Selected Editorials (2000)

HEY YOU!! - out of the gene pool! (12/05/2000) by Totentanz

Scores ... a constructive model for a change (11/26/2000) by Teatime

Turtling and backtracking revisited (11/01/2000) by Teatime

Turtling and backtracking (10/28/2000) by PainKilleR

Just a game (09/21/2000) by Teatime

Teamwork (09/04/2000) by Teatime

Lamers, and Cheaters, and Newbies, oh my (08/24/2000) by Teatime

Freedom is never Free (07/04/2000) by Totentanz

The end of an era (06/21/2000) by Totentanz

Reality Check (06/13/2000) by Teatime

The Patch (06/11/2000) by Teatime

More fun with the patch (06/09/2000) by Totentanz

Corrections and more comments (05/27/2000) by Totentanz

Comments on the Patch leak (05/25/2000) by Totentanz

Reality Check time, people (05/04/ by Totentanz

Q3F review plus more (04/05/2000) by Totentanz

Catching up on stuff (04/03/2000) by Totentanz

eV. != eV. (01/11/2000) by Totentanz

Tuesday, 05 Dezember 2000 2200Z
HEY YOU!! - out of the gene pool!... -Totentanz

Yes, you can joke about Spirits of TF past and all that, but Tot is still actually here. I wish I could say I had interesting, GOOD news to report - but that's not the case. Instead, you'll have to deal with me going into Rant Mode(tm).

First, a personal one. This one goes out to the arsehole who keeps sending virii attachments (that's viruses to the less-educated) to my planetfortress email account, with the subject line of Snow White and the seven dwarfs - the REAL story. This fucknuckle first sent it as an .scr file - which is a windows screensaver, usually. The latest was sent as an .exe file. Well, lemme tell you something, sparky - The "send Tot a virus" thing was done last year as well, and it had the same effect. Me notifying GSI's technical department, and them doing whatever they do. Lemme clue you in on something, I'm a IT professional. I'm not Johhny AOL luser. I don't blindly open fscking attachments - especially from people I don't know. Especially with a return address of [email protected]. If GSI ran their email on a Unix platform - which I sincerely wish they would - I'd use auto-updating .procmail recipes to block out the published list of spammers and junkmailers. But as it is, I rely on my brain - which works quite well, thank you. Oh, and by the way, did you realize that maliciously sending virii thru email is now classified as a federal crime? And the FBI has become rather cooperative with ISP's and Corporations in tracking and prosecuting these cases. Think about it, ace....

Next is an item that's closer to the normal theme here at The Fort, and PF in general. In the past, I've been the maintainer of the TFC Reform Project webpage, and corresponded closely with Valve on issues I get reports about, and got info from them. However, After the release of TF1.5, I grew disenchanted with TFC, and coupled with personal and health problems - I've let TF matters slip to a much lower priority in my life. In fact, the last time I played TFC, was then the last patch was released, to check out the 3 new maps that came with it. I play almost exclusively Q3F these days, because I wholly feel it is far superior to what Valve has mutated TFC/TF1.5 into. With all the changes that have made it "easier to jump in and play", I truly believe it has devolved into what I call AOL Fortress With the auto-upgrade/auto-repair features of the engineer, plus the dispenser's auto-restock (inhibiting it's usefullness as a dispenser-bomb) and other changes - it's NOT a version of TF I want to play. Plus, from reading the league message boards and all - which I still do on occasion, the sportsmanship seems to have gone down the toliet. In particular, I keep hearing comments about one particular dominant clan having a propensity to once they get ahead by a cap or two, go into complete turtle/chaser mode. This Malcolm X style of "by any means necessary" to win mindset completely takes the fun out of playing the game, in my honest opinion. None of the clans I was in ever did this - not that I ever had a desire to be in a l33t, top 10 clan, mind you. So I find something like that, something that goes against the principles of Honour, Sportsmanship, and Fair Play, to be completely abhorrent. That's another reason you'll never see me type "gg" at the end of a map or match. It's become a reflex action, and in that aspect merely lip service. If I see something I truly think worth commenting on, I'll spell it out, not abbreviate it to a "gg". All too often I see maps end like 130-20, with imbalanced teams, and the usual bunch of "gg" at the end. Frankly, that doesn't look like a "good game" to me.

Anyhow, back to the point I was trying to get at, before I went on a semi-related tangent. :P In the past couple of months, I had been seriously thinking of giving up on TFC, because I no longer found it fun. I asked Slick to see if he could find someone to take over the TFC Reform page - because I didn't want to just drop another project on him, especially one I no longer wanted to do. Slick has been helping me with it - reports to the reform@ email hit both of us. However, here's my problem. For the past coupla months, ANY bug reports, etc I've sent to my usually helpful contacts at Valve - have remained unanswered. The emails aren't bouncing, so I know the accounts are still valid on their mail server. However, I am getting absolutely fucking ZERO SUPPORT from them. Now, I dunno about you, but the only reason I did stick with this thing that long, was because I was seeing that the community's concerns WERE getting acknowledged - and in most cases, addressed. I don't intend to stand in an empty area, shouting and not being heard. I'm going to send out a 911 call to the rest of the PF oldsters I know have - or had - contacts with Valve, perhaps look up others in the community who might too - and get some goddamn answers as to why I'm not getting any input from them for what I thought they felt was a valuable asset to the community and to the fans of their game. If I don't get some kind of satisfactory response from Valve, in a semi-timely basis, I will simply step down from maintaining the page, hand it to Slick and tell him to do with it as he sees fit, and go ahead to do something I've wanted to do for a LONG time now - to delete Half-Life from my system.

And take my word on this - it's not meant as some kind of threat to Valve - cause I really feel they they couldn't care less - it shows in their lack of support of fan websites, and past track record of emphasis on the big, commercial sites. Nope, I don't consider it a threat to them at all. More of keeping a promise I made to myself. gg Valve.

We now return you to your normal silence from this area, so Tot won't offend anyone's delicate sensibilities any further.

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Sunday, 26 November 2000 1400Z
Scores ... a constructive model for a change ... -Teatime

After doing my rant on personal scores in TFC I was contacted by a reader (amazing to see people are actually reading this stuff :-)) who brought to my attention the scoring system used by Q3CTF (thanks a lot for doing so, Gav). And quite frankly I think it’s a very good system, which fits the more complex gameplay of CTF far better than the old-fashioned system TFC uses.

So the following is taken from the Q3A 1.25 readme:

New Medal Awards
  
Two new medals will be awarded to players during Capture the Flag games.
These medals recognize individual player actions that often go unheralded in the heat of play.

Assist
This medal is awarded whenever the player actively participates in a capture being made. Active participation includes carrying the flag part of the way, or close proximity defense (fragging attackers) of the flag carrier close to the time the capture is made.

Defense
This medal is awarded whenever the player either frags a foe who is physically near the flag base or when the player frags a foe anywhere else while he himself is near the flag base.

Individual Point Scores in Team Games

During the course of play in a Capture the Flag game, points will be awarded to individual players for actions that they or their team perform. This serves, to some degree, as a measure of a player's performance against other players. In the event of a tie game (game time runs out before one team reaches the map's capture limit), the game enters a sudden death elimination. First team to score a capture wins. 

 ACTION                          POINTS      EXPLANATION

Now that’s what I’d call a scoring system for a CTF game. It would be even more appropriate to a class based game like TFC, which has a higher complexity than pure CTF.

Of course the points would not fit into the recent system because Q3CTF uses much higher award points than TFC. But this would be a minor problem of scaling down those points to a more familiar level (like “Capture Bonus” = 10, “Team Bonus” = 3, “Flag Bonus” = 2 etc).

The “Medals” would be obsolete in TFC (I mainly quoted the medals for completeness, but also to show how much this scoring system strives to reward players for supporting the game goal) and the “Recovery Bonus” would not work in TFC either, unless in a map like flagrun, though I could imagine it being changed to points given when the flag returned after the set time. I could even imagine giving the defense the more points the further the flag has been moved from the flagroom.

That introduces us to another problem presented by parts of this score: The scoring system is partially based on areas and locations. Different areas are defined for the scoring system, like the team bases (see “Flag Defense Bonus”), as well as the proximity of players to each other or areas (see “Guardian Bonus” and the defense medal). Frankly I have no idea if maps can define such areas (though I remember Faelic’s “Tempest” using areas to award points) and if the game could handle actions like assists, etc. On the other hand I doubt it would be that difficult to add such things to the game.

But that would mean that even if you would apply a similar scoring system to TFC it would – partially at least – not work on older maps. Valve could update their own maps, as could other mapmakers. Yet there would be maps whose mapmakers – for various reasons – would not update them. Also there are a number of maps those themes would not work well with a scoring system like that (maps like “Avanti” or “Run”). Those maps could still use the old scoring system (I’d imagine adding a flag to maps which when set to 0 or not set would make the game using the old scoring system while when set to 1 it would use the new scoring system).

An interesting thing is that – according to the table above – the game doesn’t reward frags as such. I was told that frags would still be rewarded with 1 point per frag, but regarding the much higher rewards for other actions would be neglecting.

I don’t say the presented system would be perfect for TFC (for example, it still rewards offense to a higher degree than defense, and it require refining for working better on other themes like warpath or cz2), but this scoring system reflects much better the different roles in a game like TFC as well as it rewards working as a team. A scoring system like that would eventually reflect the efforts of weaker classes to help their team, it could motivate to help teammates and most important it would shift the emphasis from fragging to the game goal of capping the enemy flag (which is by far the predominate theme of most TFC maps).

I could also see that such a system would be helpful for clans as well. Stats based on such a scoring system would reflect more accurately the performance of players during practices or matches (well, at least way better than the pathetic current scoring).

But of course such a system could also be abused. I’m sure with a scoring system like that people would probably kill an enemy flag carrier just to get the points for that and then either ignore the flag or, worse, wait for another enemy to pick the flag up just to kill him as well. But such things would still be better than those people who are just playing DM ignoring flag carriers at all as long as there’s any easier prey.

Or the system would have to prevent that a player could just pick up the enemy flag, then drop it and pick up again a number of times to get a high score (which should not be too difficult).

In conclusion I would consider a system like this to be constructive, as it would support the game in many aspects, rather than the scoring we are still dealing with, and which - seeing a scoring system like that - can only be called destructive, as it does almost *nothing* to support the game, but rather promotes a deathmatchlike mentality.

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Wednesday, 01 November 2000 1000Z
Turtling and backtracking revisited... -Teatime

It has been brought to my attention by Barker of the Top 10 Tournament League that TTT has set up a "Code of Conduct" which participating clans can adhere on a voluntary basis to signal their willingness to follow this Code of Conduct in clan matches. This Code of Conduct is laid out as followed (quoted from the website):

My clan agrees to make a "best faith effort" to not do any of the below in matches against clans who also agree to not do the below:

1.Excessive spam at enemy respawns (1 gas/nail/etc grenade is not excessive spam) 
2.Turtling (significantly increased defense after obtaining a lead: 5 defense out of 8 or 9 is not turtling). 
3.Excessive chasing of enemy offense (chasing, for instance, is when the red team's offense players chase incoming blue offense back to or into the red base while shooting the blue offense players in the back; defense fighting enemies is never chasing; furthermore, when a team's flag is in motion or moved to an exposed spot, expect chasing, spamming, and generally all hell to break lose). 
4.Constant/intentional blocking of elevators/teleportals to make them unusable when enemies try to use them (do be aware your opponents have as much right to use the elevators as you do; defending an elevator by putting a dispenser, etc., nearby is not blocking the elevator as long as it can go up/down properly). 

More details and how the CoC is handled can be found here.

I want to congratulate TTT for this effort to improve sportsmanship in clan matches and for trying to show that competetive gameplay is possible without an "anything goes"-mentality, and for the same reason my respect to all clans adhering to this Code of Conduct.

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Sunday, 28 October 2000 1400Z
Turtling and backtracking... -PainKilleR-[CE]

Normally, the focus at the Fort is on honour, sportsmanship, and fair play in public games. Teatime's been gracious enough to offer me a guest spot here to express my opinions on such matters if I should ever come up with something that I thought was worth taking the time to write about. Well, I came up with something, but I first must stress that this has nothing to do with public games. What I want to discuss is honour, sportsmanship, and fair play in clan matches. I've been dragging a discussion through the message boards about this, and I think it's time I put my thoughts together in one place, where it might even get the ears of a few more of the clan members this really should be directed towards. Let's start by defining a few terms:  

Chasing: also known as backtracking to our European friends. I define the act of chasing as the point at which a player, who's position in the game is that of an offensive player, actively chasing down enemy offensive players. The point at which the offensive player stops acting on behalf of his offensive teammates to cap the flag, and starts acting on behalf of his defensive teammates to prevent the other team's offense from capping the flag, or more specifically, when an offensive player is running towards his own base, attacking an enemy offensive player, especially while the enemy flag remains inside the enemy base.  

Turtling: otherwise known as going all D or heavy D. Any time a team decides to only provide a token offense, or no offense, in order to prevent the other team from capping the flag, whether it be for the remainder of a match, or simply every time their flag moves. Heavy D does not mean they're using all heavy classes on defense, but rather that a much larger percentage of their team is dedicated to defense than is normal. Generally, in a 9vs9 match, this would be 7+ defenders (4 or 5 would be normal, 6 would be a little excessive, though may not always be out of the ordinary, as a 3 person offense can still be quite effective on many maps). The idea is that, once a team has gotten a lead (no matter how slight), they no longer need to try to cap the flag, so they simply stop dedicating players to making such attempts, and dedicate as many people as possible to the role of preventing the other team from doing so.  

When I started playing in TFC's clan scene, I was quite impressed with what I saw. Every game seemed to be fairly straight up, no chasing, no respawn camping, no heavy or all D moves, not even clans going with all or mostly soldiers. Everyone seemed to be playing the game to have fun, and most people seemed to be enjoying it. Maybe I was just lucky in that these were the only types of games I saw for a while, or maybe this was the experience that was shared by most clan members at the time. The TFC clan community was relatively young, and it seemed to have taken the best things from the TF clan community and left the crap behind.  

Somewhere along the way, though, it became more important to win the game. Maybe people weren't having fun if they didn't win every match, or maybe they decided that it wasn't worth it to go out there and play the game if they didn't do everything they could to win the game. When I step forward and say that I don't feel that turtling and chasing are things that should be done in matches, people invariably step forward and say something along the lines of 'anything that can be done in the game, short of cheating, is fair game'. Sounds to me like someone's missing the point. 'Fair game' is not about what's possible within the construct of the game. Just because the game doesn't explicitly stop you from doing it, doesn't mean that you should. When everyone leaves the server at the end of the nite, those 'gg's should be meant by all. So, I have a question for all of you out there playing matches every week:

Does the win feel as good when you go all D and/or chase the enemy offense to their deaths as it does when you play a straight up game, pitting your O against their D, and vice versa, throughout the match, and come up with it at the end of a close, hard-fought match?  

Shouldn't there be a little more to the game than winning a match? Is it that important to break the records set by clans of TFC's past? Will playing like this give you CE's 23-0 reign of the OGL, their 16-0 reign of the IGL, KiN's 36-0 streak in the Top10 Tourney, their 19-0 reign of the STA Gold? Or to bring it to the present, is it so important to break SD's 14 game reign of the Top10 Tourney, or PF's 14 game streak in the STA Gold that these tactics are the ones you would employ in order to do it? I can tell you right now, because I was there (and you can feel free to ask SD yourself), that these are not the tactics that were employed to break that particular streak by SD (and of course it helped that the map was Scrummage, which isn't a CTF map anyway). I can also say with some certainty that such tactics had no part in breaking CE's streak in the IGL or KiN's streak in the STA Gold, because, again, I was there for both.

The question of whether or not your clan should turtle up or chase shouldn't be one of whether or not it's within the realms of what the game allows. It should instead be a question of whether or not it's something that is honourable, fair, and in the spirit of good sportsmanship. It would be fairly interesting to see someone hold their head up high and say with pride that their clan chases and turtles, but I'd have to question where they got the idea that that is something of which to be proud.

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Yes; it's always a good idea to step back from heated discussions and fierce arguments to remember that the subject in question is "just a game".
But there's another aspect of this sentence which is easily overlooked, or ignored. Because a game you play with other people has another component: Social interaction.
Yikes, "social interaction", that almost sound as if we would deal with real people when we play TFC ...
And that's exactly what it is: A group of people coming together – most often casually - to play a game. It doesn't matter if that is a computer game, or a ball game or a game of cards. While playing those people are interacting with each other.
Now the nature of the internet (and online games for this matter) helps a great deal to ignore the fact that your opponents are real people, with the wish to enjoy themselves and to have fun. They are not sitting beside you, they don't talk to you directly, they cannot make physical contact with you. And they cannot make you accountable for your actions (except maybe the server admin who can kick or ban you from the server).
This is the primary reason why lamers and cheaters dare to behave the way they do: The anonymity and the complete lack of accountability encourages lamers to teamkill, to block doors, to hide with the flag.

But "misbehaving" in a game starts a lot earlier than with the actions of lamers. I am thinking along the lines of deathmatching and - to an extent - sniper wars, of all-D teams and people ignoring their team.
Imagine you are in a park joining a game of soccer with a couple of people. Likely you would not even get the idea to ignore the enemy player going with the ball towards your goal. You would likely be annoyed if noone would guard that goal. You would be irritated to find yourself approaching the enemy goal with the ball alone, because your teammates just wouldn't care to run with you. In most cases such things would just not happen. And it doesn't matter much if you play with friends or complete strangers (in fact you would rather fool around with friends than strangers). People would likely play the game properly. Maybe not skilled, likely not taking it too serious, maybe not caring about all the rules, but they would basically play soccer as it's meant to be played.
Yet the same would be almost a miracle to happen on a TFC pub server. And mainly because the anonymity and the spatial isolation - combined with the "single-event" character of a pub game - encourages people to disregard the aspect of "social interaction". People don't feel responsible for their actions because they are not accountable for them. They don't care about the other people because those people cannot enforce the following of the rules of the game or of a behavioural code.
People deny that with the fact alone, that they play with other people, comes the responsibility to play properly, to display an appropriate behaviour and to respect the wish of the other players to enjoy the game just as well as they do.
In real life social pressure would most often prevent such behaviour. On the internet we don't have the means to apply social pressure (or just to a very limited degree). We can only try to lead by example and hope to influence other people to do the same. The more people are doing this the more there develops something close to social pressure. The more people insist on someone to stop deathmatching, the higher the chance this person will actually stop (or leave the server which also serves the purpose).  

So ask yourself more often if you would do the same if you would play on a LAN -  where you would be exposed to the criticism or even the punishment of your fellow players. Ask yourself more often how your actions affect the fun and pleasure of the other people on the server. Just keep in mind that the more you care about your fellow players and the game, the more pub games will provide a pleasurable experience.

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Tuesday, 04 September 2000 1300Z
Teamwork... -Teatime

Does that word ring a bell?

Do you realize that playing a team-based multiplayer game like TFC does not mean that you only have to fight half the people on the server? But that such a game requires working as a team? With taking certain position like Offense or Defense in agreement with the rest of your teammates? With Defense covering base entrances, choking points and flag areas, while the Offense tries to work with each other, complement each other?

After a longer time of absence I returned to playing some TFC lately. And you know what? The quality of the game under the aspect of teamwork is not one bit better than it was one year ago. The skill level of many players is high, sometimes even amazing. But any sense for teamwork? For positions, for roles in the team? Dream on.

Now you will ask what do I expect from the filthy pit of pub games, with all these lamers and newbies. I should know by now that TFC can only be played right in a clan environment.

But could someone explain to me why even the clan people don’t practice teamwork on the pubs? They should know all about positions and roles, about communication and teamwork.

So why don’t they use it?

Okay, maybe mnay clans are solely using RW for communication and therefore no longer have bounded messages. Stupid (in case the RW server goes down), but at least understandable. But they should still be able to find their mm2-button. And anything else? I know that trying to work with the team is often a difficult job on the pubs. But it never will without at least those people doing their jobs who know what to do.

But before this sounds like I would only be bashing clan members: The concept of teamwork should not be too difficult to grasp for anybody, not even a newbie. I cannot expect a new or inexperienced player to know the maps, to choose his position effectively, to choose the appropriate class for his position or to handle situations too well.

BUT I can expect anybody to try to work with his team. It is just common sense that in a CTF-game you have to protect the flag. It is common sense to help your teammates. It is common sense to keep focus on the objectives of the map. You don’t even have to RTFM to approach TFC with common sense.

The more shame on anybody playing TFC for a long time and not play the game properly, wearing a clan tag or not. And please note that I won’t even start talking about terms like sportsmanship or honor. I just talk about the basics of teamplay in TFC. If you don’t follow these basics you play just deathmatch with teams. That’s not that TFC was created for, and it’s not what TFC is about.

On a personal note: An experienced player who is just fooling around on a server without caring for his team or the objectives of the map is IMO just another lamer. Exceptions to this rule exist, but many cases don’t qualify as such exceptions.  

Oh yes, I’m sure that a number of people will think I’m taking things too serious and will throw me the line “it’s just a game”. Expect another rant to that topic soon. 

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Thursday, 24 August 2000 1800Z
Lamers, and Cheaters, and Newbies, oh my... -Teatime

None of those are particularly new to online games in general or TFC in particular. But with the steady increase of people playing online games the number of lamers and cheaters has logically increased as well.

For those who have no idea what a "lamer" is: A lamer is somebody intentionally interrupting, hindering or affecting the game in a negative way. Examples from TFC: Killing teammates, blocking passages or doors with sentries, constantly shooting at teammates, intentionally spreading infections, hiding with the enemy flag somewhere at the map, etc. I guess we all have met such behaviour on way too many occasions.
Those people's intention is to provoke, to ruin the game for others. They get off when people start swearing and shouting at them. They want to draw attention with their actions. Either they’ve joined a server with the intention to piss people off, or they are frustrated by the way the game runs for them (some people just can't cope with losing).

Not much one can do against lamers. Unless there’s an admin nearby to warn the lamer and – if necessary – kick him options are few. Just one word of advice: Regardless what these idiots do and how much they annoy you, refrain from sinking to their level and responding with lame actions yourself, however understandable that would be. Often the best idea is switching to another server …

Your standard cheater is a different animal. Cheating means to utilize bugs or modifications to gain advantage over the other players. One prominent cheat for TFC is using a pak with modified models (spiked models) that makes it easier to spot enemies, to make out positions of sentries through walls or to locate snipers.
The problem with cheaters is that most of them try to get away with cheating without being caught. Their main motivation is to pretend more skill than they actually have and/or to be more successful in the game than they would be otherwise. Being revealed as cheater of course destroys that impression. Because of that people will always deny when accused of cheating. And often enough it's difficult to tell if you deal with a cheater or a skilled person (I expect voices of protest here).

Everybody hates lamers. Messageboards are full of stories and complaints about them. With Encounters with Lamers exists a site fed with stories about them (though occasionally it's difficult to say who the lamer is: The one described in the story or the person telling it). 
Interestingly the same is not true about cheating. Sure, everybody is looking down at cheating and the people using it. But when it comes to dealing with cheating people start to dance around the topic, sometimes presenting some strange thoughts.

On a messageboard a newsie of a TFC-site anonymously posted a link to the mentioned cheat-pak. When uncovered and approached he justified his action with the argument that the cheats would exist anyway, so everybody should have access to it to even the field. 

Yeah, sure. We nullify the impact of cheats by using cheats ourselves. Smart thinking.

So why define any rules for the game at all? Why having maps with dark spots when glowing models can be used? Why playing sniper when everyone could spot where this sniper are aiming at? Why caring about sentry placement when a spiked model will give away its position through walls.

No, such a game would no longer be worth playing. 

The other interesting aspect is the way some people to try to play down the power of cheats. I read a few postings on the Counterstrike Forum where people tried to deny the existence of certain cheats and then pointed out how useless the usage of such cheats would be (headshot script). Besides that people never grow tired to point out that cheats would have only limited effects and could easily be dealt with by experienced players.

Strangely enough two of these threads were started by people complaining of being accused for cheating because of their incredible skill.

I can’t help but thinking that these people are afraid to admit that some cheats can very well compensate skill to a certain degree. The use of glowing or spiked models, wallhacks, scripts to counter certain game effects (removing recoil-effect in CS or conc-effect in TFC) is a powerful tool and will enable even lesser skilled people to pull of some nice stunts (isn’t that why people cheat in the first place?).

Or all these people who tried to justify the use of the spy-burrowing bug, when it was still possible. “New feature”, “no advantage, everyone can do it” … some people won’t refrain from any means giving them an advantage, however cheap or disgraceful.

So, people, get down your high horse. Stop pretending cheats were just child’s game and give your ego a rest and admit that cheating can make up for skill (Note: cheating does not replace skill, and in many situations a lesser skilled cheater will still loose. But a cheater will always have a number of advantages. And if the cheater is skilled as well he will easily own an equally skilled non-cheating player). And keep in mind that the effect of cheating is far more devastating on clan matches than on those “unimportant” pub games. I wonder how often games have been decided by a clan using cheats … 

Cheating ruins the game for all of us, independent of skill and experience.

We have to be stronger outspoken against cheats. We - as community - have to take a clear stand against cheating, without any dancing around.

Cheating sucks, cheaters suck, and all those people creating and publishing cheats should burn in hell (read: be sentenced to play Daikatana 24/7).

The community should knock off that “skill-is everything”-attitude and take a stand for the game they play and love, and for the way it’s supposed to be played (though I have my doubts that most of these 14-year old immature CS-kids will realize this).

TFC (and any other game in that matter) is not a game where “anything goes”. Fight hard, fight with skill, but remember to fight honorable. I know that some people never stop to promote to take any means necessary to win. But when these means include cheating then the line is crossed.  

Okay, final part: What’s all this newbie-bashing lately? 

Sure, newbies make stupid mistakes and ask stupid questions (and they never RTFM), they slow down the gameplay, they might mistake CTF with DM, and too many of them either play snipers or HWG. So what?

Was anybody here born with a mouse and a keyboard? Has anybody here joined the game the first time making everything perfectly right? Does anybody of you collect all information including manuals before joining a game the first few times?

I don’t know about you, but I remember that my first games on TFC weren’t that glorious. I played HWG in my first game. I built my sentry near the GC the first few times I played rock2 because I thought it was a good point, having no idea of the dynamics on that map. I suspected cheating when I met my first spy grenade, and of course I suspected cheating the first time I encountered c-jumpers :-).

So what kind of game community is this, which ridicules the people who want to join the game? Many of them will be your future teammates, maybe even clanmates. Some of them will learn, and practice, and one day own your sorry ass.

This is the new blood TFC needs. In fact desperately needs, with people leaving the game to play other Fortress-MODs like Q3A (and maybe UTF soon) or other games like CS or Firearms. Enough people left in disappointment of TF1.5.

So instead of bashing or mocking these new players you should try to help them making their first steps and teach them the way of the game.

And don’t carry your nose too high When I join the pubs today I see a lot of people who obviously play the game some time now. But they don’t communicate, they don’t care much about teamwork, some of them actually seem not to care about the team at all.

So any other day I would rather have a newbie at my side with no skill and no experience, but the right attitude than one of those “experienced” and “skilled” people which are just on another ego-trip on TFC. I will have more respect for a newbie with a 2/51 score who helped to defend the flag than somebody with a 51/2 score who just made his solo-stunts.

If anyone deserves bashing then these arrogant assholes who play TFC for some months now and still cannot spell teamwork, much less exercise it.

So the moral of today’s lesson is: Hate cheaters, love newbies. Not the other way around!

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Tuesday, 04 July 2000 1400Z
Freedom is never Free... -Totentanz

July 4th - to Americans, it's Independence Day - the day we celebrate the birth of our country, signified by the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and telling King George to go to hell. Most people celebrate it with parades, fireworks, going camping or to the beach with the family - just another day off from work. Not many even bother to think back to what actually happened to give the people of this country their freedom, and the hell our forefathers went through. It's taught in High School, and History majors in college might learn more about it - but once exams are done, all too often it's usually forgotten. Many of us military veterans do remember it, cause of the bond we do share - a common bond of service to our country, to protect the rights of the citizens - ordinary people like you, like me, and like our forefathers. I received this email first from someone who I only know from the name on the email - John Riddle - and a couple of days later I also got it from Bundy himself. I informed him that I planned to put it in a post on the Fort, not only to continue a tradition he had started, but because I feel the same way about things he does.

Have you ever wondered what happened to the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence? Five signers were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured before they died. Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Two lost their sons serving in the Revolutionary Army; another had two sons captured. Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships of the Revolutionary War. They signed and they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.

What kind of men were they? Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists. Eleven were merchants, nine were farmers and large plantation owners; men of means, well educated. But they signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that the penalty would be death if they were captured.

Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his ships swept from the seas by the British Navy. He sold his home and properties to pay his debts, and died in rags.

Thomas McKeam was so hounded by the British that he was forced to move his family almost constantly. He served in the Congress without pay, and his family was kept in hiding. His possessions were taken from him, and poverty was his reward.

Vandals or soldiers looted the properties of Dillery, Hall, Clymer, Walton, Gwinnett, Heyward, Ruttledge, and Middleton.

At the battle of Yorktown, Thomas Nelson Jr, noted that the British General Cornwallis had taken over the Nelson home for his headquarters. He quietly urged General George Washington to open fire. The home was destroyed, and Nelson died bankrupt.

Francis Lewis had his home and properties destroyed. The enemy jailed his wife, and she died within a few months.

John Hart was driven from his wife's bedside as she was dying. Their 13 children fled for their lives. His fields and his gristmill were laid to waste. For more than a year he lived in forests and caves, returning home to find his wife dead and his children vanished. A few weeks later he died from exhaustion and a broken heart. Norris and Livingston suffered similar fates.

Such were the stories and sacrifices of the American Revolution. These were not wild-eyed, rabble-rousing ruffians. They were soft-spoken men of means and education. They had security, but they valued liberty more. Standing tall, straight, and unwavering, they pledged: "For the support of this declaration, with firm reliance on the protection of the divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."

They gave you and me a free and independent America. The history books never told you a lot about what happened in the Revolutionary War. We didn't fight just the British. We were British subjects at that time and we fought our own government! Some of us take these liberties so much for granted, but we shouldn't. So, take a few minutes while enjoying your 4th of July holiday and silently thank these patriots. It's not much to ask for the price they paid.

Now, I'm not asking you all to get all gung-ho and patriotic all the sudden - entirely too much to ask in this day and age. All I'd like, is for you readers to take a brief moment to consider the character of these brave men, and ask yourself "would I have the same strength of will to stand up for my beliefs like they did?" These men were soldiers too, fighting for what they believed in, and many paid a horrible price. They fought not only for themselves, but for their families, their neighbors - for everyone who believed in that way of life. They were all heroes, and not all got monuments or holidays named after themselves. Very few real heroes get the accolades they deserve. The common soldier, or policeman, fireman, paramedic, schoolteacher, father, mother - these folks are heroes too. They fight their own battles every day - stalwart, not complaining, doing the best they can all the time, whenever they are needed.

America does NOT have a monopoly on heroes, either. The soldiers of all countries are viewed as heroes by their people, whether it's the USA, Canada, England, France, Germany, Israel, Russia, Italy - or any other country. Their members serve to protect the way of life of the people of their beloved homelands, whether they have mandatory service, or they are volunteers. In wartime or in peace, they stand ready to defend. The same is true of all the other people I mentioned above - they all do their part, what they see as their duty. And I salute them all.

So, with all this rambling, what exactly is Tot trying to say? Yes, it is Independence Day here in America - but even if you are not a citizen of the USA, take a moment today, to think to yourself of someone you consider a hero, who gave of themselves for the betterment of other people. And if you can't thank them in person - thank them in your head, for what they did, and might continue to do. It won't take long, and you might discover something about yourself you never knew before, while doing it. And to all the people that read what I rant about here - I thank you as well.

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Wednesday, 21 June 2000 2200Z
The end of an era... -Totentanz

Fair Warning. This is not going to be pretty. I have written and rewritten this post, after giving myself what I hoped was adequate time to cool down, so I don't get myself into too much trouble. We'll see if I'm successful or not. Ok, here I go. deep breath.....ok, hit it.

GSI killed off Phat Dragon. And Bundy has left in protest of the way the entire issue was handled. Tot is NOT a happy Warrior right now, trust me.

Ok, some background is in order here, I guess. Any of the oldsters that readers know the deal behind Phatty, but some of the newbloods might need some background. Nobody, with the exception of a select few people, know who the the Fat Dragon was, or if he was truly real or not. I would find it difficult to believe that anyone could actually act the way he did in all the stories - Hell, it's hard enough work typing like he speaks, never mind acting like he does. What I do know is that it's some of the funniest damned TF-related stuff I have EVER read in my life. PhD is completely politically incorrect, but the first thing you need to realize is that it is SATIRE. Once you get past the surface, and read it again, you realize there's a lot more to PhD's antics than meets the eye, quite often. I myself take great offense at things like homophobia, and other forms of utter stupidity - but when you read PhD, you knew the deal behind all that. Brilliant work, actually - hidden behind the veneer of what looks like the misadventures of a complete idiot. My favourite story is one of how PhD gets on a server, autoteams (he always autoteams) and gets assigned Red. Teams are then red has 3, and 8 on blue. A person on red says "someone switch please", and PhD say "OK", and goes Blue - making it 9 to 2.Nobody else on blue switches. The rest of the story details the price blue pays for not evening up the teams - having PhD on their team. LOL, it's great stuff.

However, getting to the point - it's true that PhD wasn't exactly what you'd call PC - far from it. But anyone who read it, who took the time to think bout it - who was in tune with the gaming community as a whole - they would realize that it was merely satire, and take it at that. However, in this day and age it seems that people are unwilling to bother to TRY to think in the least, and instead look for things to cut down and rail against. It only took ONE email - one barely more literate than one of PhD's posts - to get GSI to bring the hammer down on what they considered as "unsuitable material". Never mind that the page had been there for as long as PlanetFortress had been around as an entity. Never mind that it had gotten lots of positive fanmail from people who actually knew the deal behind it. I would add other comments in here, but I'm trying to be more neutral, and not go into a complete rant here.

Ok, fine - it's not like Phatty had much to say as of late, anyhow - Bundy said he was going to talk with him about taking it down anyways, cause it had sat dormant for so long. However, the GSI management decided to say to get it off the server, NOW - without giving Bundy the courtesy of contacting him over the issue and personally expressing their concerns to him. For those of you that don't know, Bundy has a LOT of history in the TF community, even before PlanetFortress came into existance. He was one of the founding members of the Doomsday Newswire - a TF community webpage popular back in the day. The staff of that page became THE people that brought us PlanetFortress - Bundy, The Hal, Spaceman Spiff, DieHard and others whose names I sadly cannot recall at this point. They set THE standard for TF community pages, and Bundy has been in the trenches with the rest all of that time. To get treated like that - with no consideration whatsoever - is a slap in the face. Let's face it - yes, GSI provides the hardware and the bandwidth for the Planet sites - but who provides the content, that makes people come there in the first place, so they can see the banner ads that are there. Yes, it's the "little people", like Bundy - unpaid volunteers that crank out material that make people come and read the pages. They are the ones that generate all the hits. But I should have expected the change in mentality from when it went from a fan community centric idea, to big business. You cease being a person, and just become an entry in a debit/credit column when that happens.

So, in light of the treatment Bundy got in this issue, he has severed ALL ties with GSI-related matters. He's told me he's tossed his PF and PQ email accounts, asked to be removed from the PF Admin list, etc. And you know, I don't blame him ONE bit - I know the inside story as to what happened, and I'm not amused either. Since he's not going to have access to his old PF email account anymore - if anyone wishes to send him email about comments on this issue, feedback on his contributions here, etc - you can send it to me, and I'll forward it to him. Presently he's out of town on urgent personal business, but when he returns, I'll forward any correspondance to him. People that already know him and are friends with him have his personal email address already, so you can contact him that way. I've contacted some of the people he might not have been able to before he had to leave, and will continue to do so.

Finally, he sadly asked to be completely disassociated with anything here on PF as well - to include the name of the page. So at present myself and Teatime are trying to come up with a new name for the page. If we cannot come up with any strokes of genius, we can always just call it "The Fort". If anyone has any good ideas, email us with them, and you might be the one to gain infamy for renaming this place - as much as it hurts me to have to do so.

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Tuesday, 13 June 2000 2300Z
Reality Check... -Teatime

TFC is dead, TF1.5 is a completely new game!

… or so they say.

Yes, the changes are there and it’s no use denying they influence the game to some extent.

But let’s give it a closer look.

The gameplay relevant changes are:

-         Netcode

-         Changed behaviour of C-Jumping (basically removal of the handheld jump)

-         HWG runs faster while firing AC

-         General limited of type1 grens to 2

All other alleged changes are unconfirmed and would have to been proven first before being taken into account. In fact Robin Walker denied the rumour that the Scout would have been slowed down (read it here).

Let’s get even more closer:

Netcode:

It was impatiently awaited by almost everybody. And I think most people are quite satisfied with it. It has some effects we have to get used to (like being killed by a HPB sniper after retreating behind a corner) and it influenced almost every class in a varying degree.

The class most profiting from the netcode is the sniper, followed closely by the HWG.

I suspect that some of the  reports about slower rockets or pipebombs could actually be more netcode related than to changes in the game physics. But I’m no rocket scientist, so take this just as a guess.

All in all I’d say the netcode is the least controversial change in TFC.

C-Jumps: 

The more I play the more I ask myself why Valve bothered to remove the handheld jump in the first place. I’d bet my soul (if I’d had any to begin with :-)) that in one month most people will c-jump as easy as before. Sure, it looks like a few jumps are not doable any more, or require double c-jumps. But basically it will be much like nothing had changed.

Yes, I’m sure the difference will be more visible in clan matches, but I guess it won’t change general gameplay after adaptation.

HWG: 

Faster and more deadly now. A “running and thinking sentry gun”.

Yes, I can see the impact that will have. The HWG have become a greater threat to light classes as before, yet here we have a class to counter the all-too-powerful soldier. Quite devastating in higher numbers.

But the question is if the increased power of the HWG lies more in the new netcode (faster spin-on, easier to lead) or the fact that he moves faster.

No personal opinion on my side yet! Just allow me the remark that conc-grenades should work well against HWG’s.

Gren Limit: 

In my unworthy opinion this is the change with highest impact on gameplay (given that those darn snipers let you get close enough to use your grens).

Some people claim Valve did that to reduce spam (also a very popular opinion when they limited the mirvs in 1.0.1.6). But on the other hand these people who supposedly limit grens to reduce spam give you a map which single content is spam? (for those who would not have guessed: dustbowl). Does that make sense?

Let me give you my theory: Less type1 grens force you to use them more sparely and therefore smarter. If Defense is good even the most efficient use of those few grens won’t suffice. Ergo you will need assistance on O. You will need a teammate to make up for the damage you no longer can hand out.

It has been stated several times that the sum of the changes favour D to O. Though I’m not completely comfortable with this statement I think it’s safe to say that Offense will have to be better organized and working closer together than before to get through enemy D.

I’m sure I will be immediately corrected by clan people stating that in clan matches teamwork is already excellent with few room for improvement.

But allow me to say that with D being easier you will have more people you can use on O (something which has been pointed out before by other people as well).

When clan matches previously featured 5D to 3O clans now might work with 4D/4O or even 3D/5O.

To sum it up: I think the gren reduction was a measure to encourage (or maybe even enforce) teamwork. This makes definitely more sense for pub games than clan matches, yet I think the “superior” teamwork (yes, that was sarcasm) should compensate the loss.

In a post on the PF forum I mentioned compromises clans would have to endure in favour of pub games. This IMO is one such compromise.

I expect to be flamed for that :-)

So, is TF1.5 a new game? I don’t think so.

Does it feel different? Yes. But one reason for that is the netcode with its multiple small side effects. Together with all other changes it is a bit overwhelming. Each change alone would not have been that “alienating” (annoying probably, but not alienating), yet all together gives the game a more unfamiliar face than it actually should have.

Please note that even with all said above I’m still working on my opinion about the patch.

Right now I feel people overreacting to the changes without really evaluating how the changes will work out in the end.

They played in very good clans and were barely able to cap against other good clans. Now they have less grens to start with so the chances to cap drop, easy equation, right? I think these people should step back for a moment and try to give the game a fresh, unbiased look. The new netcode alone should force you to give the different classes a fresh approach and consequently you should re-evaluate all your tactics and O/D-layouts.

I don’t think TFC is dead. Yet I think it has to be redefined.

The rules have changed a bit. Not that much as people claim. Yet enough that some old procedures no longer apply. The sooner some people realize that the sooner they might discover that the game can still be played efficiently after all, maybe even on a competitive level.

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Sunday, 11 June 2000 2100Z

The Patch... -Teatime

Hmm … yes, I think coming generations will likely refer to the recent HL-patch as “The Patch”. The one that changed everything. The one that destroyed TFC. Or evolved. Whatever.

Let’s make one thing clear from the start: The patch happened. No whining or bitching or begging or reasoning will make it disappear and magically restore 1.0.1.6. That is history. Deal with it.

What options does that offer us?

A number of people are already displaying their strong dislike on the patch based on the gameplay changes. Those intelligent enough are even making some very valid points how the changes effect the playability and the feeling of the game.

As it is unlikely that TFC will ever be what it was before the patch I encourage those people to look for “more truthful” versions of TF. Q3F is already known as a very truthful remake of QWTF. TeamAssault as another TF-Mod for Quake3 is still under development, as well as the TF-Mod for UT. So there *are* alternatives to TFC.

The rest of us will have to adept. Period.

Whatever reasons Valve had to implement those changes to the game, don’t expect them to change their mind now. Valve knew that these changes would cause a major outcry on the community, so no petition will make them change their minds.

I will not start to speculate about Valve’s reasons for these changes. I have my own ideas, but that’s not the point of this editorial.

However, it’s obvious that Valve tries to give gameplay a new direction. If for better or worse has yet to be seen. But TFS (the original creators of TF, now working at Valve) had a long history for making changes on the game. Maybe one of my fellow warriors Bundy or Totentanz will offer a better insight in the ever-changing face of TF during its time as QWTF. Or ask your friendly TF-veteran next door. But for the moment let me quote PainkilleR by one of his excellent posts on the PF forum: “This is a game that once had teleporters, flares, and flash grens. There was a time when some of the classes that people consider their favorites didn't even exist in this game. There were times when scouts were faster, when snipers could jump and shoot at the same time, and when hwguys could not move while they shot their asscan.”

So whatever the new gameplay turns out to be, it’s not necessarily final. I’m confident that after some time of adapting TF1.5 will show that some of the changes (beyond the technological advancements) were useful and enhanced the gameplay while others didn’t work out. Hopefully Valve then will keep the good aspects and correct those which didn’t work out by further tweaking or restoring. One could call this some kind of evolution.

The question remains if there were any need to change the game in the first place. Don’t look at me, look at Valve. I would be just as curious as you to learn about the motivation of Valve on these changes.

I guess now you’d like to know my take on the patch itself?

Well, let’s say I have no take so far :-).

I’m convinced noone can make any valid predictions about the way TF1.5 will turn out until having played it a few days. The new gameplay will require different teamwork and different tactics, as well as a completely different approach towards certain classes. Before the patch snipers were just an annoyance. Now they are a deadly force. HWG’s were fastfood for skilled soldiers and pyros, but now it’s not so easy anymore (In fact now the HWG is more than a match for the former uber-soldier). Medics were the flying kings on many maps. Maybe they will be it again, but only time will tell.

Let me get this straight: I don’t like every aspect of the patch. I think Valve made a few mistakes here. On the other hand some other aspects are looking very promising. I will watch how all these things turn out, what works for the game and what doesn’t.

So don’t expect any premature judgement on the patch from my side. IMNSHO there are already enough people out there making rash (and therefore unqualified) statements. And it doesn’t matter if people are praising the patch or condemning it. It’s way to early for both of it.

On a closing note allow me to link to an excellent post written by NatBone on the PF-forum about the poor behaviour displayed by many people during these last days. I liked it very much.

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Friday, 09 June 2000 1400Z
More fun with the patch... -Totentanz

Well, the moment many of us have waited for - and no few of us dreaded - has arrived. "The patch" for TFC from Valve has hit the community, and to read the PF Forums, it's creating quite the ruckus - to say the least. To put it mildly, Tot is rather disgusted with the reactions from entirely too many members of the community. Actually, disgusted might be too mild of a word to use, to be honest. By looking at the timestamps on the forums from some of the posts bitching about it - it seems that all too many people played for an hour, perhaps 2 - that then ran pell-mell to whine, moan, bitch and complain that it sucks, etc. Well, lemme tell you something - if you haven't put in a good, SOLID 4-6 hours of playing with the patch, on different servers, in differing conditions - you don't know the REAL deal with it. Now, I'm not saying it's perfect - far from it, cause I've alredy encountered some annoying "issues" with it, that I'm told were NOT present in the playtester versions. Anyhow, you know what this means, don't you?

Yes, the TFC Reform Project comes out of hibernation again. Here is Tot's battle plan with this thing:
1) I will be making a "laundry list" of all the issues from the previous version. What I'm looking for, is people that are willing to help us all out, by going thru the list, and testing to see if each of them has been addressed. Once that is completed, I'll update the list of issues, because of....
2) with the introduction of TF1.5, a few brand-new issues have been introduced. I will be making a completely seperate section for TF1.5. Hopefully, we can get cracking on this, and strike while the iron is still hot, and Valve is still in the mood to deal with problems with the mod.

What does this mean? It means I'm looking for bug submissions for stuff you have found in TF1.5. If you wish to support this effort, drop me an email detailing the issues you have found, and please title it "TF1.5 bugs". I don't want to hear your whining, bitching, moaning or complaining in these submissions - I'm anticipating a veritable flood of email on this matter. If you want to send your usual flames, comments abuse, use another subject line. People who fail to follow directions may be subject to public ridicule on the Fort, for all the world to see that you cannot pay attention to detail.

The next few days should see quite a few more posts here on the Fort, and TF1.5 fever takes hold, with it's attendant insanity. And with luck, soon another honourable Warrior will join the ranks here at Fort Bundy. I won't say anything else, as I prefer to let them do their own introduction once they do come onboard - but I WILL say that I'm pumped about having this Warrior join the cause here.

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Saturday, 27 May 2000 1300Z
Corrections and more comments ... -Totentanz

Bleh, note to self - when writing any other scathing editorials, if you don't have time to double- and triple-check you wording and all, then don't upload it until you do so. :( Folks, because of some excess zeal on my part, and being so pissed off about this issue, I made a coupla mistakes, which I'll now correct.

I've had some email correspondance with cliffe from the CounterStrike devteam in the last day, about some of the stuff I did say, and some of the things I allegedly said - which I worded poorly due to haste in writing, and came out wrong.Ok, time to run it down.

First, myself - like many others in the community - were under the impression that that cliffe was the first person to made public comments about the new netcode and such. He informed me that he only did that after the cat was let out of the bag by another site, and that he had personally asked the Valve staff if it was ok for him to comment, and got the green light. Later on, in one of Gabe's interviews, he said for people to check out cliffe's comments, at that point endorsing HIS particular info.
For this gaffe, I owe cliffe a personal apology. I acted on incomplete info - as I do NOT read all the other sites and especially not about all the other mods. There are exactly 2 mods for HL I have ANY interest about at all, and that is TFC/TF 1.5, and CS. I'll make more personal comments about CS later, after I finish corrections. So, cliffe, sorry about posting inaccurate info about that, and thank you for being professional and mature in correcting me, and filling me in on some info I did not have before. Folks, I'm happy to say cliffe is a 100% class act.

Second, I made a HUGE error in wording - due to the haste with wanting to get the update published to the webpage, and still make it into work on time that night. The quote I made about modmakers was poorly worded, and stirred up a real hornet's nest of problems, and I want to apologize to the ENTIRE CounterStrike devteam for that one screwup. Below is how it SHOULD have read - had I taken more time to think things out and say everything I wanted to, although it's still technically incorrect now, given the info I got from cliffe:

And then there's the other side - the Modmakers. We've all seen the CS team break confidentiality by coming out and talking about the netcode and all. They've also given out estimated release dates for the patch - and last I looked, they were not Valve employees. Now, I don't know about you, but although I really don't think that the CS team is the culprit - due to their great working relationship with Valve that they would NOT want to jeopardize - but I know where my money lies on the betting of the source of the leak. From some other modmaker who got the advance info. Perhaps the modmakers themselves did not make it available as "warez" - perhaps they gave it to a trusted "friend" who did so. But I stick with my belief that it was a modmaker, NOT a playtester, that leaked it.

Screwups like this, folks - especially when running an editorial site, are one of the thing that can get you the most amount of flak, folks. One of my personal heroes in the gaming editorial business, Sentinel, used to catch all kinds of crap for things he said. We both have thick skins and can take the abuse, fortunately. :) Tot just needs to remember to take his time and do more than just run the column thru a spelling and grammar checker. I think I need to go back to getting hold of my old outside proofreader before posting anything again - it might keep the temperatures down and keep the power bill for the Air Conditioning a bit lower on the fort. :P

Ok, I believe that sums up all the corrections and apologies I needed to make - now on to other business. As you might expect, this little business stirred up a firestorm of emails. As per my longstanding policy, any emails that aren't outright abusive and obscene, that that are at least somewhat intelligible, DO get responses. So, all of you gung-ho CS supporters that wrote in, I'll be getting back to you in the next day or two. Just remember, if you decided to be an idiot in your email to me, expect to get shots back in return as well. Oh, and for the ASSHOLE that decided to send me a me a .vbs virus as an email attachment - nice try, sparky. I'm not senile yet. :P

Oh, and someone made a comment in one email that I'm "a bit jealous on CS, aren't you". Now, that comment makes no sense whatsoever. I'm not a modmaker, to be jealous that CS is doing so good. In fact, I used to enjoy the hell out of CS beta5.2 - when I could find wanker-free servers to play on. Which I couldn't find too many, thanks to the overwhelming number of TKing arseholes, people using the see-thru-walls cheat, and then shooting thru the walls, and finally that cursed Trainer that came out, that TOTALLY hosed the game. After this recent conversation with cliffe, he assured me that his team, with assistance from Valve as well, are working to make the next version as cheat-free as they can. I look forward to seeing what else they can come up with for this impressive mod, even tho I'll freely admit that Team Fortress is my preference.

Anyhow, I'm going to wrap this up now. Rants, comments, and yes, more flames - you know where to send them. Now if you'll excuse me, I hear the damnable siren call of the Diablo2 stresstest calling me again.

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Thursday, 25 May 2000 0230Z
Comments on the Patch leak... -Totentanz

Set_rant_mode= ON

I'll make this short and bitter, as this one has REALLY got Tot irate.

I have it on VERY good authority, that the Betatester patch binaries are UNABLE to start either a LAN server or a normal multiplayer server. It was disabled in the code. I repeat, that's in the test binaries that Valve distributed to their "trusted" betatesters. No, I don't know the build number offhand.

This leaves a couple of possibilities for this leaked TF 1.5 patch that seems to be making it's way around the net. One, and a rather UNlikely one, is that someone in Valve leaked it purposely. Since they've had a history of playing things close to their chest, and since thet have certain signed agreements with Sierra on how they do things - I don't consider this one as too probable. The other, is that one of the Mod makers that have received an advance copy of it, so that they can do work on their Mod - that they leaked it to someone. This to me is a lot more probably, as if you remember, the first people to break any "official" news about the new netcode, and it's changes on the playability - were members of the CounterStrike development team.

Okie, let's do the math, people. On one hand, we have Valve, known for not giving out much info to the public, and keeping to themselves. Known to keep working at things until they think it's good enough for them, instead of releasing incremental patches, like id Software does. Myself, after conversations with the Valve devteam on the status of the patch - *I* would have released it a while back - to fix the majority of the bugs that are out there - and then released another patch with the new functionality. But they chose to hold off until their idea of the "total package" was completed to their specs, and tested to Sierra's specs, as per contract. Now, do you really think this group of people is going to let something leak out, "before it's done"?

And then there's the other side - the Modmakers. We've all seen the CS team break confidentiality by coming out and talking about the netcode and all. They've also given out estimated release dates for the patch - and last I looked, they were not Valve employees. Now, I don't know about you, but I know where my money lies on the betting of the source of the leak.

Oh, and one other thing. I just love it when people make statements about the patch - when they don't know a damned thing about what it actually does. I read the PF forums on a regular basis, and I love seeing all these people talking out their arses about "Valve ruined this, and they ruined that, and TFC is dead". Tip for all you wankers - Try waiting until the patch ACTUALLY comes out, and play it for a bit. Then, and only then will you have enough concrete data to see what has changed in the playing dynamic of TF. Because, for right now, all you geniuses are saying is mere conjecture, and a LOT of hot air. Even the betatest isn't a completely comprehensive test. All the beta testers are most likely experienced TF/TFC players. They know what's right and wrong, and know how to properly play the game. The true test will be when Joe PubPlayer gets hold of the new thing, and we see how they deal with the changes - and how their adjusted playing style changes the game for everyone. The clannies will take a week, maybe two - adjust their strategies and drive on. They'll probably STILL go with the "by any means to win" mindset, tho - a big reason I dropped from the TFC clan scene - it's just not FUN anymore. But wait and see when you do have the FINAL patch in hand, and have played it for a while, to see how the changes impact the game, eh?

In the (paraphrased)words of a comrade of mine, DieHard - " After the newsie release, a complete re-install was needed once the offical patch came out. I hope this will have to happen for this as well." Well, Tot shares that sentiment also. When you sign on to be a betatester for ANY product, you fully realize that it might have adverse effect on your system. I really hope the leaked warezmonkey people get what they deserve. To quote my man DieHard again - "It is simple an issue of morals, honor, and respect -- you show none of these" Fort Bundy salutes DieHard - one of a dying breed of people that sticks by their principles, and that personifies the principles we espouse here on the Fort - Honour, Sportsmanship and Team Play.

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Thursday, 04 May 2000 1930Z
Reality Check time, people... -Totentanz

Ok, So I was selfish, and took some time to myself to do some stuff I wanted to do, after my last update here at the fort - so sue me. Sometimes it's hard to keep updating this place alone, when you've got other things you want to do. I haven't heard from Bundy-sama in 7 weeks, but he DID tell me he was going on an extended business trip, and may be incommunicado for the duration. Still, it does get lonely here alone, and I've been seriously considering bringing in reinforcements to the place. The place gets kinda lonesome when yer a solo act, and the echoes of single footsteps start to do things to your mind. We'll see what comes up in the next coupla weeks or so.

Well, once again it's time to do "damage control". I tend to read a LOT of the TF-related pages and message boards out there, even if I don't post on them. I tend to limit my message board posting in this area to the PF ones - plenty going on there alone, I don't need to stir up any more controversy elsewhere - I seem to do that well enough when I post here. :P Ok, let's run down the listing, shall we?

Item#1 - comments I made about Team Assault, in particular, the ones relating to it being "a dark horse". Well, if you've done any significent studies of the English language, etc - you'd know EXACTLY what I meant by that, and not get your panties all in a wad about the comment. In politics, a dark horse contender was one who wasn't viewed by the masses as one favoured to win. One that didn't get the same exposure and whatnot as the others. It is by no means meant as a slight to the TA team. As I said, I'm looking forward to seeing what they present as their vision of an updated version of QWTF. But it seems that someone read that comment, and ran off to the TA forums with a Chicken Little "the sky is falling" mindset. Goodness, get a grip, ok? Let's run down the facts that led me to making that statement that TA has some catching-up to do.
FACT: Q3F has had 3 test versions that used several clans, to help work on play balance and other issues. And now 2 open Beta releases. TA has none, that I'm aware of.
FACT: there are already announcements for no less than 3 Q3F leagues forming up, despite it's clearly Beta status, with the play balance issues that WILL be occuring. This tends to indicate the level of community support, and feeling towards the Q3F product, in spite of it's state in it's own development cycle.
FACT: Q3F has gotten some rather positive press in the big 3 Quake webages - Blues News, sCary's Shugashack, and Redwood's @Stomped. This has definitely added to it's visibility in the mainstream DM community, and has brought in an influx of newbies, some good, some bad. I've seen some mention of the UTFortress port, too. I can't recall the last time TA got any press there.

This tends to make things look rosy for Q3F, and not as such for the TA team. What to do about this - don't ask me. TA already has a very capable PR person on their staff, and I think it should be his job to present their project in the best light they can, and to continue to drum up enthusiasm for it. However, with a dearth of visual goodies, his job is complicated. I'll sit back and wait to see a product, and review it fairly and objectively against the other products in the community it will be going up against. I wish the best of luck to the TA development team.

Item #2 - this phenomenon, the so-called "Gaming Preservation Official Anti-clan sentiment ". Well, this is a rather interesting issue here. Reminds me quite a bit about the older "True Mercenary" movement, that started with all the impact of a turd in a punchbowl, and eventually worked out ok in the end. Now I don't know what the real goal of this thing is, and no, I don't intend to put up a link to it, either. You can get one from all the other newsie pages posting about it - I don't intend to dignify it with any further attention, myself. The signal to noise ratio at that place is rather low. I've only got a coupla comments to make about this entire hullabaloo.
1> Asshole clans happen. period. They're composed of asshole gamers, who seem to naturally gravitate together, like flies to a fresh turd. Labelling ALL clans as bad, because of the actions and behavior of some mental midgets and social retards is nothing short of idiotic, and in the very least extremely closeminded. Which is disturbingly close behavior to the people you're kvetching about. Hmmmm. Stop and think about that one for a moment, Ace...
2> Things like this tend to attract first a bandwagon motion. I just love sheep that cease thinking for themselves."I had a bad experience with some clan people, so I'll join up with this guy". Gotta love that. Then word get out, and an opposition forms up, and they usually lug over their jumbo-economy-size flamethrowers, and all sorts of logic breaks down, and that's usually when the signal to noise ratio dives thru the floor. *IF* the original webmaster had ANY sort of intelligent message, it has usually been completely drowned out by this assault, and they usually switch to a more offensive tactic on their main page as a result. Queue the downward spiral here, eh? Then the news pages get hold of this ongoing flamewar, and all the sudden all sorts of people come over, and a small blaze becomes a towering inferno. The actual message gets lost, in favour of the festivities going on that caused all the sensationalism. What gets accomplished as a result? ZERO! Then, sometimes things die down a bit, and some calmer minds try to come in, and do some mitigation/damage control. If it's still too active, they get flamed as well. Otherwise, some intelligence returns, the noise level recedes, and usually the activity just fades out of the limelight after a while. But we must have our Bread and Circuses first, of course. :P

I'm personally not going to give this den of lunacy anymore publicity that I haven't at this point. They aren't worth my time, and quite frankly, I don't think they're worth the time being spent posting news about it on the webpages. People who think that all clans are bad, because they have a coupla bad experiences with crappy ones, need to remember how to use their brains and THINK again. But's it's so much easier to point a finger and cry foul, isn't it? Thought denotes taking responsibility, and heaven forbid we be FORCED to take responsibility for our own actions - that comment, BTW, goes to all parties in all issues. It's just so fitting here. :P

Item#3 - Ok, one to stir the pot here, eh? I haven't done that in a long time. Right now, the attitude of the TF community in general really sucks. I mean, it's just pitiful. The public beta release of Q3F had some small part in that. Since it got press in the mainstream DM pages, we got an influx of curious DMBs wondering what all the hoopla was about. I'll make no bones that I don't like the DM mindset - all personal glory, nothing for the better of a TEAM. I've seen all to many DMers with the " I'll pwn j00 anytime" attitude, so I tune it out. However, lately on the PF forums at least, I've seen the trolls come out in droves. We usually have a fairly friendly environment there, and but the signal/noise level has gone down for a while. And it sucks. Here's some simple guidelines for life, that all too many people have forgotten: Don't be a dick. Treat others as you would them to treat you. Simple, ain't it? If you don't like people demeaning you, and insulting your intelligence - then DON'T DO IT YOURSELF! Granted, not everyone reading this is acting like preks - in fact, most likely the people that DO bother to read the Fort are NOT preks. It's just a shame that a small amount of cretins can reduce the enjoyment factor so easily.

Item#4 - and this is a doozy, trust me. All this stupid conjecture and whining about the upcoming TFC patch is just ludicrous. Unless you're a Valve Beta-tester - and if that is the case, you are SUPPOSED to be under an NDA to not talk about what you see, from my understanding - the ONLY concrete facts we have about this is what Gabe Newell has put out in Press Releases. A recent post on the PF Forums, which seemed to come from Yahn Bernier himself, and does look legit - was not confirmed either. So, the only info we can take as gospel, is what Gabe said - "We've decreased the distance a concussion grenade throws you. It's still possible to do some impressive conc jumps, but you can't jump from one battlement to the other in 2fort." Now, that's something Uncle Tot is definitely in favour of. I highly doubt it was EVER the intent of the game designers to allow concjumpers to reach a damned Low Earth Orbit with the bloody things. Myself personally, do NOT like the handheld concjump at all - I remember the old style one from QWTF - that I never quite mastered. You needed practice and skill to pull that off on a regular basis. With the handheld conc, even a scrub like me can fly anywhere. Funny, I don't recall seeing the scout or medic wearing a jetpack to be able to do it - Oh wait, isn't that a feature of the AirScout in MegaTF? *grin*
And people are complaining about other reputed changes, without having any concrete info to base them on. Folks, the development team at Valve includes Robin Walker and John Cook - 2 of the people that dreamed up and made TF. It's THEIR game, geez. There are also several mappers from the TF community on board as well. I find it hard to believe that these people would purposely make changes to destroy TFC. They do extensive playtesting to make sure the overall dynamic isn't made so it's too mangled. You've got to believe they're NOT going to make arbitrary changes, cause they're bored, or something, people. But the fact that they did wait so damned long is something I'll leave alone, for those dark ruminations when I'm deep in my cups. :|
And keeping on this subject, I see on the front page of PF, a story which says, and I quote again: "We've received a number of e-mails on a petition going around to stop Valve from releasing the next TFC patch with the no-concussion-jumping fix in it." To which I've got but one thing to say - put down the crack pipe and take two steps back, and nobody will get hurt... First, they've got the info from Gabe quoted, and I wonder if ANY of them have a clue what the actual changes might really impact. I highly doubt it. Next, their "list" of signing people has many duplicate entries, and ones with bogus info - clean it up, kiddies. If you want it to look logical, reasonable and professional, take the time to do so.
Bleh, this is getting out of control. Here's a tip, ace - whining about stuff you have no concrete idea about exactly makes you look foolish. Just wait until they release the patch, play it for a ferw days, and see what the total change to the game dynamic is. THEN make some intelligent observations based on facts and make your protests then. Until you have that hard data, try not to embaress yourselves too much, hmm ??

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Wednesday, 05 April 2000 1600Z
Q3F review plus more... -Totentanz

Stop the presses! Two posts on Fort Bundy in 3 days, OMG! The world must be about to end, or something. Well, actually, I'll tell you the reason why updates have been so sparse, at least from myself, for so long. For a while there, I had basically lost almost ALL interest in TF. With the stasis that TFC maintenance was in, and my complete lack of enthusiasm in the clan aspect of TFC - caused mostly by the latter - I just didn't care much. I was more interested in chatter on the PF forums, things at work, and indulging in my other big hobby I have.

You see, I've got a secret to confess. I'm an Anime fanatic. Not to the extent that SailorScout is, where he changed his playing name to an anime-influenced one - but pretty close. I spend insane amounts of time watching it, reading webpages about it, on IRC channels talking with other enthusiasts. All because TF had failed to keep my attention, and I wandered away from it.

However, with the release of Q3F Beta1, I once again heard the sweet siren call of mistress TF, and came back. TFC had me really enthused for a while, but it didn't keep the level up there. I don't thing that will be a problem with Q3F. So, in the spirit of getting things rolling in a higher gear again, I've done my review of Q3F Beta1 right HERE. In the typical Fort Bundy style, it's long, it's wordy, it's irreverent at times - and it's all MY OPINION. If you don't like what I've got to say, toss me an Email and lemme know, huh? I'm willing to pursue any reasonable discussions, and arseholes that send unintelligent flames, well I reserve the right to ridicule them in public on the Fort. :P~ And when you get done reading it, and sending email to me if you so desire - Get out there and go play it, Warriors! Geez, it's one of the best things to come out in a while, you should go forth and slay.

Ok, onto other, community-related issues. If you scroll down to my February 6th update, in the bottom of that, I made a plea for being reasonable ansupportive of newbies. With the emergence of Q3F on the scene, this is even more important. The big problem ahead of the TF community, is that Q3 has a strong DM bias to it, since all they've seen up to now in it, is DM and the newer flavour of CTF, which I dislike. DMB's (DeathMatch Bastards) are for the most part, by nature, NOT teamplay-orientated. They come from a personal glory, "all for me, look at me pwn jur a$$" background. Many of them, quite frankly, are rude and direspectful jerks. I had the annoying experience 2 days ago, playing on a server, to run into one of these specimens. I was playing on q3f_2stag2, on offense, making flag runs. I was doing the usual thing, reporting where I dropped the flag, and location of enemy sentry guns - you know, the basic team communications. This cretin pipes up with "Shut up asshole, nobody wants to hear that shit". Usually I ignore idiots like that, but I was tired, so I replied, "shut up and learn how to play this game right, huh?". The only thing that mollified me at all, was that I got supportive comments from 3 of my teammates, one of whom said "you shut up and listen to Tot, he knows the deal". This made my day, hearing that.
What I want to get at, is YOU might run into one of these cretin DMB's with no clue. Don't sink to their level and shower them with abuse back. Try to teach them the RIGHT way to play TF. Who knows, they might become your new clanmate, if they learn how TF should be. TFers are better than the average DMB, in all sorts of ways. Let's continue to prove that, people.

Next, the state of TFC, and what's Tot going to do? I mentioned it in my review of Q3F, and I'll sum it up here.TFC just isn't doing it for me, in it's present form. Q3F has me VERY excited, I'm expecting much fragging goodness from there people. But to be completely fair, I'm going to wait until Valve gives us this promised patch for TFC. Then I'm going to stack the two against each others in several categories: Gameplay, Community support for leagues, support for the games themselves. Then I'm going to make a decision. As much as I hate to say it, but for me, I'll quote Highlander in saying "There can be only one." I only have time enough to seriously devote myself to ONE game, at clan level. I might play the other recreationally, on I might even delete it from my computer completely. The Future will see the result of that.

Oh, and yes, there's 2 other TF "ports" out there. There's something that's called UTFortress, in the early stages of development. Well, I don't know about you all, but I've got a pretty decent computer here. But when it takes almost 2 minutes for UT to fire up, and bring me to a menu, after launching it from the desktop - there's no way in hell I'm gonna go this path. And then there's TA, or Team Assault. This is the other Q3A-based TF port in the work that I know, also being developed by some other loyal TFers. However, after a personality clash with their PR guy, and apparently their project leader, the lack of visible progress on their webpage, and the fact that they're obviously behind the power curve in the release schedule, trailing Q3F - I see them as a dark horse, a longshot. However, when they do decide to release a functional version to the public, rest assured I will give them the same fair evaluation I gave Q3F. But for right now, I'm NOT holding my breath.

One final thing. I've gotten a couple of emails from people, asking that since I've dealt directly with Robin Walker and Erik Johnson from Valve software, if I have any info on an release date for TF2. It seems some clans have/had been gearing up for TF2, and with the release of Q3F, their members want to give that a shot. But the leaders want to know if TF2 is gonna hit anytime soon, so they won't be wasting their time with Q3F, and then having to switch to learning a completely different style of game. To this, I say - read my lips - I have NO inside information on TF2 whatsoever. Zero! nada! Zip! I'm privy to a bunch of information on TFC, much of which I cannot disclose. But as for TF2 - I know as much as any other Joe that reads all the webpages.

Welp, that's it for Uncle Tot for now. And if you'll excuse me, I've got a pocketful of third eyes I'm just dying to hand out to unsuspecting recipients. See you on the battlefield - in my gunsights, of course. ^_^

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Monday, 03 April 2000 1600Z
Catching up on stuff... -Totentanz

Well, it's been a while, hasn't it? Bundy-sama has been on another extended roadtrip for his job in Real Life(tm) and I've been....uhm....distracted by various other things, and neglecting the loyal readers of Fort Bundy. Sorry about that folks. I'm mulling over a solution to the dearth of updates, and if it works out, I'll let the cat out of the bag. But now, onto the important stuff. I've had a good month to collect rant materials, so here they come..

About 3 weeks ago, ole Tot got a bellyfull of something to get him going, snapped, and wrote a rather long and pointed but not quite disrespectful letter to Valve software, asking that it please be passed around to the development team. I'm not going to disclose the actual contents of said missive, but lemme tell you, it was a humdinger. To my complete surprise, shock and and pleasure, only hours later that very day I got a response back form none other than Robin Walker himself. This pleased me, as being he is one of the 2 people there that truly was Team Fortress Software, before they joined Valve. This led to a coupla emails being tossed back and forth on the various subjects I brought up in my letter, including the state of bugfixing, the time it has been taking to see the results of said bugfixing, the effect of this delay on the morale of the TF community, and it's flagging confidence in Valve, and that's possible effects on their interest in TF2 - amoung other issues.

Now, I'm NOT going to itemize things in detail, and there are some things I cannot say. However, the feedback I got from Robin was EXTREMELY encouraging, as to what outstanding issues are going to be addressed. I'm not saying that everything was addressed to MY particular liking, mind you. But it was encouraging, definitely. I don't have a firm date as to when we will see the patch, either - right now Valve doesn't have one. They gave me a ballpark timeframe, depending on if everything goes right - and trust me, it's not that much further now. If grouchy old Tot can have some patience in this matter, trust me, you can to.

As to the eternal question of WHY it's taking so bloody long, I CAN provide some illumination on that, actually. The thing most people fail to realize, is that Valve is NOT like id Software. id is in the enviable position where they can dictate terms to their producer, Activision - and get away with it. Their track record allows them that bit of latitude. Valve, on the other hand, is bound MUCH more tightly to Sierra - as is the case with the vast majority of the other game developers in the business. And Sierra, in case you don't know, is owned by Havas, which is a French corporation. So, not only does any product or update have to pass Valve's QA, It then has to go to Sierra's QA to be signed off on prior to release. In addition to the obvious trickle-down management hierarchy structure, is the importance that it placed on international releases with Sierra products.To quote Robin, "Halflife has US, Spanish, German, Italian, UK, French, and Korean versions." Now, follow my logic here, folks. The US/UK versions are essentially the same, but when you talk about the other version, you run into things like actual OS differences, Government regulations, and translations. For instance, to not be places on the "index" list in Germany, so they would not be prohibited from selling it on the shelf, and not being able to advertise it in magazines, etc - they had to substitute robots in place of the grunts, and you can't shoot the scientists or barneys. In that version of TFC, the distinctive skins/models where replaced by the robot as well - so the only way you could tell, is colours and the weapons it's carrying. Pain in the arse, huh? Translating the text is another challenge in itself. Any of you readers that are multilingual know that quite often there are NOT direct translations for everything. So they have to make sure all the menus read correctly, and yes, even those retarded signs you see in the levels have to be translated. Ensuring this is all done properly of course adds time to the development cycle, and has to be rechecked with every update. But it IS a requirement in Valve's contract with Sierra, so it is a step that is required to be taken. And this can only be done after the patch is in "code lockdown".

Add to this, the impending E3, and the premiere of Half-Life for the Sega Dreamcast. Although Valve themselves are NOT doing the actual porting/development of it - Gearbox is - You know for damned sure they are still being consulted about it, so it is eating some portion of Valve's time in providing some level of support for that project. To not assume so would be naive, IMNSHO.

So, what I'm saying is, yes it's been a long time coming. Yes, we've still got a bit more to wait - but it's not that much longer now. And I'm certain you'll be presently surprised once it does make it out, trust me.

Well, I wanted to touch base on a coupla other issues as well in this update, but after working all night, I've plumb run out of steam. If I get the time later today, I'll make another update, and touch on some community issues. I should have my review of the Q3F Beta1 done tonite, and have that available for your viewing displeasure tomorrow as well. Until then - what are you still doing here? Go go forth and frag !!

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Tuesday, 11 January 2000 2215Z
eV. != eV. -Totentanz

Ok, to say I'm a WEE BIT angry at present, might be a slight understatement. What's the subject line up there mean? Well, sit down, grab yourself a tasty beverage, and let Uncle Tot tell you a tale. Once upon a time, in a game called qwTF, there was a clan called, >V<, the Fifth Element. And they were good, and highly respected members of the community. As clans are wont to do, there was a difference of opinion, and they split. Some stayed, and kept the >V< thing going. The others formed a new clan, named "Evolution", using the tag eV. This was a real powerhouse clan, comprising of some of the most skilled player in TF. Well, later on an incident involving accusations of cheating occured, and resulting fiasco basically saw eV. go into hibernation. Now, I'm NOT going into the cheating allegations here - this is NOT the purpose of this post.

Fast forward to the 8th of January, year 2000. eV.DoomGerbil forwards a message to BTEG HQ - describing the existance of a TFC clan bearing the same tag of eV. Now, normally incidents of clan tag collisions would not call for a "Fort Bundy Fire Mission", but this one is a lot different. Not only are these cretins using the same tag, but they are calling themselves "Evolution" as well, their clan motto is "this time we HAVE walls." - a direct reference to the fiasco involving allegations of usage of hacked map in a match, and to top it off, on their little "about us" page, they explain the "story" behind the original eV. and end it off with "Anyways, our clan tag is eV. "

Ok, DoomGerbil states he had spoken with the leadership of this clan, and they (at the time) had agreed to change it, and end this disgrace. Later on, it turns out, that said leader of that clan gets voted out, and the go back to using the eV. tag, name, etc. BTEG publishes the first news story, a couple of their personnel visit aforementioned clan's page, and make some statements on their Forum. after some talk back and forth, Someone from the clan, calling themselves "-Moo-" stated on 9Jan2000, "ok, you guys win", and that they will be changing their name, etc. Now, we all see what happened the last time one of them said that. I think there is a need for some "gentle reminders" ^_^ that this conduct is not acceptable. This is a blatant lack of respect, and if I'm not mistaken, last I heard, there are NO members of the original eV. in this doppleganger. Now, going in, taking a clan's Tag, Name, and making these libelous statement - I don't know about you, but it shows to me a decided lack of moral fibre, and if they can go this low, who knows what they could be capable of, neh?

So, fellow Warriors, here's my request. I'm launching this from Fort Bundy, but this one is all mine. ANY grief with it, send it to ME, not Bundy-sama or the Webztermeister. HERE is the URL for the page of this group of Brodies. Now, in the menubar, they have a link to their forum. Go in there, and express your displeasure with what they have done. As of right now, only myself, and some of the BTEG staff, and one or two independants have said anything. I feel that they need a "gentle reminder" that their conduct is not acceptable. I plan to - along with the BTEG crew, to continue pressure on these "fine people"</sarcasm>, until they do as they have said they will do. If we let this one go, who knows what could be next - not from this crew, but from others. Put aside the controversy of the past, and take a stand for decency and integrity NOW.

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