Since Team Fortress 2 went Free T. o Play a few weeks ago, more of my friends have gotten in on the action, which oddly enough, I never really got into. I bought it as part of the Orange Box a few years ago, packaged with stuff I Actually Wanted To Play: Portal and the Half-Life 2 games. I played it for about an hour and left it be. I allowed a small part of my brain to follow how it was coming along, in terms of updates and features being added and such. I was intrigued when microtransactions got added, and had an inkling that it would more than likely be popular enough to sustain it for a long time, maybe even make the game itself free. But for a while all I heard were complaints about the store overcharging for "hats," whatever that meant. (Turns out, they actually meant hats.)
So when the good folks at Valve released it for free (causing yet another mini-backlash, but whatever) it meant that a) my friends who were into that sort of thing would be able to play, giving me a reason to jump in, and b) the surge of new players would cause consternation (to put it mildly) among the "hardcore" players. Which is to be expected. Nerds can be very protective when they think they've found something special, especially when that thing can be affected by the other people enjoying it. So as such, the amount of maliciousness coming from these people is astounding: mods that kick F2P accounts off servers, experienced players screaming (over both voice and text chat) at newer players over every little mistake, alongside the usual name calling and such that usually goes on in games like this. (You know, ones that are connected to the internet.) Myself and my friends have been lucky enough to find a few servers where this behavior is pretty minimized, and folk are actually willing to help newer players learn the ropes, such as using the "mentor" function that the game created explicitly for this purpose.
That being said, we've had to quit out of servers on numerous occasions because of the crass and stupid behavior of some of the more "hardcore" folk. I put quotes around that because I'm sure that the number of hours and achievements they've racked up make them feel superior, but the fact is that I don't really care. I'm playing this game to have a good time, not get screamed at by a guy who puts more hours per day into this than he does sleeping. I'm not "hardcore" by any real stretch of the imagination; I like games in general, but playing them should not be like a job. It's the same reason I can't really get into MMOs; once I feel like a game requires my constant attention to be worthwhile, at least mechanically, then it stops being fun, and the point is lost.
The game is great, don't get me wrong, and I can see myself playing it for a good long time. I recommend it to everyone, especially since it's free, and can run on a pretty wide range of machines, Macs included. I would recommend hitting the offline "practice" mode first, though, just to get the hang of the various classes and such. Also, PC Gamer is doing a big "Beginner's Guide" for the game, with each class getting it's own write-up with basic and advanced strategies, recommended items to get, and so on.
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