We’re pleased to announce that hrbls has successfully completed his admin trial and has been promoted to a full member of Anti-Cheat staff. Welcome to the team Harbls!

Some players have been spotted with recent VAC bans affecting Team Fortress 2 and thus are now banned from ETF2L for one year:

• Mitchell Smith
• BODLAK
• RdRand
• metasquid
• Deket
• God
• flashback830
• -_-
• Kappa
• zOoleX
• matrix233

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

 
The following user has been discovered as an alt account of a currently banned player.
The ban has been extended by one year:

vinz. alt of Kayziix

 
Now that the Highlander Open is around the corner, we hope that noone will hesitate to report possible cheaters or alt/smurf accounts so that our new players can enjoy a smooth and fair transition into competitive TF2. Reporting can be done by going to our support page and typing !acrequest in irc. Reports can be entirely anonymous if requested by the user. We appreciate any information that will help us keep the league clean. 

Enjoy the weekend everyone.

It’s the match you’ve all been anticipating with the top 2 teams of Season 18 powered by Tt eSPORTS, Epsilon eSports and Awsomniac facing off to decide who will have a guaranteed spot in the Grand Final. Epsilon eSports were briefly in the firing line to come up as the underdog to this match however with only 5 points between them and 2nd place  Awsomniac, we could be in to see an upset and watch  Awsomniac take 1st place. In addition, if we see a draw tonight,  Awsomniac will have an advantage with a final match still yet to be played against their russian foes Lethal Weapon where if they take the 6 points home we could see them rise above  Epsilon eSports by 1 point. With potential for either side to win in one way or another, we should be in for one hell of a show! Casted on TeamFortress.TV by Admirable and Ryushi with a fixed Jon on the camera!

Read the rest of this entry »

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Highlander Nations Cup #3 powered by Tt eSPORTS: Whitelist Update

With the unfortunate timing of the most recent update, we didn’t have long to decide where the unlocks and taunts would be positioned within the whitelist. After some very brief testing we’ve come to the following conclusions:

• The Conga taunt if used at the end of a round can glitch hitboxes for the next round. Therefore it will be banned.
• All the new weapons will be allowed.

It has come to our attention that some of the other taunts can be used to get inside enemy spawns, or clip through walls. We remind you that bug abusing is not allowed and you can be punished for it.

The whitelist for 9v9 has been updated and can be found here.

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UPDATE: FLAG CHANGES HAVE BEEN DISABLED FOR THE DURATION OF THE HLNC (EXCLUDES HLO). PLAYERS WITH DIFFERENT FLAGS FROM THAT OF THE NATION THEY WISH TO REPRESENT MUST FIRST CONTACT AN ADMIN TO SEE IF THEY CAN PLAY.

Highlander Nations Cup #3 powered by Tt eSPORTS: Captains

This is the list of approved captains for their nation. Only the people listed below have the right to lead their team into the Cup!

•  Austria – private_meta
•   Belarus –  Alex_jj
•   Belgium – Crazyman
•   Bulgaria – superlub0
•   Croatia – Dania
•   Czech Republic – misha YB`g
•   Denmark – F2
•   England – Hildreth
•   Estonia – sheff
•   Finland – Toba
•   France – Mista
•   Germany – basH.
•   Georgia – Bery
•   Greece – sλayeR
•   Hungary – PingWIN
•   Iceland – Hafficool
•   Ireland – b33p
•   Israel –  SorroW
•   Italy – carnifex
•   Latvia –  Dr.kaka6ka
•   Lithuania – Spreijer
•   Netherlands – kKaltUu
•   Norway – fanny_filth + Rudey
•   Poland –  Steve!
•   Portugal – Kiler4fun
•   Romania –  Shape
•   Russia – irfx
•   Scotland – Fragm3nt3d + Fenrir
•   Slovakia –  adysky
•   Slovenia – Jan
•   Spain – pl0
•   Sweden –  nijoonen
•   Switzerland – 1pt
•   Turkey – turkuaz
•  UAE – NightWing94
•   Ukraine – Klefsas
•   USA – overseer + HueyLewis

If you are on this list, you should have been given Leader to the official team page for your nation. If your nation has not previously participated, you may create a teampage yourself. If your nation has competed before you must use the same teampage. If you need help contact an admin!

Captains should add the desired roster to the team page as soon as possible, remembering the maximum roster size of 20. Teams without at least 12 players on the team roster (exceptions may apply) by July 6 could be removed from the Cup.

Please remember if a player has joined Nation X’s roster, they may not play for Nation Y. Contact an admin if you have any queries about this.

Highlander Nations Cup #3 powered by Tt eSPORTS: Schedule

Now that we know exactly how many countries are taking part, 37 which is three more than last year, we can create a finalised schedule. Luckily it will be in the same format as last years competition.

• Captains Announced: June 22
• Schedule week: June 29 – July 6
• Groups Round 1: July 7 – July 11
• Groups Round 2: July 12 – July 16
• Groups Round 3: July 17 – July 21
• Groups Round 4: July 22 – July 26
• Groups Round 5: July 7 – July 11
• Tiebreaker Week: July 27 – July 31
• Round of 16: August 1 – August 5
• Quarter Final: August 6 – August 10
• Semi-Final: August 11 – August 15
• Grand Final: August 16 – September 7

Round 4 and Round 5 in the groups are solely for the Groups with 5 nations in them. Nations in groups with 4 teams don’t play any games these rounds.

The groups will be announced in the coming days, however I will explain the format now. There are 37 teams in total which means there will be 3 groups with 4 teams, and 5 groups with 5 teams.

• Groups with 4 teams will play Rounds 1,2 and 3.
• Groups with 5 teams will play any 4 of the 5 Rounds, depending on how the fixtures are created (at random).

This will mean for Groups with 5 teams, you might have to play 2 games in the round from July 7 – July 11. However you will later get a round with no games, so hopefully that makes up for it.

Highlander Nations Cup #3 powered by Tt eSPORTS: Maps

Now we know exactly how many countries are taking part, we can create a finalised map schedule too.

• Groups Week 1: pl_badwater + cp_steel
• Groups Week 2: pl_upward + cp_intermodal_g1
• Groups Week 3: koth_pro_viaduct_rc4 + cp_gravelpit
• Groups Week 4: pl_badwater+ cp_steel
• Groups Week 5: pl_upward + cp_process_final
• Tiebreaker Week: Best of 3 picked from the map pool.
• Round of 16: pl_badwater + koth_pro_viaduct_rc4 (decider map: cp_intermodal_g1)
• Quarter Final: pl_upward + cp_process_final (decider map: cp_gravelpit)
• Semi-Final: Best of 3 picked from the map pool.
• Grand Final: Best of 3 picked from the map pool.

EDIT: Valve have since reverted their changes in the June 23rd 2014 Update: “Reverted the recent stickybomb damage ramp up change. We will continue to evaluate the use of stickybomb air detonations and potential changes to that mechanic.”

• All Demoman stickybombs now have damage ramp up. Full damage is reached 2 seconds after firing.

This change has a substantial impact on competitive TF2 and it did not take long for someone to release a server-side mod that restores the old damage values. However, we would like to make it clear that altering gameplay with server-side plugins is against ETF2L rules and this case is no exception.

Normally whenever new unlocks or gameplay features are added to the game, ETF2L tries to preserve the consistency of ongoing league seasons and include or explicitly exclude these updates in the next season. It would seem natural for us to support a plugin that seeks to maintain the same game balance throughout the ongoing season, however we must forbid it for the same reason we exclude all other plugins that affect game balance:

1. All ETF2L matches must follow the same rules and use the same gameplay settings. Players must know exactly what settings to expect and be able to prepare for them.
2. Any plugin that alters game balance must be used in all matches or none of them, which means allowing a plugin would require us to enforce its usage in all matches, no exceptions.
3. Enforcing a plugin on all match servers is problematic – experience has shown that teams will often struggle with installing/updating it (particularly new players), and requiring all matches to be played on ETF2L servers is not feasible.

Last but not least, any plugin that alters game balance will create a divide between various leagues depending on their treatment of the plugin, and raise another artificial barrier between competitive and public play. We think it is in the best interest of competitive TF2 to avoid dividing the community wherever possible.

New weapons and taunts

As the new weapons were added during Season 18, they may not be used in this competition. The new taunts are all allowed and have been added to the Season 18 whitelist.