The Paradise Lost steam community has now turned into Fast Company. Most of us are simply going to a new server with a new name and new features, but the community that this has been (a lot of tf2 players with a few PL regulars mixed in) will remain the same.

I have sent invitations to the new group to all of the members here I would consider active. If you didn't get an invitation this means you haven't played with us in months and I don't expect you to come back any time soon. If you want to be invited to the new group you can contact me. Chances are the people who weren't invited won't read this announcement at all.

Alright guys tons of things are happening and I want your input on the changes, so a lot of you will be linked here. If you have the time I would appreciate comments on all of this.

First of all, we are getting a new server. Wolve is being very generous and providing us space on his server. We will have a normal public server with 24 slots and the ability to actually have plugins, a dramatic step up from the way things were before. Along with this is an opportunity to make a lot of changes at once, so I am doing that.

First off, I am separating this group from Paradise Lost, the forum. The reason for this is I feel like I was forcing an artificial association. I believe that I wanted PL to play TF2 and they didn't necessarily want to, and now that most of our active members are ironically "guests" not associated with the forum, separating them just seems like the natural progression. I am ok with them continuing to be affiliated, with PLers joining the TF2 games and vice versa, but we are losing the confusing and unnecessary link between the two.

What this means is a change in name is in order. I've had a few ideas. The first idea was to name the tf2 community Reluctant, which is the name of the Highlander team formed largely from members of the same community. So there would be Reluctant the tf2 community and public server and Reluctant the competitive team. I also had the random idea to name the group Fast Company. Fast Company is an expression which roughly means a group of people too "in the know" to be fooled with.

I first read the term in a sleight of hand book with a specific focus on card sharping (cheating). The author described a technique that was relatively easy to perform but advised against using it in "fast company", or at a table with players who were too clever and observant to fall for such a ruse.

If we went with Fast Company it could either be the name of the community only, with Reluctant remaining the HL name, or it could be the name for both the community and the team. I even toyed with the idea of going our first season as Reluctant to maintain the joke, and then switching to Fast Company after that as a sign of us not being Reluctant anymore.

So I wanted your opinions on the names. The tag for Fast Company would be FastCo. and the tag for Reluctant is -Rel-. Which do you prefer? And should the tag go in front of or behind our names?

Along with this new server we will be changing things up a bit. I am considering doing something similar to what the ToJ server does, which is a group I've always emulated with this community. They have their server unpassworded but also not hooked up to quickplay. What this means is strays happen upon their server but it doesn't just have a steady inflow of new players like it would with quickplay. This would give us more opportunities to play with a larger amount of people, while maintaining our regulars. We may also start adding custom maps, specifically some of those used in competitive. What do you guys think?

In other news we have another team forming, this time for the 6s format, by the name of Clockwork Rangers. This team is comprised of mostly members of Reluctant but there are a few new faces as well. Give them a warm welcome to the community :D

Tomorrow at normal time (8:30 central) will be the grand opening of the new server. It will be mostly stock TF2 stuff to start with until we've tested it. We are going to fill the server using the help of the Stooge community, but all of you are invited and you will be guranteed access if you show up within the first hour.

So yes. Things to comment on:

Aren't you glad we're getting a new server?

How do you feel about separating PL the Bioshock Forum and PL the soon to be renamed tf2 community?

Do you prefer Reluctant (-Rel-) or Fast Company (FastCo.) as a title? Do you think the HL team should be different or the same? Do you prefer tags before or after names?

Do you agree with removing the server password? And custom maps?

Will you be at the grand opening tomorrow?

Last week we filled our 12 slot server for the second time, but this time we actually had more players waiting to get in. For this reason our server now has 18 player slots to accomodate such activity should it arise again. Thats enough for highlander matches (as unlikely as it is we'd ever do them)!

We have also added a few new maps to the map rotation, including the latest map Kong King and Nightfall, our first payload race map.

The updated map rotation is as follows:

2Fort - Capture the Flag
Gorge - Attack/Defend
Harvest - King of the Hill
Gold Rush - Payload
Badlands - Control Points
Turbine - Capture the Flag
Junction - Attack/Defend
Viaduct - King of the Hill
Badwater Basin - Payload
Freight - Control Points
Double Cross - Capture the Flag
Mountain Lab - Attack/Defend
Sawmill - King of the Hill
Thunder Mountain - Payload
Gullywash - Control Points
Doomsday - Special Delivery
Gravel Pit - Attack/Defend
Nucleus - King of the Hill
Upward - Payload
Foundry - Control Points
Well - Capture the Flag
Degroot Keep - Medieval Attack/Defend
Nightfall - Payload Race
Coldfront - Control Points

Everything from Well down is new to this latest update. As always the server will follow the maps in this order unless another map from the rotation is voted for on the last round. Also at any time we can change to any other map in TF2.

Unfortunately we will not be able to run a private Mann vs Machine server as it requires much more resources than I am willing to ask our hosts (who are allowing us to play on their server on generosity alone). We have already had several PL parties using the (at the moment rather buggy) matchmaker however and will continue to do so as long as there is interest.

Now that the group has grown I've decided to actually make use of the different functions we can use to organize things.

We've recently added quite a few maps to our map rotation, with Badlands, Freight, Gullywash and Foundry making up the first set of Control Point maps to be added to the server. Other notable additions include Nucleus, Gravel Pit, Upward, and the new Doomsday map from Meet the Pyro.

This announcement also marks the first time that our "guests" are included in the Steam group. Paradise Lost is a forum community outside of Steam that isn't directly related to TF2, however we obtained our own TF2 server since it was the easiest and most fun game we could connect with. Since our group is small, we've added our own personal friends to play with us who aren't part of the Paradise Lost forum proper. This is the distinction between a guest and a normal member, simply being part of the forum or not.

In the near future there will be a members list posted in the group summary as well as addendums to our rules, such as the "less than half" rule concerning team composition with the engineer and heavy classes.

There are other improvements planned, and we are open to your comments. I appreciate everyone's participation in our games.