EPTI've been to the three main SC stadiums over the past week: Ongamenet's, MBC and GomTV's ones. Watching live SC is most definitely awesome. But, actually the best part about it is meeting and chatting with TL people and SC-fans. The worst part is finding the damn places sooo, I'm in the middle of creating the ULTIMATE live SC guide combining nevergg's existing thread and some photos... ^^
Guide done: its here http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=80483
GomTV
First up was Gom! The venue is situated in a pretty terrible location, the nearest subway station is quite far west of Seoul and the building itself is quite a bitch to find from there. After wandering around with the trademark foreigner "where-the-fuck-am-I-ohshitImlostagain" expression, I saw this..........
![[image loading]](http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/5306/dsc00877lj0.jpg)
Fuck, yeah.........
The building is in fact a high school which specialises in broadcasting studies - GomTV get to use the second floor of the building presumably at a discounted rent whilst the high school can make use of the expensive techno-wizardry that GomTV brings. Anyway, so it was a bit confusing to see a very shabby looking entrance with a bunch of school kids playing basketball outside it. I gingerly stepped inside but was greeted by nothing more than a typical high school entrance.. Hmmmmmmm, maybe this is the wrong way... I turned to go back out when I saw a group of school girls excitedly cramming into the lift next to me. "Ah!! Yes! Here we are, the infamous SC fangirls!!!!! I'll just follow them.. EZ.."
The lift stopped on the 4th floor and again I held my breath as the lift went DING! and the doors slid open... But...all I could see was desks and class rooms. Wtf
I grabbed the last girl leaving the lift and after repeatedly chanting the words Star, Starcraft and GomTV in different combinations, she said "2 floor! you go down!". Now we're getting somewhere... When the lift doors slid open this time, a huge smile broke across my face as the GomTV Averatec-Intel logo filled my vision. Off to the left, the familiar, excited murmuring of Korean commentary gave me the shivers. Like the religious acolyte nearing the great end of his pilgramage...I followed the sounds and turned round a few corners to see .......![[image loading]](http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/7641/dsc00923tf2.jpg)
Camera phone still sorry
This wasn't any VOD anymore.. this was fucking IT! Nevermind I was only one out of four spectators, I was here! and the broadcast was just starting.. The lights flared and the music blasted out. As the intro began, I sat down right in front of Tasteless and Susie as they started to do their thing. I'm Asian and apparently I look a little Korean, so there was little reaction from them as I sat there with a permanent ":D" expression soaking up everything around me. Soon though.. after some hasty scribbling... and after getting the attention of the cameraman to my right... .........
![[image loading]](http://img508.imageshack.us/img508/1065/starcraftgomtvsign1co6.jpg)
^^
Immediately after that, a girl came from out of nowhere and sat right next to me. Quite random. After asking which player she supported (none), it turned out she was a GomTV employee with great English.
So for the next 3 hours I basically watched none of the games (crap anyway) and chatted to her about all things SC and Korea. Pretty cool!OSL
Was the next stop... Ongamenet have the best location and venue by far. It's at least twice the size of the other places and pretty much in the middle of Seoul. I'm not sure if they're all OGN staff but they have a zillion people running around with big,small, huge cameras. It's on the 9th floor of a electronics mall with an entrance and stage worthy of SC gloriousness...
![[image loading]](http://img519.imageshack.us/img519/2187/dsc00886bj6.jpg)
:D
OSL seem the most well funded and organised. You can even pick up a free OSL guide...
![[image loading]](http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/9418/dsc00909sr4.jpg)
Ebay???
...and they also give you pen and paper on which to write signs! My own sign for the July v. Much game was completely ignored
Probably a good thing too as I wrote "God of War > Grandpa Toss EZ"...(July got fucked lol). I was determined to get the next sign on camera so after much wafting and pissing off of people around me, one of the stage cameramen finally noticed it....![[image loading]](http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/4995/starcraftoslsign1ll1.jpg)
Probably only on camera because of the Germans behind me....(hihi if youre reading)
Because of the match format, (winning) players would have their mini-fan meetings straight after their games. So many of the fangirls would hurry out to ambush the players after watching a particular game. Late joining spectators would shuffle in. During one of these audience-substitution periods.. I noticed a group of white people (omg백인!!!111) sit down behind me. After a double/triple take, I recognised nevergg, Artosis and Midian! .........Yes, they're all cool.^^
MSL
..Was a bitch to find. Me and Shloober spent a good 40mins wandering in increasingly big circles... After walking past the same parking attendant guy FOUR TIMES, we saw the light...
![[image loading]](http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/5697/dsc00899sl7.jpg)
The Loox Centre is in a newly opened but completely dead mall. The MSL venue itself is pretty small and even though we arrived late AND Jaedong was playing, there were plenty of empty seats for us. One nice thing about the MSL is that they're the only place to show FPviews of both players on smaller screens to the side. Watching them live-split workers was particularly arousing...
The atmosphere is less epic than OSL but live SC is live SC and it was especially nice seeing JD/imbazerg lose his second game. As his mutalisks got sniped off by Frozean's excellent marine micro, I was literally the only one cheering and whooping. I think I nearly got lynched when the Irradiate went off....
Final thoughts.....
+ Show Spoiler [MAY BE DISTRESSING] +
Live SC is incredible, no doubt. You should all go. But.... it is also a little anti-climatic. Watching VODs and reading about the Korean SC scene for the last two years has hyped it up to foolish heights in my head. I was expecting an atmosphere in the stadium akin to sport matches in the UK. But now I realise how incredible the cameramen and stage designers are in matching the VOD view of a match with the hype of SC in Korea.
There are many empty seats even with the stars playing and the venues (esp MSL/Gom) aren't quite the orgasm-inducing super stadiums that you expect. The groups of fans are there but no epic mobs.
I wish I could have sat in the same seats 4,5 years ago when SC was at its peak popularity...I'm sure Finals matches will be different and I plan to go to as many as humanly possible (esp. if FBH is there.....D
. I'm also gonna see Boxer this Thursday @ GomTV so maybe I should invest in some earplugs.... My new, best GomTV friend is kindly going to reserve a seat for me! ^^Thanks for reading. <3 to comments as always.
+ Show Spoiler [Bonus pic!] +
![[image loading]](http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/3482/dsc00879ab7.jpg)
The guy on the left is watching live SC on his phone at a subway station (wow). People gave me wtf-expressions when I took this pic hah.
![[image loading]](http://starphoto.incruit.com/cheerful/09/starbest_0924_03.jpg)
