Commemoration of the Early TF2 Era: EU 2007-11 w/ Byte interview

The Aftermath

It was indeed as Byte said. TF2 lost some individuals that season, but also gained some. On aggregate, it was looking just fine.

August 2011, each roster in Insomnia43 in Telford had two to three players from the rosters of the top teams of the 2009-2011 era, and some solid additions. The attendance was as usual. The last Assembly ever, played that month, was not bad at all either.

The “third nations cup”, ESL’s Country Championship 2011 had come to an end in July. Coming from the Lower Bracket Final played against Spain, the United Kingdom won against Germany in the grand final. For the first time in Europe, Sweden and Finland were not in top three. Again, this meant change, but not necessarily towards the good or the bad.

ETF2L Season 10 happened before the year’s end, had many of those big old names again, although in their newly formed teams. The evolved Epsilon, winner of that season, winning for the third time, would keep evolving itself for more years to come, to win much bigger titles.

If one jumped a year forward in time to August 2012, they would witness the first inter-continental TF2 LAN in Insomnia46, in Europe, the very continent that was shattering with death claims for the scene a year ago, now hosting two North American teams. Jump another year to August 2013, Insomnia 49 is being the first world championship of TF2 with the inclusion of an Australian team this time.

The legacy has only more to cover, and the counts are getting much more difficult after that point. It is safe to say that one who quit the game in 2011 could never imagine to see all this happening if they ever turned back. Surely it does not feel all perfect, especially since the concept of competitive gaming has changed drastically without ever giving TF2 its time in the limelight, but it is comforting to know that the last standing old school FPS, one of the most played games in the world* every year for almost two decades now, is never going to die. At least not in any way we had anticipated before.

Author’s note: Special thanks to the admins of CompTF2C for welcoming the publishment of this live TF2-related article on the competitive TF2 Classic blog. Thanks, as always, to our blog editor bub for the editing. Thanks to Byte for the interview and for being so open for communication. Thanks to the authors of “The decade in review” for giving me the idea, and especially to mitch and Aelkyr for their encouragement and support. Thanks to dempsey for the extensive feedback on the first draft, which made me go and turn it into something totally different. Last but not least, thanks to Wiethoofd and JMaxChill for trying their best to publish the article on TF.TV.

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