EPTThis last Sunday I attended my very first LAN event in Israel (I was already at Blizzcon, that while wasn't a LAN was something I could compare this event to). The LAN had three competitions: SC2, MW3 and CS1.6. The Arena was a small stage packed with tables with a table up front for the casters (the mighty Noam and CheapCheese) to use. A day before I was asked if I could assist with the SC2 tournament, nothing too big just some listing and other minor administrative assignments. The first StarCraft 2 event I went to in Israel was the BarCraft event that I assisted in organizing.
The BarCraft event was stacked with people, we had about 100 people showing up and watching and that was fun, this was kind of what I expected from the event. Alas, as I'm about to explain, I was a bit let down by the community in this regard.
Sunday was a holiday for many schools here in Israel as it is now Hanuka, yet Hanuka is only vacation for the kids at school.
So, Sunday morning I wake up and get in the car with my four buddies and we start heading to the LAN. Upon arrival it seemed like a lot of people showed up, soon we entered the arena and were assigned our jobs.
The SC tournament started a bit late due to some minor technical difficulties, actually a lot less than I thought we would have. And soon enough the matches started. It was a lot of fun standing behind the players as they were playing and watching how they play, how they move and the amount of focus they call upon when playing.
At about 1pm the group stage was over and we (Me and my buddies, the real admin guys stayed to work inside, I really hope they ate something.) went outside to eat and could find something really good and cheap compared to what we have at Tel-Aviv. (Moddin is a bit far from TLV)
When we got back inside we checked if we were needed for the Ro16 that was up, and it seemed like we weren’t needed so we went to sit in the audience with the rest of the folks. This is where I was surprised because they were so little people in the crowed. Actually most of the people in the crowed were players that got knocked out of the tournament really early.
We watched the awesome cast and some awkward jokes from a guy that reminded me a lot the awkward guy from Dreamhack. Then they forced us to watch the MW3 finals and then we got our SC back! I was that guy in the audience that shouted a lot, a lot.
I had to leave before the finals started because I knew I didn't have the time to watch them through. This is my event summary of a sort.
Now I'd like to take this opportunity to list some of the things that were good and some that weren't as good, and I'd like to start with the not so good stuff first, and I'd like to remind you all that this is my opinion only and that I have no idea what is it like to host this kind of tournament and have not tried it in my past. I'm grateful for the efforts of everyone involved but I think that if we want eSports and more specifically Israeli eSports to grow we need to talk about everything in a mannered and open fashion.
Things that made me sad:
- We had a CS and MW3 tournaments, they were boring and unnecessary, and they weren't fun to watch and had no professional or semi-professional casters.
- There were some serious lag issues, and while it might not be the most terrible thing in the world it isn't fun to lose because you had lag issues. And while I understand that the organizers did everything they could I wish that Israeli internet wasn't so crappy.
- We did not have an audience. That was bad and I'm going to pin this one on myself. I'm one of the managers of the StarCraft Israel Facebook page and I didn't do enough to bring this event to the public knowledge, I can and will do a better job next time.
- There wasn't enough room for players. Having your mouse bump into the next person isn't fun for the both of you.
- The casting was done with computers that could only run StarCraft at low quality, as a spectator the big explosions and melting roaches are a big part of what I expect from a StarCraft match, I was saddened by the lack of these.
- There was not enough time to solve a 3 way tie in one of the groups so the lottery rule was used and I was saddened to see one of the three players go home because of luck. And while I understand that it was the best possible solution it was still unfortunate it happened.
- I had to call the head organizer to get a player out of laddering. While I don't mind players that ladder and leave when they are told they need to play ( I think EnderTX was giving away ladder points that day, with the amount of times I saw him quit games.) it's annoying when players won't quit ladder game when they have to play.
Things that made me happy:
- We had a LAN event with kick ass prizes!!!!!!! This is not to be underestimated!!
- The casters were really good, and they kept this event alive for me.
- Part of the pluses of being in a small community is that everyone knows everyone. I got to meet a lot of the people that matter in this industry and shake their hand. Stand behind gamers playing and show my appreciation to some of them.
- The games were good. While we did have courageous sub Diamond players at the LAN a lot of the games were really good and tense.
- I was expecting a general population mix of 70% annoying people and was surprised to find that everyone was super-duper mannered. Even maoda that trashed me in a community FFA we did was very nice.
- Most of the crowed was gamers and they were very insightful when we were watching the games. Imagine watching a game sitting next to the entire cast of SotG and asking questions as the game went on? So good!
I know that the sad list is longer than the happy list, but this was a really good event for me, and I enjoyed it a lot! I'd like to say thanks to the people who made this LAN what it was to me: (long list incoming!)
Trogdor, Nooby, Nero, Omris, Noam, CheapCheese, aGGy, Zokkar, EnderTX, EnderTX's GF, Skipper, Flyling, Zanubis, maoda, HeNili, Taltalim, Sinok, regba, Pure, BHMaster and everyone else I forgot!
I hope to see everyone again in future events.
