Ladies and mentlegen of the Team Fortress 2 Division,
2013 was a good year for us. We set several goals at the end of 2012, not all of which have been met, but we set the bar high and we have not fallen too short of the mark. We aimed to bring in 75 recruits per month and brought in, on average, about 68 recruits per month. We sought to optimize our admin training sessions and, thanks to the dedication of our ATs, we have not only made a better management system for this purpose, but we also now regularly hold bimonthly admin roundtables to ensure that our admins are able to voice their concerns. We have been looking to maximize event attendance; event attendance has never been higher than it has been throughout 2013, with consistently high numbers not only at conventional events but with impressively high turnout at larger tournaments. We wanted to bring all of our public servers into the top 500 and, at the time of this writing, seven of our eight public servers have attained that rank. You should feel proud of the hard work you have done!
However, now is not the time to rest. There is always more work to be done. We aspire to put at your disposal the information you need to know in order to set new goals for our Division going into 2014. This is the year of 2013 in review.
At the beginning of 2013, the great ship S.S. TF2 was captained by SpidEY with Wilson!! and Caelestis as his navigators. No sooner had the mighty vessel of the Team Fortress 2 Division cruised into the new year than a new member was added to the crew: Goyan-Tanuki, the quiet but effective force behind the Fast Fill Task Force, was brought on deck to work as an Advisor to oversee the servers and continue shaping policy on the improvement of server numbers. He joined the company of Kazoo as EC Advisor, SnowCanary as AT Advisor, Wize as RH Advisor, and PepperRabbit as the competitive team Advisor.
Spidey, who had been the Councilor for the Division for about half a year, increasingly found his time more intensely dedicated to technical work and less to the game. In February, he relinquished control of the bridge to Wilson. As a result, Caelestis was the sole Division Leader until the end of March. At that time, Kazoo was elevated to join him as a second pair of hands to help guide the Division. The circumstances surrounding this promotion are shrouded in black clouds of mystery, byzantine intrigue, and quite possibly an April Fool's joke gone horribly wrong. Nonetheless, the consulship of Caelestis and Kazoo has seen steadiness at the bow where the less skilled would have faltered. They also sometimes are regarded as behaving like an old, married couple, to the constant chagrin of at least one of them.
With Kazoo having been kicked upstairs, there was a clear effect, even if the cause was less clear: there was no particular director of the ECs. This situation remained for several months. Finally, Leadership consulted the oracle, sacrificed a narwhal, and poured a libation to the gods of cake rasim. The consequence of this action was a dead narwhal and a bottle of water spilled on the floor in the name of a hilarious syntactical entry. These portents ultimately led to Fullmetal and Sephiroth being brought up as joint Advisors for the EC team.
In September, the Counter-Strike Division, ever covetous of the Team Fortress 2 Division's successes, retained Wize as its Recruiting Coordinator Advisor. In November, PepperRabbit turned in his laurels after a fourteen-month tenure overseeing the competitive team. Like PepperRabbit, SnowCanary was increasingly burdened by the pressures of the real world, and he stepped down as the AT Advisor in December after sixteen months of stealing ban contests from right under Caelestis's nose. He was succeeded by Fullmetal, leaving Sephiroth as the sole EC Advisor. Divisional Leadership remains a very small group in distinction to other divisions, mostly because nobody wants another person to ruin the fun whenever Seph cheats at playing Mario Party in the Leadership Vent room.
At the onset of 2013, the Division boasted 9 servers: 2Fort, Dustbowl, Foundry, Payload, Valve Maps, Harvest, Control Points Rotation, the Events server, and the League server. The natural ebb and flow of server rankings being what it is, there has been no shortage of small crises as servers would regress at times. Perhaps the starkest example of this phenomenon early on was the continual, backward slide of CP Rotation in the ranks. Never having had more than a plurality of the Division's support, CP Rotation was removed and replaced with the more popular 24/7 Hightower server in April.
Ill Legen-callmeafarmercausethesecondwordis-Dary, Councilor for the Minecraft Division and 24/7 Dustbowl aficionado, protested that the round-the-clock filling of that server made it impossible for him to enjoy his favorite map. Thus, after many months of soliciting for one, he received his wish: a 32-slot Dustbowl server in June. As this was more of a top-down rather than bottom-up decision, it came to the surprise of very few that the server was unsustainable. To that end, Dustbowl 32 became 24/7 Egypt in July. At the same time, 2Fort, which had been doing a brief stint with dynamic slots that allowed it to expand to 32 slots when the population of the server was close to 24, abandoned its modular slot expander. It became clear that it was not supported by the Division at large and it became even clearer that it was a potential problem if Valve ever looked into it too deeply. Fortunately, Gaben has spent too much time watching My Little Pony to notice.
However, Egypt struggled to get off the ground with its low server ranking and only a modest base of support. From July to October, Egypt's numbers were declining. In fact, the numbers of Payload, Hightower, Valve Maps, and even 2Fort were sliding into worsening positions. Leadership tried any number of things to stop the bleeding: adding maps, removing maps, offering all-talk votes, reorganizing the FFTF, and crying at night. All seemed lost.
Then, Saint Robin Walker presented us with the 2013 Halloween update and the message in hac carta vinces. Nobody was quite sure why the message had to be delivered in Latin, but the decision to convert a number of the waning servers to run the new Helltower map and several prior Halloween maps had the desired effect. The standing of the servers was boosted, with numbers rocketing into the stratosphere almost literally overnight. After the end of the Halloween event, the servers are still in a much stronger position than they have been before.
The Fast Fill Task Force has been instrumental in the continued success of the servers. In the summer, an attempt was made to organize the FFTF into two squadrons. This initiative, although initially popular, did not have the desired effect of pulling the servers out of their slump. Eventually, the rigid structure of the two squadrons was abandoned and the FFTF reorganized again. Due to this restructure, the FFTF has become an increasingly useful and meaningful gateway for new recruits to become initiated and be helpful to the Division. Now, the Division has 8 servers that fill with regularity due to the FFTF's skilled coordinators as well as the League and Event servers.
As ever, the Event Coordinators are dedicated to bringing you the most action and the most fun within the span of an hour six out of seven days of the week. These are just a few highlights of their efforts.
In February, the TF2 EC team worked hand-in-hand with its sisters for the Triple Crown Royal Rumble. A three-hour marathon event, players from the community were invited to compete to take on the divisional leadership in Counter-Strike: Source, Day of Defeat: Source, and Team Fortress 2. Fullmetal, expressing some concerns about the nature of Royal Rumbles, developed the concept now known as the Edge Gamers Hour, an inverted Royal Rumble in which leaders from the different Divisions play with rather than against the public. Generally, the ECs alternate between holding Royal Rumbles and Edge Gamers Hours every month.
In April, the ECs organized an MGE tournament. This head-to-head competition between players in single combat pitted many inveterate players and newcomers alike against each other in the running for fabulous prizes. Jawneh took third, Wronskain took second, and SlitheR went home with the gold. In May, Team Fortress 2 squared off with Counter-Strike: Source in two scrims. Many counter-terrorists were burned, many Deagles were inappropriately used, and many headshots were unfair. These events were unique, not having been replicated since.
In July, the second Free-4-All Tournament was held. Sponsored by Kritzkast.com and SteamRep, the FFA boasted a number of fabulous prizes. By the tournament's rules, the players with the greatest number of kills advanced into the next round. Although the nature of the qualifications to advance made it appear that every team member was in strict competition with his teammates, cooperation was absolutely necessary to progress meaningfully. In the end, Ma3la succeeded in acquiring the grand prize, a magnificent ASUS SABERTOOTH motherboard. The four runners-up were SneakyPolarBear, Invizible, Mangachu, and Bobby. The top five players also received over two dozen keys for their skill. A sample of the chaos is visible in this trailer created by Exegguru:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WC25spZWFKo"]2013 eGO TF2 FFA[/ame]
Lastly, the 3v3 Christmas Tournament ran in December. This tournament squared off eight randomly-generated teams of three players in specifically-defined classes in every round. The supreme champions were joshcash, Panda, Super-Nova, and fatyguy. The second place team was composed of Wronskain, Fluffy, BoinkVX (the Jarate drinker), and commanderweegee. The victors were able to claim prizes from an extensive and terrific prize pool, and many participants were also able to win smaller lottery prizes for the sophisticated haberdashery connoisseur.
Our ECs continue to host a variety of events every week, ranging from the silly to the intense. Some of our finest moments are to be had in events. These are just two samples of the chaos and hilarity often found in our events, provided by Meep:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neTWf9cxTvk"]Evil LittleCart[/ame]
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPSMuf6zznk"]Wacky Races[/ame]
The eGO TF2 highlander team took a heavy trouncing in the eleventh season of the UGC League. Going 1-7, the team had been placed in the silver division, the third highest tier of competitiveness. The team's placement in NA Silver was owed in large part to its more spectacular performance in the tenth season, where it went 6-2 in the steel division. An unsteady rotation of players marked the eleventh season, contributing to the team's rocky performance.
Though the going was rough in the end of 2013, there is light glinting on the horizon for the team. A new generation of members have joined in the off-season with a strong interest in playing. The team and its forum are undergoing structural changes under the supervision of fearless leader and absolute hunk of man Wilson. Presently, the team does not look to participate in Season 12 but will be reorganizing throughout the early part of 2014 and will hopefully be ready to compete again by the time that the next summer league comes. Hopes remain high that, situated in NA Steel once again, the team will be ready to represent eGO with pride next year.
2014 GOALS
So 2013's done and dusted. Let's look to the bright horizons of a new year!
Some of these goals are ambitious. Some of them are modest. However you view these goals, the theme of 2014 for this division is community. Never forget that we're all in this together, succeeding because we work as a group. Don't be afraid to learn from one another. Don't be afraid to teach one another. Grow from the experiences you have with your friends and comrades-in-arms. No matter your age, no matter your background, no matter your location, there is someone in our division you can call a kindred spirit. One person can do many great things. Many people can do the impossible. So, don't view it as the effort of recruiting so many people a month but rather as making a new friend for life. Don't view it as associating with the strangers from a different division but instead as making connections with potential friends right in plain sight. This division puts the team in Team Fortress 2.
2013 was a good year for us. We set several goals at the end of 2012, not all of which have been met, but we set the bar high and we have not fallen too short of the mark. We aimed to bring in 75 recruits per month and brought in, on average, about 68 recruits per month. We sought to optimize our admin training sessions and, thanks to the dedication of our ATs, we have not only made a better management system for this purpose, but we also now regularly hold bimonthly admin roundtables to ensure that our admins are able to voice their concerns. We have been looking to maximize event attendance; event attendance has never been higher than it has been throughout 2013, with consistently high numbers not only at conventional events but with impressively high turnout at larger tournaments. We wanted to bring all of our public servers into the top 500 and, at the time of this writing, seven of our eight public servers have attained that rank. You should feel proud of the hard work you have done!
However, now is not the time to rest. There is always more work to be done. We aspire to put at your disposal the information you need to know in order to set new goals for our Division going into 2014. This is the year of 2013 in review.
At the beginning of 2013, the great ship S.S. TF2 was captained by SpidEY with Wilson!! and Caelestis as his navigators. No sooner had the mighty vessel of the Team Fortress 2 Division cruised into the new year than a new member was added to the crew: Goyan-Tanuki, the quiet but effective force behind the Fast Fill Task Force, was brought on deck to work as an Advisor to oversee the servers and continue shaping policy on the improvement of server numbers. He joined the company of Kazoo as EC Advisor, SnowCanary as AT Advisor, Wize as RH Advisor, and PepperRabbit as the competitive team Advisor.
Spidey, who had been the Councilor for the Division for about half a year, increasingly found his time more intensely dedicated to technical work and less to the game. In February, he relinquished control of the bridge to Wilson. As a result, Caelestis was the sole Division Leader until the end of March. At that time, Kazoo was elevated to join him as a second pair of hands to help guide the Division. The circumstances surrounding this promotion are shrouded in black clouds of mystery, byzantine intrigue, and quite possibly an April Fool's joke gone horribly wrong. Nonetheless, the consulship of Caelestis and Kazoo has seen steadiness at the bow where the less skilled would have faltered. They also sometimes are regarded as behaving like an old, married couple, to the constant chagrin of at least one of them.
With Kazoo having been kicked upstairs, there was a clear effect, even if the cause was less clear: there was no particular director of the ECs. This situation remained for several months. Finally, Leadership consulted the oracle, sacrificed a narwhal, and poured a libation to the gods of cake rasim. The consequence of this action was a dead narwhal and a bottle of water spilled on the floor in the name of a hilarious syntactical entry. These portents ultimately led to Fullmetal and Sephiroth being brought up as joint Advisors for the EC team.
In September, the Counter-Strike Division, ever covetous of the Team Fortress 2 Division's successes, retained Wize as its Recruiting Coordinator Advisor. In November, PepperRabbit turned in his laurels after a fourteen-month tenure overseeing the competitive team. Like PepperRabbit, SnowCanary was increasingly burdened by the pressures of the real world, and he stepped down as the AT Advisor in December after sixteen months of stealing ban contests from right under Caelestis's nose. He was succeeded by Fullmetal, leaving Sephiroth as the sole EC Advisor. Divisional Leadership remains a very small group in distinction to other divisions, mostly because nobody wants another person to ruin the fun whenever Seph cheats at playing Mario Party in the Leadership Vent room.
At the onset of 2013, the Division boasted 9 servers: 2Fort, Dustbowl, Foundry, Payload, Valve Maps, Harvest, Control Points Rotation, the Events server, and the League server. The natural ebb and flow of server rankings being what it is, there has been no shortage of small crises as servers would regress at times. Perhaps the starkest example of this phenomenon early on was the continual, backward slide of CP Rotation in the ranks. Never having had more than a plurality of the Division's support, CP Rotation was removed and replaced with the more popular 24/7 Hightower server in April.
Ill Legen-callmeafarmercausethesecondwordis-Dary, Councilor for the Minecraft Division and 24/7 Dustbowl aficionado, protested that the round-the-clock filling of that server made it impossible for him to enjoy his favorite map. Thus, after many months of soliciting for one, he received his wish: a 32-slot Dustbowl server in June. As this was more of a top-down rather than bottom-up decision, it came to the surprise of very few that the server was unsustainable. To that end, Dustbowl 32 became 24/7 Egypt in July. At the same time, 2Fort, which had been doing a brief stint with dynamic slots that allowed it to expand to 32 slots when the population of the server was close to 24, abandoned its modular slot expander. It became clear that it was not supported by the Division at large and it became even clearer that it was a potential problem if Valve ever looked into it too deeply. Fortunately, Gaben has spent too much time watching My Little Pony to notice.
However, Egypt struggled to get off the ground with its low server ranking and only a modest base of support. From July to October, Egypt's numbers were declining. In fact, the numbers of Payload, Hightower, Valve Maps, and even 2Fort were sliding into worsening positions. Leadership tried any number of things to stop the bleeding: adding maps, removing maps, offering all-talk votes, reorganizing the FFTF, and crying at night. All seemed lost.
Then, Saint Robin Walker presented us with the 2013 Halloween update and the message in hac carta vinces. Nobody was quite sure why the message had to be delivered in Latin, but the decision to convert a number of the waning servers to run the new Helltower map and several prior Halloween maps had the desired effect. The standing of the servers was boosted, with numbers rocketing into the stratosphere almost literally overnight. After the end of the Halloween event, the servers are still in a much stronger position than they have been before.
The Fast Fill Task Force has been instrumental in the continued success of the servers. In the summer, an attempt was made to organize the FFTF into two squadrons. This initiative, although initially popular, did not have the desired effect of pulling the servers out of their slump. Eventually, the rigid structure of the two squadrons was abandoned and the FFTF reorganized again. Due to this restructure, the FFTF has become an increasingly useful and meaningful gateway for new recruits to become initiated and be helpful to the Division. Now, the Division has 8 servers that fill with regularity due to the FFTF's skilled coordinators as well as the League and Event servers.
As ever, the Event Coordinators are dedicated to bringing you the most action and the most fun within the span of an hour six out of seven days of the week. These are just a few highlights of their efforts.
In February, the TF2 EC team worked hand-in-hand with its sisters for the Triple Crown Royal Rumble. A three-hour marathon event, players from the community were invited to compete to take on the divisional leadership in Counter-Strike: Source, Day of Defeat: Source, and Team Fortress 2. Fullmetal, expressing some concerns about the nature of Royal Rumbles, developed the concept now known as the Edge Gamers Hour, an inverted Royal Rumble in which leaders from the different Divisions play with rather than against the public. Generally, the ECs alternate between holding Royal Rumbles and Edge Gamers Hours every month.
In April, the ECs organized an MGE tournament. This head-to-head competition between players in single combat pitted many inveterate players and newcomers alike against each other in the running for fabulous prizes. Jawneh took third, Wronskain took second, and SlitheR went home with the gold. In May, Team Fortress 2 squared off with Counter-Strike: Source in two scrims. Many counter-terrorists were burned, many Deagles were inappropriately used, and many headshots were unfair. These events were unique, not having been replicated since.
In July, the second Free-4-All Tournament was held. Sponsored by Kritzkast.com and SteamRep, the FFA boasted a number of fabulous prizes. By the tournament's rules, the players with the greatest number of kills advanced into the next round. Although the nature of the qualifications to advance made it appear that every team member was in strict competition with his teammates, cooperation was absolutely necessary to progress meaningfully. In the end, Ma3la succeeded in acquiring the grand prize, a magnificent ASUS SABERTOOTH motherboard. The four runners-up were SneakyPolarBear, Invizible, Mangachu, and Bobby. The top five players also received over two dozen keys for their skill. A sample of the chaos is visible in this trailer created by Exegguru:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WC25spZWFKo"]2013 eGO TF2 FFA[/ame]
Lastly, the 3v3 Christmas Tournament ran in December. This tournament squared off eight randomly-generated teams of three players in specifically-defined classes in every round. The supreme champions were joshcash, Panda, Super-Nova, and fatyguy. The second place team was composed of Wronskain, Fluffy, BoinkVX (the Jarate drinker), and commanderweegee. The victors were able to claim prizes from an extensive and terrific prize pool, and many participants were also able to win smaller lottery prizes for the sophisticated haberdashery connoisseur.
Our ECs continue to host a variety of events every week, ranging from the silly to the intense. Some of our finest moments are to be had in events. These are just two samples of the chaos and hilarity often found in our events, provided by Meep:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neTWf9cxTvk"]Evil LittleCart[/ame]
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPSMuf6zznk"]Wacky Races[/ame]
The eGO TF2 highlander team took a heavy trouncing in the eleventh season of the UGC League. Going 1-7, the team had been placed in the silver division, the third highest tier of competitiveness. The team's placement in NA Silver was owed in large part to its more spectacular performance in the tenth season, where it went 6-2 in the steel division. An unsteady rotation of players marked the eleventh season, contributing to the team's rocky performance.
Though the going was rough in the end of 2013, there is light glinting on the horizon for the team. A new generation of members have joined in the off-season with a strong interest in playing. The team and its forum are undergoing structural changes under the supervision of fearless leader and absolute hunk of man Wilson. Presently, the team does not look to participate in Season 12 but will be reorganizing throughout the early part of 2014 and will hopefully be ready to compete again by the time that the next summer league comes. Hopes remain high that, situated in NA Steel once again, the team will be ready to represent eGO with pride next year.
2014 GOALS
So 2013's done and dusted. Let's look to the bright horizons of a new year!
- Get 45 recruits every month
- Encourage more interdivisional events
- Optimize the turn-around time between promotions and AT sessions for new promotees
- Bring all servers into the top 200
- Rebuild our competitive team
Some of these goals are ambitious. Some of them are modest. However you view these goals, the theme of 2014 for this division is community. Never forget that we're all in this together, succeeding because we work as a group. Don't be afraid to learn from one another. Don't be afraid to teach one another. Grow from the experiences you have with your friends and comrades-in-arms. No matter your age, no matter your background, no matter your location, there is someone in our division you can call a kindred spirit. One person can do many great things. Many people can do the impossible. So, don't view it as the effort of recruiting so many people a month but rather as making a new friend for life. Don't view it as associating with the strangers from a different division but instead as making connections with potential friends right in plain sight. This division puts the team in Team Fortress 2.
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