Baal's last 15 years, with pictures

WGT-Baal

France3296 Posts

September 16 2023 16:27 GMT

Hello, folks,

it has been a while since I made a blog, actually my last one covered WCG 08, 15 years ago.

As I retire from my admin duties after 20 years due to the imminent birth of my first child, it is a good time to add more pictures and tales of the past years, going in a more or less chronological manner. Apologies in advance for the upcoming wall of text, hopefully better structured than my Terran or Protoss walls...

So we left off at my first WCG, WCG 2008, that I attended as press, but since almost all the BW referees were fellow WGT admins, I spent a lot of time learning about the workings of the WCG organisation and meeting various members of staff.

In 2009 I was in California for other reasons but managed to make it to Blizzcon, which was honestly a blast despite not there being any P in the SC tournament. I spent most of my time with my fellow European and all around amazing guy ToT)Ret( but also got to meet the CJ folks:

(before savior s scandal, but sadly i dont have other pictures...)

Unfortunately due to timing issues with grad schools exam, I couldn't make WCG 2009 so my next WCG was 2010 in LA. The BW event was overshadowed by the SC2 release and public attendance to the event itself was also a bit disappointing, but at the same time this meant more time to actually get to talk and spend time with the players including those 3 legends:

I had a bit of a BW hiatus as WGT shutdown the clan league, the activity in ICC CL died down and most people played SC2 instead, I joined my fellow DA members (most of them are ash now) into F69 but then I joined LDLC with my good friend AureS for a while, before finally being invited into MYM by Mondragon.

That year though in 2011 I was lucky to finally become a WCG referee, and watch live BW proleague at the event between CJ and Samsung in Korea. This is the highlight of my BW watching career as a life long CJ fan:

As well as meeting Samsung Khan players with coach January:

On a personal note, this was my first time in Korea, and my guide was the amazing Erkenbrank from the Netherlands, this actually kick started my ever growing interest in Korea, culminating in learning the language and marrying a Korean, who says video games are useless?

I made it to my first DH in Sweden that year too, all of those events in Europe were quite fun because I had known most people for years doing BW LANs as a WGT newswriter in the previous 8 years, so it was always nice reuniting with my BW friends such as CDS)Jump here:

And ToT)Gosia( (aka Paranoid) at WCG:

So this brings up to WCG 2012 in China. I had been to China before and quite enjoyed it, however I was not fully ready for the sheer scale of the event. it was PACKED. In fact it was so packed that one of the WCG referee duties was to escort famous players to the stage, so the taller Europeans and Americans (including me) became the unofficial bodyguard service of the Korean pros including Parting and Moon (of WC3), it was quite surreal but at the same time a lot of fun.
The referee team was mostly composed of previous season referees, we are all a big family really, so here it is:

Weird anecdote of the event, the France team leader did not really do much and spent more time shopping outside than being in the venue, so as the only French referee I kinda had to babysit some players a bit, including the FIFA player who "forgot his pad at home". I am not joking, luckily for him I had brought mine to use to test the setups pre-tournament so I let him borrow it but I still remember it to this day, who goes to WCG without their own equipment? So proud of my country...
Adelscott though went on a rampage and got silver medal in SC2, so I was very happy for him since we had known each other since our BW days. Here is a picture with him and Aures at DH Tours in 2015:

Also because I kept meeting Parting often, we bought each other beers several times, he is an overall chill guy. He still owes me a box of beer though, but I'll settle with Makgeolli next time in Korea... MarineKing on the other hand, was a prick and really disrespectful to everyone at WCG 2012, so we were quite happy he got knocked out of the tournament early. It is to this day my only bad experience with Korean players.
On a nicer note, EG.Hwanni was super nice, and the highlight of my sc2 "career" was beating him in WCG practice tournament, tied with an ESL 2v2 cup win during the beta with AureS.

I also got to go to GamesCom in Germany to meet a bunch of folks, including Mondragon, who is so tall (I am 1.88 or 6'2 in freedom units and still look tiny):

As well as the amazing ash.Blacksun:

I'll skip the multiple SC2 events I went to in Europe in various DH to go to WCG 2013, the final one, also in China.
I got to meet coach Park and he gave me a CJ bandana signed by him and Sora after the korean referee told him I was a huge CJ fan, which was a super nice gesture of him.

In 2015 I went to Korea for a friends wedding and used the opportunity to watch a day of the VANT Starleague, with a pretty good seat. It did help that I knew some of the referees and staff from my WCG days.

(sorry for the potato quality I had a shitty phone)

After that I moved permantently to Canada in 2016 and attending EU lans became difficult but I was able to play the BW tournament in DH Montreal in 2019, and got a carbot mod for it:

Then COVID hit and obviously I haven't been to an event since then. But due to increased time at home on Sundays in the lockdown era, I joined BWCL as a Clan League admin to help following Face's departure.
Now before that I had been with ash for years as a squad leader, rejoining active duty in BWCL s44 (and winning the little league that season, for sub 1800 players) but with little time for league admin work.
Since I had a lot of experience with WCG and WGT, I was promoted to Head admin, a position I held until last month. I;d like to think BWCL became a better place with clearer rules and processes and more transparency, but I'll let every one who played in it be the judge of that.

I also retook my mantle of Nation War Leader managing team EU in the Titanes Del Ring Nation Wars seasons 1 and 2, with a very good team culminating in a 3rd place finish in season 2.

On a side note, I am quite happy I brought Camodaz into the role of admin and then CL Superadmin (find his interview here: tl.net.

I wanted to have a series of interviews of various admins to showcase more the important behind the scene job they do every day but alas I ran out of time, still I'd like to give a shout out now to all admins in BW that keep our community running, from the good folks at NSL, CSL and CPL, to more well known legends such as ZZZero in BSL, to our new generation of amazing LAN organisers in NA like Zen and Airn, and finally the amazing guys at Shield Battery. You guys are the reason we are still here, 25 years after launch!

I hope you will all continue to play this amazing game and provide support to admins everywhere and my successors in BWCL~

Thanks for reading and hopefully we get to play together at some point when I catch a break from diapers

PS: It would take a while to do a proper shoutout so thanks to every one at ash and WCG for the amazing years, but also my CPL teammates and coaches, and special one to my most common practice partners in the past years Jess, Return, AoT, Kiko, Dolife, Hazely, Inkjet, NCX, green, Zakrom, Cenderze, Genesis, Dentarg, Gang, Sands, Thrive, Jojo for going along with my weird builds and tournament preparations, and the ash leaders Blacki, Tash, Squall and Logan, you are all wonderful folks