EPTVery Minor Results Spoilers in the tags.
There was so much that happened over the course of this tournament, I'm just going to write this to explain what it was like to be just another fan at MLG DC. Also, I'm not a picture person so this is just text, but I know there were plenty of people taking pictures of everything. (Nokarot has a picture of me, I'm the guy who isn't Tyler in the picture of him enjoying coffee.)
Day 1:
So partially to get a chance to meet people and partially because I didn't understand the posted times for when things started, I drove to the convention center and arrived around 10 AM, not realizing that there would be exactly zero games until 5 PM. When I first got in, I was so nervous because it seemed like everyone there was in a pack and they all looked like Halo kids anyways. Then, as I was taking the escalators down to the floor where the main convention hall was, I saw my first Team Liquid shirt! So I figured anyone wearing a TL shirt was a safe person to talk to, I introduced myself and it turned out to be wonkman, one of the guys who had bought a pass to play in the event. We talked for a bit as we got into the line that was forming for the early registration for players. Near the end of the line were the guys from EG, and when wonkman had to leave that spot to meet up with someone I was left standing in this massive line of people registering for Halo and staring across this random hallway at the EG guys. So I figured the line wasn't moving and I didn't need a spot in it anyway, so I went over and just introduced myself and stood in line with Incontrol, Lz, Machine, and Idra. (Inka was still sleeping during the early signups.)
The next four or so hours, almost 90 minutes waiting for the 10:30 registration to actually start, and then until the warm-up period began closer to 2 PM, I spent hanging around with EG, and eventually with Fnatic, as they waited for the warm-up. We were all sitting in Fnatic's hotel room in the convention center, with all the EG guys, Gretorp, TT1, KawaiiRice, Nony and Ret, among others, just talking about the patch and the game and watching Cheers because somehow in all of that the remote to the hotel television just vanished. If you've never met these guys, next time you go to a tournament seriously, all of them are some of the nicest people and throughout both days, they not only signed autographs and took pictures, but many of them were just interacting with the fans, talking to people, taking questions, and even just sitting in the crowd, talking about the games that were on stream like the rest of the spectators at times.
When the warm-up period finally started, all the players went to get their setups and play practice games, so I went to get a good seat on the 6 rows of benches that were outside the SC2 area of the convention hall. I think SC2 was one of the smaller areas, but for every big match, especially on Day 2, had to be close to the most packed. Then again, I didn't really venture out into the Halo throngs so maybe they had crowds I never saw. So I was sitting there with three hours to kill, and there were maybe a dozen people watching the early warmups, so I was talking to the few fans there, when one of them sounded familiar. Turns out that Gunrun was there just as a spectator, he didn't even have his press pass at the time. So most of the rest of the time between meeting Gunrun and when the matches finally started nearer to 6 PM was spent talking to him, Scan, and just the other fans who were there early. As I saw someone mentioned in the live report thread, qxc did indeed take a quick nap to the side after he warmed up, and was another player I noticed constantly talking to fans (including me) during the early stages of the tournament. Even after the matches started, there was no stream for quite a while so most of the spectators moved right up to the rail to catch glimpses of the matches, pass results back and forth, and wait for some streaming to come up. Gunrun had been trying to organize people to go out for dinner constantly, since the only food allowed in the area was stuff that was sponsored. So you had sample-size beef jerky, Doritos, and Dr. Pepper. After 7 PM they also had those Hot Pocket cheeseburger things. Of course, with the delays to the stream Gunrun's plan to go out for Chinese managed to coincide perfectly with the stream coming up. So instead of leaving right then, we of course crammed into the bleachers, which were incredibly uncomfortable, to watch the first streamed matches. At the beginning I was worried that there would be no ability to hear the casters at all since that's what I had heard took place at the last MLG, and the first two games this was pretty much true, you could hear maybe a few words here or there. Of course, I was sitting next to Gunrun, who is awesome but I think cannot turn off his casting voice even if he wanted to. So it was like having Gunrun casting for the first bench on the right, at least for the first few matches. His dinner plans finally worked and Gunrun went to eat, but since ajtls vs. Idra was about to start I chose to stay behind, and watched that match sitting next to Wolf (of Open Wolf Cup).
I think by the end of the night I'd migrated over towards the middle of the viewing area because the EG people were sitting there and I wanted to know what they were thinking about the matches, and so I wouldn't have to tilt my neck sideways. I think over there is when I met a few more of the various players and community people, like RyanRushia and JoshSuth. I won't go into too much detail about the matches themselves, except to say that the general vibe was really sympathetic towards Machine for having a really tough bracket and then + Show Spoiler +
losing to Incontrol yet again,
Day 2:
Because it had been such an amazing time before the matches started on Day 1, I decided to wake up early and go and hang out before the warmups, just to see everyone as they came in and maybe to talk to more people I hadn't met yet. I ended up arriving just as the doors opened around 8:15 AM. Fnatic were the first people down to the practice area. Other than that it was the people holding up the reddit sign who had also gotten there really early. Unlike the day before were all I brought was a pad of paper in case I really needed to take notes on something, Day 2 since I knew I would want to lie down instead of sit on the really uncomfortable benches I brought a bag filled with my graduate econ textbooks and a pillow, as well as a jacket since it was really cold most of the day.
This warmup period, probably due to how early it was, had a lot less people actually there well beforehand, although the reddit crowd did give Day9 some chocolate milk as he walked in, and in the rare moment I could, I did get to go up and say hello as he returned from breakfast. Both days, all the casters/organizers were much busier before the games than the players themselves, and because they were keeping up with spectating the various matches as a fan you saw a lot less of them outside of the streaming than the players, who were busier on the whole on Day 2 but still signed pretty much everything and took pictures. Most of the day I spent camped out on the floor in front of the first row of benches, next to R1CH, Hot_Bid, RyanRushia, and JoshSuth. (Ryan made his most notable appearance of Day 2 as the blue shoe constantly blocking Josh's face on the crowd shots. Day 1, his most notable appearance was as the one person who used Void Rays. + Show Spoiler +
He lost.
Again I won't go into the games, although there was generally more fan response as the day got later, and the MLG organizers were constantly telling us to be loud and look enthusiastic at the oddest times, like when nothing was going on in the game (right when players spawn) or between matches. So that was rather strange, and got some very mixed reactions from the crowd as a whole. Overall in terms of games, the day was pretty much the Idra and Select show, with everyone being impressed not just by Select's play, but by the sheer number of games he kept up his APM.
Day 2: The Mothership Rush
I'm sure by now you've all heard about this, but sitting close to the front row, here's pretty much what happened. At the beginning of the match in question, the stream just sat on Huk, so we got a good shot of his incredible APM that Day9 was mentioning, and then it just stayed on Huk, without switching, giving us the Radio Starcraft experience as we heard about the openings without actually seeing them. Some people started trying to get someone from the MLG staff to notice this, and started chanting “Show the Game! Show the Game!” So then the tourney organizers came over, walked out so they could see the big screen, looked up, saw Huk, and ran over to change it. Of course, the next camera they flip to is Select, so again we get a picture of him just running his hands all over the keyboard and no game. Chant starts back up, louder than before, until the game comes back on. At this point, all the action from the in-game Chat starts, with Huk asking what the chanting was about, and then saying that maybe it was for a mothership. Once he said that in game, I think everyone in the crowd knew that the subsequent chants of “Moth-er-ship! Moth-er-ship!” were inevitable. So of course, when he does in fact do it, then the crowd went nuts again, despite Hot_Bid's bold attempt like the quarterback of a home football team to silence the crowd by waving his arms in a silencing gesture. + Show Spoiler +
After the game, even as Huk gg'ed out, there were nothing but Huk chants from the crowd.
I was laying on the floor right in front of Tyler and Hot_Bid, and when Huk came back to sit down and watch the next matches there were so many people streaming up to get pictures and autographs with him that he ended up moving over to the side of the venue and had a receiving line for a few minutes before everyone settled back down. For someone just knocked out of the tournament to do that is pretty cool, and I'm glad he moved to get all of it done because there probably a dozen people trying to walk on me otherwise.
Day 2: Aftermath
Once the finals were over, a bunch of the TL people (so basically almost half of the first two rows of spectators) were trying to meet up for dinner, although because of how big the community is now, especially with random hangers-on like myself, it ended up being a massive group, almost 30 or so, walking down the street trying to find a place to get a table. Shockingly enough on a Saturday night nobody had seating for 30+, so we were faced with a group that was sort formed of three different parts, the TL mod staff, Team EG, and everyone else, trying to find a place and spreading out all over. In the end, after some people struck out in search of a bar, a bunch of us went back into the hotel and JP , hero organizer, ordered a preposterous amount of Chinese food, which we took down to a lobby area and ate. It was around 11:15 when I left after helping ETT clean up the remains of dinner.
Random Tidbit:
There was at some point during dinner Day 2 a whole morsel of chicken cast into the decorative fountain in the lobby area. Somehow despite people taking pictures using it as a backdrop nobody seemed to notice.
Overall:
The whole thing was awesome, nearly every matchup was fun to watch live. The lag was disappointing at times, and some of the technical difficulties led to long lags, but that was just more time to talk to people and say hello at the event. I especially want to thank all the members of Team EG, RyanRushia, and Gunrun, you guys were all really welcoming and I don't think I would've had nearly as much fun without being able to talk to you. To everyone else from TL I met, I was the one who's trying to write the paper.
Thanks for reading, and good luck to all the players at MLG Dallas!
