I'll look into it - we're providing servers, and may use a custom config, but probably will use the CEVO whitelist or something similar.

Player names, mostly - admins need to be able to see your "themed names".

Well, it's a HL tournament so we'll be using a HL whitelist...

Any reason you're hoping for the CEVO whitelist?

For whatever reason I really like the idea of the ESEA site functioning as a dating site.

"Hello dear, I saw your profile and became interested - e-mail me and we can swap pics."
"Sorry ma'am, looking at your team history, I just don't think we're compatible."

I just laughed for like 10 minutes at this. I think I should sleep.

I have actually had some conversations with private companies about resources they could provide for the TF2 community. The unfortunate thing is, the companies that are small enough to benefit from providing said resources are too small to fund (or run) a league. Some of these talks are ongoing, however.

On the other hand, I'm some combination of not well known and not well liked enough to feel like I truly speak for the community. I'm also incredibly busy with my actual professional obligations.

TF2 needs more money in general, and not just for this.

With the growing dissatisfaction with ESEA, it's become clear that people want another league.... but a league that cares about TF2 and has a professional staff, established anti-cheat team, good servers and most importantly a prize pool and ideally a LAN. All of that takes money that doesn't exist.

While I realize it's a pipe dream, it might be worth it for the community to actually pool our resources and seek a sponsor together. Praying for Valve to grace us with the funds seems like praying for rain in the Sahara. If it were going to come, it seems like it should have done so already.

I'm also in the awkward age bracket where it'd be weird for me to walk around by myself/with friends, but none of us have kids to walk around with yet (or, you know, any plans on kids...). I suspect this is the age bracket Halloween parties were meant to cover, but I don't really like parties. D:

We break them into groups, and do finals between groups. So you only truly "round robin" against 4 or so other teams.

I'm happy to see people like PYYYOUR standing up for some sort of principle and not playing. However, I'm sad to see talented teams dropping from the league without going anywhere else. If Watch This moved to CEVO and dropped ESEA I think it would be the kind of high profile migration we NEED to see... but for them to just drop, it feels more like players abandoning the game :(

There's also a population of known hackers who make fresh accounts and play low level pugs (it's happened before, where the person turned out to be the poorly concealed alt of an account with several VAC bans). Warning people to give them a heads up isn't a bad call.

TF2's main viewership is TF2 players, which causes a lot of problems.

I watch streams in the background sometimes when I'm doing homework, or when there's a major match I want to watch, but other than that - I usually prefer playing, as I imagine many other people do.

It's possible that the irc pug scene could help viewership by promoting streams in channel, so people have something to watch while waiting for a game to fill. However, this would still bring in only relatively pathetic numbers.

Making content interesting for non-TF2 players, and engaging to someone who doesn't know the game that well, is a huge challenge, but I think it would help TF2s viewership overall.

Took this test 4 years ago and was an ENFP. Took it now and was an ENFP. Huh. I feel like I've changed more than that.

Extrovert (44%)
Intuitive (50%)
Feeling (25%)
Perceiving (78%)

ENFP is "The Inspirer" according to the personalitypage link. I'm not so sure if I agree with the specifics of it, but it fits well enough. Also, this page reads like a horoscope...

Realized I can finish the analysis for my second paper (and potentially make progress to getting my PhD a year early) if I spend this weekend working. Feel like, long term, that's better for me than going to LAN. Sad about the sunk ticket cost, tho - if there's a way to give my ticket to someone else, I'd like to.

Have fun.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ffsh5dP8In4 (or really anything by the National)

Also, recently, I found http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_xH7noaqTA (yeah, yeah, it blew up on reddit). I don't understand the language, but it's pretty good at capturing the feel.

A little more drunkenly, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91U4_UfhSSw.

Again, you might not understand the lyrics, but http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OuFnuhXUBc is also pretty sad.

I would pay to doublemix with mirelin but I'm shit at everything that's not med (which I'm only relatively less shit at). Also, ping (I'm NA).

I think some of it will depend on the atmosphere you're going for. "Donate for Maks to drunkenly sing his national anthem" would be funny, but only if you're mostly casual.

If you're mostly streaming yourselves PLAYING, rather than speccing, I think "donate to specify my class/loadout" is fun. "Right now I'm stuck running mantreads, rocket jumper and pain train. Please donate so I can do some actual damage!"

Potentially you could also do semi-public mentoring raffles. "Donate to see kaidus discuss rollouts" (actually don't do that because he did that for the i49 thing and the VODs are still available, but maybe something similar). Alternatively, "donate to have zebbosai review your team's demo on stream".

As for servers, I can provide either an NY server or a Chicago server, depending on which you want. (I, in conjunction with TrashedGamers, provided the servers for the PvP event (mine was the NY server), although they were being attacked that weekend, which was unfortunate).