WCS

Jul 092014 Tagged with Starcraft, WCS

WCS America Season 2 Finals (2014)

You know what, I think the third time might really be the charm. In a world were WCS NA was questionably handled by both MLG and NASL, it seems that ESL has really dedicated an American team to doing this product justice.

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
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Oct 242013 Tagged with eSports, NASL, Red Bull, Starcraft, WCS

WCS america Season 3 Finals!

Hey Now~

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.

WCS NA S2 ro16 Day 1

My grandma would have no idea how to read that title. WCS, NA, S2, ro16. It’s practically jibrish.

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

Jun 112013 Tagged with Blizzard, eSports, Starcraft, WCS

“The Reddit Guy” BWC Coverage / Trip to China

Hey Now!

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.
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