This Week in TF2 History

February 23 – March 1st

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Bye February! Nice knowing you! The last week of February has always been a popular time for TF2 updates, possibly because of the natural progression from Winter to Spring leaving Valve feeling optimistic and energized. Or random chance. Who knows. February 28, 2008 saw a reduction in the comically oversized reserve ammunition carried by the Soldier and Demoman. Before this update, Soldier had 36 reserve rockets, and Demoman had a whopping 30 Stickybombs and 40 Grenades. If only the Persian Persuader had existed back then… Tournament mode also became a thing, which disables autobalance and map objectives like flags and… [Continue Reading]

February 16th-22nd

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Pretty tame week here, but there were some highlights. In February 19th, 2008 Valve added the gimmick that dropped weapons restored half of your weapon’s reserve ammo. To be honest, I was unaware this hadn’t been in the game from start. February 16th, 2009 saw one of the largest Stickybomb nerfs that wasn’t the arm time one; reduced damage rampup at close range turned demoman from a generalist into a generalist with a close-range weakness, which really made a big difference. The weapon was also renamed “Stickybomb Launcher” instead of “Sticky bomb Launcher”, as far as I know the only… [Continue Reading]

February 8th – February 15th

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Love is in the air! At least, most other places. Not much love happens in Team Fortress 2 around this time, unless you count hundreds of ring messages cropping up and blocking crucial elements of your custom HUD. Yes, I’m talking about the Something Special for Someone Special, that $100 ring that made Cracked’s list of The 5 Most Absurdly Expensive Items in Online Gaming. It was added to the game on February 14th, 2012. Also added at that point was the Snapped Pupil, which is actually the byproduct of a troll post on Facepunch that a modeler ran with.… [Continue Reading]

January 23rd – January 30th

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A new map?
A new map?

A fairly exciting week, this week, on 25th January, saw the addition of everyone’s completely forgotten favourite CTF map, CTF_Well, as well as some particle optimizations and a few bug fixes, particularly on Gravelpit. It took a very long time though for some very simple things, such as Medics getting a percentage on their Ubercharge meters. This wasn’t added until January 28th in 2009! Also added were the update progress and the level of an Engineer’s buildings in their HUD.

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January 15th – January 22nd

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This week is a week late, but that’s not a bad thing because this week in TF2 history was actually rather dull. The earliest patch is in 2008, on Jan 15th, which fixed two bugs where the Medi Gun would continue to appear on switching class, and people zooming in too quickly as Sniper. 2009 had no updates at all in this period, neither did 2010, but on the 19th of Jan 2011, we saw a small bug fix update and the addition of a plate when one throws the Buffalo Steak Sandvich. 2012 was equally dull, only adding the… [Continue Reading]

January 7th – January 14th

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Whooee…really big week, this one is. Probably because it’s one of the first weeks of the new year, and Valve has returned from their end-of-the-year vacation ready to go fix some bugs. On January 7th, 2008 Valve patched one of the signature glitches exploited by legendary griefers Team Roomba: Jumping into the Well door as it opened let a scout lock the door partially shut, preventing teammates from escaping the spawn room. Here are some highlights from one of their videos: The same time Valve also fixed another Well exploit where Soldiers, Demomen and Engineers could reach the roof in… [Continue Reading]

December 30th-January 6th

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Happy New Year everybody! Ever wondered what TF2 does to celebrate the new year? They don’t. Probably because its so close to the big Christmas update, nothing notable has ever happened to celebrate the new year. It is, however, Valve’s first week back which means they often fix notable exploits cause by newly introduced weapons. The first exploit that tragically lost its life this week was on December 31st 2007, When Valve fixed Syringe gun needles dealing harmless knockback to friendlies. This was called ‘needle boosting’ and this incredible-quality video shows it in action: January 3rd, 2011 saw the removal… [Continue Reading]

December 23rd-29th

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This week is our sparsest yet, and we can almost definitely chalk this up to it coinciding with Valve’s traditional vacation time at the end of the year. Since 2007, there have only been 2 updates during this week: The first, December 23rd 2010, has some interesting things. The Crusader’s Crossbow got its textures updated, and Valve revealed the stats to the Quick-Fix for the first time. This update also turned on double-drop week, the first of three times this has ever happened. This update also contained a cryptic change: “Added strings related to the Gadget Token to tf_english.txt.” We… [Continue Reading]

December 15th-December 22nd

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If you want to pick a single week to play TF2 every year, this is the week. Huge updates almost every year. Our oldest landmark patch yet sneaks in this timeframe; the last patch of the original Quake Team Fortress (which had moved over to QuakeWorld at this point) was released in December 22, 1996. Have you wondered why some friendly soldiers and demomen will start shooting themselves while you heal them during setup time? Obviously in regular play this can help you build Uber, but the Uber rate cut at >142.5% doesn’t apply to setup times, right? Well, it… [Continue Reading]