News

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Coming Spring 2025!

Hello again! After running the numbers, running them again, and a third time to be sure, we are ready to share with you all the changes coming to Highlander Spring '25.

Map Pool

The following maps will be included in the Spring '25 Highlander Season;

koth_product_final
koth_ashville_final1
koth_proot_b6c-alt2
koth_warmtic_f10
pl_upward_f12
pl_vigil_rc10
pl_swiftwater_final1
pl_eruption_b15
cp_steel_f12

Borneo Eruption

Ha! You thought. Eruption will be returning for its third consecutive season. While it is still the highest requested map to be removed from our map pool, it has slowly become better received after its new found play time with in our league. During the post season poll we found that Eruption and Swiftwater were only a few votes apart when asking players which payload map should be removed. Thus, we decided that Eruption will stick around for another season. The map has also received an update which will be played throughout the season.

Warmtic

Warmtic will be returning for the first time in over a year to replace Proside this season! It was extremely clear from post season feedback that players were not impressed with Proside and thus it will be retired effective immediately. Warmtic was the elected replacement for this season over Lakeside, Valor and Cascade.

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Whitelist

Loch 'n' Load

The Loch 'n' Load will be banned for Spring '25 Highlander and the foreseeable future. It was made abundantly clear to us that the Loch 'n' Load's near 100% equip rate during Experimental Cup 4 was indicative of the weapons power within Highlander (and competitive TF2 in general). It is far too strong to be included in regular season competition so you're all safe... for now.

Darwin's Danger Shield

We received mixed feedback on the Darwin's in our post Experimental Cup survey. With only some players opting to equip it throughout the Experimental Cup, we decided to poll the item's inclusion in the upcoming season via a discord poll. The poll posted in our discord ended with 66% of votes being in favor of the item remaining banned. From this result, we will respect the majorities wishes and keep the item banned for Spring '25 Highlander.

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Welcome Sylvie to the Team!

Please welcome Sylvie to our Highlander team! Sylvie is a passionate member of the community who is looking to make her mark on the admin scene. We're very excited to have her and you'll be in good hands going into the season.

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First, we're looking for staff!

You've likely seen our "We Need You" posts in the past. This is different. We are looking to fill staff positions in most roles, but in particular, we are looking for new league administrators with ambition, drive and commitment to bring ozfortress into the future. These are always nice to see in candidates, but we are looking for those qualities with more necessity than we have before.

We will always cherish the work our volunteers put in and respect the commitment they give to us and our community, but staff turnover in recent years has increased, and there are some consistent factors.

Part staff burnout

And part this, part that. It's not just these two factors, but it’s significant enough to warrant discussing. Staff burnout is hard to fix, and it's something we've worked on improving over the last few years, so beyond saying that we've done what we can to make league administrator workload more manageable than it was in the past, we'll say this; we'll always support our staff in any way we can, and we won't lie and say the workload is nothing - but if you could play one of our competitions on a team who scrims a few couples times a week, that's about the maximum amount of time we'd expect of you.

Part resentment towards negative player attitude

Resentment doesn't necessarily encompass it, but more than a few retired staff members and current staff members would probably agree that we're over it. To be clear, the majority of this community are almost always great, but I would be remiss in neglecting to mention that the minority who on purpose aim to be moronic, intentionally difficult to communicate with, just because you can be, you are who we are talking about. I will always be completely open to fair criticism, voicing your opinion on changes, even your dissatisfaction with behavioural bans against your friends or circle jerks. At the end of the day, we do what we can to make everything as fair as we can, and that's always been a principle I try to instil in our league administration. You might have noticed that as of late, I have been far more unavailable than ever, to which I just want to thank everyone who has stepped up in my absence, but it's provided me some clarity on how we really have been tolerating what are frankly, just fucking tantrums, too often. We have rulesets for a reason, and we aim to make very little use of our "we can amend or make decisions outside of this ruleset at our discretion" clauses very sparingly, but if your goal is to get your own way in breach of our rulesets, or to just be a pest, fuck around and find out.

What are we looking for in applicants?

Frankly, in the past, we've knocked back most applications that seem low effort. As much as this is just a few hours a week, volunteering for a community-run league kind of thing that, in the grand scheme of things, low priority in everyone's daily life - low effort applications that are often just slightly over a few sentences really does not make a good impression, nor does it demonstrate reliability or any interest in long term commitment. We will always be thankful for any time our volunteers can volunteer, but the turnover of staff we have had lately has admittedly made it harder to keep filling those roles, and it means much more time spent teaching. While we're aiming to improve how we do that, turnover is still an issue, and one that is not the fault of those who step away.

Beyond that, we're looking for people who are willing to step up and take over eventually. If you think that's you, or you have a drive to help with keeping seasonal leagues going, application templates and submission links can be found here.

ozfortress into 2026 and beyond

You've likely already seen that with the seasonal league signups opening, a few staff members have stepped down, and we would like to thank them for their time, their energy, and frankly, a part of their sanity. In particular, we'd like to thank Chili, who stepped up after multi's attempted Irish goodbye. In Chili's time, he kept a watchful eye over four seasons of Sixes and was invaluable in keeping ozfortress going. In addition to Chili stepping down, cryo, omni, and redja are also stepping down.

That's not everyone. In the next season or so, Sperkle will also be stepping down from being Highlander Head Admin. So you can probably see how there's a void we're looking to fill, and they're big shoes to fill.

But wait, there's more

I've had who knows how many versions of this announcement drafted for months and months now, not to mention how many conversations I've had with people about this. I don't know how many times I've told people either, but it's time. Whilst I originally hoped to have announced this ages ago, I am aiming to step down from being the League Director. I don't intend to leave ozfortress completely, nor do I intend to leave anything unsettled, so I can't say with certainty when, but ideally within a year, preferably less. With ozfortress picking up Highlander nearly four years ago now, the workload of keeping things afloat is admittedly lower than you might think, but ozfortress deserves someone with far more passion and drive for TF2 than I have these days. Even before starting Respawn League, I was helping run events, so I've been doing this now for over eight years, and frankly, I should have stepped away a while ago.

We need you, new blood!

That's our biggest focus right now, we need people who are not only going to be around a bit longer, but who have the passion to take ozfortress into the future. If you think that's you, apply using the links above.

Website posts are changing

Going into 2026, we'll be changing how we use our website for news posts. We've already cut down what we post on our website to just essential news posts and ban posts, but the latter will be disappearing. We briefly alluded to this in the most recent ban post in our Discord, but going forward, all ban posts will be in our Discord. There are a few reasons, but the main reason is, ban posts are a bad look, and frankly, they don't need to be posted on our website. Practically everyone is already in our Discord, so everyone will see them anyway. We will be working to further refine how we list bans on our website going forward, including game server bans and their duration.

Infractions and behaviour management in ozfortress

We'll detail this in its own post soon, but changes are coming to our Infractions Ruleset, and a lowering of our tolerance for severe breaches, and in particular, we'll be making it easier to dispatch of the worst of the worst.

A lot of change, so what's next?

Things will continue to operate as normal; we just need to make some decisions and fill some roles. And we aim to keep everyone running smoothly for the foreseeable future, and there are still a few things I would like to get done and launch before I step down, or more likely, step back.

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Hay fever be gone!

Stop sneezing and start gaming. Spring '25 Highlander is here and what better way to round out 2025 than with some action packed Highlander. While we are not quite ready to reveal the changes coming to the season, we are ready for you to sign up your rosters! So get excited, and buy some tissues.

Signups

You can sign up for Highlander Spring '25 from today (Wednesday the 24th of September) up until Friday the 10th of October at 11:59pm AEDT. With this in mind we'll aim to have seedings out by Sunday the 12th or Monday the 13th of October at the latest with the Season starting on Wednesday the 15th of October.

SIGNUP NOW · SEASON PAGE

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Changes on the way

Our boys in the lab have a lot of data to go over, so we'll be making a separate post in the coming days once we have all our facts sorted. This post will contain any Whitelist and Map Pool alterations coming for Spring '25, so keep your eyes peeled. In the meantime... I don't know, scrim Product, its not like that thing is going anywhere.

Staff Changes

After being with us for 5 seasons redja will be departing from our Highlander Admin team. Redja's impact was nothing short of substantial during his time as an admin. He has allowed us to have some of the best seeded and ran competitions in recent Highlander history thanks to his rigorous and meticulous planning ahead of time and his tireless work behind the scenes crafting tiebreaking metrics that combat our websites current limitations. Don't worry, he'll still be behind the scenes bossing around our current staff but his time in the spot light has come to an end. Thanks brew (bro)! You helped us run a skux league, we wish you all the best and we hope you enjoy all the fush (fish) and chups (chips) life has to offer you aye!

Cryo will also be stepping down as a league admin moving into Spring '25. With life catching up to him we'd like to also thank him for his contributions to our staff team. While he wasn't around for the longest time, Cryo provided a multitude of level headed takes behind the scenes and even took time out of his busy schedule to assist us in running the recent Experimental Highlander Cup. Truly a great guy and nothing but an incredible asset to our team and the entire community. Thank you Mr. Cryotech, we hope you thrive in 2026 and the years to come!

Despite being down 2 we're still up 4 with Pulse, woozy and myself (Sperkle) sticking around. Furthermore, our very own indy and her jones will be staying on with us now, having graduated from Trial Admin status to a fully fledged Highlander Admin!

We'll be letting you all know of all the changes as soon as we can, so keep your eyes peeled!

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