Hello! Before we launch, we wanted to give a basic rundown of how server hosting will work in Team Fortress 2 Classified. We're expecting a lot of new faces and have made a lot of changes, so even if you're a seasoned server hoster, this is still worth the read.
For those newer to TF2C, we run a manual server verification program. Essentially, so long as your server is stable and well-maintained, you can use our verified servers page and request verification. If passed, your server will be marked with a "Verified" tag in-browser, which lets new players know that your server is a good experience, and allows us to grant trusted hosts access to rich features. If you don't pass verification or don't want to apply, don't worry—your server will still appear in the browser just fine, viewable and playable by everyone. We don't blacklist servers outside of the most extreme scenarios, such as hosting malware or illegal content. We don't intend to police servers heavily, but just know that it pays to play nice.
As we mentioned briefly a few months ago, our server browser has gotten a complete facelift! While we plan to overhaul it further in the future, for now it should be far easier to find servers to play on that suit your preferences.
Come launch, servers can advertise themselves more accurately in-browser thanks to our new server type tagging system. After getting your server manually verified, simply setting a special tag in your sv_tags allows your rulesets to be displayed front and center on the server browser! After discussing with existing hosters, we've settled on a small list of type tags for launch, with the opportunity of easily expanding this system in the future as needed:
type_customrules - For servers which make drastic changes to the base ruleset, such as globally enabling the Civilian, bunnyhopping, or custom gamemodes such as Engineer Fortress or TF2Ware. This does not apply to smaller changes such as fixed spread or random crits.
type_customweapons - For any server that heavily modifies the item schema. This includes custom weapon packs, rebalance packs, and throwback servers.
At launch, this will run on an honor system, and as such will only be open to verified servers. In the future, we may look into automating this system. We would love to hear feedback from server hosts post-launch.