VanillaTF2

Hildreth — So I have managed to write two parts of a three part series of articles in about 5 days, then work took over and I needed three  weeks to complete this part 3, YET it has taken  Torden a good nine months, and counting, to finish part three of the Unicorn man series. Not a criticism of the man, I just want to know what happened to the Unicorn man, it is like a TF2 children’s book to me. Having been informed by  CanFo about a potential spot in the eSports Yearbook for my article, I owed it to the man to keep it professional and eliminate all my  TheSucker being bad jokes. Unfortunately I failed on the professionalism part in the first sentence of the article, so we’re stuck with bad puns and more Sucker truth bombs.

So anyway we’re back with four more months of TF2 coverage, from the lonely hills of Telford, Shropshire to the heat and humidity of Dallas, Texas the big TF2 LANs kept rolling in. Meanwhile the most active and competitive period of the year – the Autumn season had officially kicked off in Europe.

TL:DR Disclaimer – This article is long, I can sum it up by saying ‘stuff happened’ and also, those of you with a sensitive disposition to TheSucker I advise you do not read this article. Thank you. 

atmo — For some time now, gamers with a curious predilection for real headphones have been rather limited for choice when it comes to microphones. There are certainly plenty of standalone microphones out there, but ones worth buying are few and far between. These few models range in price from €10 to €100, depending on your budget and purpose.

AntLion Audio’s ModMic sits just a shade below the halfway point, priced around €35 or £30 shipped from   eXtine’s hometown of Portland, Oregon. At this price, the main alternative would be the Giant Squid Audio Labs Mono mic which ostensibly uses Panasonic’s WM-61A capsule electret. However, this was found to perform beneath its capabilities without additional power, something that neither the 5V of a standard 3.5mm nor a USB soundcard were able to supply. How will the ModMic stack up?

Hildreth — Last week I ventured down the alphabet to the ‘T’ section of my friends list to talk to some of the rulers of the Team Colonslash Empire. Due to this interview being so long with a lot of information and me being away next week on Holiday, I decided I would delay the release of this extensive and brilliant interview (much to the despair of the TC people). Now though it is finally their time to shine on the Div 3-6 review.

The obvious man to put the questions to is  Spike Himself, the original ‘Rupert Murdoch’ of the TC community who has watched over so many teams that he decided to take a breather from full-time management of his merry men and sit on the side-lines for a while. But now after a break from the game, the original dictator of multi-gaming communities is back to support more teams and try to heal his way up the divisions to Prem.

Spike might be a god but he isn’t the only man running the show so to add to his unique wit (“Porn is Good” – Spike Himself) I got 2 of his disciples: leader extraordinaire  Oxy and part-time Scottish Cyclops,  .OwnagePie as we talked about the how TC took over TF2, forming of TC.Academy and why .OwnagePie no longer braces the airwaves with Gamer FM.

atmo — One of the biggest difficulties for  PC gamers conscious of sound-quality is matching their precious headphones with a decent microphone. Having skipped the flimsy or overpriced all-in-one headsets that are otherwise popular, you must find a separate microphone for the voice chat that is so often integral in multiplayer gaming.

A lot of these microphones are expensive, require lugubrious preamps and mixers, or are inconveniently large. Then there’s also the cheap desk-stand mics that sound like you are transmitting from a goldfish bowl several miles away.

Koeitje — For a long time keyboards were kind of a neglected peripheral for most gamers. Reliability, build quality, feel, and actual gaming performance was never a big issue. It either had to be cheap or have flashy lights, LCD screens and macro buttons. Luckily things are changing. Several gaming companies have released mechanical keyboards, while also some non-gaming manufacturers are gaining on popularity. In this review I shall take a look at a mechanical keyboard from one of those non-gaming manufacturers: the Filco Majetouch. But first I shall quickly discuss the differences between mechanical and your run-of-the-mill rubber-dome keyboards. If you want some more in-depth information you should check out the wiki at Geekhack .

Week 3 of our sorry existence is done with, here is the report:

Most popular posts:

1. What women *actually* want – 2,383 views (you narcissists)
2. A few plausible roster changes followup –  1,041
3. Ozfortress league grand final - 897

• # of posts: 81
• # of comments: 1,251

In terms of visits we are still growing. This Tuesday was our most active day yet, with 2,249 visits. That’s close to a double from Tuesday 3 weeks ago. Total amount of visits: 33,252, out of those, 5,093 are absolute unique. More comprehensive statistics can be seen within the article.

We’re extremely happy to see contributors helping out, and providing information we otherwise would not have been able to include. -Be it French Lan, Div5 report, or interviews with interesting people. Some people even helped with drafting out “top matches tonight”. -That warms this editor’s heart!

Also, it’s great to see such unrelated curiosities like “the relativity of light” provoking some highly entertaining discussions. -Along with many other entertaining discussions being made on certain other posts.

Click the button, to see more statistics, graphs, and overview of this week’s polls.

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