Badges are assigned in three ways:

Automatic Yearly Badges
Year badges are assigned to players that have been plaing on The Network servers for 1, 2 or 3 years. Players who get this badge must also meet these requirements to prevent drop-by players from being awarded:
Joined one of our servers for the first time 1, 2 or 3 years ago.
Joined one of our servers within the past 30 days.
Played for a minimum of 120 minutes overall.

Automatic Rank Badges
The top 9 ranked players receive an armband automatically based on the Experience Points (XP) system.

Explorer Badges
These are awarded to players who have reached special obectives which could be hard to reach or secret locations. They are triggered automatically. Some badges may be awarded for a single event or they may be grouped together. If they are grouped you must complete each part to receive the badge.

Manually awarded badges
Special badges may be manually awarded to players for achieving specific goals or recognition for serving the community in a special way.