours I hear of your scout Dis quitting the game to focus on studies and needing a new pocket Soldier. How have you managed to stay alive with all these talented players departing?
Well so far this is our third ‘omg we’re gonna fold’ moment/period. But I guess I got used to it and realized stuff like that happens and as long as people are willing to continue playing in Continuity (no pun intended) I will try my best to keep the team alive. Zethzio leaving us was a very huge blow however because our playstyle was centered around him and he was maincalling for us. Still he is a really good demoman and he deserves a team better than us so I don’t hold it against him. We’ve also always been kinda close to Elemental Violence so him joining them really didn’t change anything except for the fact he’s not actually playing with us anymore. As for Turbomonkey as soons as Zeth announced he’s leaving I knew he’d be leaving as well. Originally the reason that made him make up his mind and join us was Zeth. And with him gone from the team now he wanted to use his medicing abilities to his full extent in a higher div team aswell. However we got our new medic Lagitech rather fast so we could proceed with our other trials without too much time spent not doing anything productive. As for the dis it is still unclear what will happen. He himself doesn’t know if or when he’d have to stop playing. However we did just in case go ahead and got freshmeatt into the team as a backup scout. And Sami (Roquee) our old pocket soldier left the team to remake his old Finnish team breeze. However he does still play with us during our trials when his team isn’t playing. The real reason why we could manage to get through this is because our old members stuck around to help with trials, both playing their old spot or just spectating and evaluating their performance so I’d like to thank them all for that, love you guys!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqVMxYs5Njw
Best medic in York: Turbomonkey – he tried to steal my money for booze.
How has this new team adapted? I remember playing you guys recently and I saw a lot of potential in the team.
We will need some time to get used to eachother, of course. But so far we don’t seem to be doing too bad. We got Lagitech maincalling for us, BELLSPROUT?!, dis and me are all from the old lineup so we have no problems working together. We’ve hoped to be able to use Ched as our main soldier however it looks like he won’t be able to make enough time for that so we will need to find a new pocket soldier after we get our demoman. We did however get Tommeh back from the dead to fill in when Ched wasn’t there. But that was pretty chaotic at times as you can imagine. We’ve played with good number of demomen so far, managed to narrow the number down to the final couple of trialists, and if all goes well we should have our demoman in time for our fist Wireplay official. After that we’ll go on a hunt for a new pocket soldier again.
What are your aims for the new season? I see you entered both Wireplay and ETF2L, do you plan to enter ESL as well?
We entered ESL a few seasons back but that didn’t go so well. I think we only played 2 games in our divisions, got to the playoffs, got default wins for most of our games. And those games we did get to play we had too many problems with wire. So I don’t see us entering ESL till we see they manage to fix it up. And like you said we are currently in Wireplay in division 3. And I got to say our division looks pretty interesting so that will be fun. As for ETF2L we aim for division 3 right now. However if my bad luck keeps up and we end up in division 4 and I can’t do anything about it we’ll just use the season to get used to the new team and just rape division 2 next season. ;P
Maps, maps, maps…I take it you’re the sort of team that will play any map and not fuss too much but what do you think of the current map pool, in particular the addition of Obscure and Snakewater?
Uhh. Now you got me.I’m awfully bad at new maps, meaning I’ll get completely lost the first few times I play them. Also I am against maps that aren’t final yet (even if it’s the last rc version before the final) in the league. I mean sure it’s probably hard to test a map properly so you can make it final but I don’t see a league as the place to test a map. Leagues should have maps that are finished and won’t change midseason or something. Leave testing the maps to cups or something. However the way we practice maps during the season is we play the maps we have for the official that week, that way we get to practice all the maps we need.
I met your old lineup at i43 I have to say you’re one of the nicest teams at the event. Was it the first time you all met in person? How did the event go for you guys and what was the highlight of the event for you personally? Plan to attend next summer?
Well dis and Zeth already met before however for the rest of us that was the first time meeting in person. And it was really awesome. Though I was kind of annoyed how everyone was so tall and skinny. Was afraid to hug them because they might break! The whole event went pretty well for us. We got to top 16 with not too much trouble. Then our first match after the group stages was against Epsilon. And I think you can imagine how well that went. :D So we got knocked down to the lower bracket where we faced Grandchildren of Poop, the team we lost to in group stages already. I’d like to think we’d have a chance or at least a nice close game against them if we weren’t all stuck on laptops. But all in all we did pretty good. I don’t think I can decide on a highlight of the event. It was my first lan ever and meeting both my team and Elemental Violence in person was awesome. Now add all the other teams and all the awesome stuff that happened at the event and you get a 2-3 day long highlight for me. As for the next summer I’d really love to attend. However it all depends if my team is going or not, also on my monetary status since going to UK for a lan isn’t exactly cheap.
Continuity @ i43 – watch out for Tom ‘Dis’ Cruise. (thanks to Turbomonkey for the video)
What will it take to have Bellsprout come up with a funny bind? I love the guy but I have never heard worse jokes in my life!
According to Bell his Batman joke is the best. But other than that he takes pride in his 300 binds trashtalk script. Also I heard Spike is still champion of bad jokes so you might want to double-check that :D
Any predictions for Prem this season?
none at all. I’m more interested to see all the divisions stabilize after the season than just prem.Also I don’t do predictions :P
Finally any shoutouts?
Shoutout to Elemental Violence, TheSucker, Retshock, Demsii, TC people, all members of Continuity, not just the ones currently in our two teams and of course everyone I forgot and thinks they deserve a mention here.
There you have it folks, the first ever interview and hopefully the first of many. Next week I hope to represent the Team Colonslash community as well as check out the results from the first week of Wireplay.
Originally published on VanillaTV (vanillatf2.org) on 2011-09-16 by Hildreth.
Recovered from the Internet Archive (archived copy) as part of tf2esports.com's preservation of VanillaTV's TF2 coverage. The original site is no longer online. All rights remain with the original author; reposted for historical reference.