With over 300 signups and a very diverse audience, the divisions of the first ETF2L Highlander season are now complete, go have a look!

>> Highlander Divisions <<

Teams are seeded across 6 different skill levels, with division 1 being the strongest and most prestigious, and division 6 having the most awesome people. Different regions have been grouped into sub-divisions where possible. If you were too late signing up, or if your team had too few players (less than 10), you can join the waiting list and be placed into the season when another team drops. If you have any questions or requests regarding your division placement, please contact an admin (support page).

Important Highlander Updates

Each week, you will face a different opponent from your division. Week 1 starts Sunday the 13th and will run to Saturday the 19th. You will have to get your match scheduled by the Thursday before the week starts (more info). For example, week 1 starts on Sunday the 13th, so you need to have your week 1 match scheduled by Thursday the 10th at the latest. All further dates can be found in the Calendar. If neither team has a server for your match, ETF2L can provide one for you. Our servers are located in Amsterdam and Germany, kindly provided by Multiplay.

To promote and facilitate highlander practice, we have decided to re-open the ETF2L Highlander Ladder. The map pool includes all of the league maps and some popular highlander and 6v6 maps. All teams are welcome and invited to participate and test the ETF2L ladders. For finding other regular training matches we recommend checking out this thread.

Unfortunately, all popular attack/defense maps still suffer from a bug with the round timer. With no indication that the bugs will be fixed, and Steel being quite vulnerable to the bug, we decided to replace Steel with Gullywash. If the overtime bug happens on Gravelpit (i.e. the round ends after capping in overtime) the full round will have to be replayed. However, teams can agree to replace Gravel Pit with another map, if they don’t want to risk the bug happening. More specific info on this will come at a later date. On Gullywash, make sure to remind the server admin to turn off the item whitelist by using the following command:

rcon mp_tournament_whitelist “”;mp_tournament_restart

Some other important reminders:

Sign up for the ESH Sapphire challenge

Esportsheaven has announced a new 6v6 cup with £500  in cash prizes. The first round is next Tuesday and it definitely needs more teams representing competitive TF2. So if you want to play some exciting games and help the future of competitive TF2, then be sure to have a look and sign up.

Just a quick note to say that we have shipped an update to the configs to fix a bug that was present in the new version. This bug should not have affected many people, only people who tried to play payload and then play 6v6/koth afterwards without restarting the server inbetween. You can find the configs on the rules page. If you installed the config pack, you’ll only need to replace the ETF2L config file. Our apologies for the inconvenience.

The amazing I-series admin,  Tapley, would like to let you all know that with little under a month to go, he and ETF2L sponsor Multiplay bring you another Insomnia LAN tournament hot off the heels of i43. Be sure to read this post for the latest information he has to share:

Now you may feel that the winter events are always a bit quiet, which is true but a lot of people have already signed up and multiplay again have stumped up the cash for TF2!! At least £1000 to be won regardless of how many teams sign up, and if 24 teams make it then it’ll increase to £2500! Please join us again in Telford for another awesome event and help support Tf2… Those drinking steps must be reclaimed :]]].

Again I’ve created lots of threads to help everyone out please post up!

• Official Chat / Questions Thread.
• The Accomodation Thread – With hotels as close as 1 minutes walk away why not! Camping is still available and free however (bring extra socks)
• Equipment Share Thread – Got some spare equipment that could help people out?
•  Tr(l)ansport Thread, Need a lift or can give a lift? Please help out your tf2 brothers and sisters, payment can be made in beer,money or your body.
• Automatic Mix Team Thread – Just wanna play tf2 and don’t care who you play with? Sign up!
• Official Mix Mercs Thread  – Post here if you want a team or need players for your team.
• Co-Admin Search! – Thats right I’m ucky for a very lucky person to help me admin i44 and possibly the future, more info within.
• I44 Online Tournament – Want free tickets to LAN? We’re running a upper and lower tournament again with 2 teams worth of tickets to be won again. Rules + Maps TBC soon!

We all know how much fun LAN is :D If you can make it get those tickets! Any help needed please post up in one of the relevant threads <3.

We’ve made some updates to the forums in an attempt to make everything just that much easier to find. The newest addition is the Training & Tactics Forum, where one can go for all questions and discussions on competitive TF2. This is of course the place to be for the newer players amongst us, who can learn more about the awesomeness that is competitive TF2 from insights and knowledge shared by the equally welcomed veterans.

Furthermore we have merged the Requests and feedback sections, the new Feedback & Requests Forum can be found here.

Important Note: Remember to update the forum watch list on your profile, if you want posts from these forums to show up in your list of recent posts. You can do so here.

Config Update: Cleanup, Highlander and Automatic Map Configs

The beloved wizard of configs,  Chris, has worked his magic on the ETF2L config. The result is a much cleaner, updated config and a config pack that can easily prepare your server for 6v6, highlander or even ultiduo. Simply download the config pack and put all its contents on your server. The configs will then make sure that all settings are automatically executed upon loading any stopwatch, 5cp, or payload map used in ETF2L. Grab the config pack here.

Please note that when playing highlander on gravelpit, you will have to turn the whitelist off by executing the highlander config (exec etf2l_hl).

If you want to stick to the old fashioned single configs, you can find the etf2l config here, and the additional highlander config here. Please note that using those will mean you have to correct windifference, timelimit and winlimit when playing stopwatch or koth maps.

Spike’s Special Site Updates: Player & Team Profile pages

• To please the stalker folk on ETF2L, player profile pages will now show when you have last been online.
• On the team profile pages you will now find player history collapsed after a mere 5 entries, and the list of demos and former team names is now collapsed as well.
• A player’s team history is now shown in the form of a collapsible table, very much like the player history on the team profile page.
• Team history can also be filtered by team type, enabling you to show only a player’s 6v6 or Highlander teams.

These are only minor changes, but we do intend to keep these coming so as to continue improving our website and your browsing pleasure. We are currently re-working the way the recruitment section works, to get rid of a few bugs and allow a clear distinction between 6v6 and Highlander posts. Also soon to come is a neat overview of season/match history on player profiles. Watch this space!

Any website related feedback is very much welcomed in the new website feedback thread.

Admin Changes

The day has finally come. baerbel, who has been in the admin staff since… forever, has quit. He explained his departure with the following sentences:

[02:08:01] <@baerbel`> oh also, thank you guys for the awesome time but i think i will stop admining for now, i havent been active at all in the past months
[02:08:17] <@baerbel`> and i dont think my gusto will change anytime soon
[02:08:33] <@baerbel`> so goodbye and thanks for the fish :D
[02:08:40] <@Refuse|Bill> baerbaddie
[02:08:45] <@Refuse|Bill> don’t go :<
[02:08:57] <@baerbel`> naw its cool , i rather leave than chill and not do shit

CanFo is probably the only person profiting from his loss, because now he can justifiably claim to be the best (German) admin at ETF2L.

Don’t panic! You’ll see some fresh blood coming in soon.

UPDATE: Congrats to CoD Gamers UK! Well done too to Virile unhumen with their second place.

After a rather long cup, we are nearing the end; the quarter-finals will be played tonight! There are 5 games to be played through the evening, with 1 quarter-final having already happened. So let’s go through the fixtures;

• 18:30 CEST, Round 2 #3: Pudges 0-3 Sugar Hill Gang; STV connect 46.249.40.227:27020
• 19:10 CEST, Quarter-final 2: Sugar Hill Gang  0-2 bunchiez; STV connect 188.138.56.36:37025
• 21:30 CEST, Semi-final 1:  CoD Gamers UK 2-0 bunchiez; STV connect 188.165.226.117:27040 ; password fml
  
• 22:00 CEST, Quarter-final 4: Portugay 2-0 Cardinals; STV connect 77.111.204.121:32333
  
• 22:00 CEST, Quarter-final 3: Virile unhumen 2-0 BreCuKu; STV connect 85.131.170.9:27022
• 22:40 CEST, Semi-final 2:  Virile unhumen 2-0 Portugay; STV connect 77.111.204.121:32333
• 23:10 CEST, Final:  CoD Gamers UK 2-0 Virile unhumen; STV connect 77.111.204.121:32333

The remaining games will be played at some other point, hopefully all in one night. SourceTV’s will be updated when known so feel free to check back! All games are best-of-three, except for the round 2 game which is best-of-five. Also, SourceTV demos are compulsory for the semi-finals and final – upload them after the game. Good luck to all teams!