It’s easy to take for granted how much “Team Fortress 2” has changed. Remember the commander, a class that was supposed to oversee the game from a top-down strategy perspective? Yeah, me neither, because – oh, right! It was in a version of the game that was shown to the public in freaking 1999. After that, “Team Fortress 2” entered into an eight-year hibernation, and in October, 2007, we got an engineer who looked like Bob the Builder. Setting aside the game’s storied development, it has still changed an almost unbelievable amount in the three years since its release, and we’re here to celebrate as much as we can.

At the heart of the evolution of “Team Fortress 2” are the class updates, which only just wrapped up with the engineer update in July. Each update brought a set of new toys to a certain class, and more often than not, a two-week period when everybody and their mother played as the newly updated class. Among my personal favorites are the deadly Axtinguisher, an axe wrapped in barbed wire, and the Eyelander, a haunted broadsword that buffs the Demoman for every head it severs. Of course, there were lowlights, like the utterly useless Razorback, a tribal shield with a car battery attached by duct tape. It sounds a lot cooler than it is.

It’s amazing how much more variety the new items added and the impact they’ve had on the way the game is played. As a veteran gamer, it’s almost impossible to imagine playing “Team Fortress 2” the way it was at launch. The Pyro’s flamethrower couldn’t airblast, the Medic couldn’t Kritzkrieg and the Heavy couldn’t kill people just by pointing at them. Unthinkable, I know. While other game developers may have gradually tweaked balance here and there, Valve saw fit to turn the entire game on its head every four months. I always found a good laugh in monitoring the community’s reaction to the new and often imbalanced additions to the arsenal.

I jest about the online community, but truth be told, it’s one of the finest game communities out there. In the past three years, the world has been treated to the some of the greatest mash-ups known to man – everything from “Super Smash Brothers” to “StarCraft” has been combined with “TF2.” And ever since that fateful October in 2007, Halloween just isn’t Halloween without terrible “TF2” cosplay. But the community was not satisfied to create a culture around the game – they created things for the game to be used in the game. A healthy portion of the content in “TF2,” everything from maps to weapons to hats, was crafted at the hands of people who just wanted to make new stuff for their favorite game.

Speaking of crafting, well, perhaps it’s better not to speak about it. The crafting system and the item drop system that were introduced some time ago are two of the worst ideas that Valve has come up with, and judging from the most recent update, the situation is unlikely to improve. Not unless you’re willing to pay, anyway. Wait, pay? Like, with money?

Yes, you read that right: Valve added microtransactions to “Team Fortress 2.” Perhaps more discomforting are the store’s high prices—upwards of $15 for a single hat—which have resulted in more than a few jokes about “macrotransactions.” While all of the gameplay-affecting items can be earned through playing the game, the terrible random drop system makes coming by the items you actually want an exercise in frustration.

What started out as a humble, budget multiplayer game became a phenomenon that swept the world, or at least the World Wide Web. From there, it became the de-facto model of how to support a game post-release. “TF2” is a shape-shifter, morphing from a cheetah into a war-themed hat simulator with microtransactions.

“Team Fortress 2” is still just as fun to play as it was when I first bought it more than two years ago. Since that time, no game has provided me with as much joy, laughter and limitless mirth as my beloved “TF2.” It is the game that I am most sentimental about, and I can’t see that changing anytime soon. I love it as I would a child, and though it may be growing up beyond my control, I’ll never forget the good times we’ve had together, and I look forward to even better times we’ll have in the future.