1981

Thanks guys. I’m happy to keep using it. I’ll get SourceMod in there (map voting). Maybe we’ll have gold rush to check out this friday too.

1982

Gold Rush is (edit again) LIVE. And there’s this announcement regarding a free TF2 weekend, including the new stuff.

April 29, 2008 - Valve, creators of award-winning games and leading technologies, today announced a series of events for the title PC Gamer and Gamespy.com named 2007’s Multiplayer Game of the Year, Team Fortress 2.

First, the Team Fortress 2: Gold Rush Update (www.steamgames.com/goldrush) is now available, free to owners of Team Fortress 2 via Steam, a leading online platform for PC games with over 15 million accounts worldwide. The Gold Rush Update introduces the new Gold Rush map and Payload gameplay style, the first set of unlockable weapons, and a new set of achievements for the Medic.

Valve also announced a worldwide Team Fortress 2 Free Weekend will begin Friday at noon PDT, and will include access to the new content released today in the TF2: Gold Rush Update. Using the functionality made available through Steam and Steamworks, all of the files needed to join the Free Weekend are available for pre-loading now.

“Since Valve released Team Fortress Classic nine years ago this month as a free add-on for Half-Life owners, Valve has continuously looked for new ways to support the players of its online games,” said Gabe Newell, president and co-founder of Valve. “Following in that tradition, today owners of all PC versions of Team Fortress 2 will automatically receive a free update containing new gameplay, weapons, and achievements by connecting to Steam, a platform built for gamers and creators of online games.”

The Free Weekend is open to players around the world, and there is no obligation to purchase to participate; all that is needed is a Steam account to join.

To start pre-loading everything you need to play on Friday and learn more about Team Fortress 2, please visit www.steamgames.com/goldrush

1983

Will do my best to join in Friday again. What time are we starting? Last week I saw a post here that said 10pm EDT, but the Steam event was listed as 11pm EDT…

1984

It’s always 10, but for some reason it’s often mislabelled and shows up as an hour later.

1985

Ho. Ly. Shit.

Playing a game tonight was exactly what you would have expected. Getting into a server, even one using a non-Goldrush map, was nigh impossible. Once you did get in, at least 50% of both teams were medic (on the 1UP/GFW server, my team had 9 medics). I’m also pretty sure that a few players had already earned the Blutsaugher, and it was saughing my blut all over the place.

Holding an “achievement obtaining session” with a few friends is looking a lot more reasonable now. I’m all for challenges in games and earning rewards, but maybe not in this situation.

1986

I really enjoyed the new map, I think, but the medic madness sort of killed it for me.

After a while, I just gave up and went medic, got some achievements, then got bored.

I don’t understand why they only rolled out one classes unlocks, I can’t see the upside to that decision.

1987

I had trouble joining games too. I like the new game mode and the map is pretty cool as well, but yeah, everyone was running either a medic or a heavy. We’ll see how it balances out after some time passes.

1988

Just a quick FYI:

You can unlock all of the new medic achievements (and thus, the new medic equipment) via console commands. There are no hoops to jump through, you can just enter the achievement_unlock or whatever for the ones you want. As more people take advantage, it should cut down on the 4:1 medic ratios on pubs.

I’ll post the .cfg for it if the catassers who actually give a shit about achievements can promise not to bitch too much.

1989

achievement_unlock_all unlocks everything i think, at least that’s what i’ve read.

Meh, can only check the new stuff next weekend ;_;

1990

You guys are kidding, right? There’s a console cheat code that completely wrecks the whole point of the achievements? That can’t possibly not be an oversight on Valve’s part.

1991

The forums i read mentioned that they used that and it worked and that there were other people using it as well. Although it seems you have to fiddle around with your CFG folder.

And yeah, it is surely an oversight by Valve. They were probably too busy playing GTA4 and forgot to remove it.

1992

Nope, just tried it, works perfectly.

If this wasn’t intended I have no doubt it will all be reset soon but I only really care about getting the weapons anyway.

1993

Wow, quite an oversight by valve there.

I bet it’s one they can fix though. They have all your user stats server side, so they can probably recalculate everyone’s achievements.

1994

The medic ratio wasn’t too bad for me last night. At worst, it was a 1:1 ratio of medics to non-medics, where we’d have 12 players on a team and 5-6 medics. In other games, people would go medic for setup and then switch to other classes and we’d have as few as 2-3 medics. Never did I see a team with 8-9 medics on it. I think we’ll see an initial glut and then it’ll scale back.

1995

I think the next achievements that need to come out should be for the spy, and half of them should be centered around killing medics. They also need to come out this week.

1996

Spys don’t need more incentives to stab medics. Backstabbing medics > back stabbing anything else (except maybe scouts).

1997

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=188012&site=pcg

Robin says they’re figuring out how to address this today, and we can expect action soon.

“We’ll be able to tell who used the commands to do it, and look at how many people have done it. We’ll take action based on that I think. Either way, you should see some action on it shortly.”

Scouts are a thrill, but my favourites are Pyros. It’s like a mouse stabbing a cat.

1998

Cool, I just love the idea of a round-based shooter having stupid unlocks that require grinding and/or gaming the system to obtain. I also like the fact that there is no way to prevent these unlocks from being grabbed by people who are dicking around on private/empty servers. I further enjoy the reality that there is no guarantee that anyone will have obtained their unlocks legitimately.

In essence, they are creating a hoop that a player must find a way to jump through in order to have a goddamn weapon that even by their own admission is not necessarily better than the stock weapon – only “different.”

Why not just fucking unlock it for everyone and simply add fun content and diversity to the game instead of getting people to endure stupid pointless crap for the sole purpose of unlocking new and fun stuff?

Would that make too much sense? Does Gabe Newell play WoW?

1999

If the unlockables in TF2 really aren’t “better” than the stock items, then why sweat it? This is nothing like WoW, where you need the best gear in order compete.

2000

Valve claims that they’re not better, but you’d seriously have to be an idiot not to use the new Syringe Gun.

Also, why make them unlockables in the first place?

“HEY HEAVY CAN U PUNCH THIS GUYZ PLZ?”

“…”

“CMON MAN I GOTTA UNLOCK THE UBERSAW FUCK MAN CMON”