VanillaTF2

atmo — The end of last year brought us sad news, with MyGamingEdge closing down. Thankfully, their once-premium content was subsequently freely archived on YouTube. But something was still missing: the great casting partnership of cbear and B||oodSire, who – with the occasional addition of a third caster – frequently proved that more can be better on the airwaves.

More info after the jump…

droso — If you tuned in live to VanillaTV last weekend or even caught the VODs later, you would have witnessed a  BLAST victory at InsaLAN featuring some thrilling games in the Upper Bracket and Grand Finals against  LDLC.com.

With that in mind we thought it was a good time to draw back the curtain on the upcoming LANs in France.  As you all know, we usually don’t do a great job of promoting them beyond the French-speaking community and it’s quite rare to see European teams attend such events (with the notable exception of MaxLAN 2011).

Well, we think it’s time to enter a new era: we would love to be able to lure as many foreign teams as possible from now on!  Before I give you all the details about these LANs, I think it would be useful to remind you of the French e-Sport structure.

As some of you may know, “Les Masters Français du Jeu Vidéo” is the biggest LAN organisation in France, with their sights set firmly on becoming the official e-Sport Federation.

This association assigns ELO-style ratings to our LAN events, taking in to account criteria such as the number of estimated players and the organizers experience.  The best LANs get awarded the “Masters Series” label, which has included Gamer’s Assembly, MaxLAN, Spirit LAN, InsaLAN, Azerty Party and PXL, whilst the smaller LANs only get the “800 Series”, “400 Series” or “200 Series” labels according to their relative importance.

Depending on the LAN label and their final position in the brackets, attending teams awarded points over the course of the season, the teams who have accrued the most points get invited to the TUP “Masters” final.

Now, you’ve got to know that all this only concerns French teams, which are defined as teams with at least four French-speaking players; so for the wider community this is not a concern. However, as a European team, nothing prevents you from getting involved with the vibrant French scene and attending these regular LANs which occur several times a year.

Trell — Insalan 7 draws to a close today as we see the TF2 Grand Final being played at 14 CET.  BLAST have already booked their spot in the final, coming top of their group, and ploughing through their 3 bracketed games.  Todays first game is the losers bracket final between Energetic and LDLC.com.  The winner of this moves on to face the tournament favourites, BLAST, and take a shot at winning the first prize of 660€ + 6 Logitech Keyboards G510 (value: 720€).

Update: VODs of the Final:

UPDATE: LDLC won the first map, Gullywash 5-0, and went on to with Viaduct with a golden cap – a much closer game that Energetic came very close to winning.  This sets up a grand final match up between BLAST and LDLC!

Hildreth — Welcome to part two of my three part article series documenting and reviewing the calendar year of 2011 in the world of competitive TF2. I would like to apologies to the Aussies, Africans and Asians for not really featuring you in these articles but I prefer to focus on the two main scenes which I actually know a something about. Anyway without further ado, I present to you the months of May to August of this year.

TL:DR – TF2 dies, gets born again and we have an awesome LAN.

Hildreth — 2011 was a great year for me personally; being the year of the ‘panda’ in the Chinese calendar – might have made that up, it could be a smaller animal with a likeness for orange vegetables – and has been one of the most eventful years, dare I say ‘THE MOST’ eventful year in our competitive scenes history. We have had the biggest LAN to date, TF2 going Free-2-play, launch of a new casting organisation and many, many great matches. It has also been a year of doubt and controversy. The slogan ‘TF2 is dead’ being printed on TF2 discussion boards everywhere and still being typed by many there has been dispute and frustration over unlocks, LANs and growth in the TF2 scene. There has been more gossip, controversy and drama than you’ll ever see on Maury. TF2 has changed – rising stars of TF2 have gone ’pro’, old pros have gone on the Brink of losing interest and leaving the scene. Coverage has changed and developed with new people writing articles, making videos, volunteering to cast or stream and hell we have even seen a new game mode start to become accepted in Team Fortress 2. To start it off I found a gem of an old-fashioned TF2 rant/commentary by  Foster with an actual positive outlook for 2011 and to steal a quote from it made by  Darn:

“Unless TF2 gets a proper LAN tournament in 2011, it will be the last year.”

Make of that what you will.

It’s been a long year. I intend to go over it month by month highlighting the memorable matches, the big dramas and the key events that defined our scene this calendar year. To avoid a TL:DR fest I will split it up into 3 parts, one to release now, one of New Years Eve and the last part in 2012. I would like to apologies to those who do not follow the Gregorian calendar, if for example you are Jewish please re-read this again in 9 months.

Galant — TF2World.ru LAN #3 ending tonight with great 4-maps (possibly) Grand Final, where extremely excellent cegth[etw team will need to win only 2 maps, while their opponent Crab People or Y U NO WIN? will need to take 3 map earlier than cegth[etw.

This Grand Final will be streamed by VanillaTV. At this moment you can watch 3rd map in low-bracket final between Crab People or Y U NO WIN? on gullywash.

Full play-off brackets can be found here.

Greg and  Comedian Will be casting for VanillaTV, and you can check out the russian stream at TF2World.ru TVwith  lollapalooza casting, and another stream at brainmeup with  Gideon casting

Galant — While most of you will still be sleeping this Friday – here, in Moscow, russian TF2 community will start playing group stage in first day of TF2World.ru LAN #3 starting from 10 a.m. (7 cet). Some key information about main participants can be found in this post on VanillaTF2. Now I want to give you all necessary information how to follow this event.

At first, here are groups for today: link. Play-off brackets for tomorrow will be here. Full schedule with time, maps and results can be found here (note that Moscow time = CET + 3 hours).

STVs and relays:

• relay.vanillatv.org:27100
• relay.vanillatv.org:27101
• relay.vanillatv.org:27102

http://tf2world.ru/?page_id=10804