Insomnia was on a slow decline as a BYOC lan ever since they sold out to minecraft kiddies and other youtube "celebrities". They moved to a bigger venue to maximise on that aspect and forgot their core customers.

the poLANd, if anything, provides a cheaper and bigger incentive for international competition anyways given that it is generally cheaper to fly into and get food in too :)

Goodbyes are hard, especially when it comes to this particular LAN that has done a lot for the #tf2 community over the past decade. It wasn't always perfect but it's made me memories for life

My wife has 'montaged' a great array of ISeries nostalgia. Maybe you'll even spot yourself or something familiar!

https://youtu.be/CkWpdZhW2g0?si=4jrDFLbewxPC4I3J

I blew through nearly a thousand euros attending this event in 2022, great memories and overall still a very fun experience, but everything was just too expensive for it not even being a tf2 exclusive lan plus you had to spend a weekend in birmingham

Would we have ever seen a hyped up world tournament situation in TF2 again regardless of this? Feel like the skill ceiling has even increased since the most hyped iseries, but we don't see the teams form with this international LAN shit in mind.

Is it feasible?

I think an intercontinental LAN is certainly possible, the problem however is that its going to be very expensive for someone. Whether thats the players flying over, or the organisers having to front costs for venues etc. If you are spending more to fly over to compete than you would get for winning the tournament there isn't much incentive to attend outside of the competition / community aspect.

Do the top teams care enough to do it again if community funded like before?

I think people severely underestimate how much it actually costs to travel with 6 people across an ocean for a LAN. Aside from i46 & that insane level of fundraising I would guess every team that's ever gone to a LAN in another region has probably been pretty notably in the red. Most of the people that play this game at a top level are college students or just starting out in their career so the expenses are a pretty big deal. I'm sure every top team would love to just willy-nilly travel to any notable LAN that pops up but the reality of tf2 is that they can't.

True, the plane ticket to somewhere like philadelphia alone is 10x what it costs to travel around europe for me (UK travel, local bus to airport for £2)

I can quite literally have the whole trip in a thursday to monday (hotel, food, drinks, even the lack of pay for missing work on the weekend) going from london to any major city in europe for less than a plane ticket to the US, and that's just for me, someone who lives in one of the most accessible places in the world for travel. It's only going to be worse for anyone else in europe or america.

Plus the problem with the age and size of the community. The community is small which makes fundraising money harder, but also the average age is quite old. A lot of young adults who would travel to these events have more important things to spend money on (like rent or food). So whilst sure they could afford to drop money to support people to go play games, and donate to a fun event, it just isn't worth it for them.

Definitely all true, which makes it even more sad that in spite of the financial burden - a top EU team was determined to attend an NA event for years but the event organisers did a less than stellar job of making it a possibility.

Despite how bloated i-series became over the years, it was at least a constant - for a decade (2012-2022~, or i46-i69) everyone knew exactly when and what it was, so if a team or benefactor wanted to make it happen it was in their own hands (though from my own experiences getting teams to Rewind I have immense respect for all the NA people that made the trip during that decade, I should add).

Sadly from my fairly limited perspective it feels like the potential for international competition was essentially held hostage by a very small group over the past few years since i-series lost it's prestige/viability, otherwise I'm sure we'd have seen a 'world championship' calibre event in NA.

Good points. It kind of has to be the way that Americans come to Europe to compete rather than the other way round because U.S salaries are often much higher than in some European countries so it's almost impossible for people from those countries to travel to the U.S even vaguely affordably.

Europoors, I know.

wG EU has been willing to play and self fund our way to an NA lan since the inception of the team. We would probably still run a fundraiser to reduce costs but would attend the event no matter what. I've kind of wanted to post about this for a while but have put it off so that our team doesn't get blacklisted from future events, but I really don't care anymore.

Just to give some background for people that don't know, Toemas, Domo and I have been playing in the top of EU since 2019 and were suppose to attend BTS together until the event got nuked, of course covid happened and that took about 2 years out of the timeline. But still you get an idea of how long we have wanted to play an NA event.

Skipping forward to wG EU being formed in 2022 April / June, our entire goal was to put some time in together (so we aren't bad) and then play an NA LAN to see how we do and for the general experience of the event. So our plan was to play the ETF2L season before i69 and i69 as preparation. Of course, FROYO ended up attending i69 which was a great experience for us to play vs an NA team and made the LAN a lot more hype since intercontinental competition is the peak of TF2. We didn't play the most inspiring TF2 at that event but we only had 3 months to prepare with half of the team never playing with each other before, so in general we were quite happy to push FROYO considering we were a very new team. I actually think the way we played might have put off TO from inviting us to future events.

After i69 we were very excited to keep putting work in and getting better hoping for the chance to play an NA event in the near future, there were talks of early 2023. One of the best things about being sponsored by Witness was that he was from NA and was able to communicate for us to come to NA and help us get there. In January I booked a trip to Asia with some friends for September 2023 (thinking there is no way it will take 9 months for an NA event to come up). In early 2023 we realise this rumoured event wasn't going to happen until much later. So we spoke to Witness saying tell them, we will come to any event in the future self funded, we just cant make September because I'm away. Bare in mind, this was communicated around March 2023, so plenty of time to prepare and arrange an event where we can attend.

Anyway the TO decides to arrange to event for September 2023 knowing that would stop us from coming, even though they had around 6 months warning of this. We were told the TO was busy in October, and that in November and December are completely off limits since all of America is on holiday, and a TF2 event is impossible for those months. This was super frustrating for us since we love playing LAN's and want to attend as many as possible (we played all EU LAN's possible since forming). This is pretty much the reason we aren't playing TF2 at the moment, since it doesn't feel possible to attend an intercontinental event, even when we have a sponsor who is from NA and helps run those LAN's cant get us there.

There are other NA LAN's but these are RGL, and of course we can't play at these since it's RGL playoffs. We thought about the idea of playing RGL and scheduling matches early, but its just not realistic.

My honest opinion is that a player shouldn't be the TO of a LAN. There are just so many conflicts of interest and it really puts a cloud on the competitive integrity of the event. Does this happen in any other scene? even grassroots esports? After taking some time to think about this situation, I think maybe the reason the TO didn't want us at the event is because of playstyle is boring and I guess that makes a bad product for the viewing of the LAN. I feel like we created some exciting games at RCADIA and POLAND though. I really don't think its a competition thing, I know that most top NA teams think wG EU is around the 3rd-4th-5th-6th place mark in NA.

Maybe this is a very self centered take on the situation, I'm not sure how it looks from the outside. But it just feels crazy how insanely hard it has been to attend an NA LAN when we can fully fund our trip, since August 2022. I have always loved the intercontinental LAN's I have played in previously (i63, i65, i69) and I just really think it's a shame the community doesn't get to see these events. i52 and i55 were literally the reason I started playing this game, and I'm pretty sure those events get the largest viewership and could attract some newer players.

But yeah its just frustrating to see people post on the forum about how its too expensive and no one is willing to go, when that clearly isn't the case for us.

Dang that sucks to hear :\

https://esports-news.co.uk/2024/05/25/insomnia-company-enters-liquidation/

for how much they charged for drinks they shouldnt be owing any cunt