TFW Raptor has to give mature advice in order for people to stop taking sheepy's baits.

He has really grown up BibleThump

I would come, need a PC to rent though.

Signups for DeutschLAN 2016 are open!

http://etf2l.org/2016/04/18/deutschlan-2016-signups-open/

We also set up a DeutschLAN PayPal account. Anyone who wishes to contribute is very welcome to do so.
Send your donations to donations@deutschlan.tf!
In case valve will add medals for this event again, every donator will receive a supporter medal (donation >20€).

We are currently looking for sponsors (companies, organisations, websites...). If you have any suggestions/contacts, we would be thankful if you shared them with us.

Everything else you need to know is in included in the newpost linked above.

Yours, Stinson_Out

.

If you can’t escape your past, make it your future.

It feels like just yesterday we came home from last year’s event, and it is not quite tomorrow, but we are happy to present you the Highlander-exclusive LAN-highlight of the year:

The very second Team Fortress 2 DeutschLAN!

WHEN?
From 9th – 11th September 2016!
(Maybe some NA players who linger around Europe after i58 are able to come?)

WHERE?
Natur Ferienpark, Nieheim Germany! (www.mtalan.de).

WHAT?
A community Highlander LAN-event at the end of summer.
We will have enough spots for 12 Highlanderteams this year, potentially 2 more (uncertain).

Realtalk: What does this cost?
“Ticket” + 2 nights (Friday- Sunday) will cost you 100€ per person (+20€ for early arrival on Thursday, 8th), not including travel cost.
This is slightly more than last year due to taxes and the park raising its prices, but still highly affordable in our opinion.
Details about where to wire the money will be sent to you via Email once you filled out the form on the signup page.

SIGNUPS:
Signups will open in late march/early april. We just want to get the information out there for now so gamers can plan ahead. We will provide you with the signup-link.
One player of your team (does not have to be the ETF2L Teamleader) will collect and transfer the signup fee from all 9 players.
To sign up your team you only need to transfer 50% of the fee (= 450€ + early arrival + breakfast-special) for the time being, the 2nd half can be payed later. However, due to the limited amount of houses and thus teams that can participate, we recommend to transfer the whole fee (= 900€ + early arrival + breakfast-special) right away. (We withhold the right to reserve houses for Premiership-teams, especially the defending champions.)
In your reason for payment you will have to put the text that is sent to you via email after registering.
Please note that the tenant is liable for everything that happens in his/her team’s house. We did not have any complaints last year and want to keep it that way. We appeal to every participant to behave and treat everyone and everything with the respect and common sense. This LAN will hopefully not be the last one of its kind, we do not want to have any troubles with the owners of the park.

Requirements:
Every teamleader (and only the teamleader) will have to add me to ensure fast and efficient communication.
Every team has to have a teampage on etf2l.org (Highlander Team, Fun Team or LAN Team) with all its 9 players on the roster, ideally stating who will play what class. This is invaluable for our production team. There is no minimum requirement in terms of skill-level.
You will also need to bring your own PC/Laptop as well as peripherals and LAN cables.

Sooo…. Where do I sleep and stuff?
In case you don’t know it already: the Natur Ferienpark Nieheim offers the unique possibility for teams to reserve their own holiday houses to game and sleep in. Most houses have 8 beds, so some of the players might have to stay in a different house overnight. While that sounds bad, it turned out to be not a problem last year with staffmembers and couples staying in separate houses anyway. Of course you can set up your PC in your team’s house.
The houses offer 2 bedrooms, 8 beds and a fully equipped kitchen as well as a small terrace for Barbeques (Skeej make me ribs please).

I am underaged and still want to come.
You need to be at least 16 years old in order to participate.
Every tenant needs to be at least 18 years of age and has to check that every minor in the house has a guardian. These are the requirements of the MTA organizers.
The guardian and the minor are to remain sober for the whole duration of the event.
The parent, the guardian as well as the underaged person him/herself need to sign a document that states that:

– The guardian is a legal guardian by the minor’s parents’ permission for the whole duration of the journey (dates), as well as the specific participation at the DeutschLAN 2016
– The minor’s PC is free of viruses or illegal content as well as content that is not suitable for minors
– Neither of the two LAN participants is going to drink alcohol/ take drugs
– The document needs to contain copies of the minor’s, the guardian’s and the parent’s passports / IDs

We do not legally claim that the information given above is complete and correct.

Please note, that we do, to a certain extend, also accept “tourists” (i.e. players without teams). Contact me if you wish to come to LAN but not play and we will figure something out.

Sponsorship
We do not have sponsors at this point of time. Tips and proposals are welcome. Please contact Hildreth to do so.
We are uncertain if there will be a fundraiser this time.

How do I get there?

You can take a flight to nearby airports, like Cologne, Paderborn or Dortmund. The place does not have a train station itself, although some smaller ones are nearby (Sandebeck, Steinheim, Altenbeken). We are working on a solution to get you to the actual village from those stations via shuttle service or something comparable. To book a train ticket visit http://www.bahn.de/p_en/view/index.shtml .
Some train connections are rather expensive, check out http://meinfernbus.de/en for a possibly cheaper and faster way to get to Paderborn/Bielefeld and then take a train from there.

The official topic for this event is on ETF2L.org forums (http://etf2l.org/forum/lan/topic-32642), but you can go ahead and ask questions here. I will try to answer them all at some point.

Want to stay informed? Follow me on twitter to be the first to know: http://www.twitter.com/Stinson_OutTF2

You can also join our Official Steamgroup: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/deutschlantf2

Thats it for now! Now go out and spread the word! Hype!

Gotta be honest, after I saw this had 7 pages I lost interest in reading everything and just minus-fragged everything schocky said.

Anyone who wants to check out the new rc2 can do that in the upcoming ETF2L cup on Thursday. This map will be played in the group stages as a mandatory map.

Hello fellow Teamfortress.tv community!

For those of you who do not check ETF2L.org regularly, I am posting the announcement of said Cup in here.
Group Stages will be held on January 7th with the K.O. stages on January 14th.

Signups close Wednesday, 6th at 21 CET/ 3pm EST. Any regular 6v6 team or funteam with 6 players on its ETF2L-roster is eligible to play. Teams from other regions are also welcome, but will have to play on EU servers (at least when facing an EU-team).

Interested? Click the link below for more info:

http://etf2l.org/2016/01/04/announcing-etf2l-6v6-preseason-23-cup/

See you around and have a good start to 2016!

MTA will not host this LAN again if we are 9 teams. They want to earn money as well and for them it is only profitable if we have 16 or more teams. I may be able to convince them if we were 1-2 teams short, but this year they literally only allowed it to do us a favour.

I agree, the intimacy of only nine teams is also what made this LAN fun, but that is not up to us to decide.

What´s next for Highlander, LANs and competitive TF2? I am by no means an expert, but I got to know a lot of different people over the course of this event and its preparations. Elazul asked me on Sunday, if I was aware that we wrote history. It is an interesting question. I would not go that far, but we definetly set a milestone. We have proven Highlander is extremely LANable. We have proven you can have loads of fun on a Highlander LAN, even if you do not care about HL that much or are a respected and decorated member of the 6v6 community and regardless of your skill level. We literally had open-mid teams playing against Premiership(winners).
To quote CanFo, the ETF2L adminlegend: “I don’t give a crap about Highlander, but this was fun!”
I am sure a lot more players could have come, but decided not to just because it was for Highlander. I know I am probably fighting a long lost battle here, but LANs are crucial for a videogame community to grow and these kind of events do not happen very often for TF2. I think it is really retarded to not come to a LAN, where everything sounds awesome except that you don’t play 6v6 but 9v9. I have seen people be hyped for Foungi´s idea, saying this place looks so great for playing games, they can get there very easily and chill and have a great weekend and they would definetly come, but then did not “because Highlander”. Sadly this mentality is very popular, dividing our already small community in two for the most part.
This Team Fortress 2 community, although small in numbers, is highly competent and dedicated. There are so many awesome websites, content creators and events that are made only by the players. The vast majority of these do not generate any profits, they are simply made for people equally as fascinated as they are.
It is a bummer Valve does not do a lot to support events like Tip of the Hats, Insomnia LANs or even DeutschLAN. Adding medals/pins is a nice gesture, but often those are made by the community as well, so they are not overloading themselves with work. Do not get me wrong here- I appreciate the addition of our DeutschLAN medals. However, I do think it is weird Valve would not do more for this competitive community, that clearly has a lot of interest and power already. I mean, look at Tip of the Hats! How much money did they raise? It was roundabout 180.000 USD last time I checked before I went to bed. Those guys are heroes!
I hope matchmaking will be a success. If done well (hell, even decently), it could generate a wave of new competitive TF2 players. Maybe then we will get more attention from Valve. But right now we are on our own and we are doing a damn good job with what is given to us.
“Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.” –Dr. Seuss

Love, Stinson_Out | ETF2L.org | DeutschLAN.tf

Why am I telling you this? Although it might sound like I see myself as a hero, I actually really, really don’t. I am not writing this to dissemble me some appreciation or even pity (this thought will lead me to another very important question later, hang in there).
Quite the contrary, this would not have been possible at all if it was not for a shit ton of other people. At no point of time was I working on this LAN for the sake of appreciation or fame or any rewards. I never expected any medals or community weapons or praises. I wanted to do something for the community that I could be proud of. That’s literally all there is to it.
I am more trying to direct the attention towards those, that have been working behind the scenes a lot, or even people that you did not even know were contributing. I am not the kind of guy that enjoys the spotlight. Foungi´s and my name were somewhat attached to this LAN, but we could never have done it alone.
People and organisations I am very thankful for. I really hope I am not forgetting anybody, if so then it is probably because my brain practically runs on autopilot at this point.
There are loads of factors and people that made this LAN as amazing as it was. Without some of them, the LAN would not have been possible to begin with. Without others, this LAN would only have been half as cool as it was.
First of all, thanks to you guys! Without your interest and hype, DeutschLAN never would have happened. If nobody had picked up the idea on the forums, if nobody would have responded to that post, none of this would have happened. Tons of people donated money and items towards our project, although they knew exactly they would not be able to be part of it. I cannot stress enough what a motivation it was for all of us to feel the energy that came from you!
Thanks to MTA for hosting this event and believing in us, although we ended up with less teams than anticipated. They easily could have shut down this LAN with a swipe of their pen.
Valve for adding our medals to the game.
Thanks to TF2Pickup.net who filled the gap after we lost our main sponsor. The relation between staffs was always very smooth and filled with mutual respect and appreciation.
Thanks to our donators, especially Guyovich! It is crazy and still gives me goose bumps to think we raised ~2.500 €, although we were practically strangers to you!
Thanks to ETF2L for letting me abuse their homepage up to a point where it started to annoy people. Sorry to my fellow admin friends that I left hanging because I did not do any proper work for the league itself in the past months.
Thanks to the participants! My god, it was amazing to meet you all and see people show up to what had started as just another idea that bites the dust in the forums. Some of you had insanely long and exhausting trips to even get to DeutschLAN (and back), up to 15-20 hours.
Thanks to some unsung heroes: The casters of the showmatches and LANgames, Prph@ for handling all the server stuff at LAN, although he never volunteered for anything. To Yggdrasil & friends, who did a lot of artwork for us. To Jon, who was never technically a staffmember but got caught up in the idea no less than us. You guys out there cannot even imagine how much time and energy he put into this project. Without him, this LAN would have been a huge disappointment. Honestly, thanks so much Jon!
To my fellow staffmembers Hartz, Kkaltuu and Foungi. We all had never organized a LAN before and made a couple of (highly avoidable) mistakes, but we did it, boys!!
DeutschLAN was made from the community for the community. All we did was channel the willingness of many people.

DeutschLAN 2016??? Even before the LAN was completely over, people already approached me and were wondering if this would be an annual thing.
Honestly? Right now, I have no idea. At the moment, despite all the amazing memories that are still really fresh and flying around in my head, I feel a little bit burned out. I cannot speak for the other staffmembers, but I do not know today, if there is going to be a DeutschLAN 2016. I know it would be a shame if there wasn’t. But this is where my story from earlier gets picked up again: I personally procrastinated a whole bunch of things that “normal people” (running out of words) would rate much less important than a videogaming community. I definetly did neglect my education as well as my personal life and other hobbies for quite a while in different ways and changing intensities. If you asked me now and wanted a definite answer, it would probably be a “No”. It was a great experience; I do not regret anything, but do need a couple of months now to fix some stuff.
We would need a lot more teams next year. If there was a DeutschLAN 2016 and I am involved, it would definetly only be in Nieheim at MTA again. Although this place has some undeniable drawbacks, I cannot imagine starting from scratch. A whole bunch of things would run automatically that we had to work out with almost painful effort. I do not see myself approaching another venue, having to get to know and trust different business partners and locations than this one. That would simply take too much time and effort for me. This LAN was also special because it took place right there in Nieheim, Germany.
Generally, though: anyone who has another idea where you could host a LAN- just go ahead and do it! It is not actually difficult, it just takes time and dedication. The community needs makers. Without makers there cannot be growth and progress.

Hello there. The following is a huge text that I wrote a day after I came back from LAN. Just some things I had on my mind, didnt touch it for a week and only edited some things in. I did not really want to publish it but people kept asking for it so here I go. If you are not interested in this, feel free to ignore it.
Its a personal ramble... nothing official.

Also it doesnt fit into one post so i have to divide it into two... enjoy!

DeutschLAN 2015: A personal and inofficial LANalysis by Stinson_Out

Now that DeutschLAN 2015 is over, there are a lot of thoughts on my mind that I cannot get rid off, so I have to write them down. I am sharing this with the community, not because I think that my opinion really matters or that anyone cares about everything that will be in here. But some infos will definetly be of interest and answer a lot of questions people inevitably will have. So if you can spare a couple of minutes, you should read this. I will try to make it interesting enough for you to read all the way through. But be warned: this is gonna be a long one and as I am writing this, I am not sure how long it will be or where it will take me.
I am still processing last weekend (LAN-weekend) and all the impressions and experiences are still somewhat flooding my brain. I will try to put them in an order, but cannot promise I will succeed.
First of all, when I got home on Sunday evening, I felt incredibly exhausted. A lot of tension that had built up to the LAN left my body and the adrenaline of the weekend had decayed. It was not very late in the evening (maybe 9 pm), but after I had taken all my stuff out of my car and up to my apartment, I instantly threw myself onto my bed without unpacking or setting up my PC. However, it did not take long for me to realize that there was no way I would be able to sleep any time soon.
I was caught between the exhaust and the bubble of happiness I had been in all weekend; between sadness because this weekend went over so fast and relief that it is over and I could rest; between this very relief and the prospect of the work still has to be done.
About medals and perks. I have mentioned it already in a small post. Technically there is nothing standing in the way of distributing both, but it has to be done very methodically so nothing will be forgotten and nobody overlooked. In order to be able to do this, I – and my staffmates – need to have a fresh mind and body, which I personally do not have at the moment. On my end, a lot of things have to be sorted out, online as well as IRL. It may take some time, but I am better safe than sorry. Rest assured, though: we are not forgetting anything.
You may ask: “Why is he talking about not having enough time and yet molesting us with this diary-entry?” And you would be right. But I have to write this, for me more than for anyone actually ending up reading this.
Reflecting DeutschLAN. Overall I think the LAN can be called a success. I did not meet anyone on site that did not have a crazy good time. This is – by far – the most important fact. Only if the participants and players of a LAN enjoyed the weekend, LANs can be called successful and have a chance of continuation. I am almost certain all players would come again next year, if their schedules and wallets will allow it.
Of course there were and still are hiccups. For the first round on Saturday unfortunately our servers crashed one after another because they did not work with the TFTrue-fix that had been released after Thursday´s update. The internet connection on site was not the best or ideal for a LAN. We had terrible pings towards any outside servers, streams and videos started to lag very fast when people watched them at the same time. Teams had to set up with 9 people on just one room, having to use every inch of space.
Was it a perfect LAN? God, no. But the tournament itself was really smooth, the schedule we had created proved to be challenging but worked out extremely well. Teams would have enough time to visit each other´s houses in between matches to call GGs and share a beer and snacks – and they did. It was really cool to see people, who are basically strangers to each other, walk into another team´s house and have a chat with them about the game they just played, regardless of their in-game skill level or preference of gamemode. I specifically remember a lot of people raised (very reasonable) concerns about the concept of a LAN with team houses when the idea of this LAN first came up on the ETF2L-forums – long before it would eventually become reality: Teams would be “isolated” and “separated” from each other. This was not the case at all. Every night after games there was an after-hour-party kind of mentality and large groups build up in the houses that simply enjoyed hanging out and having a good time. This is what the LAN also was intended to be: a community type of event – competitive but chilled. From that point of view DeutschLAN was honestly probably the best we could have hoped for.
My personal involvement in DeutschLAN. When I read Foungi´s idea on the Forums at the end of last year, I was immediately intrigued by the thought of helping and realizing his vision.
This may sound cheesy, but ever since I started playing competitive TF2, I was having a ton of fun organizing. Before I even played my first official, I made my own Highlander team and started looking for players. As a teamleader you quickly get to know people, since you have to schedule scrims and all that sort of stuff. You also get in contact with admins, because you don’t know how to use this ETF2L.org website properly. I admired the admins for their voluntary work. I applied to ETF2L adminship, because I wanted to contribute, to create something that helps the community (grow). It very quickly became apparent I would not be able to do that as a player, due to the severe lack of talent.
I saw an opportunity and contacted Foungi. In the beginning the meetings were really messy and we all had different ideas and vague visions of how to organize a LAN. Simply put, we had no clue what to do. Foungi had contacted MTA and they showed interest of hosting this LAN, although they had never done anything else than Counter Strike. Even when I published the original post of the Main Thread on ETF2L we basically did not know at all if this was doable, but we very slowly made our way towards specifics. In April we decided it was time to open the signups. That’s where things actually got really busy, where for the first time, people believed this could be a thing.
Kkaltuu set up the fundraiser on Indiegogo, we worked out the perksystem together and started the fundraiser. That’s where I think I began to take over a lot of the work; it is hard to tell when exactly in retrospective. From that point on I spent way more time on DeutschLAN than I both had originally intended and I had at my disposal. It was a lot of fun for the most part. There were definitely times where I was close to quitting, especially after our last showmatches got sabotaged. Despite the hype this idea and the announcement of the LAN (as well as the fundraiser actually) had gotten, fewer teams than anticipated signed up. In addition we lost our main sponsor due to an unfortunate chain of events. All that brought me close to throwing.
Instead I put more and more effort into it. I commited – as Foungi would later phrase it adequately, though on a completely unrelated note – “academic suicide”. I didn’t mind and realize it that much at the time, Kkaltuu Foungi and Hartz as my staffmembers helped me not to lose my mind and we all had this “dream” of DeutschLAN.
In a way I did fulfill a little dream. We have done something unique, possibly the first Teamfortress 2 LAN of its kind. I am thankful I had the opportunity to be part of this.

Holy shit this gave me the chills.

Insane work and insane community!

Loved it so much,

comp.tf has an article for deutschlan..

we all do