MLG Anaheim

On August 05 2011 16:22 Milkis wrote:
To be honest, I’ve been kind of scared about writing this up. It’s really hard to describe what this event was for me in words. A lot of things happened in extremes – I’ve never been so nervous in my life, I’ve never been so excited in my life, I’ve never been so exhausted in my life, and I’m hard pressed to find a 5 day period where I’ve learned as much as I did at Anaheim. I don’t know if my experience can be described as “amazing overall”, just like it was in Columbus to an extent. I actually attempted writing this about three times already and every time I wrote it I had to stop because it just sounded exhausting. I hope this won’t sound as depressing, I suppose.

I was hyped for Anaheim from a few weeks before, especially after I found BoxeR would be coming. I spent like the entire day at work with a huge grin on my face and I got little done that day as a consequence. I also then talked with MMA, who told me he got a special something for the fans – he said he got a radical hairstyle and carved an M on his hair. He said that while Korean fans may dislike it, he thought American fans would love it. Shame that the M wasn’t clearer, I think people would have liked it more if that was more visible ;p

But honestly the road getting to Anaheim was a bit of a roller coaster at least for me, mostly due to the EG/Puma drama. There’s nothing that stomps on passion better than the consequences of what happened after that drama. The entire event was extremely stressful and the only reason why I didn’t say “Screw this” was because of the tremendous amount of support I received through PMs on TL, Twitter, and Reddit.

If anyone knows me, I’m really harsh on myself and I’m quite sensitive about these flaws. I get really focused on these flaws and I tend to look out to people who would also look at that and then use that as an opportunity to either work harder or just tell myself “See? You shouldn’t be doing this.” But the amount of support I received was overwhelming, so many people willing to overlook the fact that I wasn’t the most articulate person or the best person in the world, to overlook all these flaws and show support. It was so overwhelming that I couldn’t just be looking at my own flaws and stay depressed, but to rise up again, because in the end, that’d be the most selfish thing I could do. All I could do was rise up.

And I felt that exactly again this past weekend.

I went to the airport early, after stopping by my favorite breakfast place in Chicago. I was there an hour and a half early or so, and so I had some downtime.

I found out later that Kennigit was also at the airport at the same time as me, going to the LAX flight. The funny part was that American Airlines actually offered people 300 dollar travel vouchers to swap to the LAX flight, meaning if I took them up on this offer I would have been on the same flight as Kennigit. Too bad we couldn’t communicate with each other regarding that, since I only had a crappy phone that I could tweet using text and not see anything on there.

I get on the flight and I see this guy who awfully looks like Slasher a few rows in front of me. I look at him and I’m like “is that slasher?" and we stare at each other for a bit. Slasher later told me he gave me “the nod” which didn’t really look at anything so I ended up looking away after a given point cause I thought if that was the real Slasher he would have said hi or something (Yes, we Asians really are that passive, or it’s just me, really T_T). So that’s the story of me being on the same flight as Slasher Lish and other MLG staff and me not even knowing it xP

It turns out that I arrived *after* the Koreans, so Alyssa was all the way there by herself to pick them up. They were picked up on a limo and driven back to the hotel. Apparently on the way back Alyssa asked them where they wanted to eat, and talked about how the hotel restaurants were good and there were steakhouses and such. Jessica says she wants to go to Panda Express and they end up going there to lunch. By the time I arrive, they’re all asleep (jetlag gogo). I check into my room and I head to Hot_Bid’s room.

A surprise greeted me in Hot_Bid’s room, in the form of one of the friendliest person I know in a TeamLiquid Pro shirt, Sheth. I finally met Xxio and it turns out his laptop’s log in picture has Bisu in it… he’s a hopeless Bisu fanboy I suppose :p

Anyway Lovedrop and Xxio try and get good pictures of Sheth in his new Liquid outfit for the announcement and they take like 20 tries to do it mostly because they couldn’t figure out how to email the pictures from Lovedrop’s phone and they were kind of learning how to use the cameras. I was quite surprised no one caught them cause they ended up taking the picture by the pool, which was out in the public. Of course the first thing Hot_Bid tells me is “YOU TWEET THIS AND I WILL KILL YOU” and I was like T_T but yeah to be expected. It’s also funny cause that shows how much I use twitter now >_>;

So after that Kennigit arrives and I tell him how we were at the same airport and such. Kennigit is really tired and anyway he washes up to prepare for the rally race. We all end up walking over there and wait for the rally race. People eventually gather and I’m in awe about how I don’t know anyone there

TL gets the bad news that Tyler won’t be able to make it (He was at Disneyland apparently), and Huk arrives last and he’s prepared to rip through everything. Huk was a lot smaller than I had expected and he was really really fast… to the point where TL probably would have won easily if Tyler was there despite what Slasher may talk about the subject >_>

After that we head over to Cheesecake Factory for dinner since we’re all hungry. All of liquid except for tyler and ret was there, and we all ordered our food and talked about ESPORTS business that shall not be made public here. During all of this, Hot_Bid randomly decides it would be my birthday and orders me the birthday cheesecake and the waitress singing happy birthday -_- When they came singing I was like whose birthday is it?!?!?, only to find Hot_Bid pointing at me and laughing with TLO and I’m like “Oh dear I just got Hot_Bid’d”. The Cake was good though. Anyway, I tweet Jessica my room number so she could contact me if needed and go to sleep.

Anyway, I get a call in the morning and I bring water to BoxeR’s room. Turns out Jessica had a mini kitchen set up there where she cooked for all the Korean players… she had a stew ready and she had a mini rice cooker and she cooked rice and I saw MMA and Ganzi squatting around the pot eating rice. It was very very adorable. I get the water to them and I tell them I’ll meet them downstairs later in time. Apparently Alicia and Ganzi got really good sleep and the seeded players didn’t sleep very well :p

We meet at the lobby at 10 and CDRDude comes around again at that time again and this time he hands me a TL pin. He was carrying a ton of them around and I ask him how much it cost him and he says more than he would like to admit to. The guy is a true TLer, for sure He gets his shirt signed by the Koreans and then we head to the venue, and take the tour of the venue again.

The Koreans warm up for a bit and Boxer initially had problems with the monitor but thank god we found a monitor that supported the resolution he normally uses. The emperor was relieved and although it wasn’t a 24 inch monitor like he was used to, it was at least playable for him. Apparently he ran into this issue in the previous tournament he went to and he was unhappy about that experience overall because of things like that. But let’s not go to this direction :O

We go for a Starbucks run (3 warm caramel machiattos, 1 cold for DRG, 3 caramel fraps, if you were curious), players warm up. A few offrace games, most notable was MVP offracing Zerg and DRG offracing Terran. MLG does an interview with Boxer (although with some difficulties…) and I’m sad that it wasn’t really seen… because the best part didn’t make it before the games, which was where Boxer talked about Idra and how he watched Idra and saw Idra’s mental game and thought Idra needed a lesson so Boxer was going to teach Idra a thing or two about perseverance. Oh well. When Boxer also talked about the player he wanted to talk to the most, he started talking about Thorzain, about how he learns a lot from watching Thorzain’s replays and how he wanted to play him. He was sad that Thorzain wasn’t there.

And then the fanmeeting. Sadly we were only going to do 30 minutes due to the time it took to set up… and the line was simply ridiculous since it bended around the corner. Maybe you guys should get in on that MLG Gold Pass so you guys can get in earlier so you can guarantee your stuff signed by the Koreans :D

After that they went back to warm up. When Boxer was warming up something funny happened cause some guy yelled at him in game going “Why the hell would you attack at this timing? Such a noob” and ragequit. It was one of the funniest things I’ve seen. DRG would also ladder and respond to everyone in English like the nice guy he was. We also got Boxer a pillow so he could adjust the height of his chair while he played since he has a bad shoulder.

This MLG was a bit different from Columbus, because the last MLG started off on a “low” for Koreans, as they were consecutively defeated on stage (MC and Moon both lost the first matches), but this one… was interesting in that Koreans absolutely dominated from the get go. Even the match I was worried about the most, Boxer vs Idra, Boxer defeated Idra (although I barely caught the game).

Anyway the fans at Anaheim were also at least twice as aggressive… they would constantly swarm around where the players were (there were two specific people that I noticed were at the front of the feature station whenever the Koreans played… you guys know who you are ^_^) , and sometimes they would even swarm to the pro player area. I come back from helping set up one of the matches and I find SlayerS talking with David Kim intensely and when security cleared away the fans David Kim came in (I didn’t recognize him at first). They had like a long conversation about balance, SlayerS and MVP. DRG came back from one of his games later and Jessica was like “Go away you’re not allowed to listen to this conversation” which was quite funny. Sadly I don’t remember the details of the conversations.

Anyway, interviews, the only time most of you guys saw me during the event I believe. A lot of people noted I sounded a bit nervous and I stuttered a bit. I was exhausted the entirety of the event, much much more so than Columbus for some reason. Also, whenever I talked on the microphone, I would hear everything I say a split second later than I would normally hear myself and that really really threw me off which is why I talked really slowly… I should have expected something like that and practiced and I apologize for that since I really didn’t translate as well as I could have because I poorly managed myself the entire event and barely ate and barley slept and didn’t go out of my way to try and adjust to the microphone T_T…. I remember at one point realizing I hadn’t eaten and then I kept forgetting to eat after that… I ate my first meal Friday at like 10 PM when Ghostclaw found me and gave me a sandwich and saved me :D and then I only got like 3~4 hours of sleep every night.

DRG and I at one point talked about the interview on TL and he was wondering if I softened the words in his interview a bit and when I told him no he was like “AHHHH” cause he was really worried about what people would think of him after that. DRG is really cute like that, super duper shy despite having the skill to back it up. In fact everytime he spoke in English for the intro interviews, I had to push him really hard to do it and took a bit of convincing each time.

Alicia lost his matches and he was really sad about it and he became the target of a lot of jokes (DRG was the other target since he was the only Zerg, the enemy of all the Terrans that were present, Jessica would joke about how DRG lost cause they all kept joking about him) for a bit. He then just hung around and floated around the crowd and he was really fun to have around. Later on when he lost to ToD again, he then just went full time hanging out with the fans, signing anything and taking pictures, and even running errands. He tweeted Sunday I believe “The dropout is on shuttle duty T_T” cause he brought a lot of stuff back and forth from the hotel (namely the SlayerS shirts they prepared to throw into the crowd).

A lot of fun people were around the player lounge too. Huk was absolutely amazing, he and Alicia would talk about how bad Protoss is and talked about things that I was absolutely forbidden to tweet about T_T. But Huk got along with everyone and everytime he would come around there’d be roars and roars of laughter.qxc was also around and he also hung around a bit, and talked with Ganzi and explained to Ganzi who his opponents were (“chobo chobo chobo chobo chobo”, he would say, as he went down the open bracket list).

MMA comes in much later on Saturday since he only had evening games. He came like an hour early and he ends up signing things for fans and a HUGEEE group gathered around him and we had to move far away so we don’t block the door. MMA and Alicia signed stuff for a bit and then they played their games.

If you can’t tell between Friday and Saturday is a huge blur because…. It literally was a huge blur to me cause I really took care of myself badly as I barely managed to sleep and eat during those two days -__ - which was why Saturday was so exhausting and why the interviews didn’t go so smoothly. I again apologize for that since you guys definitely deserved better.

After some drama about who plays each other, DRG finally finds out he will be playing MVP and DRG freaks out and MVP is like “Bye bye!”. It was very cute. I talked with MVP a bit and he tells me that no matter what he is confident, because if he isn’t confident then that affects how he plays in the game as he becomes a bit more deflated. So no matter what, he is always confident.

I also asked BoxeR about Yellow. Apparently no one knows what Yellow is going to do, but BoxeR is doing all he can to pull Yellow in. BoxeR is really gung ho about that.

Another funny quote was I was curious about what the 11-11 build was so I asked, and DRG was like “That’s a imba build” and I asked him “If it’s so Imba how is your winrate so high” and he smiled like a kid and went “That’s cause I have my own secret method ^_^” and then MVP jumps in and goes “You’re going to see tomorrow this kid getting owned by the 11-11 build” and DRG is like “NOOOOOOO DON’T DO THAT”

After the event, we head to the TL Party and we talk about it a bit. They see the WhiteRa thread and the Cruncher not shaking Idra’s hand thing and enjoy themselves. Hot_Bid talked about how his most memorable Boxer game was the game Boxer played against Free on Othello with the Arbiter lock down and then MVP was like “augh after that game they made us practice 3 hours more a day”. More fun convos and then we all leave.

Sunday we wake up and Jessica wants to eat breakfast so I take them out to Denny’s DRG had the ultimate skillet, MVP Jessica MMA had the lumberjack slam, Alicia and Boxer split an appetizer sampler and a sandwich and Ganzi and I had the country friend chicken and eggs. They seemed to enjoy it quite a bit. I made sure to get tums after just in case

I want to talk about the signs and cheerful. There were a lot of good ones. There was this one fan who had a pretty nicely drawn cheerful for every KR team represented (not sure how many she ended up getting signed though), while there was this guy with an iPad with so many gifs loaded on it and they made my day. There were people with BoxeR tshirts and posters and it was simply amazing seeing them all.

The BoxeR – Rain match… immediately after that was over I got overwhelmed by nervousness. BoxeR made it to the winner’s bracket finals, which was simply *amazing* for me and the crowd was so loud and it simply felt historic. All of that collapsed and I got really nervous on the stage and I think it was the first time I was ever so nervous, combined with the long answers so I’m not too sure how well I did (I think a few people called me out for how Boxer gave a really long answer and I gave a really short one, although I don’t literally remember anything from being up on stage other than me pausing for a good while as I forgot what to say). This combined with the microphone echo throwing me off was not a great combination T_T

But that got me thinking a lot. I’m pretty sure I screwed up (conditioning myself and being too nervous) and it could have went more smoothly… but the overwhelming support was what made the event for me. It made me look at the progamers more and wonder how they do it, since they are also jetlagged but they are still putting forth the game of their lives… I heard them talking about mental strength and that’s when it really clicked – it’s this strength that pulls them through, gives them control just so they can perform their very best at a given moment. People can be skilled but what’s really different is this mentality, how MVP says he’s always confident no matter what, things like that… Yes, I’m tired, but I could have forced myself to focus more and harder at that point, and I didn’t. Mind you, I tried my best to focus afterwards although I’m not too sure how that went through in the end.

MMA vs BoxeR was amazing. Before the match BoxeR told MMA to come into the booth and close the door and they talked, and from what I guess it has to do with what BoxeR said in the introduction interview – he heard from someone that MMA was planning on “slipping” on purpose so BoxeR would get the Code S slot. They played an amazing series, and after that they were backstage discussing builds to use on MVP. Sadly, MMA lost but BoxeR telling MMA to “please win” was really heartwarming. MMA told me that when he was up against BoxeR he couldn’t describe the emotions that were going through his head.

MVP eventually won, of course. Someone asked about what was on MVP’s hands, they’re kind of bandages because MVP had carpal tunnel for a few years now, and he just practices and plays through the pain. When he was holding the winner’s trophy he said it was really hard cause of his wrists and his hands were shaking for a long time after that.

After a press interview (…..lol lets not talk about that) we headed to Korean BBQ and ate there. MMA is weak against alcohol quite badly, cause he was a lot less talkative after one shot of soju + beer combo. MVP one shotted his drink (and I feel kind of bad cause BoxeR himself offered me a drink but I don’t drink so T_T). We head back, and we head to the after party. A few funny pictures (which you’ve seen already), and then after that I hug everyone good bye and go to sleep. I wake up the next day and make my way back to Chicago.

Oh, the last thing I want to talk about. Swag! People asked me this from Columbus too so I guess here are some pictures and what my plans are with some of the items.


MLG T Shirt, with every Korean who stays in Korea (with the exception of Moon T_T) who came to the MLG so far has signed. On hindsight I should have gotten Rain's signature on it too but I think he'll come to the future ones.

What I want to do with this tshirt is to donate it for a good cause, or something like a holiday giveaway at the end of this year. I think there are some of you who would enjoy it more than me.



Self Explanatory. MMA told Jessica about his experience at MLG and Jessica brought me this as a token of appreciation ;; it's amazing :D




Staff passes from Columbus and Anaheim, signed by all the Koreans who are located in Korea =)

Anyway, now that you’ve heard my story, I’m going to give you guys the opportunity to ask me anything and if appropriate I will answer anything I may have left out to the best of my ability. Sorry this write up isn't as detailed as last time, but again, a lot of things are still blurry and this was a really hard one to write overall.

But in the end, this was one hell of a month, one where I truly felt support and made me rethink about a lot of my own tendencies. I really want to thank every single one of you, and I'll work even harder to bring you guys the content you deserve (although it may not be up to your level of journalistic standard ^_^;;. Thank you, thank you, thank you all very much!

EDIT: Augh, writing this I don't think I couldn't emphasize enough how awesome everyone on Liquid is, and how amazing everyone on the MLG Staff is, and how amazing so many of the people I met there was. Sadly I had to go on and rant about myself T_T