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<\/a><\/p>\nIt’s been a while since I was in. This is not a reflection of Team Fortress 2, which remains as fun as ever, but is a byproduct of my intense and self-destructive Champions Online habit. (Yesterday I managed to level a character from concept to level 15 in under five hours. His name: Dr. Arson. His story: Not yet written. His powers: Probably in need of nerfing.) <\/p>\n
Wonderduck asked<\/a>:<\/p>\n Headsets are not required. I would say about a third of the players participate in the voice chat. The servers use “alltalk”, which means everyone can hear the voice chat of both teams. (If you want to do teamwork, you can use text chat, which can be sent to team-only.) This keeps the game lighthearted and banter-ish instead of competitive and rant-y. The server exists, in my mind, to welcome rookies to the game and be a friendly playground where they can feel free to suck for as long as they like without anyone giving them a hard time. I consider griefing or being hostile towards newbies to be a ban-worthy offense. There are players of all skill levels in there, and the game itself is built to try to make learning as painless as possible. (But this is<\/em> a multiplayer FPS, so do expect to die a lot while learning.) <\/p>\n In order to preserve this atmosphere, I’ve added a couple of mods (who will hopefully say hi in the comments) in order to make up for the loss of Rutskarn<\/a>, who has gone on to college. (Sniff. They grow up so fast, don’t they?) <\/p>\n