EPTMLG Columbus was my first MLG, and I had an absolute blast. Here's a quick rundown of what I experienced:
Signed TLO's jacket during his autograph session
Buried the hatchet with SirScoots with djWHEAT as a witness (he had taken offense to a joke I made at his expense in an Infested Archon article)
Was given an awful high five by Naniwa, then got an extremely solid high five by Thorzain 10 minutes later.
Introduced myself and talked to Tasteless, Artosis, Sheth, qxc (and they all like my articles :D)
Shook MC's hand
Saw first-hand how good Roach/Immortal is vs. Stalkers
...And that was just the first few hours of the event.
The following is a full account of my experiences and interactions with the players and personalities of the SC2 world as the writer of The Infested Archon (you've probably heard of it) It's a little long, so look for a TL;DR at the bottom if you want. Ignore grammar errors/typos, I don't feel like proofing it.
The first few hours of MLG aka "Did that just fucking happen?"
After a 4 hour drive from Indiana, my friend and I got to the Convention Center about 1:30 Friday afternoon and got in the huge line. As I start to look around at all the people in line, I spot a small group of guys in black shirts with various writing on it. My eyes grew wide as I realized it was Team Dignitas with Naniwa and SeleCT starting to go up the escalator besides the stairs we were standing on. I fidgeted a little bit as I tried to hide my nervousness from seeing these players that I've been watching play for the past year. Eager for my first interaction with a SC2 player, I stuck my hand out to high five Naniwa. Naniwa weakly contacted my hand in a simply terrible high five. I quickly pulled back and commented how awkward that was to my friend. Fearing another awkward interaction, I said a quick “Good Luck SeleCT” as he came by and he nodded and smiled.
After spotting a few more players and personalities likely heading for lunch, we finally got in the right line (we paid online, which had a really short line, but wasn't labeled) and walk into the darkness of MLG's giant room. Nerds and screens everywhere and I knew I was home. We quickly rushed over to the Starcraft side and as we're making our loop, I see a large individual standing just inside the player area in shorts and a plain T-shirt. At first, I dismissed him as a spectator or a random player. Then, I took a closer look through the darkness and asked my friend, “Is that Sheth?” “I think so.” We cautiously walk over. “Sheth?” A smile appeared on his face as he said a cheerful “Yeah.” I introduced myself as the writer of The Infested Archon, and he immediately recognized it and said he liked my articles. Sheth has a very calm pleasantness about him. He doesn't seem to get excitable, just very cool and friendly.
Continuing our tour around the venue, I see ThorZaIN walking right towards us. I cautiously go for another high five. ThorZaIN grins, pulls his hand out and gives an excellent high five. “No wonder he won TSL.” I thought to myself and later tweeted.
After walking around a bit, I see that TLO has an autograph session at the Sony Ericsson. I know from an article I did on TLO, that he likes IA, so I was eager to meet him. Stood in line for about 20 minutes and got waved in. I'm not a big autograph or Halo guy, so I jokingly apologized to Walshy (famous Halo player also signing autographs) that I was just there for TLO. I get up to TLO, introduce myself and he gets really excited. TLO is a different nice from Sheth. Dario gets excited. He seemed to be just as excited to meet me as I was to meet him. Then he said “I should be getting your autograph” and I laughed at the thought. Next thing I know, he stands up, gives me his marker and turns around for me to sign his jacket. Fumbling a bit, I attempt to pull the cap off the marker not realizing it was uncapped. I then sloppily write “Infested Archon” on his jacket and then pose for a picture from my friend who decided to cut me out of the picture except my hand:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/fZC7y.jpg)
I then proceed to walk away in shock. I say to my friend “Did that just fucking happen?”
+ Show Spoiler +
I later learned that Dario gave the jacket to HayprO who was walking around for a bit with “Infested Archon” on his back. Someone who knows HayprO (Kennegit maybe?) told me how they laughed at how odd it was since HayprO doesn't have that kind of a sense of humor at all.
Soon after we see a little bit of a crowd between the sc2 and halo stages. It's Tasteless and Artosis. We wait around a bit and finally get in to Tasteless. Once again, I introduce myself and Tasteless lights up “Man, you're funny, you're funny” then tells me about his friend in the military who thought my article about Tasteless being fired was real and called Tasteless about it. We laughed about it and I was going to thank him for mentioning IA on GSL, but some guy rudely interrupts, yelling “Tasteless! Sign my back!” and rips off his shirt. So I turn to Artosis and he was also cool as hell and talked about how the GomTV staff saw the Tasteless article and loved it. I thought I would be over the nervousness by then, but my hands were shaking after that encounter.
Some time after that, we see djWHEAT and SirScoots. I introduce myself to Wheat and I don't quite remember what he said, but I then hear, Scoots say, “Ohhh, you're THAT guy” and pretends to bring his fists up. He then talks about how he was kinda angry when he first saw the joke and was like “Who the fuck is this guy?” But, he went on to say that he read some of my articles and understood the humor a bit. Then he related how he's used to dealing with controversial statements and we had a good, friendly handshake. Totally cool guy.
I met a few other players throughout the weekend like Tyler, qxc, Whiplash, and probably others that I can't remember through the blur of the weekend's memories.
The tournament itself
The tournament got off to an incredible start. You couldn't ask for a better start. IdrA, the best Zerg outside Korea. MC, probably the best Protoss in the world. Both awesome personalities. The games were fucking awesome. I couldn't believe my eyes when MC laid down a perfect row of force fields before IdrA's units even dropped his units. And even though I'm an MC fan, I cheered when IdrA's drops came though and were too much for MC to handle. Then game 2, I cringed when I saw MC lead with his Immortals knowing that neural parasite was waiting for them. But, I cheered in amazement anyway as his stalkers were decimated..
The rest of Day 1, we did a lot of walking around catching games here and there. Sometimes getting seats, or just standing. It was just awesome being in that atmosphere, cheering like crazy with thousands of other people.
You all saw the games, and I really don't remember much other than iNcontroL hiding a pylon in TLO's base again. So, I'll keep this part brief
We were exhausted and left Day 1 early to rest up for Day 2. We wanted to keep our seats, so between main stage games, one person would get up and walk around and the other would save the other's seat. It worked pretty well.
For Day 3, we woke up a little after 7, and got to the convention center at about 8:30 (we went for a cheaper hotel a little farther away). On the way in, we spotted Day9. We were about 5th in line to meet him, but he had to go, so I didn't get to introduce myself, but a high five was pretty cool. We got pretty good seats on the right side, 5th row, great view of everything. Day 3 was exhausting, the games were so good (holy shit Moon's banelings, HUGE cheer). By the time the final games were going, I was running on Dr. Pepper, a 5 hour energy, and adrenaline. I was wide awake and excited, yet I felt like I was going to collapse at any second. And then this happened:
You can see my confused reaction at 1:22 in the bottom left. I'm the guy that goes to clap, then stops, and throws his hands out in a WTF just happened
The orbital kill went like this:
1st tank volley: ohhh, ouch, that was a big misclick
2nd tank volley: yikes, he's going to notice that and correct it right???
3rd tank volley: *hands on my head in disbelief * Holy fucking shit, he's going to kill his own orbital
4th tank volley: Oh-My-Fucking-God did he just do that?
And then the complete disbelief when IdrA gg'd and left.
The crowd for the finals was just intense. The cheer from the 2000-3000 spectators right before the finals was the loudest part of the tournament. You saw how long Tastosis had to wait to talk because the venue was exploding.
Finals were great, I had chills the whole time, just so amazing to be there. I had a huge grin the whole time.
Cool people and the after-party
Thanks to Kennegit and chobopeon, I got the super secret info about the after-party at some dive bar near the convention center. Justin.tv picked up the tab, and bout a bunch of pizzas which was pretty money. This was the goldmine for meeting people. Here are some of the people I met.
Chobopeon (Good guy, I'll definitely be talking to him more in the future), Doa (awesome guy, shared a great story related to IA), iccup.diamond (fan of IA from the beginning), Evoli, Fishstix, Wellplayed.org guys: cazter, entropyfails (good conversation), feargorm, vindexus. TeamLiquid staff: WaxAngel (great talking with you, despite my inability to keep up with your fast talking
), TrueRedemption, p4ndemik. CatsPajamas (awesome and very sharp guy, it was hard to pull him away from the in-depth conversations he was having), AskJoshy (great guy), Boss and Tgun from FXO (they were totally smashed and it took them awhile to figure out who I was), Oplaid (of itmejp brink stream fame and ESFI editor; trolled the fuck out of some random sc2 player who's teammate beat Kiwikaki once; cool guy), and Slasher (awesome guy, really encouraged me to go to more MLGs, and said he'd get me a press pass for the next MLG I get to).I also met EdwardStarcraft, Hot_Bid, and Kennegit during the event. Nice guys.
There's probably more that I don't remember or didn't recognize.
Overall, I had fantastic time, and I am planning on attending more MLGs this year. (probably not Anaheim, unfortunately). I really appreciate everyone that said they liked my articles, I was blown away by some of the reactions and how pretty much everyone knew about IA. I can't wait to get to more MLGs and hang out with those people some more, and meet even more people.
Thanks to all the people I met. Everyone was nice and it was great meeting all of you, and I hope I meet more at other events/MLGs.
EDIT: Oh, and I forgot to mention that Sunday was my birthday, which made the final day of MLG even more special. MLG gave me the best present ever!
EDIT2: all the cool people are doing a coolest people list, so here's mine:
Kennegit
Doa
Catspajamas
chobopeon
waxangel
EntropyFails (Wellplayed.org)
Slasher
Joshy
Oplaid
and of course, TLO
+ Show Spoiler [TL;DR] +
I met a ton of SC2 players and personalities who are awesome and they all liked The Infested Archon, and were even happy to meet me. I got the full spectator experience and was in the middle of one of the best SC2 tournaments ever.
I got work, and I'm still trying to play catch up with tv shows (holy shit, game of thrones), all the MLG content, and other sc2 content, so I will hopefully get an IA MLG recap up tomorrow night.
