Dreamhack Inv. - A spectators experience! :D

We start where I left off in my last post where at 9:30 am I went to the shop to buy some bananas, energy drink, mint-chocolate and one bag of Gott&Blandat (Swedish candy. Mixbag of soft licorice- and fruit-flavored candy). It was going to be a long day, and even though I knew that the hype would keep the hunger away, I needed some emergency sugar.

At 10:30 am I'm at the entrance outside of Kulturhuset. Only two people came earlier than me; one guy from Göteborg who had won the ticket through DreamHack's competition and been there since 8 am, and one girl, also from Göteborg, who'd been there since 6 am and didn't have a ticket for the event.
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Dreamhack were kind enough to let us queue inside for a few hours, where we got our first glimpse of TLO and Jinro (fangirl-squeals were made). Though eventually Kulturhuset decided that we became too many sitting in a staircase and too much of a fire safety hazard, so at 1 pm we got kicked out to the not-so-cold-but-not-warm outside. The girl who'd been here first continued on her quest to find a ticket, and as more and more people came, we all got more and more excited, and just 10 minutes before we were let in to the event the girl without a ticket got hold of one! She was most certainly the happiest person there today after that. xD Also, during the last 30 minutes of so, Coca Cola offered free Coke Zero to the queue. Honestly, most people there (including myself) prefer regular Coke, but it was free and therefore awesome. Also, the 100 first to enter got a free t-shirt! As I was the second to enter - I got one too!

As I entered the event hall I looked around very quickly before going to grab a seat as I was the second person to enter the event. They had a lot of people running around still fixing a few things, but they'd put up a small kiosk inside where you could buy the ordinary stuff you can get in a kiosk at any event (candy, crisps, sandwiches and so on and so forth). They also had four computers set up with StarCraft 2 ready to go, and some sponsor-corners for AMD, Sapphire and SteelSeries.

Moving along the side of the spiral staircase leading up to the floor of the event, you got in to the actual room where the action would be. It was bigger than it felt on the concept images posted in the Dreamhack thread, but boy did it look good! We managed to get seats on the second row in the middle, so we (most of us) got a clear view of both the players in the booths, the "english casting archon" and of course the huge screen in front of us.

Before I start, I just want to say that I won't be talking about the games in detail for two reasons:
1. I don't have the pictures a friend took that aren't as blurry as the ones I took.
2. It's a little past midnight as I'm writing this, and I've been up since 2 am yesterday. Give me a break - you can watch the VOD's for details. xD


Once the event started, it was f-ing amazing. 2GD was a GREAT host, imo improving from the coin flip tournament. Maybe the more formal clothing was his cup o' tea.

The audience was absolutely incredible with cheers and the tension in the air. All the signs were awesome, among my favourites was the "Greedy Zerg" cheerful and the "I <3 Cheese" digital cheerful! Of course, mine wasn't too bad, and I even got a little something for having a good sign:




Casters Apollo and Demuslim were awesome - a good casting pair, I'd love to see them cast together again sometime! :D




The soundless game was one of the most interesting experiences ever for me. It felt so weird most of the game when there was just nothing but the casters voices, and suddenly the crowd cheered and it was back to normal - only to go to weirdness moments later as it became quiet.

HUGE PROPS to the dreamhack crew for the little things. The very responsive small popup-frames were hilarious!!!! Especially since the players were faced away from the screen at all times so they didn't see them. xD It's those little things that take an event to the next step! And I counted only 5 lagspikes in total during the entire tournament - awesome Swedish internet!

All the games were pretty much flawless as production value goes. There was some weird camera shots, but that's to be expected. xD And I saw all the games - except game three between MC and MorroW and game two between HuK and SjoW because I was outside the auditorium getting my cheerful signed - huge thanks to the players for taking the time for that, and thanks for the nice comments on the cheerful. ^^ <3




Oh, and a tip for the dreamhack crew - try having thrashcans in the auditorium next time. xD

Best. Event. Ever.