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Old 03-02-2005, 08:03 PM   #99
o_pinkymcdoogle
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Posts Rated Helpful 0 Times
TFC...ahh...Best. Game. Ever.

It all started with Half-Life. See, I had this hot new Pentium 166 and a 3D Voodoo Banshee card (it was a 3D "accelerator" AND a 2D card...sweeeeeet!) and I had this hot new game, Half-Life, that I had been nerdily waiting for since I read the first preview of it a year earlier. Bought it the day it came out and had my friends over to play some hot-seat deathmatch the next day. We were never the same again.

We'd talk about things that happened in deathmatch as if they were real life, telling stories from first person perspectives as if we'd really jumped over a ledge and "popped some n00b in the face with the gauss gun." After growing dominant with the shotgun on Datacore and the crossbow on BootCamp, we began to tire just a bit of deathmatch...all twitch. Soon, though, TFC hit the net and that's when the REAL fun began.

We were awful to start with but the possibilities were mind boggling. Different classes, strategies, teamwork...the design was brilliant. I knew a little about QWTF but hadn't played it. From my first cap as a spy on 2Fort (brilliantly using the water to escape to 'trick' the other team!) I was hooked. Six years later, I'm still playing...with a major break or two in there.

The community really is where it's at...but for me it wasn't just a community of online friends but of my flesh-and-blood buddies...we'd set up Lan clans and hop online to whoop people en masse from one location, laughing and narrating our exploits in person. We'd talk about it at school, we kept in touch with online games while we were scattered across the country at different colleges, we actually hijaked one of our computer classes when still in high school and steered its devolution into a TFC Class that the teacher even got in on nearly every day. Hell, I mentioned TFC (partly in jest...but only partly) at my best friend's wedding...

I never was as into clans as my best bud (who I had turned onto the game) ended up getting. I was involved in too many extra-cirriculars and had too many jobs and responsibilities to allow me to get that involved...but I love TFC with every ounce of my being. TFC, to me, represents everything about my friends and about my high school life and about my hometown that I care about...there isn't much about that period for me that conjures positive memories. TFC conjures up more than "positive memories"...it conjures pure happiness. TFC is magic.

Just as throughout your TFC career you begin to add skills and proficiencies naturally through practice--the game grows organically--I grew as a person with it. Corny? Hell yes. But I don't care. I love this game.

I have no desire to see the elegance of TFC ruined with hitscan machine guns, more "realistic" additions, or any sort of economic system. TFC is the most skilled online game in existence, a game that rewards practice, curiousity, and talent more than any I've ever played. It does this thanks to a delicate balance of weaponry and player physics...I have no desire to see most of these things changed because I honestly don't feel they need changing. I hope FortressForever breathes some new life into Team Fortress and I hope it, above all else, retains the flavor of the game I love.
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