i made way into the enemy's intel room on 2fort only to see 8 of my own engineers fully set up in orderly rows saying "operation cubicle" while whacking their full hp buildings with their wrenches.

being skial dustbowl famous not because i was good but because i was a spy main with 250ping constant (played on 500kb up and 1mb down btw) so nobody could kill me

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/900972751307061932/DD99625B5066FF1B2BBCA0BE7C6351A2765D2D82/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

or playing my first ever highlander game when i was a scout main and doing 89dpm, then going back to my cp orange server where we all decided the best players in the server should play 6s and then getting fucking rolled

both fond memories

getting a backcap in my first ever comp game, I was so hyped :D

It also influenced drastically the way I played the game for 2 years after that at least.

Calling Wolsne “the most toxic player in open.”

2016 me was a different breed

s

Back in 2011-2012~ I was running hardware that couldn't even touch tf2, and I remember clicking to join a community server, getting up to make food and coming back a solid 15 minutes later to me still connecting to said server. All to enjoy my 10fps experience.

Asking my mom to buy me the rocket jumper from the mannco store so I could jump around a low grav Mario cart server

playing a dustbowl pub and back capping the 2nd point right after my team capped first

inviting a friend over so that we could have mountain dew and junk food while we played quickplay pubs all night on our laptops. i have a 13 year old recording of us playing on goldrush that i watch from one of these sessions every once in a while.

I was on youtube in the summer of 2013 and I saw this video in my feed. I was instantly obsessed, so I installed this game and started playing

https://youtu.be/vquSQD33dmc

Teaching myself to rocket jump after watching muselk videos. I grinded the old jump academy map everyday and felt immense pride whenever I beat a new jump. Discovered the market garden arena section of the map shortly afterwards and loved honing my new learned mechanics against enemies and obstacles. I did this happily for hours everyday on my shitty family laptop lol

https://youtu.be/hsjO52zvF4k

ty jeff for showing me this cool game mode

finding a home where you knew everyone in a random custom map community server you bumbled into as a kid in 2012 one time

im not sure how "early" this is but getting on top 10 plays in my first season of ESEA was crazy
https://youtu.be/cBZMTEqnedo?t=95

this was G4C for me back in the day, low grav legoblast

it was so fun, i met one of the old staff members again recently in a random pub and came to learn she has 4 kids now! so happy for her :]

from 6s: doing my first scrim with my college buddies as green as i was against luzzu (back then a i think div 1 player as well as a reputable caster on the french channels) on gravelpit and getting utterly destroyed

from pubs:
getting the game for my 16th birthday : i think it's the only time I got a steam game as a gift;
being there on the medic and pyro updates with the servers 100% filled with those classes ;
finding a community server where I felt I belonged (knifeback mountain) ;
breaking the 20pt barrier with pyro while i just woke up on a sunny saturday morning

Frequenting a very specific vatican city achievement server with my then-girlfriend and online friends all day in 2014-2015. Probably some of the best times of my life, but my favorite memory is probably us banding together to vaccinator pocket our friend to kill a rage hacker until he left.

I miss the FISH I used to spend like every night on it T_T
literally a christian tf2 server full of like 40 year old parents that showed up every night
the server was doing really well before valve killed it :(

I was so happy about getting on top 10 plays lol. My brother never talks to me but he was super hyped for me and we watched it like 5 times in a row on our giant CRT TV.

pub sniping with an old teammate of mine on badwater before grinding mge and tf2c for 4 hours a day sticks out as probably the quickest and most fun ive had getting better

same for me, exactly in 2012 shortly after I had started playing. over a decade later and a large amount of our friend group is still active talking and playing together. a handful have even done a few meetups. crazy to think about how much history has occurred between us all just from frequenting a community pub over a decade ago.

my computer couldnt run proper maps so I could only play allcrit 24/7 cp_orange servers, specifically minecraft variations

I started playing TF2 at my friend's house like 13 years ago, but my own old pc couldn't really handle it sadly:

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/649872899331058512/0646D4CCEE2FC33DCB89E84EB95D3D8A13F8BA15/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

pug.na open tournament

2 different teams from xbox signed up

of course these mfs matched us against eachother 1st round

it was a roll bc one team had like freestate/sincostan/scorp/xan etc but it was fun, like an xbox pug on pc, best part was the map was granary, the only 6s map on xbox

february 2014, cp_dustbowl bot practice, too scared to go into an actual server, wanted to get familiar with the game first

This was before I discovered comp: I remember 3 IRL friends and I did a mini LAN playing various games, among them TF2. And we all set up an Engineer defense on the second stage of Dustbowl. We were literally shouting at each other to help out removing sappers from spies when we were dead and stuff. Was intense af, but we won! :D

Also when I was still on my old laptop it would overheat every couple minutes and lag like crazy so I would hold it outside my open window in between MVM waves in order for it to cool off just enough that I could continue.

i used to write these multi-paragraph weapon analysis posts on the /r/tf2 daily weapon discussion threads in 2013. the posts got a fair amount of traction and people would compliment me on how thorough and well thought-out my arguments were even though the actual analysis looking back is insanely reddit-tier. it felt really nice being known for something so i would spend like an hour a day drafting out these essays instead of paying attention in school. i remember the first time someone recognized me on tf2 server from this and i felt like a celebrity.

also i remember specifically being called out because someone in the csgo subreddit recognized me and commented that i was silver 3 and that he figured most of /r/tf2 would be silver LOL

I always remember that I used to see omfgninja playing spy on goldrush
Then when I finally got tf2 for the PS3 and had fun watching people needle boosting and placing sentries out of bounds on dustbowl and 2fort. But probably the fondest will always be the teammates I've had throughout seasons that sticked together through 6+ years.

The voogru TF2 community servers

hanging out with the same group of regulars every day who eventually were my introduction to comp

playing Crit-Fail 6s PUGs with people from that community (think like an early pugchamp-style website)

meeting the horn player for man man, becoming friends and doing a show poster for them while playing regularly on the gravity bong 2fort server.

https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/a526d726-0ca6-404c-b366-a7e699a36c72/d4h7guv-9200702f-62b7-4dd5-b453-8438d30e5693.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2E1MjZkNzI2LTBjYTYtNDA0Yy1iMzY2LWE3ZTY5OWEzNmM3MlwvZDRoN2d1di05MjAwNzAyZi02MmI3LTRkZDUtYjQ1My04NDM4ZDMwZTU2OTMuanBnIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.nEqlFWGiSvzr6_UU_QkDDSv31OFtHpYqkYx6FHkBJZ4