EPTDay 1 - Friday, August 27th.
I woke up around 7 a.m. and immediately started getting ready to go. I was very excited to be going to my first LAN event, and extra excited to be meeting all of my favorite North American StarCraft 2 players in the flesh. I've been hanging out in various vents and stream chats for months, not to mention actually casting well over 150 games featuring a lot of these players since the beta began back in February. After getting all hygiene'd up, I double-checked my packing list to make sure I wasn't forgetting any all-important chargers (phone, laptop, camera), batteries, documents, or clothes.
I managed to cram all of my electronic gear into my Swiss Army backpack, and I just put my clothes into a plastic bag and tossed everything into my car. I skipped breakfast, which was a terrible decision in hindsight, but I lived. I made a stop right away at my local convenience store and bought a couple of Mountain Dew Voltages for the road, and a 5-hour energy because I knew I'd be needing it at some point during the weekend. In the parking lot I tried to duct tape my video camera to my dashboard, but as you'll see in a video later on, that didn't really work out too well.
I finally hit the open road, fully prepared for the 4.5 hour trip from my hometown in South Carolina up to North Carolina's capital city. The drive up wasn't too bad, but it was a bit foggy in some areas. Thanks to Google maps, I had no problem finding the City Center where the event was being held. I got in right around noon, and still hadn't eaten anything. I had consumed two 20-oz. Voltages though, so I was wired with caffeine and ready to meet some StarCraft 2 enthusiasts!
Luckily, the area I parked in was only about 20 yards from the lobby of the event. The City Center's ground floor resembled a hotel lobby, but the huge gaming area you've seen by now was actually downstairs and is absolutely massive. The entirety of the MLG event only used about three quarters of the available space, and the rest was cut off by giant mobile curtains. Anyway, I hadn't even reached the registration desk to find out about my press pass when I heard a voice yell out from behind me "Hey, Josh!" It's a good thing I posted that pre-trip vlog, or Masq and SUGGY probably wouldn't have run into me for another couple of hours.
Masq and SUGGY drove down from Canada the day before, and were well rested for Day 1. They stayed with Paiilicious, a TL.net reader and competitor in the 64-man SC2 event, at his dorm at North Carolina State University, only a few miles from the venue. We made some small talk about our travels, and I asked whether they had seen any of the other players yet. They had just finished eating breakfast with most of the Root Gaming guys, and SUGGY said that they were all really excited to start playing. As the three of us were standing smack-dab in the middle of the lobby, we were easily able to pick out a few different SC2 players and our circle gradually got bigger. HuK entered the scene about 10 minutes later and eventually we ended up with all of the Root Gaming guys, Day[9], and all of the Fnatic guys (Gretorp, Xeris, and TT1). We hung out in the middle of the lobby for a while because the doors to the event were actually not opening until 1:30, even though the schedule made it seem like players could start practicing as soon as 10 a.m. The guys were a bit miffed at that, but while we were standing around I got some nice candid video of the group.
Somewhere around 1 p.m., JB aka Agh showed up and we introduced ourselves. Agh and Masq were staying with me at the Sheraton, which was basically right next door to the City Center. Initially, I'll admit I didn't know anything about Agh and my first impression was that he didn't know what he was getting into with this tournament. He told Masq and me that his computer could hardly even run SC2, and he hadn't really played much since release. Either way, I wished him luck, and we all headed to the roped-off section of the lobby waiting for 1:30 p.m. to roll around so that we could check out the actual venue.
Around 1:20, the place was getting majorly packed. It was around then that I spotted the Evil Geniuses players sneaking their way up towards the front. Geoff is pretty easy to spot in a giant crowd of skinny nerds and teenage Halo players. Finally the security staff allowed us to all stampede our way into the gaming venue itself, and it was pretty damn cool to take in. It kind of felt like a county fair, but everything was video game related. Everyone was dashing in different directions, and I had noooo idea where the StarCraft 2 section was even located, as you can see here.
Here are a few more videos from the first hour inside the venue, while people were setting up their gear and getting situated. These videos took place about three hours before anyone knew who they were playing against.
I'll do Day 1 Part 2 when my next round of videos finishes uploading! Hope you enjoy this. =P
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