Highlander Winter '25 (S10) - Signups Open, Season Changes & Staff Updates

The Competition Remains the Same!

Highlander Winter '25 is here and for our 10th season, we have a few things we'd like to tell you about! While we need to address some whitelist changes, Map Pool additions and staff rotations we still have the goal of bringing you more Highlander competition that you love and we love bringing to you!

Signups

You can sign up for Highlander Autumn '25 from today (Thursday the 22nd of May) until Friday the 6th of June at 11:59pm AEST. With that said, we'll aim to have seedings out by Sunday the 8th or Monday the 9th of June at the latest with the Season starting on Wednesday the 11th of June.

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Winter '25 Changes to come!

Rule Changes, Penalties & Roster Shrinkage

As discussed in our previous News Post we have made numerous changes to our Rules and Penalty System which will all be taking effect as we planned. However, arguably the biggest change that will be taking place is the Roster Shrinkage.

Upon reflecting on our idea to reduce Highlander roster's down to 12 players from the original 15, we feel that this change would be to harsh to implement from the get go. Especially with a wider variety of classes being needed as subs on an active Highlander roster 3 subs didn't seem like quite enough. Ultimately, we have decided that Highlander rosters this season will consist of 13 players. We will monitor this smaller roster size throughout the season and reflect upon it internally post season.

Map Pool

Proside

For the second time in a row a Highlander Map vote has ended in a tie - this time between Proside and Cascade, both receiving 22.7% of votes each. To settle this tie, we have once again left the decision to our advisor team. Ultimately Proside (pro version of Lakeside) was decided to be the one rounding off the pool of 9 maps for this season.

Proot

In light of players warming up to Proot more over the past 2 seasons, we have decided to not rotate it out and instead keep it around for the foreseeable future. While this did go against our initial philosophy of 'aggressive map rotations', we would be remiss if we didn't give players the opportunity to play maps that they both like and wish to see more of. This also means that the map pool now has an equal amount of King of the Hill and Payload maps. However, we still intend to alternate swapping out maps of different game types at the end of each season to continue bringing players some variation and the opportunity to find new favorites.

Whitelist Changes

Airstrike

The Airstrike will be unbanned after nearly a decade of absence from Highlander. Though it's crazy to consider a weapon being unbanned after so long, the community has made it very clear that this weapon deserves a chance in the upcoming season. Exactly 50% of voters believed that the weapon should be unbanned, with a sizable 22.7% being indifferent on the weapon's inclusion or exclusion in Winter '25 Highlander's whitelist. We will moderate it's usage throughout Winter and check in on it again at the end of the season.

Loch n Load

In a much closer vote the Loch n Load will remain banned with 42.4% supporting this decision and 39.4% being opposed. With votes consistently being this close we will continue to keep an eye on this discussion and carry out additional polls for the items inclusion in future competitions as we see fit.

Goodbye General Feedback Forms

Simply put, the General Feedback Forms weren't as effective as we'd thought they'd be and moving forward we won't be using them any longer. We intend to modify post season surveys in a way that makes them easier to digest similar to what we did with the Pre-Winter'25 Survey prior to the start of this season. However, we know it's important for teams and players to submit verbal, written information so we will be sure to have an outlet for those looking to provide feedback that way.

Staff Changes

indy and her jones and Cryo

We're happy to announce that both indy and her jones and Cryo will be joining our staff team this season as the newest Trial Highlander Administrators. They'll be joining redja, woozy, Sperkle and of course Pulse who has now moved past his trial status and become a fully fledged League Administrator. Both indy and Cryo have proven themselves to be fantastic advisors in the past who made it clear to our us that they care about this scene and bettering it in anyway they can. We're excited for them to join the ozfortress staff family and wish them the best going into Winter '25.

Kai

Typically when a member of staff steps down we will make note of it, thank them in a post and personally for giving up their time to assist us in running competitions and seasonal leagues. Kai deserves that and then some. Kai has given up so much of her time and energy making ozfortress a better place and has decided that she is ready to step down from her position. Since she joined the staff team back in Season 5/Spring '23, Kai has acted as an admin for 5 highlander seasons as well as provided consistent admin support for numerous off season cups and events. She has always gone out of her way from tracking Highlander teams and players before signups have closed in order to make seedings easier to actively reaching out to users with useful resources, on top of always being on call when she can be for league related issues. Truly the GOAT of league admins and we can't thank her enough for all she has done. You've left a profound impact on staff, players, and ozfortress as a whole Kai. All of us wish you nothing but the best for your future. May you have many more holidays (God knows you've earned them) and a life full of lovely cats and kittens. Thank you for all you've done boss!