I bought the ticket to NASL months before it was here, however, due to real life problems (by problem I meant I drank myself to oblivion on Friday night, and just couldn't make the 1 hours trip to the venue. Yeah, I'm retarded.), I had to miss the first day of the finals and only watched it at home. Well, that was stupid of me, and I regretted the instant I realized how awesome it is and how much I missed. So on Sunday, I got there as early as I could. And god damn it, I would not be anywhere else in those 12 hours I was there. IT WAS AMAZING. From minute one, even before I entered the main hall, I was excited. It only took me a few seconds to get the tickets, but when even that seemed like an awful amount of time. I could hear Day 9 and Mr.Bitter's voice coming from inside; my body started to shake from excitement. I've consumed hundreds of hours of Starcraft II at home, but this is something different, I'm going to see those people in real life. And that thought alone made me feel like a little girl who is about to see Justin Bieber. When I got in, the place was only half filled, but it was still a huge number of people. And are they just happy to be there, the crowd cheered every time Bitter mentioned "Canada." We were just happy to see them, even if the games sucked, we still would've cheered out heart out. The audience doubled and tripled while I was focusing on the games, and before I know it, the place became completely packed. The first match was the CSL final. To people who are watching the stream, those series were not the most entertaining due to the limitation of skills of these players. Yet the audience didn't care, everyone went WILD(although comparing to later rounds, that was probably just a mild reaction) when TheHH baneling busted JF in the first game. To me, it was extra amazing, because I just graduated from Western two months ago, and it was my university owning it up there. I screamed "WESTERN" so loud and so often it probably started to annoy people around me lol. BUT WHO CARES, IT'S MY SCHOOL OWNING IT UP THERE. Congratulations the Team Western, you guys are the best, and god damn I miss London already. Then there was Tribes. To be honest, I had about a 0% interest in Tribes, same probably goes for 99% of the people there. Yet they still cheered for it, like I said, people were just happy to be there. They could've shown cat videos and the crowd would still explode in happiness. After that was the WCS games, by that time, the venue was completely full, audience were hyped. It was like a sea of boiling oil, one spark and the place would explode. And boy were there a lot of fire that day. When Scarlett defeated Ddoro in the winner bracket final, the crowd just randomly started to sing O' Canada. It was really just random, it wasn't the finals, and both players were Canadian. However, nobody cared, we were just fucking excited and needed some way to express that excitement. The mic in the crowd did not do it justice, everyone there can tell you how loud we were. The rest of the night is pretty much the same, we went apeshit at every opportunity, random heart signs were made. The passion for the game was just that infectious. Aside from the games, I've also met quite a few people there. Because I wasn't there on the first day, I didn't have the chance to see Idra and Incontrol close, only caught a few pros in their smoke breaks. Ret was super friendly and Rotterdam is just as charming as he is on stream. But day 9, Day motherfucking Nine, seeing him in person I once again understood why I loved him in the first place. He just radiates happiness, no matter what he is doing or where he is, he always had that huge grin on his face. I got his signiture and a photo, now I'm passing those down to my children. I also met quite a few fans, they are all super friendly people, some from around the city and some from Montreal. My experience at any sc2 event is always the same, it is so easy to strike a conversation with anyone and just have fun. I've probably rambled way too long by now, so I just want to wrap it up with a few suggestions for NASL:
1, Please come back to Toronto. Like, please do lol. 2, If you can pick a place that is closer to the centre of the city, you will get at least 50% more audience. I would've dragged several friends along if the venue was no so out of the way. Of course there might be capacity/cost of renting a place invovled, but if you move the location closer, you would get WAY MORE people going. 3, Make the event bigger/longer, two days were way too short. 4, Upload the VOD quicker, I wanted to rewatch the whole thing as soon as I got home, and it is still not uploaded four days after.
That's all I had to say. Hi to the black dude I met doing stand up comedy, those who drove from montreal and the Whisky Wizard, if you guys can see this, I had so much fun hanging out.
**TL; DR: Went to NASL, had a blast, please come back.**
Thanks for sharing your experience, I was excited to see how the home crowd was working to represent Canada alot. It definitely made it alot more exciting to watch (if only Huk hadn't lost).
Esports should come to Canada more often. I mean, seriously, after NASL, I don't know how much more a crowd can be so passionate and enthusiastic about SC2. We have such a gigantic fan-base here, it's incredible. Please, Esports, pay us a visit more often!
I bought the ticket to NASL months before it was here, however, due to real life problems (by problem I meant I drank myself to oblivion on Friday night, and just couldn't make the 1 hours trip to the venue. Yeah, I'm retarded.), I had to miss the first day of the finals and only watched it at home. Well, that was stupid of me, and I regretted the instant I realized how awesome it is and how much I missed. So on Sunday, I got there as early as I could.
And god damn it, I would not be anywhere else in those 12 hours I was there. IT WAS AMAZING.
From minute one, even before I entered the main hall, I was excited. It only took me a few seconds to get the tickets, but when even that seemed like an awful amount of time. I could hear Day 9 and Mr.Bitter's voice coming from inside; my body started to shake from excitement. I've consumed hundreds of hours of Starcraft II at home, but this is something different, I'm going to see those people in real life. And that thought alone made me feel like a little girl who is about to see Justin Bieber.
When I got in, the place was only half filled, but it was still a huge number of people. And are they just happy to be there, the crowd cheered every time Bitter mentioned "Canada." We were just happy to see them, even if the games sucked, we still would've cheered out heart out. The audience doubled and tripled while I was focusing on the games, and before I know it, the place became completely packed.
The first match was the CSL final. To people who are watching the stream, those series were not the most entertaining due to the limitation of skills of these players. Yet the audience didn't care, everyone went WILD(although comparing to later rounds, that was probably just a mild reaction) when TheHH baneling busted JF in the first game. To me, it was extra amazing, because I just graduated from Western two months ago, and it was my university owning it up there. I screamed "WESTERN" so loud and so often it probably started to annoy people around me lol. BUT WHO CARES, IT'S MY SCHOOL OWNING IT UP THERE.
Congratulations the Team Western, you guys are the best, and god damn I miss London already.
Then there was Tribes. To be honest, I had about a 0% interest in Tribes, same probably goes for 99% of the people there. Yet they still cheered for it, like I said, people were just happy to be there. They could've shown cat videos and the crowd would still explode in happiness.
After that was the WCS games, by that time, the venue was completely full, audience were hyped. It was like a sea of boiling oil, one spark and the place would explode. And boy were there a lot of fire that day.
When Scarlett defeated Ddoro in the winner bracket final, the crowd just randomly started to sing O' Canada. It was really just random, it wasn't the finals, and both players were Canadian. However, nobody cared, we were just fucking excited and needed some way to express that excitement. The mic in the crowd did not do it justice, everyone there can tell you how loud we were. The rest of the night is pretty much the same, we went apeshit at every opportunity, random heart signs were made. The passion for the game was just that infectious.
Aside from the games, I've also met quite a few people there. Because I wasn't there on the first day, I didn't have the chance to see Idra and Incontrol close, only caught a few pros in their smoke breaks. Ret was super friendly and Rotterdam is just as charming as he is on stream. But day 9, Day motherfucking Nine, seeing him in person I once again understood why I loved him in the first place. He just radiates happiness, no matter what he is doing or where he is, he always had that huge grin on his face. I got his signiture and a photo, now I'm passing those down to my children.
I also met quite a few fans, they are all super friendly people, some from around the city and some from Montreal. My experience at any sc2 event is always the same, it is so easy to strike a conversation with anyone and just have fun. I've probably rambled way too long by now, so I just want to wrap it up with a few suggestions for NASL:
1, Please come back to Toronto. Like, please do lol.
2, If you can pick a place that is closer to the centre of the city, you will get at least 50% more audience. I would've dragged several friends along if the venue was no so out of the way. Of course there might be capacity/cost of renting a place invovled, but if you move the location closer, you would get WAY MORE people going.
3, Make the event bigger/longer, two days were way too short.
4, Upload the VOD quicker, I wanted to rewatch the whole thing as soon as I got home, and it is still not uploaded four days after.
That's all I had to say. Hi to the black dude I met doing stand up comedy, those who drove from montreal and the Whisky Wizard, if you guys can see this, I had so much fun hanging out.
EPT
