#believvve

August 20th 2013, 10 years ago, Van and I finalised merging NW and FV to make vvv and enter UGC season 11. We went 5-5, including 3 forfeit wins (#forfeittofinals) and 2 forfeit losses (#forfeitthefinals).

That marked the start of a 4 year journey to eventually achieve our grand success of 2nd in Steel S22 (a loss that still stings to this day).

We represented a really consistent and foundational part of that golden age of TF2 comp in Aus, and looking back we fostered some players who went on to define the scene in the region - be it with Obla and Fozz as ozfortress admins or Hyper, Zoid and Obla (again) dominating Highlander for most of the decade in RedPandas. As for the rest of us, we formed a tight knit group that had tons of fun together, win or lose, for several years.

While the team was mostly focused around TF2 we also had a regular stack for Dota, a Destiny clan for a few years, and the odd mess around with Age of Empires, Jackbox or whatever strange indie game we could coerce everyone into buying.

From the very beginning the team was built around groups of friends coming together - starting from me and Dante in Christchurch combining with Van and Fozz in Adelaide. This grew over our early years to cover every part of Australia and New Zealand and saw some pretty great interstate/international meetups - the first one when Van came to Queenstown for my 18th in 2014, and the most recent one when the Dota boys came together in Melbourne for PAX earlier this year.

I know that since our glory days people have largely moved on from TF2, high school suddenly giving way to university and the real world. But I hope that everyone will always look back on this time favourably and also always be down to get a beer with your former teammates when your paths cross anywhere in the world.

Since the summer update in August a few of us have been jumping on the game again for some classic pubstacks - I encourage anyone who wants to relive the golden days to reinstall for a bit of good dumb fun.

Thanks for reading these silly sentimental words - miss you all and wish you every success in where your path has taken you since our days as a team.

- biowill

#believvve