Team Fortress 2 Classless Update: Now With Hats!

Valve has taken the wraps off the Classless Update for Team Fortress 2, a new add-on for the online FPS featuring a brand-new map and some very sexy hats.

With the unpleasantness of jarate finally receding into a mercifully-distant memory, Valve has decided to once again remind people that it is staffed largely by people who aren't quite right in the head. The best way to do that? Hats! 18 of them in fact, representing an impressive collection of headgear that's both attractive and practical.

"In wartime, hats were a useful way of conferring rank, and ensuring that casualties were confined to the lower classes," Valve noted in its announcement of the update. "During peacetime, hats have been instrumental for men to let the non-hatted know just who is wearing the hat around here."

And what's the point of having a new hat if you don't have somewhere new to show it off? Thus we have Arena Offblast, "a fast-paced, high-altitude community map set in a top secret missile silo wedged into the top of a hollowed-out mountain" that's also included with the update. The map features open paths carved into the mountainside and the whole thing is set atop a sheer cliff, providing players with plenty of opportunities to stumble to humiliating, self-inflicted deaths.

There's also a tantalizing possibility that there will be more: The First Ever Classless Update - 100 Percent Free! - is, like the Sniper vs. Spy Update before it, packing a "Day 1" tag, the obvious implication being that there will be a "Day 2," presumably with even more stuff! Get the details, and have a look at some fine, stylish chapeaus while you're at it, at teamfortress.com/classless.

Thanks to VyperX for the heads-up.