EPTYesterday I went into the center of town and bought the cheapest camera at the first place I looked. Then I took the subway to Haeundae and spent most of the day relaxing on the beach. Sometime between three and four I was too excited to keep reading so I went and nabbed a seat in the front row. I chatted with some highschoolers and watched the crew set up. The kids knew everything about Starcraft. One was a BW fan and the other was a SC2 fan. We talked about all of the crises in BW and scandalous behavior in SC2 we've had recently.
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These guys were awesome. Big shout out!
Eventually, it was almost time for Genius, Optimus, and DongRaeGu to play their round robin showmatch set. The highschoolers next to me got temporarily evicted and the progamers sat down. I was suddenly shoulder to shoulder with one of my favorite Terrans. This was the first offline event I have attended and I was giddy like a schoolboy. People kept coming over and getting autographs until they were ready to start the event. I managed to get an impromptu one for all of us.
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Then the gamers were hauled up to the stage and the matches started. First was Optimus vs Genius. Both players got up to three base, one of which was gold (this was Xelnaga), and then everything went crazy. Suddenly it was nukes vs mothership. Optimus was zoning with nukes constantly out of several academies. Genius crept across the map and got off the money vortex outside Optimus' third. He killed off the units outside and piled his army in. Then Optimus nuked the vortex. Pretty epic. Genius started gaining bigger and bigger advantages, switched into carriers, and closed it out.
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Game two was DRG vs Genius and it was not too out of the ordinary. DRG got up to five bases on Shattered relatively quickly, and leveraged them into strong tech armies that Genius kept beating. After a long period of economic dominance, DRG slowly succumbed to blink stalkers and a ball of collossi.
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Game three was Optimus vs DRG. I don't remember that game as clearly for some reason. I think it was on Taldarim and DRG got an early advantage, built up to four base, and finished it.
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The main screen for all of the games at the event was in 3d. It made it even harder to precisely see what was going on, but it looked completely stellar. It was like looking into a shallow box with archons and voidrays and stuff in it. Zooming in the camera made for pretty excellent effects, particularly with tall units like collossi or trees.
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The crowd was all in 3d glasses
After the preliminary matches, they had some ads for LC cinema 3d that were cool and then they put on Step Up, which was all but. Putting a bunch of SC2 fans through that was pretty cruel. There was nothing cool or raw about it and it unfolded like a bad dream. At first I thought it was a preview, then I thought it was a few minutes to show off the 3d, then I thought it was going to be the first 15 minutes as a promotion, and then the reality of the situation slowly sank in. All of the parts I watched made me dumber.
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Enough about that though. During the movie, the seats started to fill up. By the time they were about to announce Boxer and Yellow the place was packed. Then our heroes came on stage and everyone went nuts. I realized afterwards that I shouted a lot of my voice away.
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The guy behind me was toasted!
When the first game got going I started up a 'bunker bunker bunker' cheer after Boxer's name. Loads of people joined in before a cop jogged over and made me sit down. What the fuck, man? My brother informed me that I was mentioned on the English stream, which was cool.
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The games themselves were entertaining but not competitive or amazing. The crowd's energy and passion was very strong though and that made it seem much more epic. It was clear beforehand that Yellow would be getting stomped. The main thing was just the spectacle of it. Boxer versus Yellow. Again. On the beach. It was unreal.
Afterwards, I tried to get access to some gamers for pictures or autographs, but they had sealed Yellow and Boxer off for an interview. Fortunately, someone was holding open a gap in the tent so I could get one last picture of Boxer and Yellow together.
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Bonus Pics!
+ Show Spoiler +
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This is the STX house. Just looking I could feel the gosu flowing through me.
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Me and Sea! You can see how fucking excited I was to meet him.
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QXC autographed and gave me his 3rd place trophy from CPL in China. While Boxer was playing I overheard him talking about how the SlayerS TvZ build was a QXC original. He suggested that one compare when he first executed it to when SlayerS introduced it to the masses in a big way. QXC is such a nice and straightforward guy. I'm pulling for you Kevin!
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