Colorless Times

### Outcome

* Many qualities, including the all-important Unusual quality and its effects, are temporarily disabled on TF2Tags.
* Reformatting of the site to allow all items to use all qualities, regardless if that quality was possible on that item, allowing for thousands of more creative options for tags.
* The return of April Fools' Week is announced by Dr. Dos.

**The Colorless Times** was a site-wide bug where every item quality (except for Unique, Community, Self-Made, Valve, and Strange on Botkiller weapons) was temporarily removed from Item Creation and rendered unusable. This first happened on January 28th, 2016, which was quickly resolved and wasn't focused on too much. It then happened a second time on February 14th, 2016, and proceeded to be in effect for nearly a month. The most tragic and noticeable loss was of the Unusual quality, and by extension Unusual effects. This shut down a large amount of creative possibilities, much to the chagrin of taggers.

The bug did not affect existing items in the affected qualities; it merely blocked new tags in those qualities from being created until it was fixed.

## The Disappeared Unusual

The **Disappeared Unusual** refers to the first instance of the Colorless Times bug, which occurred on January 27th, 2016. The first instance of the bug only lasted for about an hour and a half, and was hardly acknowledged at all by the userbase due to both the negligible length of the bug's effects and the drama occurring at the time.

Specifically, the drama can be seen more as a continuation of the New Tagger Riots from earlier in the month. However, unlike the first riots on the 7th, this revolved around a random non-user named pootis-spenser(sk) showing TF2Tags off on a Steam guide he made, wherein he allegedly insulted TF2Tags's jokes and refused to credit the original Taggers. This guide is apparently the reason for an influx of Taggers around this time, which (as previously in the month) resulted in a deluge of horrid tags that were met with many misses.

Of these new users was apparently a friend of the guide's creator named Pyrokip, who asked why everyone hated him and his friend for "not giving credit". Le Tryhard Hunter informed him that it was because of him being a little shit about it, and Marmot suggested taking the guide down until he gave proper credit to the taggers. Legownz told him to "make your own fucking jokes", to which Crimson Blitz advised he stop and not give the shitposter the attention he wanted.

Later on, after this riot was dying down, M3Lucas made a set wondering if he was the only one who wanted new taggers. He believed that everyone starts out bad, but they learn and grow, which would only make the site bigger and better. This was criticized by TGRobert, who claimed his tagging quality had increased in the slightest since he had joined. A (then) unknown tagger named Shit Poster admitted to his first tags being bad, but hated the way the community had treated him over them, claiming he had been told numerous times to leave and kill himself. TGR told him to get a firmer grasp on the English language. Crimson later said that if you are going to knock free publicity, then you don't deserve said publicity.

Regarding the bug itself, Makin' Bacon was the only one to actively acknowledge it. At first, he believed it was Dr. Dos updating the site, and for it he asked if he could implement a feature where one could see the best tags of a specific tagger, an idea Legownz seconded. Later on, Makin' made a joke about the bug.

In truth, if this had been the only instance of the bug, it would not have warranted a wiki page. But this instance would be but a precursor to...

## The Colorless Times

The second instance of this bug occurred the day after the Wahfia's massive gain of Taggers on February 13th, 2016. Shortly after the jokes made after the fact concluded, the site bugged once again and the same instance of certain qualities getting removed reoccurred. This was first noticed by SaturnCaine, who made a tag about it, followed immediately by a similar tag by BEAT. Initially, nobody really seemed to care. Taggers continued to tag like normal, using mostly Unique or Valve-quality items. Expand, resident news reporter, did not even report on the bug, instead making a special report on how TGRobert was robbed of a 350+ item set as he continued his feud with Smash Z for longest item set.

The following day, however, a bit of stirring about the issue would arise. Makin' Bacon would once again draw attention to the issue, albeit as a secondary complaint in an item set primarily complaining about the merged submission and comment limits that Dr. Dos implemented as a result of the Great Comment Crash around a month prior. Following this, Marmot would make a joke tag about how someone wasn't fixing their website very well. Later that day, however, Ulysses would contact Dr. Dos on Steam as he typically did in such situations to get an explanation. According to their chat logs, Dos confirmed that this situation was in fact a site bug stemming from a backend change made during the infamous Mobile-Friendly Update back in the summer of 2015. The change allowed the site to automatically add new items and new qualities for existing items by feeding off info from the TF2 wiki. Dos declared his intent on saying "fuck it" and scrapping 100% accuracy for each item's existing qualities and allowing all items to use all qualities, regardless if such combinations actually existed in-game. Marmot would comment that this would be for the best, as the TF2 wiki was never entirely accurate for such statistics in the first place. The rest of the day would see a few other taggers making note of the loss of most qualities, especially Unusual, as either a lamentation or a joke. Ulysses would make a rather cryptic set of him talking to what appears to be alternate versions of himself about various site aspects. Some wondered if this had anything to do with the current situation given he had just spoken to Dos earlier, but this was not confirmed at the time.

February 17th saw some more complaints, but most pertinently Ulysses relayed some information from a chat he had with Dr. Dos on Steam, which addressed three issues, including the bug causing these colorless times. This tag also directly connected back to that cryptic tag he had made the previous day. Dos clarified that the main issue with qualities and getting the information from the TF2 wiki was that the wiki seemed to constantly change the way it stored quality information and he would constantly have to respond by parsing these new ways. It wasn't an issue of the pages no longer being updated frequently, but actually getting the information itself was the problem. This chat also gave an early look into what would become the new comment limit system, and why community moderators had not yet been added despite months of demand. He estimated that he would get "it" live by the following week. While vague, it was inevitably just the comment system that would be implemented during that time, as the Colorless Times would continue on into March and community moderators wouldn't exist until at least another year.

As the days went on, the Colorless Times faded into the background. It was simply the reality of the current situation, and most tended not to draw much attention to it after that, especially considering the events of the Attack of the Clones which occurred on February 20th. Prior to the infamous shitstorm that occurred that day, however, Dr. Dos implemented the new comment limit system and, in a news post about the change, further confirmed that he was probably just going to let every item use every quality, stating:

> "Item qualities are still broken as the tf2 wiki where there pulled from has once again changed how that data is stored. 99% chance of me saying to hell with it and just having available weapon qualities based on whether the item is a weapon or a hat, and live with the submission of Unusual Proof of Purchases and Collector's Golden Frying Pans because the amount of effort involved in parsing that data which is not meant to be parsed is a pain."
>
>

February 20th's more infamous happenings and its consequences took over the site for quite some time, but after the immediate fallout the status quo more or less returned to normal. Taggers attempted to try and continue making Unusual jokes by creating regular unique items and adding "Effect: <Unusual Effect>" in the description, but such attempts usually did not amount to as many points as they would have if the effects were still there. No outcry for the effects to get fix would ever form, mostly on account of the users not wanting to further piss off the site owner who was now open about how pissed he was with them.

On March 1st, the Colorless Times would be used as something of a catalyst towards the first major drama incident following the Attack of the Clones. The "Edge Incident", so called for the behavior of the central tagger during this incident, sparked out of Meta Breakers attempting to "refute" the Colorless Times by pointing out that Botkiller Weapons could still be Strange. This did not refute anything, as Ulysses explained that Botkiller Weapons were bugged by the Colorless Times. If they were submitted in the Unique quality, the site would bug and the tag couldn't be posted. As such, Dr. Dos made it so that Botkiller Weapons were hardwired into being Strange by default. This caused Meta to have a quite toxic Steam chat with Ulysses, and the majority of the community turned on him for his behavior. The rest can be read in more depth on the Incident's page.

The Edge Incident would last for about four days, with the colorless status quo returning on March 5th. On March 6th, Meta, commenting on a random post he didn't make, would be the first to start wondering aloud about the continuing lack of effects, pointing out Dos said on the 17th of February he would fix it the following week. It had been around two and a half. This didn't really go anywhere and was more thinking out loud. Two days later, Mr. Copycat, returning from a hiatus, asked what had happened to his precious Dead Presidents effect which was a staple of his representative item. TGRobert, Le Tryhard Hunter, and Meta Breakers summed everything up to him in some comments. He would later make another tag using the Soldier's Requiem to mourn the loss of colors.

On March 10th, the cries for returning the colors began to get a bit louder, with Marmot pointing out that it has been almost a month since the bug first struck the site, and asked Dos (whom she called "Mom") if they could get item qualities back. In the comments, Player 1 + Player 2 and Meta Breakers passed blame to different things. P1P2 blamed the TF2 wiki for changing the item qualities so badly, while Meta believed Dos was holding this above the community's head as a means of reminding everyone who was truly in charge.

## The Returned Colors

> "Thank the lord Satan almighty."
> ~ Blast, overjoyed at the return of his beloved Hellfire effect
>
>

Then, late at night on March 10th, the unthinkable happened: Meta Breakers made a tag with the *Haunted* quality, one of the many casualties of the Colorless Times. He exclaimed to all that the Colors had finally been returned to TF2Tags. Not long after, Marmot, continuing from her asking the previous day, thanked "Mom" for finally fixing the bug, using an unusual effect for the first time in what felt like ages.

Then, Smash Z made his first unusual tag since the return, pointing out that the colors had not only been returned, but gifted to all. He claimed that his rep item had shifted into maximum overdrive, as it was now capable of using unusual effects such as Time Warp, which it was unable to previously. Yes, Dr. Dos had in fact said "fuck it" and unleashed all qualities onto all items, which solved both the bug and the issue of the wiki's tardiness while giving the users more creative options. Specifically:

* All cosmetic items are now capable of using any quality and any unusual effect, regardless if one actually existed in said quality.
* All weapons are now capable of using any quality except for Unusual (the only exception being the Horseless Headless Horsemann's Headtaker). This was because TF2B, the backpack viewer Dr. Dos used to get the unusual effects, did not have unusual effects for weapons at that time).
* Taunts unfortunately were limited to Unique and Valve quality only. Unusual taunts were broken for unknown reasons and would never be added.
* All items capable of being strange were given their category's default strange ranks. That is, all weapons got Strange to Hale's Own, all cosmetics got Strange to Mannceaux Signature Collection, and all items with unique strange ranks got their unique strange ranks.

This, as one might expect, led to an absolute *tidal wave of a flood* of tags for the remainder of March 10th and all of March 11th. With restrictions having been greatly lessened, people let their creativity run absolutely wild. During this extreme influx of tags, Ulysses provided the explanation as to why the fix took so long. Dr. Dos had originally intended on restoring the colors the previous week as advertised, but had just moved and temporarily lost the power cord for the external drive that the developer copy of TF2Tags lived on, and had to see to finding it before launching the bugfixes. Ulysses then anticipated more complaints towards Dos about adding the new unusual effects that had been added since before the Colorless Times, as well as War Paints, which Ulysses ordered people not complain about and be happy that they got the Unusuals back, at least for a little while.

The celebration lasted all day, with a deluge of tags coming in hot, sprinkled in with individual taggers thanking Dos for restoring the color to TF2Tags. Le Tryhard Hunter was annoyed about the sheer number of tags being posted, likening it to spamming and by proxy the behavior of the new taggers everyone supposedly hated so much. Everyone collectively ignored him and continued to make tags. So he gave up and began asking questions about the implications of certain items. For instance, what would a Strange Rocket Jumper (incapable of damaging enemies) count? People discussed, and made more tags. Blast, seeing the sheer number of tags being posted, made an innuendo about everyone holding their tags in and releasing them all at once.

Later that day, Tryhard would announce that the Returned Colors officially marked the beginning of the supposed "Second Age" of TF2Tags, likening the new possibilities as a Renaissance to the Colorless Times's Dark Age. Ulysses immediately disputed this claim, pointing out all the negatives that had still not been corrected. Sensible Haircut and A Fucking Idiot were still banned, Dr. Dos still wanted to kill the site, and Meta Breakers existed (showing that even though he had a direct role in ending the Edge Incident, he still had an extreme hatred for Meta). He claimed that if there was any "age" on this website, then they were all still in the Dark Ages.

As things settled down early in the morning of Marth 12, Blast set up a game of Cards Against Humanity for everyone to enjoy and celebrate the return of Unusuals with. He would then grow incredibly sad when the only person to show up was BEAT. After this, things started to slow down back to the normal rates of tagging, though a trend soon emerged that gave love to the Collector's quality. Since the Collector's quality revolved around converting 200 unique quality copies of a single item into 1 Collector's quality, people made various jokes revolving around 200 of the item they used in the Collector's quality.

Finally, just before the clocked changed to March 13th, Dr. Dos himself made a tag. This tag showed not a TF2 item, but an incredibly compressed png of then-candidate (and future US President) Donald Trump. He declared that he would "Make TF2Tags Great Again", announcing that April Fools' Week would return in just over two weeks. Given that April Fools' Week did not occur in 2015 for reasons unknown, many users celebrated this announcement with extreme excitement. A few Generation 1 Taggers were happy that the much-beloved feature was returning, while the Generation 2 Taggers were hyped to experience their first April Fools' Week on TF2Tags, with Walumancer later proposing that everyone roleplay as their NTF2Tags counterpart on April First. With this, the Colorless Times officially came to a close.

## Trivia

* The Colorless Times marks the longest-lasting single historical event in TF2Tags history, with the second occurrence of the bug lasting a whopping 25 days. If the first Instance of the bug is added onto this, it brings it to 26 days.
	+ This dethroned the previous longest historical event, the Racist Anon Incident of May 2015, which lasted for 21 days.

* The Colorless Times is the only time a historical event overlapped with other historical events. Given the nature of the event being a bug, this makes sense. The Colorless Times were in effect during both the Attack of the Clones as well as the Edge Incident.
	+ The New Tagger Riots came close to doing this beforehand, but the riots died down *just before* the Great Comment Crash, which occurred the same day the riots ended.
* The Colorless Times saw the creation of NTF2Tags, a meme alternate universe where every Tagger acted the opposite of who they are. Also many became women for reasons that were unknown then but are more than clear now.
* The Colorless Times oversaw the advent of the Perverted Conagher's Combover meme, which would later become a staple joke of the site and its community.