Skyride — One upon a time there was a website called cadred.org who used to do the odd bit of coverage for our beloved game. Back when new unlocks were met with excited anticipation and we still thought cp_well was good, that was the site you’d go to for results, articles and news for all things LAN in the world of TF2. While we now have this amazing site – VanillaTF2 – there are still many things I miss about cadred. For me personally, it was the Good LAN / Bad LAN following every major LAN event, so here is my own attempt to bring it back/
Good – TF2 Community
These days it almost goes without saying, but our community is truly a thing to behold. Not so much the troll-infested online conglomerate of DM-obsessed teens that seem to make up a sizable portion of ETF2L these days, but the LAN attending regulars and newcomers. While winning an MGE duel online may result in a flood of Cyrillic characters, at LAN it’s very likely to earn you a free beer and a good laugh. Whether it be Greg’s overly complex drinking games, Tapley’s infamous jungle juice, or a room of 2 dozen drunks plus Comedian casting another dozen people playing a new custom map at 2am, it’s impossible to not have a great time.
The community photo is truly the epitome of how this community works. The fact that nearly a hundred loosely organised gamers can come together at a specific time with only a few hours notice for something seemingly trivial just goes to show what a tight-knit bunch we really are.
Bad – Grand Final
As painful as it is to point out, we simply had a finals with scores and teams that could have been predicted a month in advance. This was Infused’s tournament to take and they did it half asleep while slumped back at a 45 degree angle. Aside from a single brilliant map earlier in the tournament from our inevitable second place winners, no one really managed to make the infamous brits (and a fin) break a sweat all weekend. Greg spent the entire event playing demo and numlocked simply took the finals as opportunity to practice shooting at his feet.
Despite Byte and Pledge’s best attempts, it’s hard to get a crowd excited about a game with such an obvious outcome that many in the community took it as an opportunity to catch up on some sleep. As someone who’s attended every spring and summer i-series event since i39, I can honestly say this was definitely the most disappointing TF2 final I’ve ever seen.
This fight is actually less one-sided than the i45 TF2 Final
Good – Elemental Violence
Despite being severely out-classed in the final, EV took it like champs, gave it 110% and went for it. They went into that final fully intending to give it their best in the face of near-certain defeat, aiming for a win and nothing less. WAR has said both on and offline that he would have preferred to be 5-0′d twice in a row by an on-class Infused instead of a closer game against a group of off-class prem players.
That aside, they played terrifically throughout the whole tournament and provided an extremely exciting underdog to watch. If you haven’t already seen it, the lower bracket final between Zumba and Elem.V was probably the best game of the weekend and the vods are well worth a watch despite the outcome being known. Many have stated that it was the “real” finals of the event, and as someone who was stood in the casting booth watching the action live, I can’t say I disagree.
Bad – Anal Prolapse
Unfortunately due to the infamously flaky piece of hardware that is the Razer Deathadder, we may have had a few more interesting games in the later stages of the tournament stolen from us. Anal Prolapse (or “AP” as they were euphemistically referred to by our casters over at VTV) Medic Si unfortunately developed some serious USB issues on his machine that resulted in him having to play all of his Saturday matches with a laptop touchpad and keyboard. As true as the anecdote “A good tradesman never blames his tools” may be, it’s certainly hard to knock in nails with a fork.
Along with being prematurely knocked down to the loser’s bracket due to their demoman Hildreth being unfamiliar with the complex intricacies of setting an alarm clock, it’s a shame to see such a promising team of upcoming players under-perform by such a wide margin for reasons that were mostly out of their control.
A PHD in time science is required to operate one of these. Basic use is also included as a module on our basket weaving post-grad program.
Good – VanillaTV’s Casting
While it may appear to be a conflict of interest both personally and due to the site on which you are reading this article, I can assure you it is not. The casting rotation of Pledge, Comedian, Byte and Cube did an incredible job this weekend. As someone who self-admittedly doesn’t watch a great deal of TF2 casts, it’s amazing to see the difference a year can make. Every game was broadcast with a quality and stamina I would never have thought possible only 12 months ago. I think a special shoutout is owed to Comedian who spent a large portion of the weekend tanking through the ills of bad blood sugar levels, but also invested a large amount of his own money into all of the great equipment you saw lining the edges of the webcam.
I personally feel that if this starts to become the standard for every major LAN event, we could very well see this game given a second chance in the world of major esports.
Bad – Seating
Although this may sound like a fairly subtle and nit-picky issue, I think it’s something worth bringing up. One of the coolest things for me personally about previous i-series events has been that there was always an area where I could walk over to anyone, ask them their name, and recognise them from either the ETF2L forums, IRC, or even just mixes from #tf.wars. The idea of being so completely engrossed in the community both physically as well as literally is truly a feeling like nothing else. The TF2 tent was one of the main reasons for the success for i40, so to see us take yet another step back from that is disappointing. I do understand it is a little difficult for Multiplay to justify setting aside an area specifically for a game which is well known for having lack-luster attendance outside of summer events, however I can’t help but feel we’ve really lost something this event by not having.
There is of course no doubt in my mind that everything will be back in order come i46, but my concern is more for future Spring and Winter events. What really makes this game is its community, and if you start to segregate the community, you lose what makes TF2 such a great game.
Good – 9 Men
Punching above their weight does not even begin to describe the performance this rag-tag team put on. They managed to take down Anal Prolapse, Give Zumba a run for their money, and even take a couple of rounds off Infused; actually managing to be in the lead at one point. For a team who’ve been playing around div4 level, that’s fairly impressive. I’d like to think this isn’t going to be a one-weekend occurrence, but either way bloody hell lads, hats off to you.
Bad – Attendance
Any time attendance of non-summer i-series events is brought up, there are two halves of me which always start arguing with each other. One half is saying “what do you expect? This is standard for the TF2 community”, but the other simply does not find the situation acceptable. I was actually discussing this with BoneS and the fine gentlemen who does the incredible photography you see every i-series right before the final. This LAN only had 10 TF2 teams attending. 10 Teams. That is a single group of a single division in ETF2L, for comparison there were 50 teams in attendance at i43, and 24 in attendance at i42. I understand that a lot of people had set funds aside for Battle of Amsterdam, but somehow I’m just a little skeptical that we would have had double the attendance had no word ever been made public of Qun’s sketchy plans.
LAN is the best part of being involved in an online gaming community. For those 4 days, everything about your online persona becomes real. Those flashing red icons in mumble become people, those 6 anonymous names on a scoreboard become 6 professionals on a stage, and those raging kids don’t exist. It is something you have to try at least once in your life, and the chances are you’ll want to do it again too. If nothing else it’s worth it just to try out a Stone Willy’s pizza.
The crowd getting hyped before the start of the TF2 Grand Final
Good – Promotion
There’s a saying in sales that people don’t buy a product, they buy you. If it applies to promoting something you love, then I think that it’s something few scenes do better. Every time there’s a big shout at the grand final, every time Comedian screams in the casting room, every time there’s a cheer over an airshot, someone new finds out about competitive TF2. There are people who 12 months from now will be highly active members of the community that just had their first glimpse of the game this weekend. Whether it be on stream, on a news site, or at the event itself. I’ve personally spoken to a large number of people this weekend who are now very interested in something that 7 days ago they had never heard of. As long we keep doing that, this game will always live.
Originally published on VanillaTV (vanillatf2.org) on 2012-05-07 by skyride.
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.