Bans

These players have been caught with VAC bans affecting TF2, and will be banned from the league for one year:

• alabbs000
• K3m0k3
• salforis
• _frenchie
• Aysentaro
• unclejohn

As these players have not been caught cheating by our staff, their match results are not affected.

The following players have been caught cheating by our Anti-Cheat team. They will be banned from ETF2L for one year:

• DmC – ESP, aimbot
• 009EFF – ESP
• [iSc] Hamza – ESP
• Bat – Triggerbot
• Berry – ESP, aimbot
• ISA – ESP, triggerbot
• Elmo – Aimbot
• Alfred – ESP, aimbot

The following players have failed to upload demos twice, and have been banned from the league for two weeks:

• iZon
• Josh
• kasabubu
• h3x

Announcing Season 20 powered by Tt eSPORTS: Signups Extended!

Due to the late notice of prizes, maps and a general disappointing level of signups so far, signups have been extended for High, Mid and Open. If you are applying for Premiership, the original deadline applies which is Friday January 23rd 23:59. This is so we can continue to have Pre-Season Premiership Playoffs next week.

The new signup deadline for High, Mid and Open teams is Wednesday 28th January 23:59. Provisional Tiers will be released on Thursday 29th, and Final Tiers will be released on Friday 30th. The remainder of seasons schedule will remain the same, to clarify here is the updated schedule:

Signups: January 7 – January 28th (Prem Signups close January 23)
Publishing of Provisional: January 29
Publishing of Final: January 30
Pre-Season Playoff Week: January 25 – January 29
Main Season: February 1 – March 19 (7 Weeks)
High/Mid/Open Playoffs: March 22 – April 2
Premiership Playoffs: March 29

Announcing Season 20 powered by Tt eSPORTS: Fundraiser

We are pleased to announce ETF2L’s first community crowdfunding system for Season 20 powered by Tt eSPORTS. The purpose of this fundraiser is to allow members of the ETF2L community to contribute directly to the Season 20 prize pool and help make Season 20 the biggest yet!

The fundraiser will run throughout the season, with prizes finalised Sunday March 1st. Because of this we cannot promise any exact prizes for tiers until this date. However we can guarantee the minimum prizes for Premiership teams:

• Premiership 1st place: €500
• Premiership 2nd place: €300
• Premiership 3rd place: €200

100% of all donations raised will go towards the Season 20 prize pool, ETF2L will not keep any of the money.

Why should I donate just for the Premiership Players?!

Funds and Items raised through the fundraiser will be used for prizes in all four tiers – Premiership, High, Mid and Open. Prizes for everyone! Clearly we do not know exactly how much will be raised, but our aim is to provide cash prizes for Premiership, High and Mid with at least item prizes for Open.

Perks for Donating

• Donator Title €5 – Receive an ‘ETF2L Donator’ Title on the Forums (similar to current Staff titles).
• Bundle #1 €10 – Entry towards a raffle to win a signed ETF2L shirt by the top 5 teams at i52 and TF2 celebrities a Tt eSPORTS Ventus Mouse , Tt eSPORTS SHOCK Headset and 10x serveme.tf Premium for 3 months each! Includes Donator Title.
• Bundle #2 €15 – Get a weapon signed by one of the top players in Europe. Includes 1 Raffle ticket and Donator Title.
• Bundle #3 €20 – Receive access to emotes on the ETF2L forums, the plan will be to have Twitch Style emoticons with TF2 classes. Includes 1 Raffle Ticket, Weapon Signing and Donator Title.
• Bundle #4 €30 – Receive a group mentoring session from one of Europe’s top players. Limited to 10 people per player. Includes 2 Raffle Tickets, Donator Title, Forum Emotes and Weapon Signing.
• Bundle #5 €50 – Receive a Custom Title on the ETF2L website. In the new theme, Staff titles will be listed in a different colour while Donator titles will be in the regular colour. Includes 3 Raffle Tickets, Forum Emotes and Weapon Signing.
• Bundle #6 €100 – Get your ETF2L official match casted live on teamfortresstv by Admirable! Limited to 5 people. Includes 5 Raffle Tickets, Weapon Signing, Forum Emotes and Custom Title.

All donators will be contacted by email, please make sure the email you use is one you will check!

Details for Perks in full can be found on our Indiegogo page.

Item Donations

We had set up a specific account to manage donations, however due to the trade restrictions this account can’t accept trade donations until 1st February. Until then Permzilla will be accepting donations to his personal backpack, but we promise that all donations will be transferred to the ETF2L Fundraiser account when possible. You can send him a trade offer here and view his backpack here.

If you don’t feel comfortable donating to Permzilla’s backpack, feel free to wait until the Fundraiser account is working. (He does control both though, so there isn’t much of a difference really!)

Season 20 powered by Tt eSPORTS: Fundraiser Showmatch

Join  Admirable and Sideshow on Tuesday 27th January where two of the best teams in Europe will battle it out in a showmatch across a bo3. This will be to promote the fundraiser and Season 20 as a whole. There will also be a featured Tt eSPORTS giveaway during the showmatch, where you will have a chance to win either  a Tt eSPORTS Ventus Mouse or a Tt eSPORTS SHOCK Headset

•  Reason Gaming vs Ze Knutsson Rollerbladers: Tuesday, January 27 at 20:00 CET

Season 20 powered by Tt eSPORTS: Maps

Season 20 is proving to be one to go down in the history books of ETF2L in many ways. Here’s another: it’s goodbye to cp_granary which has seen playtime in 19 seasons of ETF2L up until now. Quite a record, however TF2 is a changed game, and we feel the map has served it’s time and it’s time for some new, fresh and exciting maps to come through. Welcome cp_sunshine_rc4! 

• cp_badlands
• cp_gullywash_final1
• cp_process_final
• cp_snakewater_final1
• cp_logjam_b18
• koth_viaduct_pro5
• cp_sunshine_rc4

• Week 1: cp_badlands & cp_process_final
• Week 2: cp_process_final & cp_gullywash_final1
• Week 3: cp_gullywash_final1 & cp_logjam_b18
• Week 4: cp_logjam_b18 & cp_snakewater_final1
• Week 5: cp_snakewater_final1 & cp_sunshine_rc4
• Week 6: cp_sunshine_rc4 & koth_viaduct_pro5
• Week 7: koth_viaduct_pro5 & cp_badlands

Tan has been acquired, solar cells have been filled and your body has received enough Vitamin D to last you a whole season!

We’d like to thank all participating teams and we hope the cup was to your liking. If you have any constructive feedback regarding the organisation and execution of the cup, feel free to voice it in the comments below or in IRC.

We’d also like to shout out the generous sponsors of this cup that made the current prizepool possible:

Arie of serveme.tf, providing us once again with precious Mann Co. Supply Crate Keys and a dozen 1 year donator status memberships on his site.
If you are ever in need of a server, sponsored by community members for the community, you should check serveme.tf!

We’re also very grateful to the combined efforts of tf2pickup.net and whitelist.tf providing us with additional Mann Co. Supply Crate Keys aswell as regular and specialized killstreak kits.

TF2Pickup.net offers you a more serious and experienced environment to play pugs in.
Every player with sufficient experience in their gamemode is welcome to hone their skills using this awesome site!

Created by Wiethoofd whitelist.tf gives users the ability to easily generate a custom whitelist to use in TF2’s tournament mode.
Presets for every Team Fortress 2 league imaginable, perfect for when you’re running a server or want to maintain config files.

Feedback

Make sure to provide any constructive feedback regarding the map in the forum thread dedicated to cp_sunshine.

The Winners

Read the rest of this entry »

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Announcing Season 20 powered by Tt eSPORTS: Signups OPEN!

After wrapping Season 19 powered by Tt eSPORTS up and crowning SUAVE champions, we are happy to announce our next 6v6 Season. All the information regarding the coming Season can either be found in this newspost, or will be announced in the future! Stay tuned!

>>> Sign up now! <<<

Sign-up process

Make sure to choose your desired division when signing up. If you created a new team or feel you can jump a division, feel free to apply for the division you believe you deserve you should be in. To prove you are capable of the division you applied for, we require you to submit screenshots of results from your recent practice matches or tournaments where you scored decent results against teams that play on the level you aim for. The quantity is not the most important factor in this case, it’s more of a helpful measure for us to figure out if your team will be able to keep up with the pace. There is no magical, minimum or maximum number of screenshots that you have to submit.

Since the new tier system is not yet implemented, there is a crossover period between divisions and tiers. Please continue to apply using the division structure, and we will seed the tiers based on these division applications. If you want to be more specific about a tier you request, send an application to staff@etf2l.org (details listed below). As a reminder here is the division to tier rough conversion:

• Premiership – Premiership
• High– Division 1 and Division 2
• Mid – Division 3 and Division 4
• Open – Division 5 and Division 6

Please note that the success of your request also strongly depends on the free slots in the tier you aim for. Established teams will be favoured over new teams or teams that request to jump a tier. The screenshots have to be uploaded to an online image storage service (for example, you can use imgur or Dropbox). Keep in mind that if you opt for a zipped archives with tons of pictures attached to an e-mail, your application will be ignored. Keep it clean.

Also helpful for us, but not a must however, is adding who the opposing team is in each screenshot (and maybe even the division they played in the last time). That makes it easier for us, because sometimes it can be quite hard (especially in the lower tiers) to figure out who the teams in the screenshots are.

If you are applying for Open (which is our entry division), you do not have to provide any proof that you are capable of playing at that level.

Please send your application to staff@etf2l.org. The division assignment request has to include the following information in order to be considered. Incomplete applications will be ignored!

• Do not use HTML in your e-mail. If you want to add a link, just paste the link in the e-mail as you would enter it in your browser.
• Team name
• Team link on ETF2L.org
• Tier/Division you apply for
• Link to the online photo album
• Reasons why your team deserves to be placed in the tier you applied for (optional)

Season Schedule

Signups: January 7 – January 23
Publishing of Provisional: January 24
Publishing of Final: January 25
Pre-Season Playoff Week: January 25 – January 29
Main Season: February 1 – March 19 (7 Weeks)
High/Mid/Open Playoffs: March 22 – April 2
Premiership Playoffs: March 29

You can still sign up your team after January 23. Teams signing up later than January 23 will be placed on the waiting list and added into the next available week.

Premiership Playoffs

After a successful day of Premiership Playoffs in Season 19 powered by Tt eSPORTS, the schedule will be the same as last season. The full schedule for the playoffs is listed as follows:

March 29th

19:00 CEST – 3rd vs 2nd

21:15 CEST – Winner vs 1st

The day of the finals is set to Sunday March 29th. This day may be changed to a day before Sunday March 29th if all 3 teams agree.

Unlocks

After our pre-season whitelist was announced, for the first time the community has had the chance to try new unlocks before they are allowed in the season. Based on the feedback we have received from TF2Pickup.net we have decided to allow all unlocks from the pre-season whitelist. Now that we have the opportunity to test unlocks before they are allowed, we are reluctant to add any additional unlocks into the season without testing, however we are going to make an exception here for the recently released demoman unlocks. The full list of additional unlocks allowed for Season 20 is:

• The Shortstop
• The Direct Hit
• The Cow Mangler 5000
• The Liberty Launcher
• The Scorch Shot
• The Detonator
• The Scottish Resistance
• The Frontier Justice
• The Ambassador
• The Iron Bomber
• The Quickiebomb Launcher

Maps, Prizes & other changes

Everything else will be announced in the future, we just wanted the schedule to be available to you all as early as possible.