The ETF2L Highlander Community Challenge
Date March 25, 2010
It’s (almost) business time

I don’t think ETF2L has any formal written-down kind of mission statement, but if it did, it’d no doubt be about growing our league as a great place for you to play, but it’d also include something vague about nurturing competitive TF2 as a whole.

We’ve already made efforts in that area to improve TF2’s reputation as an esports title with members of our staff volunteering to write for Cadred or admin Esports Heaven, for example, but we’ve never taken on a really huge project. But we’re about to. And we need your help.

So, before the official public announcement, we’re very proud to announce to you, the competitive TF2 community, The ETF2L Highlander Community Challenge. The objective of this project is simple: give the non-competitive TF2 player the opportunity to play competitively and make their experience the best one possible.

Think of it like a Nations Cup, but rather than country vs country, it’ll be public community vs public community. We’re looking to officially announce the tournament this time next month and start taking sign-ups for a May/June start.

We want to show all the TF2 players around Europe just how great competitive play can be. We want to show them what a great community we have, and, if they decide to enter a team, we want them to stick around after the Highlander stuff is over. It may seem weird to you, but the feedback we get from people trying to make the leap from public community servers to 6v6 often boils down to the competitive ruleset being too alien compared to what they’re familiar with. We hope that this Highlander tournament will serve as a stepping stone for people who are curious about competitive TF2.
A quick note

Just to be clear: this is for people who are new to competitive play. The teams will come from public community servers. That said, we understand that many Division 6 teams are community teams, so they will be eligible to take part.

If you’re not a Division 6 player, though, there’s still plenty you can help out with. And we’re planning to host a regular Highlander tournament after this one is finished.
where you can help

We’re in the midst of writing and producing a short promotional video for the tournament which will be embedded on Valve’s TF2 blog, hosted on a special ETF2L landing page and posted on community message boards, but we still need some major help on reaching some important parts of the European TF2 scene.

* We’re looking for native Russian, German, French, Spanish, Finnish and Italian speakers with great English skills who will be able to translate a script, record a quality voice-over and deliver work to tight deadlines. If you’re over 18 and confident in your ability to meet those requirements, please contact me on Steam as soon as possible.

Do you have experience creating custom content for TF2? Do you know anyone who is really good at it? If so, we’re in a huge rush to get in-game medals produced to give out as prizes.

* We’re looking for three separate medals to be built: participation, runner-up and winner.
* The medals must adhere to the TF2 style guidelines.
* We need (at least) concept art of these as soon as possible for the promotional video. Get in touch with me via Steam if you can make these models to the required standard. If you have an online portfolio with any related work, please link to it when you contact me.

You can help us with advertising too.

* Do you run a TF2/gaming news website? We’d love it if you announced the tournament to your readership – but only when the promotional video is ready and the news has been broken on the Valve TF2 blog.
* If you have any links to people behind TF2/gaming podcasts, please let them know what we’re doing and hook us up with them.
* If you’re a creative type with ideas for promoting the tournament – be it propaganda posters, a competitive play survival guide for new teams, etc – feel free to contribute.

Finally, if you’re an easy-going person who cares about helping the TF2 scene, we’d like to invite you to become an ETF2L buddy!

* Buddies will be the representatives between ETF2L and the community teams. You’ll join their roster, be responsible for answering their questions, making sure they schedule their matches properly, and depending on how good a buddy you are, organising and helping them out with practising and tactics. (Note: All teams will be automatically added to a Highlander ladder where they can arrange non-tournament games.)
* Buddies will also be eligible to play in the Highlander games themselves. But you can only play heavy, engineer, spy or pyro!
* Buddies will be assigned to teams on depending what language they speak. If you have a link to a particular community, you can request to be their buddy.
* You can put yourself forward to become a buddy simply by joining the new ETF2L Community Challenge Steam Group. Please make sure that your Steam page has the correct country information posted on it.

In conclusion

I think that’s everything. If you have any ideas or questions, post them in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them.

It’s projects like these that will hopefully keep our scene healthy for the months and years to come, so let’s do our best to make it a great tournament and show the world of TF2 what ETF2L has to offer as a place to play the game we all love.

And how do they define a community player? Somebody who has never played 6vs6? or 9vs9? Or has little experience în both? low--?

Someone who has never played in ETF2L or is division 6 I guess.