You are reading the first article of United Fortress, or united.tf, a new web site aiming to pay homage to the legacy of Team Fortress games and mods. Ideally, the desire is for it to bring coverage from all Fortress domains, supporting them, fighting the disconnection between their communities. However, it is a personal, limited effort, so no promises are given for now. Currently, its biggest trick is the interview you can read below in this article, and The Wall. The Wall is a catalog for all the active Fortress titles, together with a selection of their most useful communities and platforms. It took more than a few weeks, dozens of hours and thousands of messages to dig through, asking around for the history and technical information documented there to present them honestly. The people who have helped find, verify and hone the information are credited below.

Fortressmen of the Month

The United Fortress blog opens with a new interview series: Fortressmen of the Month. The goal is to speak to two members of a Fortress community and document it, possibly every month, but at least every few months. The guests can be game developers, veterans, server hosts or anyone from any Fortress domain to bring insight and inspiration, and to shed light on some history.

The first of the series is an interview with Aberrant, a.k.a. Agent, and Cloud, a.k.a. MasterMind, from the MegaTF community, the former being its current developer while the latter a community lead, who have been playing and contributing to the game for almost 30 years now.

TFC visiting FF visiting PF2 visiting TFC visiting PF2 visiting FF visiting TFC in return.

Three Fortress titles making up one of the closest related kinship within the realm of Fortress games are visiting, and being visited by, each others’ communities on three game nights over a week’s duration, in the 30^th year of the Team Fortress saga. This is as much of a collaboration to amplify the fun as it is a competition to prove their mastery over the others. How well a Team Fortress Classicer performs in Source engine? What about the Fortress Forever folk in GoldSrc? Can the usual Pre-Fortress 2 enjoyer pull off bunny hopping? All of this and more will be answered during the Classic Revival Week!

Fortress Forever Night ♾️
🗓️February 25^th Wednesday, 21:00 CET (20:00 UTC)
🔗Atlantia Vanilla Server #1 | 164.132.202.176:27012
Backup server: Atlantia Vanilla Server #2 | 164.132.202.176:27013
📣Discord server (Official community)

Team Fortress Classic Night 🪖
🗓️February 28^th Saturday, 22:00 CET (21:00 UTC)
🔗Royston Vasey | tfc.roystonvasey.org.uk or 51.195.252.162:27015
Backup server: [APG] Battle Fortress | 54.36.177.240:27020
📣Discord server (Royston Vasey)

Pre-Fortress 2 Night 💀
🗓️March 4^th Wednesday, 21:00 CET (20:00 UTC)
🔗[EU] FortressWorld | 57.129.123.44:27015
Backup server: [US-EAST] FortressWorld Backup | 108.175.8.158:27017
📣Discord server (Official community)

On February 18 this year, Valve released an update to Source SDK Base, making the current Team Fortress 2 code publicly available. The community which has been creating its own TF2 content for nearly two decades can now make its own TF2 games (complete with Steam release). The possibilities are limitless, fitting to the tradition of the Fortress saga which started as a mod (of Quake) itself almost 30 years ago.

Major TF2 mods such as TF2 Classic and Pre-Fortress 2 that already existed off-Steam are preparing for their Steam releases * while the competitive community of TF2C has already kicked off its organization, CompTF2C, on whose soil this article is planted. These mods base their identities to the early (even pre-alpha) versions of TF2, they are searching for their places in the realm of Fortress games, and competitive TF2C is still figuring out its meta, the most viable game modes and the rules. There could be no better time to remember the early years of live TF2’s competitive scene, which were also full of chances, exploration, and innovation.

It has been five years since teamfortress.tv’s massive effort to review the previous decade of competitive TF2 (2010-2019), chronicling the era and its legacy.

This article aims to take it from its beginnings (2007-2009), with insights from a bird’s-eye view, then to the narrative of the period that followed after (2009-2011) with a depiction of its atmosphere and mentions of its milestones.

The 30th year of the Team Fortress saga that started in 1996 is just around the corner. Nevertheless, as if it has only just begun, 2025 is being a spectacular year for various TF games spanning multiple generations. TF2 Classic was perhaps the first one to deliver big news this year. From then on it just kept coming: QuakeWorld Team Fortress Live’s (QWTF Live) new Hawaii server that connects Australian and North American players across the Pacific; the “next gen” update to Enemy Territory Fortress’ (ETF) gameplay; the new Pick-up “Cup” bot of Team Fortress [Classic] PUGs along with the integrated new website; and a new official update announcement to TF2 only a month after witnessing arguably the best LAN tournament of the game’s history.

It is with great pleasure that we are sharing these parallel universe occurrences with you.