Old Fortress Collective: Who we are

“A modern space for classic TF games.“

Hello! While my group has been affiliated with this site for a good while now, I’ve never made any efforts to introduce the readers here to the group. The Old Fortress Collective (OFC) is a Discord server/Steam Group centered on discussion of and introduction to Team Fortress games created prior to TF2. We talk about all manners of obscure entries, gameplay mechanics, and balancing quirks between all of these classic games. We also try to introduce those who are new to these games to the features and gameplay that originally defined Team Fortress, mainly through Fortress Forever. We have pub events every week, with FFridays being the most popular and consistently played. Soon, we will be having our first Monthly Team Fortress Rotation event, which we are really excited about!

Monthly TF Rotation

In the scope of this new event, every month we will ask our community to vote for the Team Fortress game to play next month. On the second Sunday of each month, we hop on a server to play that selected old-school TF game. Similar to what GoldSrc Saturdays do for the old GoldSrc games, Monthly TF Rotation event has the potential to give some of the on-going old TF games a considerable boost, while reviving some of them from total death and keeping them on such life support.

The first TF of this event is voted as Enemy Territory Fortress (ETF), for November 8^th. Join our Discord server to get more information, and all the help you need to set up the game. After the hype of v2.0 died out last year, ETF has been having a rough patch. I hope to see you at our first edition of Monthly TF Rotation, giving it a good push together!

GoldSrc Saturdays (GSS) has selected Team Fortress Classic as its Week 252 game. The gaming community which has been raiding a different GoldSrc-engine game every Saturday since 2021 will return to TFC on October 17^th, following an Opposing Force deathmatch session this Saturday. The event kicks off at 19:00 UTC (21:00 CEST / 3PM EST) and will run for up to four hours on GSS TFC server at 91.191.213.98:27016. More than twenty players are expected to participate. This will be GSS’s third TFC session this year, with the first one coinciding with the TFC night of Classic Revival Week on February 28^th. If you have never joined this community of GoldSrc lovers, this is a great opportunity to meet fellow fans of the classics and journey back to the late 1990s together. Join their Discord server to stay up to date, and visit their website for more information.

FFridays are back to Fortress Forever, with the subtitle REVENGE. After the slow decline of A/D Saturdays organized starting from May this year, the young folk at Old Fortress Collective, specifically Reptid, stepped in to bring the old tradition back. The public games will be held at 3 PM Eastern Time every Friday, on the SDK2013 version, which is still being developed by hlieb and hithere while BrokenBenny is working on the TF2 SDK migration. The server is likely to be MaxTF – Classic Server at 164.132.202.176:27095, a community favorite. Join the Fortress Forever and OFC Discord servers to get the latest updates and reminders for FFridays.

Fortressmen of the Month #3 brings together two competitive veterans who were rivals across two different Team Fortress games, yet companions at the same international LANs, 15 years after standing at the top of the European scene. Coinz competed for ECA in Enemy Territory Fortress and later for YoYoTech/TCM Gaming in Team Fortress 2, while Moose played for Clan United (ETF, TF2) and then for Crack Clan/Power Gaming (TF2). Both came to TF2 from the short-lived but competitive tournament scene of the still-young ETF, joining a wider migration that saw entire clans from games such as Team Fortress Classic make the same transition.

For Coinz and Moose, however, the move was far more than a passing fad. They remained at the forefront of TF2 as the game’s competitive domain evolved from humble beginnings into a major scene with multiple leagues featuring several hundred teams each season.

In this interview, they look back at the online ETF competitions, discuss TF2’s unique gameplay and their adaptation to it, revisit the major European TF2 LAN tournaments where their paths crossed, and recall TF2’s early prospects as a major esport—including the first attempts to engage Valve on the game’s competitive future.

Team Fortress turns 30 years old this week, and so far, we have received three presents. The first and the biggest one came from the developer team behind Team Fortress 2 Classified (TF2C), a.k.a. Eminoma, who released the Team Fortress 30th update. The update introduces a holiday feature to TF2C that will be active every year from August 23^rd to 25^th. During those three days, features like ported old-school maps will be available in the game. This year we got Fortress Forever’s Dustbowl, QuakeWorld Team Fortress’ (QWTF) Canal Zone, and two more maps from Team Fortress Classic. The update also introduces the Classic Vision feature, allowing players to see all the classes and Sentry Guns using their QWTF models. Unlike the holiday, this feature is not time-limited, and can be enabled at any point from now on.

Perhaps even more intriguing, especially for the romantics and the historians, is the masterfully created update page. Its timeline takes you through almost all the major Team Fortress mods. It is reminiscent of what united.tf hoped to achieve with The Wall, but Eminoma’s timeline comes with the team’s usual level of visuals and presentation– makes it genuinely difficult to believe that this is the work of a non-commercial mod rather than an official sequel. And then there are the old teamfortress.com-styled links at the bottom of the page– a small detail, but an absolute delight to see. TF2C takes one for the whole team, honoring the 30^th anniversary by releasing a major update packed with phenomenal content and paying the utmost respect to the legacy on behalf of us all.

30 years of TF is actually 30 years of QuakeWorld TF. And if hard forks are set aside (MegaTF, CuTF, AGR etc.), the only active public (casual) game community that has survived around it is QWTF.RU. They gather every Tuesday and Thursday night in the European time zone; follow their Discord server for notifications. HaMMeR and other members of the community prepared a delightful article with a special focus on the Moscow TF League that lasted longer than other local efforts. The article also points to other worthwhile pieces of TF history, so you can dig even deeper.

The final surprise is a genuine public game session in QWTF Live (formerly known as FortressOne), a 2019 fork of QWTF. Modernized, fast-paced, and enhanced with anti-lag tech making intercontinental play smoother than ever. These days, QWTF Live is organized only around pickup games (competitive sessions) through its Discord server, but the young folks at Old Fortress Collective (OFC) Discord server have decided to change that for one day: September 5^th. To join, mind that you first need to obtain a token from the QWTF Live Discord server and associate it with your FortressOne client before connecting the server. Any technical or gameplay questions can be directed to the OFC or QWTF Live Discord servers. They hope to see you there– in the game that started the saga 30 years ago.