about 9"

Match tomorrow I guess...

I guess this is nothing unusual in a gaming community, but I've been watching ESEA since season 7 and I feel like the TF2 community has been hoping for something else for a long time.
IMO the prize pool argument is worthless as soon as you consider the time invested by the players in the top 4 invite teams. Return on investment with TF2 is pretty piss poor for anyone who values their time.
My point: Everyone who plays TF2 plays it because they like it.
Only trade scammers really try to make money from it and I think we all agree that they can just eat shit and die.

The NA 6's community enjoys exclusivity, and there's nothing wrong with that until they complain about not having enough teams/money. TF2 is not as big as other games, but many of the people in ESEA have the skills and ability to recruit more people to the league from pubs, pugs, UGC or wherever; that would require humility, charisma and patience... so they don't really do that.

Agreed, if the current mood is still "If you don't like 6's and our(community) attitude exactly as is then you're welcome to just leave or ignore it." then threads like this will become more common and b4nny will no longer have other teams to give him money.
I'm not personally invested either way, but from an outside point of view I agree that many players are turned away from 6's who maybe would have strengthened the scene. Corsa is probably correct that comp TF2 players aren't as big o' dicks as CS:GO, Overwatch or DOTA 2 top level players, but they also have more to lose by not trying to grow their league.

So this thread seems kind of derailed.

What I can gather from it:
Most 6's players have no interest in pursuing a league other than ESEA even though many of the players can't afford to play in ESEA... ? (based on the call for donations in the Invite Happenings thread)

UGC will continue as usual so long as people decide to do something other than pub all day.

Competitive TF2 is clearly in decline, although the trolling "former bigshots" from the old days are extremely rude to disregard all the people who still want to play comp TF2. (that's my nice way of summing them up)

and most importantly.... ESEA S25 Invite, is it happening or not? Do we have a lineup of teams yet? Edit: just noticed that scheduling has started even though it appears that teams aren't paid up. So these INVITE TEAMS are final?

At some point one of them got passionate about making money when they started dropping crates into peoples backpacks and selling keys to open them... and the game was forever changed.

how much are fees?

edit: ... just waiting for article to announce whether or not invite is happening. : /

In the future I'd sell stuff on marketplace to get people some paypal cash if it means the survival of a league, but is it too late for that now? Plus I'd hate to put a bunch of money up for a team that folds 3 weeks in. Best of luck to those wanting to play.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H07zYvkNYL8

eXtine
Because of his dedication to the game and the community for such a long time. For years he has put out casts, special feature videos, his work with Sal and Pyyyour, yyyaaaooo vlog, attendance to LANs, endorsing fundraisers, advocating tf2 to Valve and sponsors, etc.
He's a fun caster, if not the most technical or precise, but overall involvement with the community makes him the best in my mind.

Turkey with mushroom gravy, peas, carrots and potatoes.

Laird Hamilton

Windows 10 creeps me out. The first time my PC booted itself up at night to run an update I thought I had been hacked, and I think there's a lot more data collection going on than other operating systems.
I didn't even want to "upgrade to it" it just kind of happened, basically it was not fully consensual and I feel violated.

Edit: if RAM usage is the issue I'd just find a good deal on better laptop RAM, Windows bullshit cannot be stopped...

the medic drops

just amazing...
nothing has changed and yet... everything has changed

what is the cost of sponsoring a team in tf2 invite?
since no LAN anymore seems like costs would only be for membership and servers...