Team Fortress 2 Competitive Beta Sign-Up
Well, who’d have thought it? There’s actually matchmaking things going on for reals! No more will B4nny (bless him) be the only reliable and constant source of information about Team Fortress 2’s official matchmaking. Nope, yesterday, a Valve employee popped by and announced that there is now an official Steam group, as seen here. It’s almost definitely official, since the admins are three Valve employees, and the group also has a selection of Steam Community moderators. The main admin of the group, someone called Jill, has got nearly 4000 hours on Team Fortress 2, which is a sign of, um, well, something. Something good, I hope.
According to the page, the group, Team Fortress 2 Competitive Beta, is where they will be announcing all the latest bits and pieces. They’ll also be picking out people to send passes to for the closed beta.
It’s definitely grabbed a lot of interest, as the group currently has 12000 members, having jumped a good two thousand since I joined the group early this morning. While the chance of getting into the closed beta is incredibly low with such a huge number of people, it’s good to see that something is actually happening.
One unusual little thing though, is how Valve have announced this. Rather than announcing it through the TF2 blog, the TF2 website in general or the Steam store page or the community, they’ve gone and announced it on places like /r/tf2 and, amazingly, on SPUF. Goes to show that people still use SPUF after all. Still, very curious how this is being handled.
This, combined with the huge flood of Pyroland Valve servers that has sprung up recently, all of which appeared to be running 5cp maps and the like, not to mention the smaller updates, some of which include balance changes, suggests that Valve are actually starting to crack on with matchmaking and other bits and pieces.
For now, the group is huge and hectic and full of questions, but this is a sign! A sign, I tell you! A sign of matchmaking!
Keep your eyes open, everyone.