As someone who bought a physical disc copy of The Orange Box on launch day, it…kinda slays me that TF2 is still running. It’s a very different game than it was in my day, and it is just wild hearing kids younger than the game talking about it. Gaming almost always moves on faster than this.
That launch day was amazing. We had a 2 day LAN party that weekend and played TF2 almost exclusively. This was with a group that had formed around TFC. Then about 6 years after launch I introduced my son to it and he became hooked and we played for years together. There’s a certain magic to all versions of TF that just doesn’t exist in other games.
(it’s probably the well balanced gameplay and dedicated servers)
I loaded up TF2 a few months ago just for a quick game, expecting to get into yet another round of I’m-so-over-it 2fort.
What happened instead of that was a completely nostalgic get-into-any-map-I-wanted round after round of full servers like I’d never put the game away. Dustbowl, Gravelpit, Steel, trying to re-learn all the maps, finding other players who had long since figured out new clever ways to use weapons and classes that I’d always thought of as sub-standard.
And I’m in a region where there should be less players.
