Happy Late Birthday, Team Fortress!
I know I’m late with this, and Team Fortress’s birthday was the 24th of August, but Valve is late with everything so hopefully they forgive me. Anyway, let me get all the fireworks and confetti out of the way…
Anyway, back to the actual event itself. Twenty years is a pretty damn long time. Older than my sister, in fact. Yes, Team Fortress is older than my little sister. That… is a worrying thought. It’s a very impressive thing though, that a class-based first person shooter series of games is still around. Despite the fact that the little, Short-Circuit-killable bouncing beach ball still says 15 years on it. There are still people playing Team Fortress Classic and Fortress Forever. There are people still playing the original Quake game and probably even the original Team Fortress mod. Speaking of which, they should get party hats too.
As much as we complain about Team Fortress 2 and its faults, and how it’s really nothing like its older variants yet somehow actually being quite similar in its own ways, we should all be happy to still be here. Most games don’t last this long, and many games have appeared to try and take a slice from the Class-Based Team-Based First Person Shooter pie – not many have succeeded though. Unrelated, the Class-Based Team-Based First Person Shooter pie tastes like rockets, piss, chocolate and Medi Gun fluid. It’s not the nicest pie around. The community has endured all the silly and dumb stuff the TF Team has thrown at us, and they’ve endured all the hate and anger we’ve thrown back.
Things may seem rather dire right now, with matchmaking not being what it wanted to be, and with Blizzard releasing Overwatch and all that, but things have been better and things will hopefully get better. The TF Team is starting to communicate with us more, and we should have the next comic up soon. There’s been slow progress on making everything work. You know what they say about clouds and silver lining.
Most of all, I love the TF team’s sentiment that it wasn’t just Team Fortress’s birthday, but it was in fact everyone’s birthday. That’s sweet of them. They’re right though, Team Fortress wouldn’t be here without all the dedicated players, from the teams now playing at i58, to the people at teamfortress.tv to everyone who’s emailed Valve to complain about something. Oh and the people who spent fortunes on virtual items, they were a big help too.
Congratulations, Team Fortress. Here’s hoping you make it a few more years. The Team Fortress Community (and the Daily SPUF of course) will be watching and cheering you on. Even if it looks like we hate you at times. Like any good community though, we’ll always be there to point out your faults, and we’ll always be there to complain about balance, but we’ll still love you.
And really, thank you, Team Fortress, for being some of the most fun I’ve ever had online.