About the TFA

The TFA is not a guild, It is a community of TF veterans who are willing and able to help people new to the game of Team Fortress. We provide hints & tips, online training and a safe place for you to make your mistakes. Not only will we teach you the basics of TF, but we also hope to instill in you a sense of honour and fairplay....traits that are sadly lacking in the game today.

Credit Kaos for the idea, heres the email that started it all:

As the world of QWTF moves on, and more cheats are developed, and players excell above all known limitations, the below average player begins to feel discouraged. As you know by now, I am not referring to myself. What I am referring to is the "newbie".

Just imagine for a second, that you just bought Quake at a yardsale, and were eager to get online and see how you compare to other players. You first try deathmatch, and then move on to Team Fortress. When you start playing in large public servers, you begin to encounter the type of people who don't play by the rules (cheaters). Also, you feel depressed because you know that if you had the technology that the other players are using, you'd be doing just as good, if not better than they are.

I know this feeling as I have been in this boat before. I began playing Team Fortress when it was first developed, give or take a month. When I first started playing, and actually till I moved off to college, I was playing on a 33.6K modem. My average ping was 450, and my average PL was 20. I was playing on a 486 with 24MB of RAM, and some sad excuse for a video card. This is what I am referring to by "technology limitations".

Now that Quake III is out, and Q3F has been released, the numbers of QWTF players will sadly and slowly start to decline. Yes, it is sad but true; TF will not live forever. I recently came to this harsh reality when my clan, Fallen Angels, decided to disband and move on to Q3F after almost 4.5 years of existence. It is because of situations such as this that I am proposing my new idea.

I have decided to start an organization that will only cater to serious "newbies". I, and hopefully with the help of other veterans, will tutor these "newbies" and teach them our skills that we have developed over the last 4 or 5 years. I understand that it might not be very big at first, but when each "newbie" tells his other "newbie" friends that there is a place that you can go to learn how to play QWTF as a whole, and more specifically certain popular maps, I could very possibly be overrun with "newbies"!

I have realized that this is basically the only way to keep QWTF alive. If we can teach, and by "teach" I mean actually TEACH, these "newbies" how to become better players, there will be less cheating and ultimately the numbers of QWTF players will rise again. Plus, since I am entering a whole new world right now (majoring in Mechanical Engineering, and then soon to have a job), I will not be able to play for much longer.

It is to this end that I will be setting up a QWTFTC: Quakeworld Team Fortress Tutorial Center. Not only a message board, but a list of actual contacts of approved veterans that will help tutor the "newbies".

I will hopefully design the webpage over the summer, and when I am back on campus in September, the teaching will begin. By this time, I will have hopefully recruited enough teaching assistants to help me with my idea. If any of you feel that you could be a good teacher, contact me sometime over the summer, and I'll "interview" you and see if I feel that you would do a good job. Please pass the word along to all your TF buddies, as this is one of the few ways that TF will live longer, and improve the quality of such a wonderful game.

This email was submitted via the TF Players Mailing list.