EPTI attended the event for www.esfiworld.com, part of a great team that went to cover the WCS, CSL and of course, the main tournament. As a result, I got a press pass and can offer a somewhat unique point of view of the event. And before I begin in earnest I’m going to shamelessly plug ESFI, the team worked really hard and got a ton of great content that will hopefully be up in the coming days so please stop by our site to check out everything! I’ll be linking photos and videos from our site in this post, so please take a look.
Just a quick disclaimer, this is a personal blog, not endorsed by ESFI, all opinions and thoughts are mine alone and do not represent the official position of ESFI. All photos and videos linked in this blog are property of ESFI (except the most obvious ones)!
Day 1
The event was held at the International Center, technically not “in” Toronto, but hey, close enough I suppose. The venue was right beside the airport, so players who flew in must have been pretty happy about that. I drove up with our translator, mrlie3 and my cousin the photographer. After registering at the front desk, being introduced to the wonderful NASL Marketing Director Barbie, we headed up the very odd spiral staircase to the press room.
The room itself wasn’t overly large, but spacious enough to hold the people who were there. There was another room that was to be used for interviews (with the official NASL sponsors backdrop and everything) where when I arrived, a lot of the TL staff were setting up. Being socially awkward, I didn’t introduce myself formally to them but IIRC Kennigit, Treehugger and one of the staff from Liquidpedia (sorry if you read this man! I forgot your name TT) were in there setting up their laptops. The rest of the team, Peja and Jin arrived at around 9:30-:45 and it was the first time I met a lot of people who I talked to Skype on regularly, in person.
We walked down to the actual floor of the venue, checked out all of the player stations and I directed our photographer to take some shots of the players practicing. There were four areas: Main Stage, WCS player’s area, a CSL player’s area and the Tribes: Ascend area. Our photographer knew NOTHING about eSports, the industry, players or personalities. So he just took pictures of every player playing, but later on it would lead to some funny story. I remember seeing Hendralisk practicing beside Scarlett, and I chatted with him a little bit about his two tournaments (he was playing both in the WCS and CSL for the Unversity of Toronto) and he said he was pretty nervous, but felt like he could make an impact in both events. The venue was still empty, but I went over to our CSL (I’m a proud UofT student, and the UofT SC club is pretty tight with the CSL team) team and talked with them about their Ro4 match against Waterloo.
![[image loading]](http://a8.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/266106_10150941757808240_1752496833_o.jpg)
Slained & JF from UofT CSL team!
Finally the doors opened and people started filing into the venue, and mr.lie3 introduced me to Smix. After the introduction, I was overjoyed to learn that she was there helping out ESFI, whereas I previously thought that she was going to be handling the official main stage translating for NASL. Smix helped us SO much on that first day, and was overall just a really awesome person to work with. We went up to the press room and started planning out the day, who we wanted to get for interviews. We tried filming a quick intro video, but general lack of a script and a Day[9] photo(video?)bomb prevented that, so we went over and Mona (CSL Director) managed to wrangle some Waterloo and UofT players for quick interviews. The day began with TT1 and JEcho playing on the main stage for WCS, which was going on while we were doing those interviews (crowd was already going nuts) and TT1 beat jEcho quite handily.
Back in the press room a speedtest quickly showed that the wifi connections were very poor, and when multiple people logged on it would kick off the previous user. NASL caught wind of this, and Barbie managed to secure up to 6 connections for us (with more the following day) but the as many Canadians can attest, telecommuncations in this country is severly lacking. Thankfully our video producer had unlimited data on his phone and set up a hotspot so we managed to upload at ok speeds. The first match played on stage was MC v. Puma, and I wanted to give our photographer some direction as to what to shoot. Going down to the floor, security rushed past us to get MC ready for his carpet walk. He walked past a few feet from me and I just stood mouth agape as the BossToss sauntered by, GSL badges gleaming on his jersey. I looked over at my cousin, and was like “Dude! MC just walked by!” and he just looked over like “Who?” the blank stares he got from some of the people around us were hilarious.
![[image loading]](http://a7.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/411917_10150941767808240_1602554508_o.jpg)
The venue filled up really quickly
Back in the press room, I remember Clutch came in and was waiting for the interview area to open up. Place just got more hyped with him being in the room, he’s got a really crazy aura about him. He goes to the window, which overlooks the entire venue puts his hands on sill and goes “Behold, my kingdom!” everyone starts cracking up, he does his interview and takes off.
Smix told us MC was coming up to do an interview. I was really nervous, we had questions prepared but I have no experience interviewing on camera and no formal journalistic training. Peja totally bossed it though and got a great interview with MC (in English!) which really set the mood for how good our content would be all weekend. DDE came up after his win against KoMA (TT1?) and that was the first interview I did for the weekend. Mr.Bitter was standing by the door when I went back down, greeting people as they came in and I talked with him for a little while. He was honestly so happy about the crowd and coming to Canada, I was happy to find he’s just as enthusiastic as he is on stream.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/KubdS.jpg)
The BossToss
After hanging out on the floor for a little bit, Girls of StarCraft 2 showed up to the press room and were helping that 5 y/o dude have the best birthday ever. I went down to see how our photographer was doing, and saw Rotterdam was standing by the entrance to the backstage area and I couldn’t contain my fanboyism so I went up and told him on what an awesome caster he was (Bitterdam is my favourite casting combo) to which he gave me a brohug, and I asked him about predictions. He said the Protosses in the tournament were really strong, so he said he had a good feeling about HerO. I said something a long the lines of “Well a Zerg will probably take it, more evidence to show how OP they are” and he laughed and said “I don’t think we need any more evidence of that!”
![[image loading]](http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/330884_10150941773718240_2137582649_o.jpg)
Meeting both Bitter and Rotti was insane for me
After grabbing a hot dog from outside (anyone who went to the event knows the hot dog guy), we went back to the press room where everyone was mulling over the news: Scarlett had just beaten HuK 2-0, knocking him down to the losers bracket of WCS. Kennigit told me that whoever won that match would win the tournament and what a solid prediction it was, Scarlett ended up taking the entire thing losing only 1 game to Ostojiy.
It’s now becoming obvious how extremely difficult it was keeping track of time during the event, but I believe Stephano and HerO were playing. Smix tried to get Stephano for us, but that wasn’t a problem for us because after his signing Adebisi brought him for an interview for Gamespot. Excited I realized that hopefully we could just ask him a few questions after Gamespot was done, but as I looked around the press room I realized that our video producer was nowhere in sight. Frantically we tried to find him, but to no avail, Gamespot wrapped up and Stephano went on his way! It was a missed opportunity but we didn’t dwell on it to much.
I went back down to the floor and lo-and-behold, I saw the most amazing teal sweater vest standing in the player area, the owner of which was the famous TorteDeLini. I met Torte this year at LANETS, and NO one knows what he looks like. I brought him up to the press room because I wanted to talk to him about getting an interview with JEcho when he was done playing, and I remember him introducing himself with his name, however I dropped the bomb and said “It’s TorteDeLini!” to which everyone was like “YOU’RE TORTEDELINI!?” It’s apparent that while Torte is very known, the fact that NO-ONE knows what he looks like makes for some pretty funny situations. I told him he should just introduce himself as Torte from now on, as everyone will probably recognize him better.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/GU9GA.jpg)
Alas this is the best picture I could find of Torte from our archives
While we were waiting for JEcho, Scarlett was playing Drewbie on the WCS stage. Mr.Lie3 and I went to talk to Hendralisk, who was playing TubbyTheFat after Scarlett’s game. It was really sad, he said he was feeling pretty nauseous and couldn’t eat. mr.lie3 asked if I wouldn’t mind driving over to Tim Hortons to try and get him some soup, so off we went. We didn’t make it back I time for Hendralisk to get more than a few spoonfuls in, and he unfortunately lost to Tubby 2-0.
We managed to do two interviews pretty quickly, one with the new RooT player MaSa and Torte came through and brought jEcho up after his loss to HuK. jEcho was a real pleasure to interview, despite his tough losses he gave some really great answers and still seemed pretty cheerful. The president of NASL Russell was in and out (the press room was also beside the main production room) and we all chatted with him off and on, he was obviously extremely busy but seemed very happy to just stay awhile to chat.
![[image loading]](http://a3.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/524253_10150941772993240_1046927988_n.jpg)
Three huge personalities I barely said a word to this weekend T_T
Sometime after this HuK lost his games to Alicia, which was a huge upset for the crowd. When HuK came down with the flag he really whipped the crowd into a frenzy, I heard it said people sang the national anthem (not when everyone was singing on Sunday) but it wasn’t streamed. mr.lie3 came through for us and said he had Alicia if we wanted to interview him. For a lower-key member of the SlayerS’ team, Alicia seemed very animated despite his exhaustion. I tried to make the interview as brief as possible so that he could practice for his games against Ret.
![[image loading]](http://a8.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/552618_10150941783848240_1415800563_n.jpg)
Was the saddest picture we had all weekend T_T
Adebisi was hanging out in the press area and I asked him if he wouldn’t mind doing an interview, being one of the best known Western in-game observers, and having his insights as to how much dedicated in-game observing increases the production value was amazing. Following this, we gave our video producer a “break” and allowed him time to upload and edit some of the interviews to upload…or so we thought until IdrA and InControl ended up walking up to the press room for an interview.
I was pretty exhausted at this point, but Peja got one of the best interviews with Idra and inControl (coming soon!) of the whole weekend I think. It’s around 30 minutes long, but both players always have great insights into the industry. When Peja came out of the interview room he was like “Alright we got about 10 minutes with those guys.” Our video producer was like “Actually it’s about 30” Cue open-mouthed Peja looking totally blown away that it took that long, because he said it didn’t feel like more than 10 minutes. He was pretty bad at guesstimating his interview times all weekend though. Talking with Idra and Incontrol for a little after, they were both very professional. As many people who have talked with Idra in person can attest, he’s really not the person everyone in the community makes him out to be.
The day was finally winding down, with both Alicia and Stephano winning both of their games. Most of the players who had lost earlier had retreated back to their hotel rooms so there wasn’t a chance to interview them, everyone in the press room was packing up and deciding on whether or not to attend the after party. I had to drive mr.lie3 back to his house, so I couldn’t really partake but when I did swing by people looked like they were having fun, InControl and Idra were signing autographs in the lobby of the hotel and Alicia was being a total boss despite being very tired he still hung out for a little talking and hanging out with fans.
![[image loading]](http://a7.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/529571_10150941788458240_1812195470_n.jpg)
Our translator bro'ed out pretty hard with Alicia
If this seems like a long ass Day 1 post, it is because Day 1 seemed to stretch on forever. There was always someone to interview, always something to see on the floor, someone to talk to…it was a whirlwind of activity working that first day and I don’t think my mind managed to process it all. Time of events taking place may seem way out of sync because I had no idea what time it was! Thankfully, while Day 2 had plenty of excitement there was plenty of downtime too.
Day 2
I arrived to the venue at around 9:30 again, and thanks to NASL scheduling there weren’t going to be many things happening that morning. The CSL Championships were taking place, and this was the highlight of my morning. Our translator Mr.Lie3 is actually also part of the UofT CSL team, so I was hanging out with them. They actually managed to bring ex-Fnatic player JF out of retirement to play for us and our captain Slained was very optimistic.
If Hendralisk could beat Ostojiy, he would be able to play again if it came to the ace match and probably take the game. It was tough to watch JF go down to a baneling bust from Western, but the highlight game of the match had to go to Hendralisk and Ostojiy. As far as ZvZ go, Hendralisk put on a pretty great show. Getting tons of infestors out and turtling behind his spine crawlers he used overlord drops and lings to snipe all of Ostojiy’s hatcheries. After taking huge damage, Ostojiy went for broke and tried to take Hendralisk’s spine crawlers. Hendralisk barely held on and managed to take the second game. The 2v2 match was interesting to watch, and both Sooch and Mr.Lie3 tried their best but Western seemed ahead of them every step of the way, with their early pressure crippling mr.lie3’s economy. Finally Slained was up to bring it to the ace match, and seeing the rax pressure from Western just spiral out of control was painful to watch. Despite the loss, I was extremely happy to our white club shirts in the finals and those guys played their hearts out.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/iAxaT.jpg)
Me and an NASL voulenteer, mr.lie3 playing his 2v2 match against Western
Heading to the press room, I was relieved to see our photographer brought an 8 pack of Red Bull for the day which was finished before noon I’m pretty sure. The D-eSports guys also brought a huge pack of apple juice which was awesome. We briefed ourselves a little bit, Smix was only there for the first day but mr.lie3 managed to buddy up with Alica so we still had access backstage. After that, Scarlett played Ddoro, and the crowd went wild. Being on the floor of the event while everyone rallied up to cheer on Scarlett was one of the most memorable experiences of my life, the passion couldn’t be relayed through the stream I’m sure, there’s no way it could do it justice.
Gamespot interviewed Russell and Peja also managed to stop him for a few questions as well. But after WCS finals were determined, Tribes took main stage and Scarlett began playing on the secondary stage. She had a showmatch with CombatEX which drew quite a crowd. As we were briefing, mr.lie3 called me up here’s what I can remember of the conversation:
“Hey I’m with Puma and Puzzle”
“What do you mean?! I thought you were with Alicia!”
“Well they are coming for interviews so…”
I was so happy if a little taken by surprise. Puma AND Puzzle? I quickly jotted down some questions and was very much looking forward to picking their brains about the upcoming GSTL match with TSL who has been dominating lately. They were both quite funny, in the interview you can see I asked them about Zerg and they both got quite flustered. It may be a bit too obvious flame-bait for race balance but their responses were priceless. Mr.lie3 told me of course they were joking about race switching, but it was hilarious to see them both be at a total loss to the Zerg problem, especially considering how good Puzzle is in the matchup.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/TgWy9.jpg)
Puzzle was a great dude to interview
Mr.Lie3 really killed it this weekend, while everyone put in an insane amount of work this weekend, he was always grabbing us interviews with all the Koreans he could find. Torte was also in the press room freaking out about getting his first interview gig with Ostojiy for D-epsorts, he actually took my notepad and I had to hunt him down to get it back for Puma & Puzzle! His interview is up though, and I think he did a sick job for his first time. Tribes was still going on, and would be for another few hours, so everyone in the press room were really chilled out. The president of BarCraft United Lorin showed off some really cool things regarding that scene, and Koibu from SC2 Ratings brought us great news when he told us Scarlett would come up to the press room for an interview after her match against Ostojiy.
We got word HerO was back in the venue, and Mr.Lie3 brought him up for an interview. He was really soft-spoken just like he is on stage and in interviews, but it’s always surreal seeing players you’ve only scene on stream in person. Once Tribes ended, Peja and I saw Stephano milling around the cafeteria, so we took the opportunity to ask him for an interview after his finals game. Imagine if you will, Stephano’s smug face, he turns to us and says “If you can catch me!” as he ran off backstage, leaving me and Peja in the dust staring at each other. Ok maybe he didn’t run off, but Stephano’s demeanor anytime I saw him was one of a cheeky imp or something, always with the hint of a smile on his face, I really wish I got to talk to him he seems like a very friendly guy.
![[image loading]](http://a7.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/8075_10150943213318240_1668509057_n.jpg)
This is the face I was trying to describe!
The WCS Championship took place, hyping the crowd moreso than any other point in the tournament. Our photographer and I were actually eating, so we missed one of the walkdowns, but as we fought our way to the front of the crowd we heard the familiar tune of our homeland. The O Canada! May come across as a tad jingoistic, but many people know Canadians are some of the most humble people in the world. Once in awhile something will happen (see Winter Olympics) to really give us a sense of nationality, between our new champion, and first ever live eSports event I suppose we were just bursting at the seams with how happy we were, so why not let everyone know where this crowd was coming from!
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/R17pN.jpg)
Our new Canadian champion!
The event was nearing its end, with only the third place match and finals to go. The press room wasn’t as packed and Frodan came up for an interview thanks to Torte. Another great personality in the community, from knowing next to nothing about him after that interview he surprised me with his enthusiasm and dedication. He seemed very knowledgeable and dropped some juicy tidbits about eSports and syndicated television.
The finals started, to much fanfare as Stephano and Alicia did their walkdowns. The games as you may have seen were disappointing, Mr.Lie3 said that Alicia was quite tired and was very unsure going into the finals. Pro-gamers are pro-gamers though and excuses shouldn’t be made, after Stephano’s sweep of Alicia, Peja and our video producer went backstage to “catch” him and got an amazing video, even if it’s only 30 seconds, I think the emotion really shows through though. As people started filing out of the venue, I took the opportunity to walk around the empty place and try and let everything settle in. Much to my dismay I missed the finals celebration as I was professionally indisposed, but from the pictures and stage in the aftermath it seemed like quite a scene.
![[image loading]](http://a6.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/178092_10150943223463240_216555659_o.jpg)
No picture could really show the madness
Standing by the stage with Koibu and his friend from SC2 Ratings, lo and behold a wild Gretorp appears. One of the only people I hadn’t had a chance to talk to all weekend. He looked rueful, looking around the venue and smiling. I went up and congratulated him on everything, I told him I remembered the first season of NASL, how much he’d grown as a both a caster and personality and thanked him for bringing such an awesome event here. He seemed ecstatic about how everything went, a little tired but really uplifted by the crowd, fans and everything else. Not wanting to keep him long and quite tired myself I retreated back to the press room where the remaining press was hanging out. We exchanged contact info, said our goodbyes uploaded our last video and said goodbye to NASLS3.
![[image loading]](https://twitter.com/The_Wiz4rd/status/224685124590120962/photo/1)
Goodbye NASL, hope to be somewhere like this soon
This blog, even post-edited is incredibly long. If you managed to make it this far, thank you for reading! It’s a disjointed piece, but like I said, working at one of these events is like a time warp. There are definitely continuity problems, and things may or may not have happened in the order listed here. Lastly, I just want to shout out to everyone who made my personal experience memorable:
ESFIWorld: Believe it or not, this was everyone’s first time working at a live event. Thanks to Brent Ruiz for providing us the opportunity. Special mention to Jin (our video producer) who worked tirelessly to make sure all the videos were edited uploaded before end of day, Smix and Mr.Lie3 our translators for netting us so many great interviews, Peja for handling all the difficult ones, Cameron for offering his time and expertise, and my cousin Paul for keeping an open-mind and photographing the whole event. Also to our DOTA2 crew who helped even though they didn’t have too.
NASL Admin. Team: There have been some horror stories of the way press has been treated at some events, but NASL really made an effort to accommodate us. Barbie and Russell both stopped by and addressed any concerns we may have had, and I appreciate the effort made to make sure our needs were attended too.
Press Room People: GoSC2, D-Esports, TL Staff, Adebisi, Kaiou and everyone else who was in the press room, it was awesome meeting and speaking with all of you. So many people from so many different perspectives and backgrounds it was a pleasure meeting you!
Esports Canada, Interceptor Group: Kenny, Galleon, Andrei and all of the volunteers who provided the manpower for the event, handling players or just ushering people around. Thank you so much for making the first major eSports event in Canada run smoothly!
CyberActiv Productions: Hailing all the way from Quebec, thanks to Roch, Charles and their team for travelling all the way to Toronto and doing an outstanding job to help produce the event.
UofT StarCraft Club: Songers, MercScout, Slained, Sooch, Hendralisk, and many of the volunteers were from my beloved UofT StarCraft club. You guys absolutely killed it, you should all be extremely proud of yourselves, to our CSL team, you guys played your best and UofT is going to be someone to watch out for next season!
DJ: I really wish I found out this guy’s name, he was doing some incredible mixes in between games. I hope someone in the comments can let me know, I’d love to buy his stuff.
This guy was killing the tunes all weekend
Sorry for the length of the blog, but I just wanted to share a new perspective, that of the press and a first-time live event spectator. Thanks again if you managed to read the whole thing.
Thomas ‘the_wiz4rd’ Shifrer
