EPTI have a bit of a story to tell you, so sit back and grab some popcorn.
Back to August -- The idea came up to me
I will talk a bit about my gaming experience here. It was past DreamHack Tours, for a long while, I had some up and downs but I didn't have enough passion to keep on playing the usual amount I used to do, even though I scheduled myself a really intense planning to keep on practicing, I ended up not following it. It had three sessions of HIIT per week, and four to five StarCraft sessions I would take straight after work. Sometimes these sessions were Clan Wars, as my team Horizon subscribed to two different team leagues : AlphaSC2 and Psy-eSports-League. It was well rounded that I would keep to play a regular amount, however the LotV beta started and I ended up being in it with the batch of the top 20%.
In that phase, I was looking for something to revive the burning passion I had when I was practicing for DreamHack. Even getting the LotV key didn't bring me that much. My mind was scrambling when it suddenly ticked out of nowhere.
"I will be doing a campaign run when LotV comes out."
Then I sat there for a minute, I have seen multiple long streams, with different goals, and some of them had a charity ongoing as well and defending a lot of causes, funding for illness research or even just giving out the money to organisms that would do the job for them.
During this period, we all suspected LotV to be released around Christmas, so the occasion was all set ! Do a long stream for LotV's release, and collaborate with a charity to give away the money to families during Christmas. My pick was on a French charity called "Secours Catholique" - translates roughly to catholic rescue - and the reason why was because I know and seen with my own eyes that they are devoted and ready to help anyone in need.
The day after all this thought, I set everything in motion! I created a Facebook group, kept secret with only best friends, mailed the charity, mailed twitch on what I would need, mailed Blizzard's press contact and I posted regularly on what we would need as more of my friends joined in and submitted ideas.
Moving on to September -- When everything didn't look right
After a lot of chats to all of my friends, we concluded we needed a bunch of things to do what we wanted to do initially :
- A place where there's the connection to support a HQ stream. --not my place
- A charity that is willing to cooperate with us.
- A twitch channel where you can use donations --using Twitch Alerts
- Then a PayPal account for the occasion, either charity's or mine.
- Some additional hardware to host a bunch of computers, capture other games for a potential B Stream
We didn't have anywhere we would be doing this, so I started looking to rent somewhere that could fit the connection needs, asked my friends if they could use their network to also find a place, but ultimately, the best would have been at my best friend's because he's just near the relay point, giving him a 9Mbps upload speed, which is more than enough for two HQ streams.
Concerning the charity, they told me at first that the person in charge of challenges such as mine was on holiday and that they would contact me, yet they didn't for a bit and it worried me.
About the Twitch channel, I wanted to use mine, even if there is a low follower count and view count. It didn't matter much since starting a brand new one would not even grant me those follows and views. Every viewer can change the way the charity goes in terms of donations, and I didn't want to miss an opportunity so I concluded to get going with my own. As a consequence for that, I started streaming quite regularly to obtain a stronger audience. I did stream LotV for a bit, then as we started the new AlphaSC2 season, I began solo-casting and took a lot of pleasure and self-confidence doing so. I recently got praised pretty hard for being their front streamer and told me I was the best. I blushed. ♥ to you Alpha staff!
Using Twitch Alerts was then done for me, as I got better with handling how a stream evening works. However the PayPal question went up quite a lot, and I was only waiting an answer from the charity to start preparations for the D-Day.
Last but not least, the hardware costs were high, even if we were to split among ourselves. I came to put that on the side, since I needed all the previous points to be validated before worrying about the hardware.
Then came the famous day, September 13.
As hyped as a fresh baguette out of the oven, watching Lilbow making his way to the WCS Season 3 Finals gave me a good ignite to pursue my event. Then we saw the release date along with the new trailer. After my jaw dropped, my kid eyes opened wide and my best friend watching along with me, the release date appeared : November 10. Quickly set a new wave of motion!
I recontacted the charity that gave me a phone meeting the same day I sent the e-mail, very nice people to talk to, very cooperative and willing to understand what StarCraft is all about, what I am doing, why I am doing this and forwarded me to their website in which they already have everything in place. They have their own donation pages you can make on the fly. However they don't work with PayPal yet, so Twitch Alerts won't work with the donation. Not that much of a sacrifice given the content they feature. One of the most notable features is for French residents, if you give an amount to the charity using the link, 75% of this donation is refunded by public taxes. If I knew the terms better I would actually be able to explain this.
Straight after those news, my best friend announced me that his place was free the weekend after LotV's release!!! However this weekend being a bit closer than expected, he can host less people as well, so we got rid of the B Stream idea but still keeping the games on the side to entertain the players when they're not touching the computer to play on the SC campaign.
Present time, October -- All is soon to be done!
And now there we are. I hyped everyone up, I have a competent and willing team of friends, preparing themselves for the coming event, and full of ideas.
Today, I set my own page for donations up, and while being in french, if you click the button "Voir tout" you will be able to see an English part translated by myself.
So now my coming steps are the following regarding how to prepare the event :
- Advertise through all social medias, such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube etc...
- Have one of my artist friends to design something simple to spread for the page, fill the Twitch channel of it as well.
- Prepare the overlays, a planning, donation goals, challenges, fun games and everything else for the event.
- Do a video with everyone to tease the event, spread it, do a serious yet fun trailer to display weeks before the event.
- Do a crash test evening with all of our settings done.
This being a lot of work, my friends and I aren't a bit scared of that and we already are spamming a ton of ideas for the videos and art.
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So this is it for now, I will keep you updated with what happens in within, problems we meet and probably all the videos and art we will provide for this event.
As I think you might be curious, here is a quick Q&A concerning the charity event.
• Concerning the Campaign run, will it be the whole or only LotV ?
At first we considered doing everything using the Mass Recall remake. However it is too short in time even for confirmed players to wrap it up in only a weekend. Only LotV.
• Will the event be only French or there will be English as well ?
It will mostly be French, as I am the only English speaker out of the crew. I will talk to you folks in the chat, and probably try and sneak some English around to please everyone.
• How to donate through their donation page ? It's all in French ?¿?
I will explain this either in a video, or live during the stream for a global "how-to" for non-baguette people.
• About the campaign difficulty ? Brutal or Casual dirty scrub ?
I am the only Master league player in the crew. I will hold on to play them Brutal for a hardcore experience and we can set stupid challenges such as "micro this zealot so it stays alive the whole game and fights still" and give me something to do if I fail. My friends will variate through Difficult to Normal, and Casual for those that never touched StarCraft in their life.
I think that wraps it up! Thanks for reading until the end, and open to discussion and suggestions.
Lots of love TLers. ♥
I hope everything goes well and wish you best of luck! 
