WDZ Weekly Highlanders

WDZ Community Highlander Season One: February 27, 2011 - February 18, 2012
WDZ Community Highlander Season Two: June 23, 2012 -

Basics:

The Weekdayz Community hosts weekly highlanders, usually every Saturday night from 7:00pm Pacific Time to 8:30pm Pacific Time. Scrim administrators select the maps and organize the teams beforehand. The competitions are hosted through TF2 Lobby.

Highlanders are essentially competition-based, 9v9 matches, with each class restricted to only one player. On standard control point matches and payload races, the first team to reach 5 wins OR the team with more points when the map time runs out is determined as the victor. On attack-defend payload matches, the victor is determined depending on how many points are captured and how fast they are captured.

Every now and then, we may host a highlander special. These occasional highlander specials will feature Admin vs. Community matches or some map twists, such as ctf_turbine_pro and our exclusive pl_2fort and ctf_2fort_night. In addition, there may be future incentives and prizes for certain teams who win a highlander special.

WDZ also hosts its own Mumble channels reserved specifically for WDZ highlander participants. The address for our Mumble is voice.wdzclan.com, and the port is 64738. More info can be found here.

Additionally, during the match, alltalk will not be on.

How to Sign Up:

To sign up, you must post a reply on the respective forum thread of the upcoming highlander. If it is your first time participating in a WDZ highlander, you must also contact community administrators Jopper, Murx, SuperRaWR, Tech, or Peewee to be added to the WDZ private scrim group. On the thread, you may indicate your team preference and class preference to reserve a spot. You may also claim your spot as "random" (no class or team preference) or "reserve" (as an available substitute on stand-by). Not all spots get reserved right away, and not all spots are guaranteed. Individuals may be swapped to ensure team balance. Any unreserved spots that are available on the day of the highlander will be open to the available substitutes. At that time, any friend or reserve on stand-by is free to join.

If at any time between the time of reservation and the highlander you become unable to participate for any reason, you must notify one of the scrim admins of your absence. Unexcused absences may hinder chances of participating again in the future.

On the Day of the Highlander:

The match lobby will open usually at around 6:00pm Pacific, allowing time for teams to be organized. All participants who reserved a spot prior will be provided the confidential TF2 Lobby password via a notification from the WDZ scrim group. To log onto TF2 Lobby, log in with your Steam account. In the lobby, please select your team and class, according to your reserved spot. If it is a friend, substitute, or any reserve on stand-by, he or she may select any team or class that has unreserved, available spots left. Again, players may be switched between teams to ensure a balanced, fair game.

This is an example of a TF2 Lobby team set-up before the beginning of a highlander.



Once all 18 players are present in the lobby, all players will be expected to ready up. Anticipate the highlander to begin by 7:00pm Pacific, so be careful not to be idle or "away from keyboard" during that time. If any player present in the lobby has not indicated "ready" or has been "afk" for too long by the time the highlander is supposed to begin, the player may be kicked and replaced.

"Time to fight!"

With indication that all 18 players are ready, the highlander will commence and the players will be connected to the scrim server. This TF2 server is a private, password-protected server intended only for private matches, id est highlanders, 6v6 matches, and pick-up games. You will not need the server password when connecting from the lobby. However, in the event that you fail to connect to the server from the lobby, you will need to connect directly to the server via Steam or Team Fortress 2 and request the server password from one of the scrim admins. The server password is different from the lobby password. These passwords are confidential, so do not share them with any other players except with those expected to be participating.

The highlander match itself will begin only when 18 participants are present and ready on the server. You may prepare your loadouts, strategies, and communications while waiting for the match to begin. Again, there are no weapon or item set restrictions, but preferably you should synchronize with your teams' strategies and maximize your class's role (e.g. be wary of choosing a Demoknight loadout as you are the only Demoman on the team). Team names may also be changed using F4, with respectful accordance to server rules.

Once the match has begun, the match will continue until time runs out or until one team reaches 5 wins. The match may not be paused, even if one member of one team disconnects, crashes, or leaves. It is the respective team's responsibility to inform a scrim admin of who is absent and which class is missing in order to fill the vacancy immediately. Matches will be rarely paused, reset, or cancelled in certain emergencies such as a match setting error or a community-wide Steam system failure.

Players may switch classes with other players within their own teams, preferably in between rounds. After a map change, the losing team of the previous round has the option of swapping one of their team members (sometimes a "weakest link") for a member of the victorious team of the same class (sometimes a "strongest link").

General server rules apply on the private server just as they do on our public servers. Please express courtesy and good sportsmanship during the match.

Banned Weapons and Items:

For the purposes of maintaining a balanced gameplay and preventing bug exploits, we will not allow the use of the following weapons and items:
Pomson 9000
Phlogistinator
Enforcer
Holiday Punch
Item sets with effects (I.e. Do NOT use an entire item set that has a game-changing effect, e.g. the Milkman set with the extra HP; you may use the individual weapons at your leisure, but do NOT use them with the set effect)
Bombinomicon
Jingle Belt
Bootie Time