TF2 Newbs (Team Fortress 2) Blog

Today it was announced that all items/drops that were earned by players while using an idler will soon be removed, and that all players that didn’t ever idle will soon be rewarded with a new hat. Since most the people I knew idled, I thought I’d go ahead and post some shots of what the halo looks like:

Be sure to check out the TF2 Newbs servers, all server starters (first six players on any server) are rewarded with the ability to wear any in game hat (including the halo!)

Update: The halo’s proper name is ‘Aura of Incorruptibility’

The August 13th Update brought joy, hate, and new hats to the land of Team Fortress 2. The goods news is that Valve fixed a hand full of problems, added a handful of features and gave all the classes 2 (and in some cases 3 if you count ‘no hat’) new hats. The excitement surrounding the release wasn’t nearly as wild as a typical class update, but I did see a bump in user counts and saw less bitching about the FaN.

Now onto the meh – Each afternoon I look at my friends list and think “oh wow, TF2 is poppin’ today” until I realize that its just a bunch of people idling for hats. So I began to think how I could save myself from this daily disappointment. After many hours, and countless reams of paper with scrawled notes and calculations I finally had achieved my goal. I had formulated a plan to make the world a better place for everyone. Well at least Newbs.

The plan is simple. Reward people who play on the servers with hats. Yup, you got it – TF2 Newbs is giving away the New Team Fortress 2 hats for free to players. But wait, theres a catch :( I know I know, you’re expecting me to say that you need to sign over power of attorney before you get the hats right? No? Oh.. Hmm. Anyways… So, the catch is that the hats ONLY work on the tf2newbs.com servers. Thats right, you can come in, hang out, borrow a hat, but when you leave you have to leave it with the coat room clerk.

I know what you’re thinking, how can I afford to give away hats to everyone? The answer is simple, I can’t. So I’m going to have to do this as a limited offer. How is this going to work you ask? After much consideration I decided that the lifeblood of the community are the players that are determined to play on a Newbs server, regardless of who is on, and even more importantly even if there aren’t other players on. Yup – I’m rewarding the true heroes of each day, the server starters!

From now until I say otherwise, the players that are on a server when the player count (on teams) reaches 6 will be rewarded with access to our new hats command ‘ !hatme ‘. So if you want hats, join an empty server, get 5 of your friends on, and BAM hats. The hats will be available to you by menu until you leave the server, or the map changes.

There are probably a few players out there that have played on other servers that do have ‘hats’ as a feature, some of them might even be available to everyone that joins, but they probably don’t have a feature that we have (Unless you’re on the nNn clan server). Our hats work on all classes. Yup, you heard that right – you can be an scout with an engineer hat, and you can be a demo with a ushka. Any combination works, and they mostly all look good :)

What you don’t believe me? Well heres some previews..

I’ll update in a couple days with some more pictures, maybe some without me taunting. Oh yeah, this offer is good on servers 3-8 + Arena currently, servers #1,2,2.5 and #10 will be added when possible.

Servers:
#3 24/7 Badwater 113.212.76.6:27015
#4 24/7 2fort (Octo-land) 69.12.98.121:27015
#5 24/7 2fort (Koans Kingdom) 69.12.37.15:27015
#6 Custom Rotation (Koans Kingdom) 69.12.37.16:27015
#7 24/7 Payload Rotation 69.12.37.14:27015
#8 Stock Rotation (Octo) 69.12.37.3:27015
Arena [Chicago] 69.12.91.12:27015

Forum Discussion: http://www.tf2newbs.com/forum/index.php/topic,3745.0.html

Hey guys,

Scott here after a brief hiatus that saw me get addicted to World of Warcraft, drive across Canada, and buy and return a laptop. None of these events were related, but I’ve been a busy little fat man.

So anyway, as I was sitting in a meeting today I had an urge to doodle. And then I had a better idea. I wanted to see what the creative sorts of the Newbs community could draw. We’ve all seen Forte’s arts (and t-shirts and mousepads and such), and we know Dingo can forge stuff out of pure refined awesomeness, but I don’t really know what other people are capable of.

So I propose a contest. A recurring contest, where I am the only one who can’t win.

I propose… an art contest.

“But Scott,” you say, “I have no artistic skills!”

Well, neither do I. And you don’t need them, exactly. See, I won’t be judging these on quality. Oh no. I’m looking for whatever picture tickles me juuuuust right. To quote Family Guy, “That tickles me in a way that if Loretta tickled me in that way I’d say ‘Oh yeah, that’s nice’”.

It can be funny. It can be cool. It can be so mindbendingly awesome it reduces me to a puddle of goo and I have to spend the rest of the life having some annoyingly perky nurse mop the drool off my chin so I don’t gurgle. I’d obviously prefer one of the first two.

So, enough of the preamble. What’s in it for you?

Well, prizes obviously. I haven’t quite worked out the details, but I possess the rare ability to purchase items through Steam and deposit them into your account. It’s like voodoo, except it works (zing!). I can also possibly wrangle up a reserved slot, or if you want I could twist Octo’s arm until he coughs up a t-shirt. The choice could be yours.

Intrigued? You better be.

Now for the important bit. What you have to draw.

For the inaugural Scott’s Ultimate Art Newbs Contest (aka the SUANC), you will draw me…
…

a ROCKET CAKE

Interpret that however you want. It doesn’t have to be TF2-related if you don’t want it to be. The picture I like best wins.

You have 2 weeks. Deadline for submissions will be August 21st. A winner will be announced and contacted not long after.

The winning entry will be featured on the blog, and possibly elsewhere if I can get a gallery organized. I might post all the entries just for fun, depends on how I feel on the 22nd.

You can submit entries by sending me a link to where it’s hosted (I’m on Steam, look me up), or by emailing them to me at “scott at qv7 dot net”. Just convert that into a real email address. Put something about the contest in your subject line and also include your Steam ID if you’re not already on my friends list.

I look forward to seeing what your twisted little minds can come up with :D

Update:
1) If you enter multiple times, your second picture is compared to your first, and I get more critical.
2) Your entry doesn’t have to be a hand-drawn thing, it could also be photoshop, or a picture of a thing you made, etc

For those of you who don’t know, Jigen wants a beanie. Like, REALLY wants a beanie. Beats me why, seeing how he’s a spy.

But anyway, Valve is being a bit of a jerk about this. They don’t want to give Jigen a beanie. And that makes me, among other things, sad.

See, Jigen’s a good guy. And I hate when good guys can’t get stuff.

Luckily he has a solution. Money.

As mentioned in this thread, he’s going to be buying a real beanie, and will most likely wear it everywhere, all the time. And take pictures to share with us all.

So, who would like to help donate to the Get Jigen a Beanie fund? You’ll be helping a great cause, and a great source of potential hilarity.

Grey Devil reporting in. Newbs’ resident crab-of-many-names.

A lot of members from Newbs have been spurned by the new item drop system (I know I have). And while the system may not be perfect, Koans decided on Sunday to give users what they wanted. No, not the new unlocks (but I’m sure he would if he could), he went one better over Valve. He threw another (in)famous Newbs Instant Contest: Win Koans’ Money!

Nothing gets people motivated more than cold. hard. cash.

What kind of depraved, whorish, insane shennanigans did Koans’ twisted mind come up with this time around? He challenged the #4 2fort server engineers to build a full setup in the other team’s sink room. Having to build a lvl 3 sentry, lvl 3 dispenser, and working teleporter (exit in sink room and entrance in the home base) proved to be quite difficult and Koans kept everyone motivated by doubling the prize.

There were a few people who got very close (Scott, Ggg, Steven and a few others) but in the end Waffle Frohman rose to the occasion and was victorious! Congratulations. I do hope everyone had a good time, keep an eye out because you never know when and where the next instant contest might be.

On a related note: I’d like to personally thank Koans for putting the time, expense and effort in keeping the community a great place to be. You dont have to be an admin to make these contributions; so if you’d like to donate money, complete something in Octo’s to-do list or anything else you can think of that benefits Newbs you’re welcome to do so.