TLR drops their TF2 squad (or their squad drops TLR)

As was expected TLR has now announced that they drop their current TF2 squad and they aren’t planning taking in a new TF2 team.

Many of you who follow the TF2 scene can probably guess the reasons. We remove the Team as I (Chef) Feel the team is very unstable. I also feel that the lans that are coming up are not worth supporting or following a team in this game from my point of view and does not fall into our plans, at this stage.

This statement has resulted in a lot of reactions, especially from AcidReniX (who played in TLR.TF2).

AcidReniX: we were leaving anyway, just saved us the time lol 

Munchies (from management): As for the other squads we have Enemy Territory and CoD4 who are working hard towards their Lan goals for this autumn. Not to mention the previous results for both ET and CoD4 have been far more impressive than TF2. If youre talking about offline achievement, then the TF2 team didnt deliver close to what some of the other squads have (and will) achieve, so please dont flame them without cause. 

AcidReniX: So let’s see what offline achievements the TF2 team has…

i33 – 2nd 
i34 – 2nd 
PCgamer – 4th 

Read the rest of the responses on TLR’s website (the post has been removed now).

UPDATE: The comments have been removed from TLR’s website but we have saved most of them.

AcidReniX: pshhh remove TLR, we were leaving anyway, just saved us the time lol

Good luck to you guys too! But no need to be so harsh on the team, I don’t see any of your other teams getting results at lan or having comittment. 

Munchies: [This is my personal view]

Please Acid, whats with the comments “we were leaving anyway”. Try to not throw your toys out of the pram please.

As for the other squads we have Enemy Territory and CoD4 who are working hard towards their Lan goals for this autumn. Not to mention the previous results for both ET and CoD4 have been far more
impressive than TF2. If youre talking about offline achievement, then the TF2 team didnt deliver close to what some of the other squads have (and will) achieve, so please dont flame them without
cause.

The TF2 team didnt upload a single photo from the event, post a single blog or news post. From my understanding the sponsored PCs were also just left on the desks at the end of the event and not
returned. The TF2 lineup has been unstable, and in terms of support, TF2 were recieving more than other squads, in my view without merit.

Since the TF2 squad didnt achieve as high a standard as the other squads, nor did it live up to promises over coverage, Im not surprised that Mike made the decision to drop the squad. A decision which
I fully support.

Since i have had very little to do with the TF2 squad, maybe I have the wrong end of the stick, but this is how it seems from where I am sitting. The TF2 squad just wasnt living up to the standards we
should be expecting from TLR squads.

Having said that, I have no problems with any of the individual members, and genuinely wish you all luck with whatever you do from here. Its an unfortunate situation for both the players and TLR as an
organisation.

Thats my 2 pence worth

AcidReniX: just lol at that response. Toys out the pram? sorry sir… it’s just the truth.

So let’s see what offline achievements the TF2 team has…

i33 – 2nd
i34 – 2nd
PCgamer – 4th

What have the other teams got under their belt? Hmm interesting, i’ll be awaiting that response.

As for the last event. There is a reason why we didn’t upload photos or write blogs. Firstly, due to bad organisation, we had no TLR shirts. This meant the TLR sponsors did not get the coverage that
have been promised at the event, and it makes TLR look bad.

Three of the 6 AMD computers were broken, and AMD wanted photographs of their computers? So they basically want to brand AMD like…

“AMD – Supports professional gamers with broken equipment”

2 of the monitors were supported by polystyrine and keyboard boxes. That’s going to make people want to buy AMD products… right?

As for a blog, O.k, here’s a quick version of what my blog would have looked like at the event. You should be able to see why I didn’t write it.

“On Friday we arrived very excited, picked everyone up from the airport, met up, had a chat and some food then moved into the event.

We unpacked the AMD PC’s and started to set them up, ready for a hard night of practice before the competition, but wait….

2 of the computers needed windows vista activation. We called Mike to tell him we needed a key, and he told us to ask Multiplay. Multiplay don’t even run the event, and have nothing to do with TLR,
they literally laughed at us asking them to give us a CD key for windows. We asked Mike to contact AMD, he said he can’t. GG that, 2 computers out of operation.

Another computer had no soundcard. I would like to see any player from any competitive game try to practice for a £15 000 lan tournement, without any sound. 3 Computers out of action. We took 7
players to the LAN, 1 had to spectate the entire event despite paying to be our 7th, just because AMD couldn’t suply us with working computers.

We couldn’t practice that night, so we went out and got drunk.

Saturday:

After spending 3 hours fixing the computers, it was tournement time. We had about 5 minutes to sort out our configs and settings before our first match. If this was against a hard team, we would have
been knocked out first round, considering every other team was up most of the night and morning practising.

All of the computers had sub standard hardware. TF2 on phL’s computer was running at 30 fps idle. less than 10 fps in action. Again, we had to rip components out of the other machines and mix and
match them to get the machine functioning. Other computers were also running with very low performance. My 4800 X2 with a x1650 pro AGP Graphics card actually ran the game just as good as the machines
we were suplied with. So naturally it didn’t effect me personally, but it effected the rest of our team.

We spoke to the coolermaster and 4kings (packard bell) over the event. TCM’s PCs ran the game at a blistering 200 fps while the packard bell machines were boasting a constant 300fps during action. We
got quite a few laughs when we informed them ours was running at 40, on a small map.

We asked Multiplay if our shirts had arrived, they said no, maybe ask later… so we did, again, no. O.k, so every other organisation can manage to get T-shirts for the LAN, but TLR couldn’t manage
it.

Despite all of this, we managed a half decent night of gaming, and we were through to the knock out stages.

Sunday:

T-shirts arrived? Nope! So event if we got to the final, we may as well have used a different name. We pushed through the games, against some world class teams, and managed 4th place. We were seeded
4th so we were happy with the result.

As for leaving the PC’s behind. Mike told us to take them to the back collection point. We did that, they weren’t left out on the desk, they were fully packed away, all default settings restored. The
problem was, the building closes after the event, so when AMD came to pick them up, no one was there to let them in. I don’t see how this was our fault, for doing exactly what Mike instructed. He’s
just trying to point a finger at someone because he can’t accept the fact that his own lack of organisation caused most of the problems he blames us for.

I too wish good luck to the TLR organisation. I’ve met a lot of players and management, and they are nice people. But the management has issues, especially when the team manager advertises that he has
boxes full of tagan hardware, and doesn’t seem to be doing anything with it… I wonder if tagan know about that? I’ve seen no competitions, and i’ve not heard of any of the teams getting any?

Maybe he’s just ebaying it ;ooo

Munchies: Quote: “What have the other teams got under their belt? Hmm interesting, i’ll be awaiting that response.”

CoD4
i33 2nd
CDC4 2nd
I34 2nd

Enemy Territory
CPC2 1st
CDC3 1st
CDC4 1st

As for the shirts, I have no idea what the score is there.

Quote: “I’ve seen no competitions, and i’ve not heard of any of the teams getting any?”

You dont check the site that often then? And yes squads have recieved products in the past.

As for the problems you had with the hardware, i had no idea of that situation, and yeah it was a long way from ideal. I also had no idea that the problem with AMD collecting their PCs was as a result
of the venue. This is not how it had been explained to me. It seems on this point, i had the wrong end of the stick.

AcidReniX: That was an old CoD4 team, they were a great squad, but they left. No dedication to the org. What have the current squads left in TLR achieved? Anyone can brag about previous tournements with
different teams. That is the organisation achievements.

As for ET, didn’t they leave as well? or get kicked or something. Then they came back.

I don’t see any of the current teams achieving anything at the moment, and as for updates, look at the last 4 results on the TLR website. They were TF2 matches played a long time ago. No other squads
submit their results?

The competitions post, was relating to Tagan. And don’t get me started on TLR competitions lol. The last competition, 3 prizes went to TLR players (or at least were going to until we stepped in).

And this current competition has allready past 2 closing dates, and as far as I know, no winner was announced.

I have no problem with TLR as an organisation. Hopefully they will get lucky again and pickup another top tier team.

Munchies: The old cod4 team did leave to go to mym, after they had played 4 successful lans in tlr, and had done very well. Admittedly when they left some people got a bit emotional with their posts, but
personally I dont blame them for their move in the least, and thank them for the time and effort they put into TLR during their time here. I have a lot of fond memories of managing them.

As for ET, well its a different kind of scene. I would say the top 5 teams come back when a lan is announced, but outside of lan events the scene is totally dead. Most of our current lineup has played
in TLR before and were on the lineup which took gold. I dont believe they would be back in TLR if they werent happy the first time. Personally I think they put in more than enough time, effort and
they undoubtably deliver results.

As for submitting results, a lot of the squads have submitted important results in news items, and yes i agree with you that more effort should be made for the proper results section. Maybe this is
something i will try to bring up more often.

The TLR competions that were won by people affiliated with TLR, were in my view won fairly and squarely. If you look at the effort those individuals put in to win the prizes then i think you would
probably agree. Mike makes the decisions on prizes, and so he personally cant win them, but if any tlr players want to enter the blogs competitions etc i see no reason they shouldnt be able to get a
prize. Admittedly maybe a better judging system should be implemented.

And yes i know the current competition has passed 2 closing dates without a result announced. I agree that is a bit silly, and its something which i dont agree with. It isnt my decision though, but
competitions are still being ran non the less.

I dont have any problems with the TF2 guys, and on the occasions i have spoken to any of them i have found them to be great guys. I understand some players might have felt let down over problematic
computers and lack of shirts for that one event, but that is by no means “normal” for TLR in my experience.

Riemu: lol I have to say – it’s pretty funny to read your statements

I can’t really comment on any TLR internal stuff, cause I have never been part of TLR.

I just wanted to say that TLR.TF2 has been one of the most stable teams in Division 1 over the last 6-10 month (No idea how long TLR.TF2 actually exists) and I have never heard a single bad word
regarding your organisation.

They have always been the European No. 3-5 (depending on form and line-up) in TF2. Try comparing that to your other teams currently under your roster…

TLR’s LAN performance has been pretty decent too tbh, comparing the number of LANs hosted, attended and the final standings for those…

Oh and, please stop calling Arx a lier! I have known about the departure from TLR a couple of days now – way before you issued your official “let go posting”. And like i said, i’m not even TLR.

Moleh: I just wrote out a long post, and the website threw me some syntax error when I hit ‘post comment’ and I lost it :/

I played for TLR.TF2 at PCGS as one of the team couldnt make it. I just wanted to say that from what I saw the TLR team:
-Paid for their own accomodation
-Paid for their own travelling expenses
-Were supplied with sub-par machines that we had to do our own tech support on to make vaguely playable.

I saw nothing of any of the suppliers logo’s at all apart from the AMD one on the side of the machine that I had to lean my monitor against because it didn’t have a stand come with it so I had to
stand it on a monitor box for height and against the machine for it to be up straight. Thank god none of the team got angry and hit the table because I’d have had to catch my monitor as it slid down!
Then I had to reinstall the sound on my machine to get it to work. Although I was fairly happy with the performance of the machines themselves. At home I run on an AMD64 3500, 1gb DDR333 and a Nvidia
8500 and from these machines we were supplied I got a very similar performance (give or take about 10fps) so I was comfortably playing in a situation Im used to!

This is my first time playing for an org though, and I was very happy with it. All TLR really did was pay £40 for my entrance ticket being as I got there on my own steam and the team captain Wlv paid
out of his own pocket for us to stay in the hostel, but in paying for that ticket I got to have a really good weekend and met up with alot of quality people. Its good to finally meet those you have
played online so much. I’d happily write you a blog if you wanted one! There is a team photo of us on cadred.org too, but as we didnt have our shirts or anything yet so throughout the event we didnt
really get to show off your sponsors :/ We did manage to avoid there being a CoolerMaster logo in the team photo though! They were on every other panel on the walls!
I must admit though I was expecting to be in a group and have to watch p’s and q’s and whatever because we were representing the org, but not even any management showed up let alone any other teams so
I got the impression you hadn’t found a stable COD4 team since the previous one left for someone with more support? Looking at previous posts it seems I was mistaken?

I would be interested to see what the other sides get in the way of support though if TF2 has had more. Ive known this side since I first met them at i33 and I remember them only getting the free
camping for accomodation (one of the teams tent flew away! haha) rather than a hostel or anything. The team don’t have BNC’s on IRC, certainly for this event we paid our own travel and accomodation
rather than it being part of TLR support, and I’ve never known the team to receive any hardware donated by Tagan. I thought we were going to get energy drinks from fucapo at the event too but I ended
up sticking to coffee at £1.40 a cup.

As for leaving the machines on the desks. That would have been pretty hard. We were indeed one of the last lot to pack up as the TF2 final was last and the Multiplay/PCGamer staff started taking the
tables away during/immediately after the TF2 final and were pretty much stood waiting for us to clear the computers up! Maybe your informant left before we did, though we did leave at the same time as
the TCM/4K TF2 teams because we all went down to the pub on sunday!

Munchies: RE: Riemu

Quote Riemu: “Oh and, please stop calling Arx a lier! I have known about the departure from TLR a couple of days now – way before you issued your official “let go posting”. And like i said, i’m not
even
TLR.”

I never called anyone a liar. Admittedly i wasnt fully informed as to the situation, and my opinions have changed slightly after readin some of his opinions, but i dont consider any of tf2 to be
lieing.

If you say that the TF2 side had made the decision to leave TLR days ago, then why did they inform yourself (who isnt in tlr) and not tell the managers?

I agree that the TF2 team have been professional in their conduct while they have been in tlr, and as i have repeated, i think they are nice guys. I just think this whole situation over PCG was a
complete mess, and i dont deny that from readin this, a lot of it could be attributed to TLR. But never the less, there are instability problems with the lineups, combined with a 4th place result,
and
no decent land coming up, that alone is reason to let go of the squad. Its just a shame it ended like this.

9 Comments

Jambo says: 7 October 2008 - 18:27

Btw, the comments have been removed from TLR’s website 🙂

shifty says: 7 October 2008 - 20:07

burned.

Wlv says: 7 October 2008 - 20:10

The lack of commitment bit was a bit of a kick in the teeth, let me run people through the events in TLR from when we joined….

Joined TLR just before i33 so had no support for that anyway, came 2nd – when we should have come 1st (only “bad” LAN result we’ve had)

Played in several online competitions, etf2l, esl ems, etf2l cup, clanbase cup, ed 6on6 cup, ed eekn8 cup, and played pretty well in all of them, despite loosing people to real life commitments.

Had several arguments as to why the 4/5/6second delay in ventrillo is useless for tf2 and bought our own mumble server.

Got tickets and pc’s for i34, came 2nd again. Spent £240 in accomadation.

At this point, at LAN, we were told we would have PC’s for PCGS as well and were told this all the way untill the monday before the LAN (which started sat), where we were told we may not have them,
waited till thursday and finally got confirmation, after one of our members had already flown over to the UK, may I add not once did we complain about this to TLR or whine about it to anyone else –
baring in mind by that monday, phL, zerox, darn had all paid for their flights to the UK, coming in at a combined total of £600

Arrived at LAN, PC’s showed up, 2 without Windows Vista Keys, 1 with a dodgy onboard soundcard (i.e it diddnt work at all), advice from TLR was “ask MPUK”.

Just some sums…

Total Spent (by me) over these events (apparently we were the most supported team in TLR…..)

Travel: £400.00 (rounded down! dm)
Accom: £600.00

Total Spent by other players in TLR.TF2

Travel: £600.00

Total of £1600 spent on things, I don’t think this shows a lack of commitment.

Match Stats in TLR: P344 W278 D16 L50 in 6 months.

Second to this we were accused by TLR management of leaving the PC’s unpacked and on the desks (at PCGS) after the event. Wrong, we boxed them up and put them back where we found them, later to be
flamed at as AMD couldn’t pick the PC’s up due to the venue being locked – despite Chef telling us to put them there (and later accusing we diddnt…lol?) – Casting my mind back to i34, he left the
venue, pretty much paraletic, all pc’s half boxed/unboxed and expected us to tidy all his mess up, not once did he ask if the pc’s were ok, or asked us to take them anywhere.

Oh at PCGS the shirts diddnt turn up either, he then pm’s asking for an SS of us wearing the shirts at PCGS laugh?

I can continue for ages on things like this, but you guys probably wouldn’t believe half the things I can write here

shifty says: 7 October 2008 - 20:12

it is a gossip site ;] maybe we could tell a little ;O

waebi says: 7 October 2008 - 21:21

🙁

Amonsilas says: 7 October 2008 - 21:24

It’s on big gossip!

shifty says: 7 October 2008 - 23:47

new team formed out of this anyways

MeMento – arx, beta, shi, zerox, matji, itchi. just need to fill the medic position, help :}!

F2 says: 7 October 2008 - 23:55

I’ve heard Wlv is unclanned.

mercu says: 8 October 2008 - 12:08

Epic story :o) Gl to the MeMento