 Good evening. TF2 is old but gold. It was first released over 15 years ago way back in 2007, and given that it's still pulling tens of thousands of players to this day, it doesn't look like the internet is ever going to stop loving it. And it's not hard to see why. There's always been a lot of fun to be had, and a lot of memories to be made in TF2. And even outside of the game itself, it's impossible to forget the impact left by the TF2 videos made in GMOD and SFM by people like the late Kidio 706 which have earned a place in millions of people's hearts and have cultural legacies of their own. To this day, sometimes I like to boot up old TF2 maps from my childhood and reminisce on the good times I've had with them. That sense of nostalgia is one of the things this channel is built upon. But what if you could never relive any of those memories again? What if you could never go back to revisit the locations of your childhood and reminisce? If you could never play your favorite old TF2 maps ever again and were stuck only with your fleeting memories of them, that would be pretty upsetting, right? Well, I recently found out that this is sadly more than just a hypothetical. It all began when I started scrolling through my Steam Accounts Image Library and rediscovered this old screenshot from August 31st, 2012. I would have been about 9 years old when I took this screenshot and I'm 19 now. So of course seeing it again, I was immediately met with a wave of nostalgia remembering the time I had spent playing on the trade map seen in the picture after school. I vividly remember it having all kinds of huge physics objects, cars, and even explosive barrels that all came together to create a pretty unique online space to hang out in. My recollection of its actual layout or what it was called had gotten pretty hazy by now though, so I scrolled down to find the map's name in the screenshot metadata. Trade underscore FizzTower underscore B9. I plugged this string into Google expecting to find a rehosted download of it somewhere that I could boot up and explore again for a trip down memory lane, but I was instead greeted by nothing. Searching Trade FizzTower B9 yielded only 7 results, 3 of which were unrelated spam sites. As far as I can tell, there are no remaining download links for Trade FizzTower B9 online. In fact, the first two results were 3 year old form threads of people asking for help figuring out where to find it. One of these actually did have a reply that shared a link to the map, but even this relatively recent re-upload is now defunct. Now, I know what you're thinking. This don't seem too bad. In theory, we now know at least a few people have the map and could still share and help preserve it if the right person got in contact with them. Surely someone on Reddit could dig up a copy of this thing in no time. However, what I learned next made me realize that the case of FizzTower B9 is a bit more complex and hopeless than one of just a missing file, and that even if I were to ask around for the map BSP, getting my hands on it would be of no use. See, the final two results I got from Google were both from a TF2 custom map archive formed thread where a user named Rebco posed the question, anyone have any idea how to get Trade FizzTower B9 to run? Just crashes when you try to load it. Might be some weird shit with it like having Half-Life assets in it? Another user named WeedBoat then replied and supplied the name of the server that used to run the map. Man is a super awesome trade server. However, they stated that they were also unable to get the map to load. And when another user named HugTheBed2 decided to take a crack at the map, they uncovered something pretty confusing. The map file for Trade FizzTower B9 lists zero entities. None at all. Now, if you know anything about TF2 mapping, you'll know that this makes zero sense. In order for a map to play it needs player spawn entities, ammo and health pickups, doors and props to detail the map, etc. So for a map so robust you would expect it to have hundreds of entities, not zero. This gives us more questions than answers, although it does tell us why the map crashes the game. For a level to load it requires at least one automatically generated entity called WorldSpawn, which is among those absent from the FizzTower's entity list. So, why is the map like this? Well, the only explanation that seems to make any sense is that the creator of FizzTower B9 and the owner of Man is Super Awesome Trade Server were in cahoots and didn't want anyone running off with their formula. So, they configured the map to only load if it was connected to a closed source server plugin, making it impossible for anyone to run the map on anything other than Man is Super Awesome Server. Basically, they were hogging the map for themselves by making its ability to load reliant on a connection to their special server. As a result of this, now that that server is washed away with time, FizzTower B9 is completely shelled. It's possible to force the map to load using a source mod plugin to run the WorldSpawn entity, but it's completely empty and only loads the map's geometry in water, which is a tiny fraction of what it once had to offer. Since there's pretty much no documentation of the map anywhere on YouTube apart from this 40-second clip, it would also be pretty much impossible to remake it faithfully. So, unless someone involved with the server comes out to supply the plugin used on Man is Super Awesome Server or an alternate version of FizzTower B9, anyone looking to boot the map up today is fresh out of luck. Now, unfortunately, this isn't the only case of TF2 community content getting lost due to server plugin reliance. I remember being a little kid and drooling over this old video showing off a TF2 Portal Gun server mod, only to find out that the server that used to host it had shut down and, unfortunately to this day, I still have never had a chance to play with it. Shame, it still looks really cool. Anyway, after going on this fruitless search for FizzTower, I started reflecting and realized that the TF2 modding scene in general is a shell of what it used to be back in the day. As time has gone on, it's only gotten harder to personalize your game. TF2's slow creep of complex cosmetics has all but killed the demand for custom player model skins. The switch from the V-Model system to the C-Model system and the introduction of gun skins has permanently crippled the custom weapon scene. You'll never see anyone using stuff like the iPhone, Dead Ringer, or the Jackhammer anymore. And while the casual matchmaking system they added in Meet Your Match might have made the game more accessible, it also eviscerated the community server scene which was once bustling with interesting activity. Nowadays, official matches don't even support anything other than HUD and V-Model reanimation mods. And I never really cared for either of those things, so unless I want to play on weird trade servers and 24-7 Skyl 2 for it for the rest of my life, TF2 modding might as well be dead, at least that's how I see it. All the effort the community used to put into making cool free mods is now funneled into workshop submissions. And by design, the workshop is a much more creatively limited space than a regular old fashioned mod sharing site. When I was a little kid, I was downloading fucking Super Mario Goomba Soldier, Halo Rocket Launcher, and all kinds of other stupid shit to test around on community balloon race servers every day after school. But unfortunately, people picking up the game today probably won't ever experience anything like that outside of maybe a freak fortress server. And it seems like this is also the trend for the broader gaming industry as well. The insane shenanigans that used to be commonplace in game modding spheres is pretty much all but gone in modern titles. Sure, Fortnite lets you pay real-world money to play as Master Chief in Chun-Li, but 10 years ago we were doing shit 15 times more absurd than this in pretty much every game that was out at the time for free. Someone in the comments, please tell me when and how did we surrender this? Anyway, to get back to TF2 and the story at hand, maybe you never played Fist Tower B9, maybe you couldn't care less about it. Hell, I very well may be one of the only people still around who even remembers it. But if you love TF2 then I'm sure there's a custom map out there that's special to you, and that you'd be upset to see lost to time, especially at the hands of a random self-centered server owner. Now, there's a chance that after I put this video out something miraculous will happen and a guy will come forward to somehow provide a restored version of the map. But that would presumably require either the original creator of the map and or the original server hoster to come back a decade after quitting the scene to provide a map file that they likely lost track of years ago. So unless that happens, you can never play this TF2 map again. Thanks for watching, I hope you enjoyed the video. If you want to support my channel and I have a Patreon, have a good day.