EPTWeek 1 of the NASL had similar technical difficulties, sound issues and editing mistakes were common on every broadcast, and if anyone were to sit down and watch the content before broadcast time these mistakes would have been caught and fixed with ease. This set the tone for the rest of the regular season, and turned a lot of people off who had paid $25 for a seasons worth of content. Gretorp and InControl developed a lot of chemistry as casters over the first few weeks, and then suddenly InControl disappeared and NASL brought in a series of other casters to fill his spot. As the weeks progressed, the editing and graphical work improved, as well as Gretorp's casting and chemistry with a slew of names from the Starcraft community. One such guest was Mr. Bitter, host of the show 12 Weeks with the Pros, made his casting debut to much success, and I for one hope we see him again behind a casting desk. Near the end of the regular season, many groups' playoff spots were still muddied, and the casters were rotated out so regularly that the new casters did not have a clear idea of what was at stake, and as such there was never a clear narrative created for the viewer as to what the big picture was. While the casters attempted to do this early on, they soon stopped with the removal of the half hour of introduction and analysis of the evening's match ups.
The playoffs arrived with a new pair of casters, and were essentially a week's worth of super short games, many BO1's where players all in'd attempting to quickly win the game. Diggity and Moletrap did their best to cast the games, however the format worked against them and often times they were left with poor quality matches to cast.
Leading up to the Grand Finals, only one player (Strelock) had visa issues, which to me was surprisingly good for a tournament featuring so many foreign players. Tastosis and Day9 were announced, and the community was genuinely excited. Eventually, pictures of the event area and the assembly of the stage were posted, and much hype was generated
Finally, the day of the finals arrived. I was still at work during the 'start' of the finals, however as tweets began to filter into my phone, I heard about NASL's slow start, the multiple problems, even TLO's tweet about the production values. I hoped this wasn't the case and the community was (as usual) blowing things a bit out of proportion. However, when I got home all of this was confirmed, the shaky camera zoomed in on the caster booth, the 'follow mode' observer bouncing around on the screen and terrible audio levels for the casters and interviewers. The rest of the first evening was a lot like this, including a long stretch of one sided, boring best of threes. Awkwardly enough, all of that changed when Darkforce showed up.
The Darkforce vs. Alive match was, for me, when the whole event started to change. It was the first match that seemed... even. Maybe this speaks to the quality of forigner play, but every match preceding it seemed to pale in comparison, and when you add in the awkward adorable cheerfulness of Darkforce, there was a strange sort of energy even when watching the stream. Darkforce and Alive played three good matches, the first game was a short bunker rush that caught Darkforce by surprise. But, the next two games were a treat to watch. While both players seemed absentminded and tired by the end of the match, the games were a display of what we have come to expect from NASL games, even play between foreigners and Koreans with just a hint of eccentricity from both players. Darkforce's facial expressions of absolute joy made me smile, too, and made me remember why I was watching the NASL in the first place, because the game matters more than anything else. Day two was more of the same, with some fixes and a few excellent additions (on this note, it seemed extremely unfair to not brief LindsEy on what exactly she was covering, throwing her into the Starcraft Community with no information whatsoever is asking for trouble). I feel like Bo3 for the first round wasn't enough to determine player skill, and maybe a BO5 in round two wasn't enough either. Time will tell, and I hope NASL experiments with their format in the future and brings us even more exciting games in the early rounds, maybe even incorporating a losers bracket...
Fast forward to MC vs. Puma on Day 3, the final match. I found it odd that even though they flew Tastosis in from Korea, NASL chose to have Gretorp and InControl cast the final deciding match. Puma breaks fast for a 3-1 lead, and the next game would be the stuff of legends. As MC is about to lose, backed into his own mineral line with a handful of units, InControl and Gretorp all but ready to take the headphones off and pack up, MC somehow holds off Puma's army. Maybe Puma would have won it there and then, but he decided to back off a bit. MC had an opening, and macro'd up. He came back and won in one of the best comebacks I've ever seen. MC would go on to tie the series 3-3 before all in'ing in the final game and giving the match away to Puma who held the all in brilliantly.
As I closed the stream, I thought a bit about the decision to have Gretorp and InControl cast, and the more I considered the alternatives, I realized that both of them have put a lot of work into the NASL, and deserved to cast the match. Not only that, but they did an excellent job dealing with the pumped up crowd during the breaks in between games. A few months ago, Day9 expressed concern with the fact that Casters were overtaking the players in importance within the community, something that I agreed with. Watching Puma vs. MC after a weekend of bumbling errors that were slowly corrected, it made me realize that the game is really what matters. That's the idea behind NASL, the game takes precedence over everything. Unfortunately, it seemed like NASL could do nothing right except for stick players inside the booths and turn the projector on. They did get something right in the beginning, and that was committing to bring in the greatest talent to compete for a huge amount of money. The stakes were high, the narrative was there, and I was on the edge of my seat cheering the whole way through.
Thanks NASL for a great culminating event. You haven't sold me on next year's regular season matches and I hope you fix a lot of your technical and sound issues across the board, but when the games were on I wasn't leaving my room for anything. Season 1 was $25 well spent.
