Alright, so let's just get past the elephant in the room, and because it warrants mentioning just one more time, let's throw it out there:
These are the calamities that were produced by myself:
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1) I was sick the entire event, and I am still that way now. The side effects of medicine included drowsiness, effecting my critical thinking skills and the coughing was affecting my ability to cast.
2) This was my casting setup.
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It is important to really look at that casting setup and look at what I had to work with and where it was located: In the locker room of a gymnasium. No way for me to hear what is in game at all. The microphone, as you all can see, is a condenser mic that I have to either hold in front of my face and you guys can either A) Hear me loud and clear or B) Can't hear me at all. It is also important to note that there are 3 pieces of equipment that require me to use my hands to operate, but I only have two hands. At times the microphone was clearly too loud for people to hear audible casting. I was almost certain that the event organizers would have had something like those Sennheiser headsets that we've seen at the homestory cup and such, but that was definitely not the case.
I am not making excuses, but that is the situation I was in. I won't be sick at every single event that I go to, and from now on I will take my own headset to the live event. If it was Tastoosis casting, they would have the same problems I did (save for their health). Adding insult to injury, twitch moderator tools screwed up on me while I was broadcasting, so a lot of the guys I had given the ability to mod my stream just couldn't do it. As for the people I banned... Well, I guess I can go ahead and unban everyone in my stream chat. I see no harm in that.
I will never produce such a terrible broadcast again guys. I apologize. "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
I would also like to remind everyone that I am here to stay and there is no getting rid of me. What you see is what you get, and I will make sure that you guys get satisfactory content in the future.
Here's what was great for the players though: At the end of the event, on mainstage, all of the players were handed out their cash prizes in suit-cases on the mainstage like what you see in the image below. So, I'm gonna call BS if anyone thinks that they're owed money.
As for the live event itself... The number of viewers at the golden dragon stadium in Hangzhou was relatively low. At the maximum I would say only one third or one fourth of the venu was filled, compared to the absolute masses of people at WCG 2013 in Kunshan. However, at the same time this event itself was produced to be pre-recorded and rebroadcasted on television at a later time in addition to being streamed. It was also competing with the Chinese national holiday known as "Mid-Autumn Festival." This is easily comparable to Thanksgiving in America.
The following are pictures I took of players at various points throughout the event itself:
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I've been wanting to meet Jim and Macsed for a long long time and now I finally got my chance.
It was also great meeting Edison, Digmouse for the first time ever in real life, F91, and everyone else at the event.
The day of the Grand Finals. You can tell Jaedong and Snute are stacked.
Dat ossum possum hotbid.
At this point I am illustrating the emptiness of the arena.
Jaedong's biggest female fan in China. The actress known as Irene Liu.
The top 4 players and their translator. Liquid`Hero was a nice guy and he gave me a pack of cigarettes, so in return I gave him a pack of my favorite brand of Chinese cigs known as Zhong Hua.
I feel a bit disappointed with the number of people who showed up to the live event, but at the same time I think this was a good learning opportunity for myself and the organizations involved. It was great also meeting pros from America and Europe too.