HKEST - First tournament experience everrr

Warning: LONG POST AHEAD

Hey guys, I was gonna save up this blog post for my 6k post (I tried my best to not spam and earn that few hundred posts missing) but oh well, didn’t make it on time. It’s going to be a long blog, so I will break down in sections and you won’t have to read everything.

This was the first esport tournament I have ever went. I had been to barcraft and gaming expo but man, tournament is DIFFERENT.

unnecessary rambling:
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The day started with me getting up at 8am randomly and managed to arrive at the station at 10am. When me and my friend got to the venue, HuK vs Hurriance just started game 2 (which I thought I will missed). I completely ignored EVERYTHING in the venue and just ran to the main hall.
I got my ticket out, then the staff at the door told me that the hall isn’t opened until 5pm.
Got a bit shocked (hell, it was only around 11am, I have to sit on the floor for 6 hours before I can get in T T) But the voices of Tastosis just urged me to watch the game.

There were around 50 people sitting on the ground to watch on a projectile screen. (I think there were a small screen showing CS but me being a big SC2 fan completely ignored it) and as expected, not a lot of the crowd really know how to play SC2 and so there were no claps at all for the game. (and it’s really hard to appreciate a rush based PvP anyway)

League of Legend stuff:
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Next up was League of Legend semi final. Singapore team vs HK team. It drawn a lot of people attention because:
1. It’s LoL
2. It’s LoL with a Hong Kong team
3. LoL in HK
4. Gamania bear is going to play later and they just won something big I think.

Not sure how many people were there but certainly a lot more packed in the area.
First game went extremely smoothly for HK team, easy win there and looked like they were out leveling the other team the whole game.
A lot more noises and cheerings, great atmosphere.
Then came the first major problem, the second game kept on having technical issue and the spectator client kept failing to get data. Singapore team won that game
They had a break and so me and my fd ran down to have a super fast lunch and ran back up just in time to watch game 3 which imo was a pretty good game.
More people joined to watch and there was a Ahri cosplay supporting too.

Technical issues again but this time was worse, client crashed more often, and we couldn’t even watch the ending last fight. Singapore team won at the end and advanced to final

On my way to the bathroom during the down time occurred in LoL, I met HuK who was looking quite serious and walking towards the main hall.
hoping not to disturb him (and partly because I was freaking out, there is this weird feeling that after you watch someone on stream so often, and suddenly he is there in front of you, your mind just kinda go blank), I just said something along the line: Hey HuK, big fan here! Completely not knowing what to say next and forgetting to wish him good luck, I just smile and hope somehow he knows the rest of what I wanted to say.
Then after the LoL game, they played Hurricane against King Kong where King Kong just got 0-2 and went to the loser bracket. King Kong did a proxy hatch build which was interesting but no one really understood the meaning of it 

Getting a photo with Tastosis:
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And then came the best moment of the day:
I saw Tastosis was on an interview, I waited patiently outside the interview/casting area and got a guy who we just chatted a little with to take a photo of me and tastosis.
Here’s a great thing about the tournament, people don’t really know them and it was easy to get close to them.
I didn’t even know what to say. all I could got out is you guys are so good and that I watch GSL. I wanted to tell them that their casting helped me through my college life so much etcetc, but nothing could come out because I got more pressure when I walked close to them for the photo.
Still, I was a happy nerd. Until I realize I closed my eyes in the photo and then I was a not-as-happy-as-before-but still damn happy nerd.

Venue stuff:
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The venue was smaller than I expected, around 3 to 4 booths, one selling the mouse and keyboard, one cosplay stuff (not sure if they are selling stuff or just promoting their cosplay, but they had some cute league of legend cosplays, ahri, lulu and katarina (cat skin). I was quite surprised they didn’t go on to the stage), one gunnar glasses with a street fighter game so you can test the glasses out. They also have an area selling HK esport t shirt and another booth show casing the Bluetooth controller for mobile and a gun shaped controller for CoD.

Then skipping ahead to the real deal, the main hall.
The opening ceremony was going ok, we had to watch a LoL match before the ceremony because of schedule issue (mostly due to LoL kept crashing).
Then there came a moment of awkwardness when we had to stand up and listen to the national anthem lol (worst of all, the music didn't even play properly)
Grand final FIFA and Street Fighter 4:
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Grand final started with FIFA. They ran the game in windows mode and was kinda laggy, it was actually pretty annoying because of that.
But the game was exciting: penalty shot getting blocked, own goal (lulz), counter attack win etc. The Chinese player was quite a lot better than the Russian opponent and both used the same team (real madrid OP)
Then another x mins of ads, we have the next game, street fighter, and man, was it epic. Casted by Tastosis themselves.
Didn’t really hear what they said because the sound effects were damn loud but they just add so much energy to the game. Imo, that was the best game of the show, sakura chaining those combos was jaw dropping scary to watch.

Next up is some special guest playing heart stone, me and my fd ran down to have a dinner so we won’t miss the SC2 matches.
SC2 final
The final was Hurricane vs King Kong.
The crowd was quite sleepy by then and ZvP with builds such as FFE into all ins can really be quite boring for viewers. Luckily there were some foreigners there just for SC2 I think, we made quite some noise while the others were like “what is going on” lol
There were some awesome moments such as Hurricane letting queen to spawn from the proxy hatch, donut FF onto the roaches.
Gratz to Hurricane :D

League of Legends:
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The high light of the show is definitely League of Legends, it’s safe to assume at least 70% of the people just want to watch League but this is probably where it disappointed the most as well. There were just way too many technical issues.
Sound issues such as casters kept dropping (?) the mic, display issues (randomly freezing during a match), client disconnect/lag that makes us miss the crucial fights and sometimes even just fast forward to the score board.
It’s almost like back to the beginning of SC2 when there was NASL guy PLUS constant lag.
But the crowd definitely was much louder than other games, maybe even with SF4.
The engagements were AMAZING. Even as a not so experienced LoL viewer, the combos were just amazing to watch. A lot of WOW YAY and BOOO moments (yay when we see amazing kills and boo when client crashed…..again)

I didn’t stay for the closing ceremony because it went over the schedule and I might miss the last train if I have stayed.
BUT
I managed to grab another photo with tastosis again, my friend pushed me to do it because I was a bit too nervous to ask for another one and they were talking to someone.
Thanks bro you rock :D
(wanted to talk to them a little or say a little bit more than last time but this time the words just got stucked in my mouth while my fd chatting easily with them T T)

It was already around 12 when the LoL matches finish and so I had to run before the last train is gone. I think it was meant to finish around 11?
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Areas that the tournament did well:
- Casters. Tastosis perfect as always, I don’t know what they can’t cast.
I liked the League Cantonese casters as well, it was awkward at first since I am used to listen to English casting but it was surprisingly good. One caster casted FIFA and League both pretty well, using the correct terminology and knows what he is talking about.
I think the League casters were really put onto the test because of how many down times there were. Trying to ask the audience to guess if the champion who appears to be in trouble will die or not was a really smart idea to get them to stay interested.
- A great kudos to the production team. They really have put an effort doing that video and the audience loved it because of how cheesy it was. In case anyone missed it:
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- The Hong Kong time lapse video was amazing as well. + Show Spoiler +

http://vimeo.com/65620112

- Getting girls in the venue. I think by ratio, this esport tournament might have the highest number of female (and most of them pretty) I have ever seen. I seriously wonder if esport tournament is the new dating activity.
- Just being awesome in general. Staff was friendly and helpful, they did quite well to lighten the mood up since there were quite a lot of technical issues. A nice gift bag (but why socks and umbrella lol)

Areas that were problematic:
- National Anthem, that was just weird and out of place. I guess it was necessary because of WCG involvement?
-the tourney ceremony felt really rushed and lackbuster. Only LoL one was done better, the rest was just a quick snap shot and off you go.
- Sound guy. Seriously, how many sound issues were there? Ignoring the casters kept hitting/dropping/doing whatever to the mic, the volume was just never correct.
- LoL client issue. They claim it is server issue but I wonder did they try to contact Riot beforehand to help with the connection. Not sure if League has this thing though.
- Cameras and lights. The camera man kept using flash light to take a shot while they were playing the games. The lights occasionally move around and just shine onto the progamer's face. Seriously, LEAVE THEM TO THEIR GAMES.
- Very small projectile screen. Man, that was way too small for the back to watch. I had the middle graded (around 80 USD) seats which were at the front but still, it felt small.
- No one to check the seats. People kept switching their seats during the later stage of the tournament, not a huge deal but I felt a bit ripped off if they could just get to the expensive seats while buying the cheaper ones.

Overall I feel the tournament was not bad. They managed to get through all the games and had lucky draws, good castings to back up the games. Not the highest level of games but entertaining nevertheless.

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Photos:
Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera, my parents had it but it was too early in the morning to get it from them. My friend took these photos for me.
Photo time:
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p.s. I feel like a light bulb standing between tastless and artosis, not sure if anyone also got the same feeling lol

HKEST - First tournament experience everrr

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