ggwp <3

bl friends

pls stop calling us ex-iM :~(

fantastic season though ggs - closest games of tf2 I think Australia has seen for a long, long... long time

washed up noobs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anIqALM9hHs

threw some clips together from last season and scrims before OW arrived

pls NA or EU lan instead of UK :(( don't know if my bank can handle it

Last year the problem was that we couldn't delay the games to have a hype last day for players and spectators, and this year people have a problem with delaying the match for those exact reasons... I understand that it sucks for those of you that aren't able to stay up and watch the game, or those that organised their other commitments around a schedule. But the reality is that not only are these kind of delays almost expected when it comes to gaming tournaments, but as long as they are designed to ensure the best possible finals series can you really argue that you'd rather a little convenience for yourself?

Instead of focusing all our energy ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ on worrying about the schedule, why don't we focus on what is hopefully going to be an amazing repeat of the UB final in a few hours time? :~)

You have to be joking right? Even excluding my own bias, from someone that was playing at the event - the teams that won i46, i49 and i52 weren't "head and shoulders" above the rest by any stretch of the imagination. That is one of the main draws of repeated intercontinental lans in the first place - 3 years in a row there have been tournaments that any of the top teams could have walked away with on the day, and that fact leads to some of the best & most competitive tf2 played each year. Hopefully i55 is the same, and I'm super jealous of everyone lucky enough to go this year.

We've been playing the current season with the change allowed in ozfortress - and there's a thread up atm on feedback about it from ppl that have been using the change:

http://ozfortress.com/showthread.php?t=65168

:D fun country you have here

https://scontent.fsnc1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xtf1/v/t1.0-9/11403210_10155726005405654_1298241949538715537_n.jpg?oh=f45156d65ed02375440c7c72575f2f0c&oe=5657ECE1

empire state :]

I don't believe that you have to choose. I'm not even specifically talking about i58 or an iseries event as being this hypothetical "big thing". It's kind of pointless to even consider what something like that would look like, there are just too many questions which can't be answered effectively by speculation.

I'm not trying to suggest that you shouldn't try and make i55 a successful event, or that players from EU or NA shouldn't attend. What I am saying though is that I think its unrealistic to expect i55 to be an enormous hype train for competitive tf2. I think that if that is the end game here, and that if there is legitimate drive to support and bolster competitive tf2 then we need to start looking forward now, rather than rely on i55 to effectively achieve any of those goals. At i49 and i52 the next event was always a "maybe". Nobody knew if the scene would survive another year, or if there would be enough support for another intercontinental LAN. Both of those events involved massive initiatives to get off the ground, whether that be fundraising or just personal sacrifices and commitments, and there was a lot more drive in the scene (not just from the players!) to prove itself and display itself as best as it possibly could.

Again, I'm not trying to say that i55 can't involve many of these things. But an event that was confirmed only 3 weeks ago, and is occurring in a little over 3 months? No matter how much preparation or time players/production staff etc are willing to commit to it, I don't know whether it could possibly compare. Maybe I'm totally wrong and its the best international event so far, or maybe like you say, it simply doesn't matter. What does matter is where we want to go moving forward as a scene.

I think that the uncertainty of whether theres going to be another big event every year is causing more damage to the scene's future than just about anything else. There's less interest for players to commit to teams and commit to practice when its a coin toss whether all the work will result in anything. I believe that many of us continue/d to play for the love of the game, but without the prospect of international competition and those few rare games of "real" tf2 its increasingly more difficult to commit time to teams and to the game. When an event is announced and scenes scramble to fill teams and practice frantically in the few months of certainty* (for those lucky enough not to have to fundraise or coordinate huge amounts of travel [not saying this effects practice, just that its more certain]) leading up to the event, the level of competition obviously suffers compared to what we could see if that certainty could be extended for longer periods of time. Obviously there are external factors which influence whether or not an event goes ahead, but there are none which inhibit players or the community as a whole from committing to striving towards another event. I think that if we are to believe that a stream list and MM is going to make a difference, and that valve is willing to cooperate and potentially work towards better things for tf2, then that kind of commitment is going to be needed a lot sooner than 3 months before another event. It demonstrates a faith in the game and the scene that I don't feel has been present for i55, and I believe that its the only way that we're going to see another event on the scale of i52 or bigger - where we get top teams that are well prepared from all over the world together to compete.

I didn't talk about much of this in my original post because it wasn't really relevant to where I posted it on ozfortress. I think that these factors are the biggest detractors from players returning to or continuing to play tf2 going forward, and that if we want to keep people interested in tf2 then we need to display some of that interest ourselves.

edit: I'm probably rambling a bit but its late so please forgive :~)

Cross-post from ozfortress, in a thread talking about us attending i55 being referenced on euro fully charged. This may be an unpopular opinion...

Yea i55 definitely isn't happening. It's just totally impractical [for us].

I honestly think that the scene shouldn't push for i55 to be a big international event. There seems to be some sentiment that they have to continue and that if there isn't an NA team at i55 then the game is rip. Right now I think the international competitive scene is at an all time low, there are far fewer notable teams in NA and Europe and all of the scenes are stagnating to similar extents as our own. If there is a big push for i55 its not going to suddenly inject a bunch of energy into the scene, not when its already May and it would happen in August. It's asking too much of the community, the organisers and players to prepare for an event on that scale with the expected hype of i46/49/52. Everyone wants to get it going again because of mm and the stream list etc, feeling like it will breathe some life into the comp scene... but is it really going to be ready and effective by May?

If we're talking about banking on mm and valve cooperation to bolster support for TF2, then I honestly believe its in the best interest to forego i55 entirely and instead focus on a bigger and better event next year. Get in early and get the scenes preparing for a huge event to coincide with everything that Valve is or isn't planning. Start building hype for an event that will actually display the best that tf2 has to offer, rather than just stringing together something that will be "good enough" and lacking the presence of major teams that are well prepared and playing their best. I think that taking that approach will only do the scene more harm, as a lackluster event will deter players/spectators/donators/organisers from committing to a bigger event in the future should everything come together the way they hope.

This is all obviously hypothetical. But if there were a big event on the horizon, with some legitimate support, good competition, and a bunch of hype... I think we'd want an Australian team there, and I'd want it to be the best it possibly could be.

easily the best game of tf2 any of us have ever played in... hurts much less to go out in a game like that than one like last year ;)

ggwp to mix, won't be surprised if we just stole the thunder for the next 2 games though :D

(foreverfuckingfourth)

We just traveled with ours in checked luggage, most flights have like 30kg these days and if u wrap it up well it should be ok :)