on the decade review of tf2tv

Hi! Thank you all for the great article.

However, as someone who followed the competitive scene between 2009-11 and made competitive TF2 news coverage in a local community website (also some on vanillatf2.org), I should say that I was very excited to read about your 2010 and 2011 summaries, recall some memories and get emotional :) But I am a little disappointed. Though, I know I can't expect everyone to know those times, so I thought maybe I can help you with this comment. It will be a long-read so if you are not interested, please don't torture yourself. :)

You are indeed right that the record of the EU TF2 scene is lacking in that era because vanillatf2.org is gone. (Its owner was Torden, the Norwegian player, who is the creator of the "7 Brothers" fragmovie) Aside from that, if I don't remember wrong, there was TF2 coverage on cadred.org as well, mainly driven by "admirable" (the Irish player), who made a turn back some years ago. Though, I believe that it's still possible to find all the discussions in ETF2L forums, but it's a mess, I know.

ETF2L Season 7 is a VERY important season for that era. "A team aptly called Idk?" and "a team sponsored by Epsilon eSports" in the following paragraph, are actually the same team. Team Dignitas had been the unbeatable king of the European TF2 scene for the last 3-4 seasons. (For more than the half of the history of the game at that time.) And had never lost a single LAN. (Only an Assembly LAN later in 2010 or 2011 to Power Gaming. Assembly was a LAN tournament in Finland. The second most recognized LAN in EU after Insomnia. And Power Gaming was a full-Finn squad, later added the well-known scout "cookye" in one of those seasons, who was accused of cheating due to having an insane aim) Anyway, in Season 7, the dominance of Team Dignitas was overthrown by Epsilon (i.e. "idk?"). In Season 8, they repeated the same success. But LANs were still being won by Team Dignitas even when they were losing the ETF2L titles.

By the way, it was not only ETF2L and ESL but also an online league under WirePlay. I think it provided tournaments for multiple games and not only TF2. I guess it does not exist anymore. Even then, noone really cared about it. ESL was also losing its reputation rapidly, although it was the first ever platform to home competitive TF2 in Europe.

A small correction: Extremer was not English, but Lithuanian. If he wasn't, it wouldn't give rise to this meme video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZbzFK_K8a4&feature=emb_title . (I know it probably won't be funny if you don''t know the players, MGOs etc and it's based on the rude stereotype that Eastern Europeans are poor) There weren't this many English top players back then. The highest levels primarily consisted of Finns and Swedish. I remember in one of those seasons half of the top division players being Finnish and 3 top division teams being fully-Finn. The others had an equal share, really. Maybe Germans were a little bit more crowded than the others.

ETF2L Highlander Community Challenge was not only the first ever serious Highlander tournament of Europe, but also of the whole world. Innumerable US teams were competing in that tournament because highlander was non-existant before. Yes, we knew there is a game-mode called Highlander and it was played 9v9 so maybe there had been tiny Fun Cups etc in the past but it was only after that tournament that the game mode has gained its continuous seasons. In that tournament, high+ level 6v6 players were not allowed to play the 6s classes because they would basically own. Everybody was a noob and there was no highlander strategy, meta or whatsoever. I was in that tournament with my team as well (consisted of mostly pubbers and some low 6v6 players like me) and after completing the group stages with success, we faced the team of Shintaz, which would make quarters finals out of 750+ teams. He was playing Engineer but still owning us with his insane shotgun aim.

In 2011, ETF2L Season 9 was a scandal, which has to be mentioned. It was after Soldier vs Demoman update (It may also be the Engineer update. But I will assume it was Solly vs Demo). That update gave one more unlock weapon(a 4th one) to one of the 2 classes. It was huge because before that, all the classes received 3 items with their class updates and the class updates were not completed yet (I guess engineer's was the last one). (Medic's and Pyro's Meet the Team trailers were not there yet either). But even with 3 unlocks for 6 classes (18 non-vanilla items in total. No trade, no craft) the people were sceptical against allowing unlocks in the competitive scene. I remember the rules being like "vanilla+kritzkrieg" or later "vanilla+kritzkrieg+gunboats", something like that. And the additional unlock is followed by community weapons included in the game without counting which class has how many additional weapons. In Season 9, ETF2L decided to allow many of the unlocks, if not all. Best 2 or 3 of the top division teams went against that. ETF2L didn't step back. Those top teams decided to boycott ETF2L Season 9, not competing at all, and said that they will only play in ESL and give more importance to that organization from now on. Those boycotting teams included Team Dignitas, as well as Epsilon eSports. It was horrible. I didn't even remember who won ETF2L that season until I read this post. It wasn't important at all.

Of course it was a very well deserved win by Team Thermaltake (actually the well-known FakkelBrigade before the MGO owned them). They had very valuable players even before the inclusion of Kaidus (which is another brilliant story): Exfane, Arie, Mirelin... They always seemed like people who play for fun and helped the community with mumble servers etc. But they were the 5th or 6th best team in the top division. It was only due to the boycott that they won and I guess more than half of the teams in the top division just left before the end of the season.

I remember watching Kaidus in insomnia40. He was with Team eMpathy, a Division 2 team (Div1 was the top division. It was in one of those seasons when ETF2L added Premiership division and Division 1 became the second best, Div2 the third best etc.) Noone expected them to win against FakkelBrigade and go to semi-finals. But they did. With the words of "fle" (the scout of that team, a Turkish player): "He owned them. And they added him to the roster." This is how Kaidus was rostered to FakkelBrigade (Team Tt) and rose to the top division. (Please watch the TF2 Lan Trilogy i40 fragmovie, if you haven't yet)

I was a high school teenager when these happened. It's crazy how I can still remember this useless information :) I personally turned back to tf2 in 2017, playing low- as always, chilling. Checking the scene time to time. It still makes me happy to see Kaidus, read and hear his name. When he quits the game, the scene will lose the only connection it has with the past, and I will lose the only connection I have with the past of the scene.