I was able to attend the 2014 WCS America Season 2 Finals (yup, it’s still a mouth-full) in beautiful Burbank California at the brand-spankin-new ESL studios. This location really is new, and this was their first big SC2 broadcast. They had time to practice with Tanks and promos, but it seemed as if this was finally the real deal for them. The first real test. After whipping up the warehouse into a badass studio and production house, they put on one hell of a show for not only oodles of online viewers, but a packed house of SoCal local attendees. Thank’s for letting me clown around at your new home ESL.

So onto the event itself: In a world were I get most of my WCS knowledge from liquipedia, I started off a little under-enthused going into the Ro16. Major was there, but no players who I really cared about, or could have good dinner conversation with, made it. Luckily I had my hands full taking oodles of pictures of them smexy Korean’s. If you’d like to just look at pictures (maybe you hate my writing, maybe you always just had a thing for picture books and magazines, I don’t judge) you can look at them all here:  Day 1  // Day 2

Day 1 was pretty standard fare. 4 best of 5 matches were being played. The day started at 3pm and the house was filled with audience members. Toodming, Clutch, Veto-Mustachio, and Taeja were sexy as usual.

Nathanias and Rotti were holding down the fort casting as usual. However the real surprise here was just how damn good QXC was at the desk. He brought energy, did a little call and response with the audience, and actually had a deep player perspective articulated beautifully in game. A++ hope’s ESL gets him back again.

A new addition to the on-screen family was Nikki B. She was…..well…willing to learn. I’m sad that I got to miss all the things that twitch chat must have said. I have a feeling this might be the last we see of here.

Bomber won his match and did some Alliance-level brand sporting. Hyun and PigBaby also took home wins, while Polt made us all a little sad. The atmosphere in support of pigbaby was actually crazy. People went from not knowing of him, to become fanatic about observes, to legitimately cheering him on through the weekend. I knew I drank the kewl-aid. He seems to be a high level korean who can come win in America, has a bm personality, and can engage a crowd. Now if only he spoke english we would have a full package. I’m sure the dude is inundated with team offers.

Clutch, who spent most of the down time hyping the crowd (and giving them food) sent the broadcast and the day away with an SNL style ending.

Day 2 was bigger in every way. More stress. More people. Blizzard staff all over the place. I feel like the fire marshal would not have been happy. Here is a pano shots to get a feel of what we were dealing with in the studio:

The ESL/Redbull partnership saw not only the audience getting free redbull, but the appearance of their bar in the backdrop of part of the set. This is were the casters were giving post game solo replay analysis from.

I took advantage of the situation to do my best RedEye impersonation.

With even more people there for the finals, it’s a good thing the fire marshal did not show up. The ESL need4seat office chairs lined the room as blizzard staff, esl staff, and general public cramped together. Bomber was comfrotable on stage tho. Man is suave.

The 7 game crazy set between Bomber and PigBaby was probably one of the most entertaining I have seen in a while. It was wacky, gimmicky, and just multiple typed of odd. I like matches like that. Keeps things fresh. The game 7 tempest win (spoilers lol) had the crowd and Rotti going crazy. When the GG was called the fans in the stand rushed the stage and really shocked PigBaby. It was a pretty cool moment but I have no idea how it really reflected on camera. The crowd favorite won, and everyone was elated.

Once the broadcast wrapped the staff invited everyone to downtown to hang out and eat. We had a grand old time till late in the night. I sat next to Alicia and helped him order wisky. We all shared some good laughs on a job well done that week. I’d be lying if I said I recalled much more.

But yeah, that was my weekend at the new ESL studios. Cool place, cooler people. They’re gonna pump out a ton of awesome content. When I wasnt taking pictures or watching the games, I really enjoyed conversations with staff and audience members. I wish there was more to write about from an “on the floor” perspective, but alas my weekend was just that. A lot of time sitting on the floor. Mmmmmm polished concrete.

Again, if you would like to visit the two image galleries to see all (77) pictures that I salvaged from this weekend, you can do so here: Day 1  // Day 2
Shoutout to the friends who worked their ass off on the broadcast.
If you’d like to follow me on the twitter, I’d totes give you a hug. @Leafeator
<3
~Joey “Leafeator”

Here is a real quick share of some pictures I took Sunday October 20th at Red Bull HQ for the WCS Season 3 America Finals. This was a free admission event hosted in Santa Monica California that featured the top 8 Americans (Read: Koreans). Unfortunately I was only able to attend Sunday, but felt right at home with a, small, hyped crowd and a bunch of friends from NASL and the SoCal scene. Personal highlights of the day included the copious amounts of free Red Bull, Gretorp hugs, Jaedong remembering me, and a Polt W.

I hope everyone in Toronto is excited for this weekend. Knowing a itsy-bitsy part of what is in store for you makes me envious I can not attend. You guys are going to have a blast.

Fingers crossed that I will be making it out to Blizzcon for some good times.
Have a good one yo,
Leaf~

WCS NA kicked off its first live broadcast at the NASL studio Monday. 3 of America’s top players (Jaedong, Ryung, and Oz) were all in Rancho California to play infront of a live audience. Since a fire broke out at the original venue the crew did not have much time to turn their office into a studio, a la MLG. Something new to this live WCS NA event was an audience! It did not come over well through the stream, and the guest list was 90% VIPS, but people were there watching and rooting for NA’s best. Since Violet could not come it was a rather short day with not too much to shoot, but a fun time with friends nonetheless. Hope you enjoy some of the pictures. Unfortunately this was the only day I am able to cover WCS stuff. I fly out to TI3 Friday. Hype as fuck.

Full album can be viewed here 

Additional shots and a vine pan of the set on my twitter

~Leaf

Who’s excited for another event recap blog?!? Here is my stories from MLG Spring 2013 in Anaheim California. If you don’t want to read the words and instead just look at the pictures, you can find them by clicking on this big ol’ link.

MLG is arguably the largest eSports organization in America. For the last three years the crown jewel of the MLG circuit has been MLG Anaheim. Located in southern California, and stones throw from Disneyland, Anaheim draws an unparalleled crows in the USA. All of those nice things were true again this year, but only for 66.666666666% of the featured games at the event.

Upon entering the doors of MLG this year it was obvious that they changed up the venue floor format. Here is a very not to scale, yet artistic masterpiece, map of the show floor.

The League of Legends and Call of Duty stages sat next to each other and drew some big crowds. In the middle of them was a steel loft that featured each games casting desk elevated over the audience. This side of the convention center was sick and well planned out.

Whoever said that all of the stages were of equal size is a liar. If you read carefully up to this point you might have got some clues to tip you off about the state of Starcraft at this event. Lackluster, dull, dim, drab and uninspiring are some good words to describe Starcraft at MLG. It was as if the event was literately pushed into the corner and poorly laid out. With no featured stage and only one side of the player pit viewable the fans there was not too much to do aside from watching the main stage. There were other minor things that were bothersome such as only having one screen per stage.

I don’t really know how much of these problems are directly correlated to not being able to finalize Starcraft as a game until only a month before the event started. Maybe I am just being necessarily rough.

The saving grace for MLG was the work that was put on by the casters, crew, and players. It is very hard to stay angry when the actually show was so good. I was more excited for this player pool than any MLG in recent history. I would much rather see Incontrol cheese on the main stage, Nani bm, Bubbles, Illusion, Tyler, LZ, 11 root players, State, and Xeno play than 20 kespa players.

Saturday: 
Saturday was my first full day at the event. Friday I arrived late and spent a lot of time bitching. I decided that I should do something more productive than that so I broke the camera out. All be it there was not too much work to be done. Between Carlton Beener, GHOSTCLAW, Tank, and the MLG photographers, I did feel a little inadequate lacking a real press badge. Since the Starcraft section of the floor was rather small and players were only ever playing on stage or in the pit most pictures turned out to just be “liquipedia-esque” head shots. Boring? Maybe. But some of these nerd ballers are sexy. Are you ready for a little photo dump?

In an effort to get some main stream attention thrown at MLG; Dez Bryant, Dwight Howard, Ty Lawson, and Dejuan Blair all showed up to play some Call of Duty on stage. It was a fun little gimmick but holy shit was it hard to capture the moment with all of the people and security around the players. Dwight went over well with the local basketball fans. Some even chanted “Stay D12″ longing for him to remain a Laker. Love him or hate him, the guy is a bundle of charisma.

Normally when one attends a MLG they live off of a Doctor Pepper diet. This year Flipz pretzels was added to the list of sponsors. Now attendees can compliment their diet of Dr. P with some chocolate pretzels. Yummy. The Flipz girls spent the day showing off a lot of skin while literally throwing hundreds of bag of pretzels at nerds. It was almost as if they were trying to fend them off with carbohydrates. They really did give out a lot of pretzels.

I was refusing to eat the free crap in the venue and such was starving. [Blitz_Dota] offered me to come grab a bite to eat with himself, Purge, and MOTHER FUCKING 2GD. James was the one person in eSports who I have yet to meet and was still a fanboy over. He flew out to SoCal with Statman Bruno to go do some DOTA 2 stuff at the Beyond the Summit studio. I was pretty hype to go mingle with him over some burgers. He really is a dick, and I appreciated it.

As the day was coming to a close I spent more time snapping some player pictures with fingers crossed that some of them would be good.

Championship Sunday:
Wanna play a fun game? Next MLG count how many times djWheat says “Championship Sunday.”

Did you guys hear the juicy drama that happened Sunday? Naniwa called Polt……..a “bitch.” gasp The drama didn’t even end there! After Naniwa lost, Polt went to Naniwa’s booth to shake his hand. Nani refused and laughed. Funny how this was one of the high points of the event. I like that Nani can be the heal. I still am not that big of a fan of him in general.

Very few games played out Sunday. MLG had something super secret going on in the player pit. The main stage went along at a breakneck pace. The grand finals took place relatively early. Former TSL teammates Polt and Hyun took to the stage. The crowd was playing up Polt as an American hero since he is currently residing in Texas. They went fucking nuts when he ended up winning over Hyun and his crazy pants. I wonder if he liked the “USA! USA! USA!” chants.

Starcraft fans packed up early after the finals to head home. While exiting the roar of the League crowd was deafening. I was a bit envious. I made it back to the Hilton hotel bar after taking a shower. Everyone was getting ready for the Twitch after party that has become a staple of attending MLG. Instead of a club they rented out a sports bar. By 10pm that place was packed with everyone who was anyone. It was hard to walk from one side of the restaurant to the other. I attempted to play some billiards and 2GD thought he would be my coach. His pool advice is sub par. Some of the best networking happens at these after parties. I got to hang out with TB, djWheat, Deamon, Purge, MLG employees, Twitch folk, Alex Garfield, and even sit down for a long chat with Jaedong. Jaedong was sad that so many people were shy around him so we talked about being a celebrity and his fans in America. His English is damn good for never taking formal classes. I think if he worked at he he could become even more beloved in the west. I wish I took a damn picture with him.

After the Twitch party the cool kids went over to IHOP for some late late breakfast. By “cool kids” I mean I just went with Suppy, FireZerg, Sasquatch, 8mmspikes, Blitz, and Purge. It was a very nice way to end a crazy fun weekend.

Heading back to the hotel super tired I could not help myself but to join in on at least one Mafia game. If you dont know what eSports Mafia is, you can watch it on twitch every Wednesday night! [Stream Link]

At the end of the day/event the most unsettling thing for me is wondering what is next for MLG. Sure they announced MLG Columbus, Ohio, November 22 – 24. With all of the rumors about no Starcraft on the pro circuit, and only 3 live events in 2013, the future is disconcerting.

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Thank you for reading. The next event I will be at will be TI3. It will be my first DOTA event and I am excited. I know the majority of people who read these things are just Starcraft fans, so it will be exciting to see if there is any interest in reporting DOTA.

I want to be putting regular content up here that is not just event recaps and pictures. I will be putting together some “eSports Journalism” pieces that are a little fun and different in the time between events. If there is anything you would like to see me write about drop me a line on twitter [@leafeator]. Hell even if you don’t have any suggestions maybe you could follow me anyways. We can be BFF’s

<3 <3 <3

~Leaf

First a little bit of house keeping. Bringing the site out of “beta” today with some graphical and miscellaneous updates. No longer scared to link people here. Looking forward to the pointers I get on improving the place.

So I got a VIP invite from Rob Simpson and Sean Plott to attend the “Open House” final day of the Red Bull Training Grounds event. For the third of fourth time red bull opened the doors of their socal headquarters to the Day[9]tv squad to host a starcraft event. Two red bull sponsored startale Korean players, joined two Europeans, and four NA players for a three day production. Training grounds allowed these players a lot more than just the opportunity to play in an invite only tournament. These eight players were being put up for an entire week in Los Angeles and given the opportunity and tools to practice in preparation for MLG Anaheim next weekend. You can find the liquipedia recap of the event [here].

[If you are just interested in seeing my album from the event you can click on this big ‘ol link.] 

This was my first time visiting a production at the red bull HQ. I have only ever seen pictures from their previous events, even though I live rather close to Santa Monica. I arrived at about 1pm and the show was scheduled to start at 2. When I got onto campus I was greeted by some nifty cubicles and a massive wooden ramp spanning the length of the warehouse. The party was going on towards the back of the complex. Security escorted me through the cubicles and to the set. Everyone was just hanging out and I learned that the show was going to be delayed until home story cup was over for the day. The interwebs gave them a lot of love for this decision, and I agree. At the end of the day it was far and away the best business decision they could do tho.

Behind the set I found out that most people were actually gathered in a theater room. Here the other VIPs were hanging out and watching the conclusion of HSC. We all had catered food from a local taco joint, enjoyed the open bar in the corner, and had access to limitless amounts of red bull.

After Taeja won everyone gathered around the desk outside to skype Germany and say “HI!” to HSC. It was a maniacal cross-promotion between the two events; but I think there was a noticeable difference in viewers from the lead in from HSC.

The production was getting ready to go live and I was hanging out on the set instead of watching the action in the theater. Here is a little better of an idea for what the setup was for the cameras:

I climbed up the, rather steep, wooden ramp structure and snagged a picture of the entire setup. It’s one of my favorites from the day. I had a lot of fun sliding down the ramp like a little kid.

Demu and Sound was the first semi-final of the day. Ben did a great job of making sure that his monster bottle was in every shot red bull wanted to take. His games were not executed as well as his bottle placement and dropped the series to the Korean. Instead of watching the games I played a resounding game of table shuffleboard with one of the other camera men.

The players who were not enjoying the open bar were sitting on the set playing and watching some starcraft. Everyone had their designated station and computer for whatever they wanted to do. Grubby, who was out of the tournament on day 3, was the most disciplined practicing for MLG next week.

Day[9] casted the entire show with help from Husky and Mr Bitter. Bitter had more of a host / analysis desk role but he did cast the ZvZ.

Sometimes silly things go on with casters when the camera is in game. With that being said I fucking love Ben.

It wasnt a super long day of starcraft, but it was flying by. I spent a lot of time just chatting with random people and old friends. The second match was between Kane and Golden. Found out that Kane was not just a super gosu NA player, but a fun guy who is always smiling.

Kane fought hard and did take a game, but Golden did advance to the finals.

Sound and Golden. The two Koreans, the two startale players, the two people sponsored by red bull. They played an exciting final and people were getting hyped. More exciting than the games, and the 40/40 jokes, was the trophy these two were playing for. Seriously, this thing looked sick. A mock disk hard drive with a weighted disk, California magnet, bull reader, and circuit board back is the coolest eSports trophy I have ever seen.

Golden was super happy to win and get his trophy. He was radiating happiness. After doing his little post tournament interview/ceremony he took his trophy and went to KBBQ with his teammate to celebrate. I was sad I couldnt get to do a little interview with him.

I stuck around after most of the other people left. We sat and joked and enjoyed some drinks with Day[9], MrBitter, and the players. Everyone took it upon themselves to play a micro tournament while the crew was tearing down the set. I believe they intended to stream this earlier in the day but because of the HSC delay they never got to it. I recoded the players while they were partaking in their micro tournament. Turned out to be 20 minuets of unusable B roll that I can never upload because of the beer in the shot with the red bull logo, and the banter between players and casters that really shouldn’t be hosted online. Grubby was going to win before the power cut out.

The party moved to K-town in downtown Los Angles. Puck, Vibe, Kane, Select, Demu, Bitter, 9, Tyler (of day9tv and Lone Star), and I drove about 15 miles through not ideal LA to get to a place that Sean proclaimed is the “best KBBQ in LA.” We waited a little while for our table because they place was not supper big but we joked around outside. We were trying to get Select to teach us korean, and tell us jokes in English. For 5 minuets of my life I knew how to ask a girl if she wanted to go to bed in Korean.

We got inside and had to split the party up because the tables were not big enough. I ended up sitting and having all you can eat with Bitter, Demuslim and Tyler. While the other table talked about games and light hearted issues, we had a serious conversation about love and life. The meat was uber good.

After stuffing ourself I bid the other fellows adieu and drove back home. All in all it was one hell of a good Sunday.

Hope you enjoyed my recap and pictures for the day. I am excited to be going to MLG Anaheim next weekend and I will be shooting significantly more pictures and have a lot more to chat about. I still have an E3 blog to throw up soon from the time I spent on the floor there. I am most excited about putting regular content on this site.

kbai <3

Don’t care about my story being a VIP on blizzard campus, USA launch, and mingling with the “big boys?” Would you rather just look at the pretty photos? Click here for my imgur album of the event. I don’t blame you.

So how do I get invited to the Blizzard campus to hang out in the midst of this day long live-streaming bonanza? Back in February I woke up and found an email in my inbox from one Sean Plott. I was instantly confused as I consider Sean a friend, but not someone who I am in regular correspondence with. When I opened up the email I saw a long description of what was to be the community stream for the launch event. All of these hush hush details were being shared with me. The most exciting part was reading that I was being asked by Day[9]tv to be the representative of /r/starcraft for the launch stream. They were having videos submitted by teams, players, websites, animators, and leagues to play on stream. But they did not have any video content from the (second most) popular Starcraft site on the net. I was ecstatic with the opportunity and honor to work on putting something together for the stream.

After a few weeks of speaking to Sean, Cara, and /r/starcraft staff there was an idea in place to gather community video and splice it together into one uber-video. Everyone would be answering the same 6 questions, and with this I could show the diversity of the reddit user base. The stressful part of doing this was: A) the lack of time between the official announcement, being able to collect video, and the turn in deadline. B) Learning how to use Sony Vegas on the fly as I did not have someone to help me edit and view the video. C) The community reaction to the project. A was solved with a lot of pestering. I wish I could have done a better job with B, but I think it came out okay. C, for better or worse, never happened.

All in all it was one hell of a fun time, and a lot of work to push this video out in such a small time-frame. If you wish you can watch the /r/starcraft community video HERE!

The unforeseen benefit of doing this project was waking up to another email from Mr. Plott. This one was inviting me to be a VIP at Blizzard for the USA HotS launch party. March 11th I would be making the hour drive to Irvine to hang out on the Blizzard campus with other eSports figures, and then partying at the mall with everyone else who came to the launch. This is the story of that day.

1pm – 8pm Blizzard HQ 

March 11th. The day before Heart of the Swarm launches. I wake up with little sleep after playing way too much Sim City the night before. I turn on Twitch to see the start of the Europe launch party. Redeye is announcing and the crowd is going crazy. I watch a little bit while getting ready. Excited because today I will be visiting the Blizzard campus. I grab my camera and headed out the door. The drive from Ventura to Irvine is a good 60-90 minute adventure depending on traffic. Interstate 5 is often times a coin flip. Unfortunately I was stressed out as it looked like traffic was going to make me late.

I arrived at the meeting parking lot at around 1:15. The VIPs parked here and were getting on a shuttle buss down the street to Blizz HQ. We were gathered in a barren parking lot across the street from Taco Bell HQ and throwing distance to the Spectrum mall where the big party would be happening later. We got friendly under a tent and mingled with the lucky folks who won the free VIP package. Some folks even flew into LA after they got their VIP ticket. I was talking to Xeris, Gretorp, Shindags, and other fine fellow as the bus (that apparently was on Blizzard time) came to get us. When they loaded the first set of people onto the bus I had to stay behind because my name was not on “the list.” When the next bus rolled around all of that was cleared up. Getting on the bus anticipation built as I signed a non-disclosure and headed down the road.

Finally we were at the gates of Blizzard. Security was tight as we rolled into the compound. Walking off the bus I was greeted by friends and Mama[9]. After sorting out my lack-of-pass problem I went on a mini tour through some of the Blizzard buildings. Unfortunately it was not a Valve-esque tour. It was cool nonetheless to get to poke around a little bit. Papa Johns, Subway, and Red Bull were fueling a gathering outside. I happily gathered a plate of pizza and tried all of the new Red Bull. Red was the best, blue was icky, and silver tasted like gumballs.

I got to shake the hands of some people who I have only talked to online. It was a pleasure to talk to Chanman, Sixen, and many others. The best part of hanging out and enjoying the warm summer day was catching up with those who I already knew. Shindags attempted to start a game of Starcraft Risk. After reading the rules and realizing that there were no grown ups around, we all reconsidered. Clutch was off interviewing Arcturus Mengsk (well the voice actor) infront of the famous orc statue in the middle of the quad.

I decided to finally head inside to see how the stream was going. Day[9] and Husky already finished their first broadcast early in the morning. Now that Europe was ending they were starting their second, longer, run. They have been up for a long time to do this and looked a tad tired.

The broadcast room was a desk for the hosts, two cameras and lights on them. Behind them was a team of 5-6 people running the stream and all of its assets. The back of the room had computers set up to play HotS multiplayer. The rest of the room consisted of chairs and a projector to show what was being pushed to stream. The audience was doing a stellar job and everyone was excited to be there.

Along with GHOSTCLAW I was the only other real shooter taking pictures at the party. All be it there was not a lot to capture. “Real” media was showing up and taking pictures too. This one lady committed the biggest sin of them all by shooting the casters, while they were live, with a flash on. Someone should have sent her to eSports jail. Aside from the awesome clips that were community submitted and playing on stream; some cool interviews happened at the desk. Kevin Knocke reading poems and Mike Morhaime being interviewed were just a few of the high points.

I decided to sit down and play some games of HotS. I launched a game and 5 minutes in I hear Day[9] start to intro what is to be the video that I created for /r/starcraft. He melts my heart with this awesome shout out in the lead-up to showing the video. I was way too distracted to be playing this game, and before I knew it I was floating 2k minerals. I believe the video came off really well. I felt a sigh of relief and happiness breeze over me.

I spent most of the rest of the day outside mingling with more people. Some people confused me for the head of /r/starcraft. Others thanked me for the redesign of the site. All things that I had to deny and give proper credit for. Before I knew it the sun was setting and everyone was starting to pack up to get on the bus that would take us to the mall. As we gathered out things and shuffled around we all received goodie bags from Blizzard. A Starcraft 1 music cd, book, thundersticks, marine figure, and poster all graced our bags. We also learned that when we got back to our car we would get our own signed collectors edition of the game.

Very satisfied with my day I drove back to the mall to see the “real” party. Not knowing that there was still a solid 8 hours of time left before I would be heading home.

8pm – 3am Irvine Spectrum Mall. The “big” party

Getting off the bus I immediately met up with some friends who unfortunately had a problem getting into the VIP event. I dropped my bags and headed for the heart of the mall to see the stage and people. This massive titantron was playing a (pre recorded) state of the game right in front of a ferris wheel. Close to a thousand people were huddled together in a standing room only space. They would remain standing there for about 4 hours while taking in the show to come.

The crowd was diverse. Every age group and race was in attendance. Mothers standing at the very front of the stage all along enjoying the show while picking up the game for her kids. College kids carpooling from all over so cal. Grandfathers, and even Dads bonding with their brood.

With there not being much to do aside from watching the show; I went to the bar (aka restaurant) to mingle more with the likes of Chanman, Odee, the NASL crew, and Blizzard employees. We talked for hours about teams, leagues, pop culture, and everything in between. 10:30 rolled around and we decided to get back out to the crowd. More people have shown up and Suppy was just getting ready to play Vibe in a best of 1 of 3. I took my place by the stage and spend the rest of the show using my camera, while dodging theirs.

The crowd was hyped as the games were played in a very fun and exciting manner. Lots of chatter and banelings were shared. The crowd was fixated on the games. Except for Clutch who has an uncanny ability to find cameras that are pointed at him.

The games ended and the clock was drawing ever closer to midnight.

The last bit of time was filled with interviews and throwing gifts to the crowd. Chris Sigaty, Carbot, and Robert Clotworthy all took to the stage and threw some sick gear to the audience.

Day[9] threw some more things into the crowd before him and husky tempted the audience with the collectors edition of HotS.

The crowd was counting down the seconds to midnight. I watched the stage hands give the players and husky confetti guns as I got ready for what was going to be an epic series of photographs and memories. When the clock hit 0 everyone was going crazy. People were jumping up and down and cheering. Confetti shot through the air as the stage lights went bonkers. Finally HotS was here.

K[9] Said good night to the stream and brought what was a full day of world wide streaming to a close. However things were not done for those in attendance. When the cameras went off the duo stood at the end of the stage and explained how distribution was going to work, how awesome the event was, and how there was still more stuff to toss into the crowd.

The players aided in a lot of the throwing. Mousepads flew left, right, and center. MC tried to fly his far. Polt decided to hand his to a young kid in the front row. Suppy’s flew crooked, eventually tumbling end-over-end and hitting some poor soul in the face.

As they tossed; raffle tickets were drawn to give away processors, video cards, cases, laptops, the works. The people in attendance were showered with gifts. As I walked away a Blizzard dev who I recognized from traveling to Shanghai with him handed me a collectors edition of the game and said thank you. I don’t even know his name, just his face, but you made my day that much better. Thank you. Again. <3

As the sea of people started to thin people were picking up their game. Everyone had a ticket that corresponded to the order they paid for the game in. 1 to 960. You could either take your game and get home, or stick around and get your whatever signed by all of the devs / personalities. This process took a lot longer than I expected it too. I felt sorry for Clutch, Husky, Chris, and others who were sitting there for three hours signing and greeting non stop. It seemed as everyone really enjoyed being able to interact with the team like this. Smiles were the most prevalent thing on this cold late night. When you exited the signing station you were gifted a HotS poster and asked to sign a cardboard HotS display for the team to take back to the offices.

I had to duck out around 1 am to take the bus back to the parking lot. I rode alone as I missed the memo that most people went to get their car earlier. Upon getting back to where I started this adventure the day before I was greeted by the Day[9]tv crew in the back of a windowless van. They were packing up and I was one of the last people to stop by to get their HotS collector edition. I love that gang and happily talked to them for a little bit before I headed back to the mall to say goodbye to fiends there.

After all the good byes I got sucked into chatting with Clutch and Vibe as they continued signing things. I think they were only around #750 at the time. Sitting at the table I got recognized by a few people and was asked to also sign their box. Boy did I feel both shocked and ecstatic, but unworthy to ink my name on this box with the devs. A few of the devs also called me by name. I had copious amounts of joy.

We chatted until the last copy was signed and then picked our tired bodies up and headed to the parking lot. The crew was still breaking down the stage, and the Blizzard team was happy to be headed home. After the last few hugs were dealt out I got in my car and made the hour drive back home to my bed. Which I promptly passed out in with a huge smile on my face.
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It truly was a day that I am going to remember the rest of my life. I really have to thank Day[9], Blizzard, and TL for the event. After driving the hour back home at 3am I passed out only to get right up and play the HotS campaign.

I am looking to a very exciting 2013 in Starcraft and eSports. I am going to keep networking and attending as many events as I can. I love doing event photography and live reporting, but in reality I am not the best at it. Here’s hoping for more opportunities working in the future.

If you would like to keep up to date with everything I am doing you can follow me on twitter @leafeator. Thanks and I wuv you guys~ <3emimg class=”aligncenter” alt=”” src=”http://i.imgur.com/jVpPy2al.jpg” width=”640″ height=”427″ /

Guess who is back with another photoblog / story time post? This guy. I really do enjoy being able to put my thoughts here and share me event experiences with all of you. If this is your first time coming across my blog then I would love to welcome you. Sit down and join me for some tea.
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IPL5, Las Vegas Nov. 29 – Dec. 2

You can find all of my IPL5 photos on my imgur page, at this link!

IPL is a trip that almost did not happen for me. With my friends bailing on me I had no way to make my way from LA -> LV, and nowhere to stay. It is a good thing that everyone in Starcraft is awesome. After a few texts and tweets I made arrangements and found myself driving down to GHOSTCLAW’s house Thursday night. It sucked that we had to miss Thursday at IPL, but a 4 day event is silly long.

After meeting up with Robbie, our ride arrived. Gary, a CSL admin and all around cool kid, showed up in his mother’s lexus SUV. We packed out bags in the back and made out way from UCLA twords Vegas. However we decided that it would be a good idea, at 8pm, before our 4 hour drive to stop and get Ramen in downtown. Needless to say the noodles were gewd, but we did not leave downtown until 11pm. We were not going to get to Vegas for a looooong time.

On our drive up I sat shotgun. This turned out to be very necessary because Gary’s sense of direction was quite subpar. We made our way from the 10 to the 15 as we sang with the radio and chatted. eSports, politics, school, engineering, and Katy Perry were all discussed in detail. GHOSTCLAW download and played a solid 3 hours of Hill Climb Racing for his, now cracked, S3.

We finally made it to Vegas at 3:30am. After parking at the Cosmopolitan we took the elevator up to our rooms. I was calling drazak 100 times over as I was suppose to sleep on his floor. He would not answer so I followed Gary to the room that he was crashing in. I was welcomed in and offered a floor by two guys who I have never seen before in my life. Turns out that one was Cheesehead, a CSL caster and Empire Media, and the other his friend on leave from the Airforce. They were drunk. It was great. I made a bed with the couch cushions and crashed for the night.

Waking up Friday morning we all scantered down stairs to the fourth floor. As soon as we got out of the elevator the amount of people was evident. IPL too over the entire floor, using one wing for sponsors, one as a lounge, and the last as a SC2 / LOL venue. I met up with Paul, the CSL web dev, and got some Panda before picking up our badges and heading on into the venue. We got to walk across the bridge hanging over lv blvd, and take in all the crazies.

Back from food I got my media badge and decided to check out the venue. Already missing a day I was curious what it looked like, as I was not able to see many pictures from inside the hall. When I walked in Scarlet and DRG were playing. Almost all the seats were filled. GOM production was in the corner, Grubby was on stage casting like a boss. The voting scoreboard was front and center, and the casters were flanked by two booths on each side. Not much to do aside from sit and watch the games. The Media pass did not allow us to sit in the first four rows of VIP seats, but it did allow us to sit right in front of the stage. Guess I could not complain about that.

Players were gathered to the right of the stage by the bay of computers set up for them. This is where most of them hung out during the entire event. If they wanted to sit in the VIP area they needed to get a VIP tag themselves, so it was easier for them to hang here. The shitty thing about this is that the lighting to take pictures of them was bollocks. Aside from the standard eSports dark venue which makes taking pictures near impossible, everyone was glowing weird colors like purple, blue, or green. Here is MC in the player pit sporting his sexy purple hue, and his Obama tshirt.

Alex Garfield was also looking like a boss in the player pit attending to his ever so important business. He looks damn good in blue.

A bunch of stars were in the audience. Well eSports star atleast. Joinging the crowd as spectators were the likes of Mike Morhaime, and djWHEAT (Making side-bets, none the less)

I decided to go check out the League room next. They were making a lot of noise. They in fact had the bigger hall, which was a good thing because they needed the seats. They had ~200 more seats than starcraft, and also more people standing. They had a little better lighting too…

I walked in during the middle of a 70+ minuet game. Which is pretty extreme for a moba. Turns out with the delay that the players actually get to turn around to watch the last 30 seconds of the game. You know who wins before the gg. They had a very similar stage setup and was a very fun environment.

I love FPS games. Valve shooters brought me into eSports. With that being said, I am a big fan of Shootmania. The shootmania room had a really small stage and audience, but also a bunch of computers to come play on. Everyone also got a beta key with their IPL pass. The environment was small, but fun. Joshy did a good job casting the games with TB. I spent more time in this room than I care to admit.

On the way back to Starcraft for GSL ro4, I found a wild Hot_Bid. This is what the interviews look like from the other side.

The GSL intros were fucking epic. I actually had chills. Everyone came out and stood under their spotlight. The Korean announcers were on point. John was extra cute.

Artosis was ready

Mr Chea was ready

Definitely the highlight of my day. Tastosis did an awesome job on stage interacting with the crowd. The games were fun. I got to sit three feet in front of the casters and take pictures of the players. I felt spoiled. Ultimately Hyun and Sniper won. Setting up the ZvZ that really, no one wanted.

I went out with Shindigs and his UC Irvine CSL squad to go get some Earl of Sandwiches. Hot Hawaiian was a good choice. Getting to interact with the all of the colorful vegas night-goers was fun too. Really tho, I just love the look and lights of the city.

After playing Mafia until 6 am, I slept in a wee bit too late. I missed all of the IPL happenings on Saturday. I arrived just in time for the opening ceremony for Korea vs World. Shit was going down. Robin marched his players down the isle hoping to snatch victory from the GSL Koreans.

Unfortunately for the world, the Koreans had this in the bag. With the exception of Scarlett and Stephano, the Koreans won out. They were very smug at their table.

After Korea won day 1, everyone got on stage for the camera.

After a little break it was GSL Finals time. This was the most crowded that the venue got. Everyont was piling in to watch Tastosis cast a GSL Finals on American soil. Both of these players have been waiting all day for their chance at the trophy.

Sniper making his way down the isle

Hyun on stage ready for battle

Tasteless being sexy, as always. His interaction with the live audience really made the finals that much more awesome. Joking and doing call / response with the crowd just raised everyone’s excitement levels.

Now Sniper did win. Congrats to him. That kid was in so much shock coming out of the both that he was shaking. Hands on face, tears in eyes, he won the highest prize in the land of Starcraft.

With every winner comes a loser, and it was heartbreaking looking at Hyun in his booth.

With the night over we all went to KBBQ. JoRoSar owed GHOSTCLAW dinner from an old bet. Turns out 40 of us walked down to this hole-in-the-wall scary 24 hr kbbq place. We found Korean players, GOM staff, and a bunch of other friends here. We ordered a lot of food. However our table got the wrong order. With the waitress coming back after we finish eating in a panic telling us “NO WAIT, THIS IS YOUR ORDER!” we were a bit scared to find out what we really ate. And that’s the story of how I ate tongue for the first time.

We all went back to the fourth floor to play some more mafia. Jorosar joined us and got his mafia beak wet. He really enjoyed it, and tweeted a bunch of panoramic of us playing. Untill 6 am, again. Bad call. It is hard to balance eSports work with getting to hang out with these wonderful friends that you make.

Kiett also decided to take a bunch of pictures of me playing. Stone cold Mafia killer over here. Just ask Shindigs.

When Gary and me got back to our room we found our roommates to still be up. Cam was bleeding all over the place. He had a nasty cut on his nose and above his eye. He was so drunk from the club that he tripped in the bathroom. After tending to him and getting him to bed, I did not get to pass out on my comfy floor until about seven am. w00t.

Sunday started for me with the Brothers Spain trying to take down the Koreans in all-kill format and send the show-match into an ace match.

Even with Stephano trying for his reverse all kill, it was kinda hopeless

The Koreans won 2-0. We were ready for IPL finals.

At this point TB came upon stage and hyped the shit out of the crowd. This was needed because most of the media staff was falling asleep on the right side of the stage. This was not helped by Leenock and Violet playing all 8 of their games. We actually thought we might have gotten out of their early Sunday….lol

Leenock and Violet hugging it out before the finals

However 8 games later, the winner arose

Polt is beautiful. I have a man crush on him.

IPL Top 3 posing

I stuck around after everyone cleared out to talk to some people. The GOM staff all lined up on stage for a photo. Was really happy that by change I was able to snag it and share it with everyone who wanted to thank them for the awesome job they did over the four days.

So the event was over. Twitch had an after party at the hotel bar. That was really cool until I found out that they carded at the door. #under21problems. I got to hang out with the other youngins until the party moved to the downstairs open bar. I was able to interact and mingle with everyone there. The night gets a little fuzzy after that part. I just remember getting to hang out with a lot of people, talk, and hugging Artosis. After getting kicked off the casino floor really early in the morning, we talked on the fourth floor for a bit before calling it a night. Sadly Julian did not last too long

The next morning we all arose in our tired state. Had some buffet and left vegas around 4pm. GHOSTCLAW slept, Gary and me sang along with the radio on our trip home.

NASL4, Long Beach Dec. 8 – Dec. 94

You can find all of my NASL4 photos on my imgur page, at this link!

NASL was a completely different beast than IPL. Aside from going from Vegas in a convention hall to a theater in Long Beach…I was no longer just Media picture boy. Now I was volunteer dood on the production wall.

Normally I take thousands of pictures during an event. I was not able to do that. My duty here was to make sure that every piece of media out of game (Segments, back-from-commercial videos, and so on) were played with the correct sound and able to be broadcast to the stream. Everything went smoothly as I have worked with a lot of the NASL guys before. After all they really are the ones who put my foot in this proverbial eSports door.

I arrived Friday night driving from Ventura CA to Long Beach CA. Normally a 75 minuet drive that took over two hours. Anyone familiar with LA traffic will know why. I arrived twords the end of rehearsal. Everything was set up and we were just practicing for tomorrow. I got to snag some pictures of the venue to release.

I drove back to Van Nuys to sleep at my grandmothers house. Gas < hotel. After catching a few winks I headed back out to Long Beach for the 9am call time. We had to delay starting the show an hour, and admittedly got off to a rocky start. We were startled by some things but kept on pushing through. The crew is tight nit and very kin to a family. I really love being back stage with everyone involved. The production wall consisted of about 12 people in total, so we were all working our asses off. It was good to see the show get started.

Everyone was huttled backstage working on the next move and watching the games being played. All of the players and interviews were taking place under the stage in the dressing room areas. Directly behind the stage was where the production was going on, along with the PC’s for the FFA.

Fierce Fitness Happened.

Mr. Bitter enjoyed it a lot.

Soe does an amazing job in her couch/corner doing interviews. She is also a very pretty and funny lady. If you ever get the chance you should say hi to her.

Rotti also adds some sex appeal to back stage

Gretorp catching some Z’s

Ken was a great addition to the NASL staff. He sacrificed a lot to move down from Canada to SoCal to help eSports.

Lauren and Chance are the real sex appeal of the show. They are also BFF’s. Chance is actually an immaculately trained dog. Morgan, the director, treats him like a king.

Violet rounded off Day 1 punching his ticket to the grand finals Sunday. It was a long day working and waiting. I drove back to grandmas for the night, excited for the events of Day 2.

So we started off arriving a little later day 2. We were all in our rhythm and ready to roll out. The day started off with White-Ra and Ret playing their HOTS show match. Both of these guys are personal friends of mine. Hell I am the Liquid`Ret fan club head. I should update that. Alex kicked the shit out of Jos. It was the first time I really watched HOTS play.

the FFA was coming up. The last bit of silly before the serious finals time. We knew how epic it was going to be, but not how viral it turned out. The viewer ship peeked during this time, and everyone loved the interaction between the players on stream. The combination of casters / cameras on the players / the players willingness to be silly with each other hit a home run.

After the FFA break, the mood shifted. It was no longer time for silly segments and laughs. It was time for the NASL Grand Finals. This was serious. HerO was the hero we deserved. I looked over to Elliot (the bad ass who is responsible for almost everything that goes out to stream. He is the man technically producing the show.) and told him that I was going to run off now to go take pictures. He couldnt really say no to me. Now here a bunch of pictures from the championship celebration.

After the finals ended and clean up stopped we went to Roscos. Dat shit gewwwwd. Silverfire had chicken liver, and that was discussing. Everything else was wonderful. The rest of the staff went off to PF Changs to have some drinks. Eventually we all met back up in the hotel lobby. Players, staff, fans, and insiders all mingled over some Makers Mark, 151, and coke. This went on until we got a bit too rambunctious and had to take the party upstairs. Mr. Bitter told a story about turtles for about 15 minuets. Unfortunately I had to say my goodbyes and drive home. I arrived back home at 5:30. A 60 minuet drive greeted by the sun rising. I slept for 13 hours.

There are a shit ton of pictures that I did not post here because they have no context. I like a lot of them. If you would like to see them, this is a link to the imgur page that houses all of the event pictures.

Again, since I had a job this event I did not get to do a lot of shooting. QQ, I need as much practice as I can get. If you would like to see more photos please check out my friend’s albums. Carlton, the ESFI Guy & Silverfire/Ghostclaw/itsjustatake, the TL guys. Both have really good stuff.
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There is a part of me that is happy now that I can spend the rest of 2012 relaxing with my family, and focus on other parts of my life. It is not long before the tournament scene will be back in full swing for 2013. I hope that I get to attend more events next year. I love networking and meeting new faces, along with getting to shake hands of those who I have spent hundreds of hours of my life watching. Maybe if I am really lucky I could get a job in the scene. Twitch just put out a new listing for a “Content Manager,” and god damnit I feel like I fit their requirements well.

I hope that you all had a great year. 2013 is looking bright for not just Starcraft, but eSports on a whole. Trying my hardest to suppress the cynical side of me that is concerned of a “bubble.” I hope to be able to meet more of you in the future.

If you would like to follow me on twitter to keep current with everything I am doing, you can find me @leafeator. Thanks for reading. I wuv you <3

Leafeator here back with another blog to chronicle his time spent at one of these little starcraft events. This time I was a lot out of my comfort zone traveling from California to Shanghai for the BWC grand finals. It was one hell of an adventure. This blog will follow the format of all of the others. It will accompany little personal stories from being at the event with pictures I took there. The positive feedback I received from the other blogs and joy that I get from writing these means that I will be doing this for every event I get to be a part of. Thanks for all of your kind words.

So how did I get to BWC? Who am I? Admittedly I do not post much around TL. I am a reddit guy through and through. I have been contributing to the /r/starcraft subreddit since the beta in numerous ways. Blizzard wanted to send a bunch of media out from their best news sites to cover the events. /r/starcraft made the cut and found out that Blizzard would be paying flight, hotel, and event costs to send one of its members all the way out to China. The mods of the subreddit decided to make a thread and take nominations for who would be the best fit represent them at BWC. A lot of names were thrown around, but when the dust settled they were tasked with choosing Krukar or… Me. Because of the overwhelming support Krukar got in the thread, he ended up being the first choice. However he decided to decline the offer. That left me, leafeator, the kid who has done a bunch of different jobs at a bunch of different events, and likes to post a lot.

I was fuckin’ ecstatic. Immediately I was put in contact with Blizzard. I got all the paperwork together to go down to the Chinese embassy in Los Angeles to register for my visa. That place was like a super DMV, and after being harassed by the teller, I was back a week later to pick up my passport with a cool little visa inside. Plans were put in motion, equipment was borrowed (I LOVE YOU GHOSTCLAW), and I was about a week away from traveling outside of North America for the first time in my life. I was both hype and uber nervous. I did not want to be letting anyone down. It is a lot of money to send someone out to China and put them up. It is a lot of pressure knowing that you could go there and your comrades on reddit could think you’re a twat. I don’t want to be a twat.
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Day 0

All packed and ready to go. It was 1pm on Wednesday that I got through security at LAX. They determined that I had no bombs on me, so I waited in the boarding area for an hour. There I saw such people as Dustin Browder, Blizzard Employees, MLG photographers, and TL members. We did the anti-social thing and chose not to intermingle much. I was sitting playing my 3DS, and was too enthralled with paper mario to shake a hand. I was super happy to have this new Paper Mario to play on my 14 hour flight. Yep. 14 hours from LAX to Shanghai. And I was one of the lucky ones as I just had a strait flight. I did not have to take another plane to connect with San Fran, DC, or any other state side local. You know what is even cooler than the 14 hour flight? The 16 hour time change. That is a lot of dead time.

I hate airplanes. I do not know how I have not gotten over this yet. I do not like planes, elevators, or talking on the phone. What a random bunch of phobias. I wish that I was just scared of heights and would only carry that fear. Making me more nervous was that after boarding, we got to wait around an hour on the plane to wait for takeoff. I sat in the very back row by the bathrooms. The bad news is that it is a very high traffic area. The good news is that the two middle seats in my row were empty. The other lady and myself were really happy with this. We took a few naps with both of hour heads resting together in the middle of the row.

To keep me company in my bag (which was snuck past security because technically I needed to have it checked for size) was a laptop to big to use in my seat, my phone, and the afore mentioned 3DS. Mario, Howard Stern, Adam Carolla, Dr Drew, the new P!NK album (which, fuck you, is awesome) and the latest episodes of Dexter / Homeland lasted me a while. But by the first feeding time I ventured to the land of the built-in entertainment set in front of me. I was excited to get to watch the Katy Perry documentary (which I later informed everyone to watch. The EG WOW players know whats up, along with the female blizzard employees). I also got to watch Ted (not nearly as good) and play some tetris.

Speaking of plane food, well, this picture probably does a good enough job explaining how my dining experience went. Note: turbulence not pictured.

When I landed and we all got off the plane, it was a little surreal that I was in Asia. It was 9pm on Thursday. More than 24 hours after I took off in LA. Everyone made it past customs just fine. I only got a few dirty looks. Once we made it out of the baggage claim area we were greeted by thousands of fans for some pop star that was set to be arriving at the airport. That was the first big shock in China. Thousands of teens lined up at the airport to great and take pictures of their pop idol. All with accompanied signs and shirts. This made finding my designated driver rather difficult. Also, I was not really sure if I had a driver or not. After stumbling around I got a cab. The man told me where to meet the pretty girls and get the best drinks, then called a cab for me. The cab was my own little minivan with a guy wearing full butler outfit. White gloves and all. We did not talk for 50 minuets as he drove me on a highway to the hotel. I did not care about not being able to converse, or knowing that he could drive me to an alley and murder-rape me. I was taking in everything I could see. The roads were new, tolls were taken by lots of flashing lights. The buildings tall. The drivers crazy. Seriously my dude was driving in the on the middle of the lane lines.

Once I made it to the hotel I checked in. Wow that was a riveting sentence. The hotel was five star breath taking. Never stayed in something like this before.

I made it to my room on the 31st floor. Fun Fact: The elevator did not list a 4, 13, 14, 24, or 44th floor. So I was not really that high. Once I got into my room I not only realized that I had to call for a power converter (come on people 110v is obviously best v), but I had no god damn idea how to turn the lights on. Flipping the switched and walking around mindlessly for 10 whole minuets until the guy came with the converter with me. He then instructed me, and probably laughed, that I had to put the key card in a cretin slot to power the room. I felt like an ass, but I went back to setting up my room and taking in the view. Here are some daytime shots of the room. It was sweet. The bath with the window wall was my favorite. Took my first bath in maybe 10 years.

Turning on the TV and channel surfing I stopped on MTV. Call me Maybe was on, and I was both happy and confused. I switched the TV to HBO because it was the only English background noise around. I then went to plug my lappy in and tried to set up my VPN. China firewall is dumb. For realsies. I had to switch providers on the fly and ended up using StrongVPN. Not only did they have a 7 day money back guarantee, I had the best VPN out of anyone at the event after. I got to watch streams and never had downtime. I even got it working on my new S3, so everyone wanted to use my phone in the lobby to check twitter. Twitter is some sort of meth for players and casters. Monk from TL hit me up on skype, and I met him and Antoine down in the lobby for the first time. We talked for a while and then parted ways knowing we had to be up early for the breakfast buffet, and shuttle to the venue. I turned in for the night and slept rather well. No jetlag the whole weekend actually.

Day 1

Friday morning. The first day for everyone to get to the venue and finishing prepping everything for a live show. It was the practice day to get the players comfortable with everything that would be going on. After an amazing breakfast buffet on the 54th floor (well amazing is relative, ask Adabisi and Grubby) everyone gathered in the lobby awaiting the shuttles. Want to play a fun game? See how many people you can name in this picture:

We waited and waited as the buses seemed ever delayed. I stuck mostly with the TL guys, and we got passes for the event from the Chinese Blizzard rep. We had all our gear and was ready to get on site. The first buss filled up with players only. HerO decided to take a smoke break, where Sen went for a nap.

The TL boys and me got in the second little van and made our way to the venue. It was about 10 minuets away from out hotel and across an epic bridge. The venue was in the African hall from the 2010 world fair that was held in Shanghai. Miles of buildings were erect here for hundreds of countries. I was so ignorant I did not even know the world fair was a thing. The sad thing is that only two years later, all of the buildings are abandon. Much like the Olympic structures in Beijing. The architecture of the building was very unique and beautiful. It is a real shame that they are all rotting away. When we got to the venue everyone was taken aback by the banners outside and the pure size of the hall. Here is a pano that I posted of the entire front of the building.

When we got inside everyone was gathering in the media room as workers finished up the venue. I walked around and saw the two stages, razer and asus booths, fan art gallery, press rooms, media room, blizzard HQ, informational booth, and store. It was evident that a lot of planning went into this. It was the most well constructed event I had ever been to. Everything was crisp. I had high hopes. After all of the players were briefed of the days events in the media room(minus Suppy, Scarlet, and HuK who were arriving Friday), they were moved to the player area behind the stage. The player area was two rooms, one lounge and one with tons of computers. The boxes were set up so you could not surf the web, only play starcraft. And a lot of starcraft was played. In fact the players spent 98.6% of their time at the venue in those little rooms. It was their haven.

I noticed that after they players left the media room that only the TL boys, the MLG Photographer, and myself were left. That seemed odd as we wanted to see where all of the other media was. There was about 50 chairs all with internet in the media room. We prepped a lot of content anyways and was ready to push it to the internet. But things felt fishy. I asked my bliz contact, Stefi, and she shortly there after sent Rob Simpson my way to inform us that we really were not supposed to be here, and could not post anything from inside the venue today. Oh. Well I deleted all of my pictures I took so I would never post them. I wish I kept some of them in retrospect.

We packed up and headed home. It was a gift from god himself that Monk can speak some Chinese to find out from the buss drivers when we could get back to the hotel. Waiting around for our ride back we took part in a good luck ceremony outside the event. A Chinese chef set up a table and lit some candles/incense and took out a roasted pig and chicken. He cut them up and we all ate a piece with sauce and sugar for good luck. It was very tasty, all be it a little cold.

Once we got back to the hotel we all went to our rooms and set out stuff down. Armed with just cameras and cash we ventured out into the streets of Shanghai looking for food. Monk knew where we were going, I just followed. Enrique, the MLG photo man, joined our krew. I marveled at the buildings, lights, weather, people, everyone’s inability to follow traffic laws, and all of the bikes. Everything seemed so odd and weird. I constantly felt judged by everyone around me.

We made our way down the street and into the shopping mall. This place was huge. Four stories of mazes of shops. Food, stands, clothes, electronics, it was your standard mall all right. But the size and losing my sense of direction was killer. We went down to the level that must have had 30 restaurants, and the metro access. The colors were awesome, the text I could not read. I found some shops that looked familiar

And some not as much

Our mission was to find soup dumplings. Monk said it was a specialty of Shanghai. I am a bit of a foodie and am down for trying anything as long as it has a good recommendation. I was all in on this soup dumpling idea. Once we found a good place after wonder around for what seemed like an eternity to my stomach, Monk took the liberty to order everything for us. Still not knowing any Chinese, I was was just happy when the food arrived.

God damn that was good. We walked around the mall a little more, and headed back to the hotel. It was not raining and people laughed at me wearing shorts and a tshirt. My only real wardrobe. Everyone rides bikes and mopeds, and they all have their own special way of keeping dry. It was interesting. So was the long rack of bikes.

We all dried off in Munk’s room. It was nice to be in a room on the other side of the hotel, as we got to see the other side of the city. We also laughed at how his bathroom glass wall was oddly placed right next to the bed. It was romantic. Here we waited to get our official press badges and go to the dinner we were invited to by Stefi, the lady from Blizzard. To kill time we did some work practicing interviews. Monk wanted me to pretend to be a player so he could interview me. I put on my best Illusion swag and did a full interview answering questions as if I was Chris. It was good to get some practice in front of the camera.

We met Stefi and formed a party of 10 who would be walking down the street again to go for a traditional Chinese dinner restaurant. Courtesy of Blizzard of course. Dat’ WOW money. TL, Reddit, and Enrique got clumped with the Europe press as that was the Blizzard division taking care of us. I do not know if other NA media got invited to a different dinner, but I do not think so. I did not see much of Gamespot however. We got to know each other venturing over to dinner. Sweeds, Germans, Americans, Franchies, Ukranianiese, we represented a wide stroke of western media. When we sat down we got a book that had 100 pages of things. Again, thank god we had Monk. The task of ordering dinner was more of a team building exercise than a pleasant night out. We had to take notes just to figure out what we wanted to order. After the marathon of ordering was done, we drank some amazing tea and talked all things from wow boosting (yeah I still dont know much about it) to #SaveHOTS, and investors being the most broken piece of shit in the history of the universe. I also got some shit for being “The Reddit Guy.” The brunt of many jokes I was. Pitchforks and Destiny posts were frequent one-liners. Once our food came we ate about 7 weird yet great plates of food. Never had a lasy susan been so effective. Dinner was great, but what was better was getting to know all of these guys, and converse about eSports for about four hours.

We all walked back home and hung out until it was time to get some sleep. The event was tomorrow, and we were ready to work out asses off. Everyone was hyped.

Day 2 / BWC Day 1

We were ready. We ate our morning buffet and took off for the lobby to meet up with everyone else. Gunrun was paranoid about getting everything working the way it should, so we took a cab with him to the event. We had an interesting time getting there, and arrived before the majority of the players. However people were already filing into the venue. Even with the heavy security

This place was starting to get rockin. So many plastic lawn chairs were set up in front of the starcraft stage ready for the day’s events.

Starcraft to the left, WoW to the right, sponsors and art in the middle. At the start people were drifting all over the place just to see the venue. The media room filled up with the gents I met the night before, some new faces, and a ton of chinese press.

Artosis was chillin’ at the main English caster desk as people filed in. It was odd in respect that he, and everyone else for that matter, were out in the audience casting. However no one was pestered by all of the fans. Thousands of people and they did not care for our English casting heroes one bit. Must have been relaxing for them.

Cosplay was super popular for the people attending the event. I do not really understand, but everyone was clamoring to take pictures of these paid actors in professional made costumes. The Kerigan took the cake tho.

Each side of the hall had a desk with posters and pens where ladies would let you draw your own sign to take with you to the audience. It was cool to see that the paper was free, because most NA events will charge you for this. Some of the pre-made art was quite badass.

As it drew within 30 minuets of the stream going live, the loudspeaker told everyone to gather and take seats in the starcraft section. The opening ceremony would be taking place. This was the moment everyone was waiting for, the start of the event! The amount of people that filled the chairs was quite cool.

Then the drums started. It was a little weird, but whatever. We rolled with it.

Next up came the chinese crew for the audience. Pepper is on the left, and is Clutch’s favorite.

After not understanding a word they said, Mike came out to give a speech about BWC. He was good, but I would have been 800x happier if he was not reading it from a prompter.

Now we were greeted by the flag girls who walked to the back of the crowd to unite with their respective players.

Evey one was announced one by one to walk with their flag down the crowded audience section. This thing was seriously a fire marshal’s worst nightmare. This was the largest camera blitz of the event, trying to snap pictures of everyone walking proud



Full Album of these pictures

My man Suppy was up first on stage. It is hardest to watch your friends play big games. You want them to win so bad it is painful. You feel their excitement, you share their defeat. Luckily Conan won his group the first day. After the win he took a long deep breath, happy he did not travel all this way to lose his first set (something he was scared of).

Day 1 was all group play. The brackets in venue were the best I have scene. Big and posted on the side of the stage, they were updated asap. It was the only real way for us to follow the tournie as we only say one game at a time, not four. Liquipedia was obviously our other resource.

Upon going back to our media cave after the first game it was evident that this BWC ship was sinking fast. Stream problems were running ramped, and the complaints were going strong. We were aware of the feedback because we could hear that in the venue as well, not just the stream. That shit was annoying. All I could hope for was Blizzard stepping in and taking over some control from the chinese production team that was ruining this broadcast. Some of that did happen, and bugs were being squashed, but I still understand that the stream was not the high point of this event. IMO if the games were not as awesome as they were, this would have been a huge failure.

People were leaving the starcraft seats fast to go back over to the wow stage. Their hometown hero was defeated, the only other player they cared about was Grubby, and come on, wow dungeons were being shown across the hall. That shit kray. This was a common theme through the event, more people watching wow. In all reality they should have had the bigger stage. People were also leaving because the only people who had food at the event were media members and staff. Being in an abandoned area, there was no food around for miles, and no food served in venue.

A high point of the first day was how the casters did. On the main stage was the chinese duo, who along with the OGN korean casters worked their ass off casting main stage games non stop for the two days.

The English desk was a constant rotation of the many casters. Tastosis saw the majority of their time out in the crowd, but Day[9] and Apollo had some good stints at the desk. I only saw the Ax brothers out there once, along with Kaleris, Khaldor, and Wolf. I dont think that Bitterdamn ever made it out to the main casting desk, but I could be wrong.

I sent a tweet to Razer asking if they had any hoodie swag at the event that I could have. Why not eh? They got back to me and told me to meet the rep their names Andrew. He is the “eSports Marketing and Content Specialist.” Have you ever met someone and just from the start had a friendship with them? These are my feelings twords Andrew. Although they had no hoodies, we started a friendship over the remainder of the event. I learned quite a few things from him, and am even considering applying for a Razer opening in Singapore now. Seriously, he rocks. Here is his interview with Illusion, and here is his event video.

I finally got to do an interview with a chinese fan. It was hard enough to find someone who spoke english. I looked like a fool asking everyone. Ever harder was finding someone willing to do a video interview. 7 people later I had to settle for text. You can read that here.

The rest of the day was games and standard media work. Nothing too exciting except for seeing the response online and watching fires be put out. Grubby won, which sent the chinese fans in a frenzy.

Illusion lost to Parting. This made me QQ

Idra went on a fucking tear. Which was good because people started talking about him, and less about the stream.

Most people who go to many events to work know that Saturday is a long night. Normally you get out at midnight or later, and go to bed because you have to be up in < 6 hours. We got out of the venue at 9. Holy shit that is early. Andrew and me hung out in the lobby, got some KCF with Illusion, Rotti (who lost his phone TT), Axletos, and some others. Then we went up to the bar at the top of the hotel to have a drink and chat with the likes of tastosis and wolf. The bed.

Day 3 / BWC Day 2

Wake up, shower, buffet, buss, venue. We arrive on site ready for the RO16. With half of the players out already today is when we find out who is out champion. Players nerves were high hoping for a win. Media nerves were high hoping for a better broadcast and more access to the players. The fans didn’t care because they were watching WoW anyways.

In all honesty there was not a ton to be doing. You can only take pictures of the audience so many times. With Sen being the only fan favorite left in the event, he spend almost all day on the main stage to try and get the best response from the crowd as possible.

It might get boring to shoot the crowd a bunch, but it NEVER gets boring taking pictures of Artosis. I swear I set a world record for tastosis pictures this event.

I spent much of my time out of the press room standing by the English stream desk. Either taking pictures of watching games listing to Dan/Sean cast them a foot to my right. It was nice because I could focus on them and drown out the in house chinese stream. You did get to see their frustration with the production tho. Here is Day[9] saying “What the Fuck” to the crew back stage.

Yao Ming showed up. That was really, really cool. He is tall. He was swarmed by his countrymen too. A real Chinese hero, I wish I got a picture and not just pushed around by adoring fans. Brothers casted Brothers after the clamor from the community brought it to Blizzard’s attention. This kind of made the event for me. It really was something monumental.

The downtime on the stream where everyone had to watch the cut scenes over and over again was masked in venue by a crazy chinese dood, and pepper, giving away tshirts to fans in the audience. It was a little bizzar. My favorite one was when the guy did not know that Idra played Zerg after Idra just finished playing his game.

Another fun part about being at the venue, was that they can only smoke…in the bathroom. I hated myself every time I had to pee. Walking in the restroom was like wondering into this mist of cigarette smoke so dense you could feel it. They hot boxed the entire bathroom, and it made it hard to even breathe.

HerO lost his games and dropped out. I felt his pain.

However it was more hard to watch Illusion lose. And by far the hardest to watch Suppy get knocked out after going up 2-0, and winning most of the third game. Sorry if you happen to be reading this Conan. I could only imagine how you feel. It sucks watching friends lose. Friends who could have beaten sen and been in the finals. ='[ I got to interview Conan and ask him questions from reddit. It was really hard to get play interviews, especially the format I was trying to implement. Add to that how bad the audio is because I do not have a direct line in on my t1i, and this being my first interview…. Yeah. Fuck I think we did a good job tho. Interview.

So I dont need to run down the event for you. You can see who beat who on liquipedia. ^^, But as we all know, this baller won. Pardon the pun.

The victory ceremony for Parting was very……odd. Not HerO not knowing how to open champagne odd. But…eerie odd. Parting does not know what do to on stage. The crowd is cheering, but it is a very calm cheer. No one is going too crazy. Everyone is just watching him on stage, pointing their cell phones at him, as if they are waiting for his instructions on what to do next. I know it came across loud on stream, but being in venue after Parting won the event, something felt off.

The house lights come on and everyone clears out. Parting does three interviews in the designated press rooms. One chinese, one korean, and one english. Here is the full english one recorded.

I got Andrew to snag one last picture of me before I shook Mike’s hand and headed back to the hotel

TL, EU, and Chinese media buddies all went to a Hot Pot restaurant after the event. We got a private room and ordered a bunch of stuff. The most enjoyable eating experience of the event for me. Again we talked a bunch, but we also got to enjoy the food. Again I had no idea what we were ordering, I just put the apron on and went with

Evey one was announced one by one to walk with their flag down the crowded audience section. This thing was seriously a fire marshal’s worst nightmare. This was the largest camera blitz of the event, trying to snap pictures of everyone walking proud
img class=”aligncenter” alt=”” src=”http://i.imgur.com/uXcRWl.jpg” width=”427″ /h4height=”640″ / the flow. Zero regrets, and I enjoy the friends I made.

We get back to the hotel late. A man with a monkey on a leash follows us home. We see Rotti arrive with Ben and Stephano back from wherever they went off to party. Everyone split into little catacombs that night. There was not one central event (unless you were blizzard staff or uber VIP). Rotti was silly drunk, and Bitter was pissed because he had to babysit him. I also believe that they got kicked out of a cab, so Ben was having horrible flashbacks. Monk and I along with Sam and Matt went down to the corner store and bought some very interesting liquor. My bottle of rice vodka had a $5 bill underneath the cap. I do not know why I paid $12 only to get $5 back upon opening the bottle. It threw red flags of horrible at me right and left. We discussed Reddit v TL, Warcraft 3, China, the future, and eSports all night. No sleep for us and we hit the buffet in the morning.

Day 4

Last day in China. We eat ourselves awake in the morning, meeting other groggy friends such as Axletoss and Major up there too. Major freaked me out by touching me on the back of the neck thinking I was Apollo.

Most everyone was leaving for the airport early, but those of us flying back to LAX were not leaving till 8pm. After saying bye to friends and cleaning/packing up, Enrique and me checked out of the rooms and left our bags at the front. We went out for lunch and exploring around. I was excited to have extra time to do this. We went back to the mall, got lunch, got lost, ate, got lost some more, found some little alleys lined with shops, shopped around, and had a fucking black. I love Enrique. He is a little quiet, but a baller and artist none the less. He also works at a shoe shop. Respect.

After walking around for hours and spending money (or in my case, regretting I did not buy things like the Obama Mao bag) we chilled in the lobby and talked to people who too were waiting for their shuttle to the airport. Had a nice long talk with Mike about his food poisoning. Also some chatter with Suppy / Scarlett / Major about teams.

Eventually Enrique and me went up to the business lounge with out bags to do some work / use our laptops. We ate the snacks (which we later found out were not free), and worked away prepping stuff for upload. It was sad knowing that out time in Shanghai was coming to a close.

We got on the buss with Blizzard employees, players, the EG WoW team, and Day[9]. I sat in front of Sean and the mother fucker was rocking shaking my chair the entire way to the airport. To be fair, he warned me. I could have moved. We talked about, in the words of Rotterdam, “Fucking China, Man.” Then the conversation switched to “Top 5 Games.” The 40 minuets to the airport felt like 4 with everyone just enjoying conversing about games. Unfortunately the buss took us to the wrong terminal, so we had to navigate out way back to AA departing.

We get our boarding passes from the desk and make out way through customs. Turns out that airport security is very easy leaving china. This guy didnt even have to take off his shoes. I did anyways and everyone was looking at me like an idiot because I had no idea what was going on. Enrique and I went on one last shopping adventure through all the duty free shops, and waited another hour for our plane to leave.

Boarding the plane back was hell, as it was a full flight. I was in the back again, but not an isle seat this time. Sucked. 15 minuets after getting on the plane I was asleep. Only to be woken up by offers of food, take off, and landing, I slept for almost the entire 10 hours on the way home. My neck hurt like a mother fucker.

And then I was back in LA going through customs again. At 7pm on Monday. 2 hours before my plane took off. Time travel dude!

______________________________

It felt great to be home and eat some comfort food. I was ready to upload some pictures, share them with the world, and start writing about the experience. I can not thank Blizzard and /r/starcraft enough for the experience. I will be traveling to Vegas this weekend for IPL5, and Long Beach for NASL4. I will be doing insider coverage on reddit, uploading more albums, doing more interviews, and blogging about it after the fact right here.

I hope you enjoyed my story. I probably forgot some things because there was just too much. You can the “best of” album of BWC pictures here. It has over 200 pictures from the event, and more/different ones than this blog! If you would like to follow me on twitter to keep current with everything I am doing, you can find me @leafeator. Thanks. I wuv you <3. Thanks. I wuv you height=”640″ / the flow. Zero regrets, and I enjoy the friends I made.

There is no one I owe more of a “Thank You” to than NASL. I am bias as shit. You can look through post history of mine and see me defending them when almost everyone was anti-NASL. I would not be any where if Xeris did not give me an opportunity to enter the studio at the beginning of season 1, and let me help with the league. Without those initial connections I would have not had a solid path of networking through the scene; and I would have never worked the S1 finals. Thanks Duran, Thanks Russ, Thanks Andre, Thanks Eliot. I had to skip out on the S2 finals because of school. I reallllly wanted to go, and got quite a bit of harassment from the team. I told them that I would for sure make it out to Canada for Season 3, and I kept good on that promise. Boy am I happy I did.

Fuck Pearson Immigration. With that said, I loved everything else about Canada. It was my first time in the great white north. It was a very similar culture, but obvious differences became apparent. It was also weird to have so many people speaking french, and for it to be so warm. I would love to go back and really explore the city. One of the biggest bummers about traveling to eSports events is that you get to go to a cool city; but spend most of your time in the airport, hotel, and convention center. I got to oder my first drink at a bar while at the hotel. It was like I turned 21 as soon as I stepped off the plane. I want to try Vancouver next year.

_________

Adventures working production and with the venue-

After I got off the plane (Thurs Noon), and detained by customs for an hour, I decided that I would walk the 2.6km to the venue. Didnt seem that far on google maps. At least I didnt have to pay a cab fare. >< Getting in for the first time there were new members of the crew I never met before. Mainly Mark, the COO, and all of the volunteers from Canada. Seriously you guys were fucking awesome. I also had no idea exactly what my “job” was going to be this weekend. Adventure one was simply to set up the venue. By the end of the day, most of it was done.

The booth was made by the bad-asses from Cyber Active. It had its flaws (I hated the construction paper blinders so the players couldn’t look at the casters screen), but it was way better than trying to ship a pre-made booth in. The Russian crew that worked labor getting everything set up was both super scary, and super nice. They were the same people doing security for the players walking down the red carpet.

B stream set-up booth. The standard booth that was used for Sunday Showdowns and road events. Greg and Geoff spent a bunch of time here. Greg actually left his starcraft and twitter logged in after the first night, and I really had to refrain from posting something silly.

Some of the amazing volunteers that did so much setting up and administrating the event. This would have been 8000% harder without their help. If one of you read this, thank you. Really. You rock. I wish I got a Barcraft Canada t-shirt from you guys. I ended up going to dinner instead of your party tho. QQ TT =[

So all the iBuyPower boxes came, but none of the power cords showed up. Sundance……….

View of the venue from the press box after everything was close to completion. The set up experience was very, very smooth for S3. It was nice. And everything looked great.

Here is bitterdamn testing the main stage. Things were running good and as expected. Big props to the local man who worked the Jib for this event. He got some amazing shots and was a complete professional.

You guys seemed to like it when tasteless did it….

One of my favorite things about events is being able to shoot pictures. I do not have the best camera, nor am I the best photographer, but I argue that I do a good job. I strive to get better. The reason why there are so few pictures from me of this event was because at the end of the day I got thrown into doing back stage production stuff. I rolled videos, put people into games, got players what they wanted, and mic’d casters on the main stage. My camera was uber mad at me for not being able to take pictures like HuK walking down the red carpet, or Stephano kicking Lauren in the head. Damn.

Wires. Wires everywhere.

Everyone getting their directions and rundown from the director Morgan. Yes, Morgan is the one who tried to spin Stephano and use him as a weapon to murder lauren.

Almost ready to let everyone in, these two doing some last second work.

The turn out was early and huge. The line went down the block for people to get their passes. It was nerd-chill inducing.

Barbie was hyping the line by throwing out shirts to everyone who had a cheerful made.

Frodan was hyping the line with a high-five train. He was out of breath by the end.

The first set of many many people to come into the venue when the doors opened. Again, the fans were flat out amazing.

The venue filling up more and more.

A man and his people. Everyone cheering when Sean Plott makes his way from the VIP area with the mic.

If you didnt notice or watch, there were a shit ton of people. Jesus. Christ. The atmosphere was amazing, but it was defiantly a fire hazard. The AC was working uber super overtime to try to compensate for all the bodies.

People, faces, and personal stories-

The King and Queen of Drones. I met Jos when I was given the last second task of picking him, WhiteRa, and JulyZerg up from LAX. They were at different terminals, I was an hour away, and I was super stressed. I found Jos first and he was simply awesome. He spoke english (well), and was fun to talk to. He sat in the front seat on the way back and we talked the entire way to the venue. Ever since then I have seen Jos at almost event event I have been at, and we have a great relationship. We all enjoyed many laps in the pool, and drinks with Incontrol, Idra, Scarlet, and Ostojiy. He is one cool cat, and I will always cheer loudest for him. I also just took over his fan club, so WOOOO RET FIGHTING. And thanks for the bed. :3

Drewbie and his new ROOT jersey. They are legit. He is legit.

Ddoro had a good run in WCS Canada. We never talked. But gj man.

Ryze is another gentleman I met for the first time at this event. Spent a little bit of time chatting with him and Drewbie.

Lookin’ Smexy Firezerg.

Andre was testing out the computers. He is a friend of mine. I really do enjoy spending time with him. I think he is proving over and over that the hate is not deserved. We both had a pulled pork at Zets around 1am, and things like that are my favorite eSports memories.

Serious Face.

Frodan bleeds passion. And let me tell you, after tripping off that stage that man can bleed a lot. It was great getting to be around him. His NASL RO16 player bios were amazing, his casting is great, and he is willing to do anything. I wish the man nothing but luck for the future, and I hope we get to work together again.

The two of them together make for some great moments.

Tribes and Smite was at the event with HiRez. Props to all of them. Bart and Fishstix are two of my new favorite people. One of you should offer me a job.

Fans spoke. Clutch came. I think he has things that he can work on to turn himself into a staple in the scene. Backstage he was a professional and made me laugh. A lot.

Backstage in the VIP room we found ourselves crowded around a 5 inch monitor to watch the game feed. Sean, Soe, James, Andre (The russian, not the Gretorp), Torte, Mike (Huge shout out to him for doing all of the Gamespot coverage. Have fun at Dreamhack. Hope to see you soon, you rock.), and many others. We easily could have used another video source to watch the game. I do not know how this happened. But it was fun. Fun fun fun.

Bitter had a sketch book that he passed around to a ton of people. Everyone drew something on each page. He had a lot of fun, and we had a lot of fun feeding off his energy.

Kev loves the fans. When I had to mic him he would make sure that I knew to make his hare look good when I was done. So eSports.

Bitterdam

They could all be backstreet boys replacements. Look at that swag.

Idra and Incontrol did a great job this weekend. Doing everything asked of them. The people love them casting together, and I think Anna is just a front for their secret love. Look at the lust in Greg’s eyes.

Your CSL Casters, and people who make the organization run, Mona and Tim. Looking forward to working with both of you guys for Season 6. #CSL

Mike says there are never any pictures of him. He dos production and just makes shit work at NASL. He made it work this weekend.

Eliot has been with NASL from the start. Through good and bad he is the man who does so much of the work back stage. He is also great to have on speed dial if you blow a tire on the freeway in Rancho.

Chris, Ostojiy, is another friend. I had him to win WCS. Thanks for that one buddy. I truly think that him and Illusion are the NA breakout stars of the future. He is so much fun to photograph because of the intense faces he makes while playing.

Queen of the Swarm. WCS Canadian Champ. Scarlet. She has so much personality, yet is very very quite. I enjoyed watching her try to drink a white russian with Incontrol. Congrats gurl.

Jos winning the RO16. It was heart crushing going from almost 3-0 on Alicia, to losing 8 strait games.

Stephano doing an interview on Day[9]’s Lap

Canada CSL Champs!

He smelled remotely of champagne.

The End.

You can find my complete imgur album for the event (and all of my other event photographs) here.

Thanks again for reading. Hope you enjoyed, and I hope you come back again. If you ever see me at an event please say hi. I love a good random conversation. Also, Gunrun has perfect feet. And he is very ashamed of them.
~Joey ‘Leafeator’

Pictures & Stories

One corrupt SD card later, I lost quite a bit of pictures from this weekend. QQ TT

This was my first time at Cal Poly Pomona, even tho I have lived in the area for the majority of my life. The campus was really nice and peaceful. Green poster board lead everyone from the parking lot to the Student Center.

The top floor was lined with posters and sponsor booths as you made your way to the main hall. TV’s displayed graphics of the days schedule. Everyone was walking around with their goody bags and free t-shirts. Entering the main hall, many more sponsor booths were present. GESL had more sponsors on sites with booths than any other event I have been too. He is the Gigabyte booth:

All of the on site sponsors also had an hour in a private hall downstairs to host workshops. Here the companies would do some educating and selling of their product. The real reason people went was so they could win some free stuff. Here is a picture of the Newegg workshop. People packed in as newegg gave away a ton of great stuff. I got a free 750w PSU myself. Other workshops got crazy. In the Enemax show, the girls hosting simply said “First one on stage wins X.” Someone might have gotten trampled to death in that room.

Also downstairs was “The Game Room.” They are a preexisting business in the building that has TVs, arcade machines, pool tables, bowling, air hockey, and all that fun stuff. Mad Catz took over the game room with some fighting game competition, but a lot of people were also gathered here just to hang out. The projectors were often playing whatever was not featured on the main stage at the time. Also near by, Red Bull set up a nice lounge for the players. In that room they had food, drink, and a PC with couches.

There were two rooms dedicated as practice areas. One for star players, and one for league players. This is where the players spent the vast amount of their time practicing, hanging out, and playing the matches that did not require a trip to the Red Bull booth in the main hall.

GESL packed the house in front of the main stage. I was rather surprised with the great turnout. They all got pretty hype with all of the free stuff being given out.

Speaking of free stuff, the raffles were the huge draw every day. Every person packed in to see if their lucky number got called out by Rachel. $25,000+ worth of stuff was given away in these raffles over three days. Many people won consecutive raffles, taking home hundreds of dollars in equipment. Some lucky folk even won complete gaming PCs, complete with monitors and peripherals.

Even Zig’s, a young LoL pro, mom won stuff. In fact having TD’s moms there, with their own jerseys, and doing interviews, was awesome.

Speaking of Team Dynamic, they are some cool cats who showed up at both MLG and GESL.

Rachel did an amazing job hosting. She is also very easy to take pictures of. Here are just a few of what I got.

Rachel, I’m Sorry. <3

Hosting also involves doing some interviews. Here is Rachel with Violet after he won his first set vs Illusion.

How about some player pictures? I have a bunch in the album, but here are some of my favorites.
Chris, Illusion, is someone who I really like to watch play. I really want him to break out and win something. Hope I’m at that tournament to give the man a high-five, and buy him some dinner. I need to make an effort to talk to you more Chris, I just dont want to bother you :3

Razer asked to use some of my pictures on their facebook wall, I was quite honored. #humblebrag

Violet

Monster

Golden

KawaiiRice. <3

Caliber

Flo was not playing at the event, but she was there cheering her Quantic brethren on.

Beastyqt

Axslav

Demuslim

Ryung, watching two streams at once like a boss.

Sleep playing, with Violet looking on from behind.

I became a fan of mystik this event. I did not watch him play much; but every time you are around the man, he is always smiling. It is infections

GESL got quite a bit of flack for not having an “A List” caster line up. Obviously this is becoming a more and more important part of events. Personally I enjoyed hearing casters who are up-and-coming. I do not enjoy how people will be flat out malicious towards these people. I have more caster pictures in the full album if you are looking for some more pictures of yourself men.
Gwin

Axeltoss

Azel

Thundertoss

and my personal favorite, Derp Wombat.

A big thanks to GhostClaw for also talking pictures. Doing a much better job at it than me. And updating liquipedia. And being a boss
.

And finally PrimaDog, who is mad that I have a picture up here of him. But he did a shit ton of work to make this thing happen. Saying that I do not wish to diminish all of the other volunteers who worked on the event. A lot of people worked really hard this weekend to make a great event.

You can find my complete imgur album for the event (and all of my other event photographs) here.

The community; cutting off its nose to spite its face

I let my jimmies get a little bit rustled this weekend. Sigh.
On Sunday I made a post in /r/starcraft, and then cross-posted it in /r/leagueoflegends. The post was me compiling all of the (many) sponsors for GESL so that we can try and thank them for their support. A decent amount of these sponsors have not had too much involvement in eSports before this event. The sponsors at the venue were happy, they all made a ton of fans there. However with the online experience of the tournament not being able to hold a candle to in-venue, many of people speculated as to what a shit event this was; and that the sponsors should be shamed.

This argument in and of itself is okay to debate. Everyone knows that the broadcast event was not the best thing in the world. The starcraft viewer count was relevantly low, and a lot of valid complaints were had.

There was a considerable amount of negativity in these threads. Things and actions that can only hurt us. Posts like :

I appreciate compiling all of the sponsor information. I will now go through and let them know that I will not be buying their products in the future because of the whole destiny debacle. Thanks!

The real thing I learned from these threads is how malignant the league community could be. Some of the things being said were just flat out false, and people were rallying around these points. Here are some of the quotes:

• It’s really a shame that those sponsors chose this shitty tournament to show up for. It is by far the worst run tourney to date in League of Legends history. Hopefully the sponsors are smart enough to hook up with a real tournament in the future because this one is an absolute joke.

• Sponsors were pretty bad to say the truth. i didnt like the presents at all, and even the people walking up to the stage to collect their presents seemed sad as fuck. Giving away random components like that just isnt rewarding, you dont feel like you actually won anything since you still have to invest a pretty considerable amount of money to make any use of your present. Would have been way better giving away like 20 gaming laptops for example.

•  fuck gesl, screwed over a lot of players, made me watch 1h + of give aways i could not enter. you seriously think they gave out 250 thousand dollars worth of stuff? are you fucking high? it was prob shit they had laying around cause no one wants their shit.

After this experience I am more grateful for the SC2 community. Although things like this still happen, we seem much more mature than our league counterparts.

Crucifying something for being sub par, and attempting to drive sponsors away, is petty. It only hurts everyone. And that goes for everything, not just this event. We can not cut off our nose when we all still need to be growing eSports.

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Thanks for reading. I appreciate any feedback you have for me. If you enjoyed this I would love a follow: @leafeator. And if you ever see me at an event, please dont hesitate to say “Hi!” I love giving out some high-fives.
~Joey “Leafeator”