On the eve of the release of Starcraft 2, hundreds of nerds gathered at Harvey Mudd College to swarm around one of the most prolific figures in esports. Sean "Day[9]" Plott played host to the world as he celebrated the end of the Starcraft 2 Beta and the release of Starcraft 2 Retail with his King of the Beta Tournament - sponsored by Razer. Of course, you know all about this event already and no doubt you have seen the pre-game vidoes from the community (check here if you haven't!).
At long last (after some technical difficulties), Day[9] has uploaded the vods for the semifinals and finals of the Razer King of the Beta tournament. For your viewing pleasure, we have collected them all here for you to watch - spoiler free! We also have an interview with the winner after the vods. So if you missed these three epic series, now you can finally see the games that we've been talking about all week!
Note that you can click the little TV icon next to the game to take you directly to the VOD on blip.tv. The spoilers contain embedded VODs.
DISCLAIMER: If you currently have an ATI card and are running Catalyst drivers below 10.7 you may experience a blue screen of death viewing these videos. Watch at your own discretion. You may download the latest 10.7 drivers here which will alleviate the problem.
Hey Idra and congrats on your victory over Tester. How does it feel to win the final tournament of the beta?
It feels awesome, I wasn't performing particularly well towards the end of phase 1 so its great to be able to come back and win a tournament like this right before the big release.
Tester is a player who has given you a bit of trouble in the past. Do you feel like your victory over him is the result of personal improvement over the course of the beta, or do you think you simply adjusted to his style, allowing you to pull through?
It was almost purely an adjustment to his style, in tournament games he tended towards 2 base collosus/stalker based allins because he knows i prefer ground macro games. I recognized this and designed builds and tactics, the muta openings and faster ultras as well as the focus on ling runbys, to counter it. He also tends to open with zealot pressure, so the speedling opening helped vs that as well.
I noticed that Tester picked maps that were pretty cramped (Steppes and Blistering), while you chose maps that were more wide open (Metalopolis and Scrap). Was the reason for this mostly related to the ease of use of early pylon shenanigans, which he used on the maps he chose, or were there more complicated reasons?
Well we mostly chose along zvp balance lines, but the reason steppes and blistering are good for protoss is the relatively short rush distance, and the fact that they're 2 player maps. So while they're good for pvz in general they're especially good for rush builds like his cannon block. I chose purely for big open macro maps.
In the 5th set, you sniped Tester's robo bay at a critical moment. Hypothetically, if he had been able to build up a bunch of colossi, how would you strengthened your composition to deal with the inevitable big attack?
Once you have ultras out the stalker/collosus ball is almost useless. I would have just kept adding ultras and hatcheries, gotten drop and started harassing.
The beta is over. Do you have any plans that are set in stone as far as competing professionally in Starcraft 2? We know from previous interviews that you'll be attending various tournaments representing CJ, but are there any specific events that you know you'll be attending?
Nothings really set yet, most of the upcoming tournaments haven't even been announced as far as I know. I think there's a very good chance I will be at the Intel extreme masters event in Germany in August, but like I said nothing is for sure yet.
Well, I think this about wraps this up. Good luck in your efforts to win more tournaments in the future, in Korea and abroad. Is there anything you'd like to say to your fans?
A: Thanks for all your support, hope you enjoyed the games. Oh also, thanks to white-ra. He helped me practice the day before the match vs tester and it helped quite a bit. I probably wouldn't have won without those games.
And that well and truly caps of the beta. Starcraft 2 is an amazing game and it's already consumed all our lives, and will continue to consume them for many years to come. With a number of massive tournaments on the horizon, you can look forward to TeamLiquid giving you the very best coverage of all of these events - just as we have done and will continue to do for SC:BW.
Click the little TV icon next to the game, well at least that's how i got it to work. + Show Spoiler +
Have yet to see the games yet, but Idra 3-0'ing qxc was really a surprise to me after qxc's 2-0 on ITR. I dislike idra for his rage, but he deserved it.
I'm so glad to have had Day9 bring this to us. Following the tourney and picking up the game at midnight, followed by the finals made for a really memorable night.. and I hate RTS games. Out of curiosity, does Sean make money off something like this? I'd hope so; the production value of that event was quite high for being run by one guy (with help of course).
Anyone with an ATI card having trouble watching these 0.o? I just bsod'd twice trying to watch the first game with the latest drivers lol I guess ill have to wait for the youtube versions
On August 01 2010 13:45 Ligerx wrote: Anyone with an ATI card having trouble watching these 0.o? I just bsod'd twice trying to watch the first game with the latest drivers lol I guess ill have to wait for the youtube versions
On August 01 2010 13:45 Ligerx wrote: Anyone with an ATI card having trouble watching these 0.o? I just bsod'd twice trying to watch the first game with the latest drivers lol I guess ill have to wait for the youtube versions
Yeah I had the same thing happen to me with my ATI card :/
i had a problem (BSOD/ video card crashing) watching flash vids with my 5850 after i overclocked but after i installed the previous version of flash the problem was fixed
For everyone having issues with slow loads from Blip.tv, they throttle their bandwidth on each video I believe (and these are higher quality than normal). If you're going to watch a few games in a row, open them all and let them all load in parallel to get around this.
On August 01 2010 13:45 Ligerx wrote: Anyone with an ATI card having trouble watching these 0.o? I just bsod'd twice trying to watch the first game with the latest drivers lol I guess ill have to wait for the youtube versions
Yeah, I'm on a 5870 1gb and it was extremely alarming when I got a display driver error. I tried again, thinking it was only something minor, and I BSoD like the rest of you guys...
It appears to only be a blip.tv thing too since I can watch LQ/HQ youtube, livestream, continue playing SC2 on all ultra 1920x1200, etc.
Anyone having problem with these loading slowly? I have internet 'o plenty and never had this problem with blip before but now i have to wait like 2 hours to see a 25 minute video.
Asdfsdaf, trying to watch but seems to be be pointless, hopefully up on youtube soon
On August 01 2010 14:56 Earll wrote: Anyone having problem with these loading slowly? I have internet 'o plenty and never had this problem with blip before but now i have to wait like 2 hours to see a 25 minute video.
Asdfsdaf, trying to watch but seems to be be pointless, hopefully up on youtube soon
Yeah, it's buffering at a snail's pace for me. So damn frustrating.
I tried to remedy this by buffering multiple videos at once and they all like disappeared. Now i have to rebuffer from the beginning again and I don't have time for that tonight unfortunately. I hope its better tomorrow because I really like bliptv better than youtube because the videos aren't split.
On August 01 2010 13:45 Ligerx wrote: Anyone with an ATI card having trouble watching these 0.o? I just bsod'd twice trying to watch the first game with the latest drivers lol I guess ill have to wait for the youtube versions
Ye same here. My ATI card stopped working first and then windows restarted...
On August 01 2010 13:45 Ligerx wrote: Anyone with an ATI card having trouble watching these 0.o? I just bsod'd twice trying to watch the first game with the latest drivers lol I guess ill have to wait for the youtube versions
Dude I have an ATI 5770 and I blue screened 4 times trying to watch the semifinals between IntoTheRainbow and Tester. I freaked out thinking that my card was dying. Glad to see it's a a software problem between Blip.tv and ATI and not my card.
The great thing here is that latest drivers will fuck up some of opengl games such as quake live. And now this with older drivers. ATI might be ahead in power but fails in stability :S Gonna try if downloading those vods would help.
Man, I hate blip.tv. About 90% of the time, there is buffering, and if I leave it to buffer (pause it), then it just whites out after a specific period of time (it's by design, guaranteed).
... and no, it's not my connection.
[EDIT: I see others have the same problem. Ridiculous stuff.]
yeah day9s voice sounds really bad.. maybe thats why he havent posted any dailies lately? he probably didnt have any voice at all after all that casting of kotb
Okay, the reason it's taking so long to buffer is because the video's themselves are massive, it's not blip's fault, it's just they aren't compressed heavily so you get that crisp clear video quality. (compare these 400mb 20min videos to the usual 600mb 60min dailies)
Anyway I'm not sure if you guys that are complaining about buffering just haven't noticed or what, but there are download links.
I'll post them here anyways, game 4 and 5 of the final have a spoiler file name, so you might not want to dl them straight up (if you were going to put it in a dl queue or something).
huge thx skipgamer, just was going to ask for these ))
E: wow im actually able to watch some games via stream which are .m4v filetype despite having 5750 with 10.5 cat (didnt start dling instead opened as quicktime stream). Flv ones wont work i guess, at least wont try dont wanna more bsods :S
i had no issues with the sound. the commentators were loud over the game sound, but the game sound wasn't completely invisible so it was perfectly well balanced on my end.
finals were great!!! amazing gameplay from both sides!
fantastic games... highly enjoyable, especially the ITR/Tester series.
This game has a vast amount of potential once players start exploring all the different units rather than just build a "bunch of warpgates/build a bunch of mauraders and send them into each other" style you see from American players.
Thanks to Day9 to putting such an awesome event together.
My only constructive criticism, if I am allowed, is to say that the "any fans of xxxxxx" before every game to gain some forced applause felt pretty.... forced.
On August 02 2010 00:57 Surreal wrote: Am I the only one that is annoyed that tester was hearing the stream while playing vs intotherainbow?
ummm how do you know that? it didn't seem like the case in game 4 when they were screaming about ITR's factory in his base and tester didn't notice or respond... does Tester even understand english?
On August 02 2010 01:30 EAGER-beaver wrote: blip tv is so god awful slow I gave up trying to watching it, gogo youtube or torrent it!
Seriously, blip.tv is one of the worst video sites ever. I understand why day9 uses it and it's fine, but it consistently complains about my internet being too slow when I can stream 1080 video from youtube with no hiccups whatsoever.
Anyway, whining aside, so stoked these videos are up. I've managed to avoid any spoilers about who won so this will be amazing to watch.
Thanks alot for the download links, saved my life. Anyway I think the ingame sound issue is only on the first game of QXC vs Idra, which is most likely the first game everyone sees, then come to forum to complain about game sound, but atleast for me, after that game, they were all perfectly fine.
On August 02 2010 01:30 EAGER-beaver wrote: blip tv is so god awful slow I gave up trying to watching it, gogo youtube or torrent it!
Same, I really wanted to watch but the constant stopping every 5 seconds was more then I could take. Guess I'll watch whenever it get loaded onto YouTube.
EDIT: I just saw skipgamers post, Thx downloading now
Anyone else notice how rediculous the framerate is on blip.tv? It makes youtube look like a slide slow. I just installed new videocard drivers so it might be that but it looks really good.
Hi guys, blip.tv is acting really slow, is there a way to download the replays and watch them directly in my SC2, I can't find a link to the replays anywhere. Thanks.
God, great white hope really becoming the great white hope.. it's great to see that he is turning into an adapting player unlike the mechanical dude he was before
On August 01 2010 20:30 skipgamer wrote: Okay, the reason it's taking so long to buffer is because the video's themselves are massive, it's not blip's fault, it's just they aren't compressed heavily so you get that crisp clear video quality. (compare these 400mb 20min videos to the usual 600mb 60min dailies)
Anyway I'm not sure if you guys that are complaining about buffering just haven't noticed or what, but there are download links.
I'll post them here anyways, game 4 and 5 of the final have a spoiler file name, so you might not want to dl them straight up (if you were going to put it in a dl queue or something).
I've been going through watching one, while downloading the next one. It's not bad, and sure as hell beats the stupid buffering.
{edit: sry, updated with links for the url's, i have no idea why some are flv and some are m4v :s}
Can't seem to view any of the games after game 3 of Tester vs IntoTheRainbow, except for game 5. Tried VLC, tried Windows Media Player. I have latest ATI drivers.
EDIT: nvm it seems that I got it working with Media Player Classic.
Oh man, those 10.6.5 ATI drivers were a nightmare for me. Not only did they crash SC2, but they also crashed any video on youtube, blip.tv, or any other video that was embedded into the browser.
After days trying to avoid spoiler i got into day9tv.blip.tv and saw the game names that spoiled who got into the finals. (this was a few days ago, its fixed now)
And now I cant even watch the games because all of them are taking like 2-3 hours to load in my stream.
Day9 always provides quality entertainment, and Im sure this was a blunder, but man its so frustrating, heres to hoping you can get it fixed in no time!
On August 01 2010 20:30 skipgamer wrote: Okay, the reason it's taking so long to buffer is because the video's themselves are massive, it's not blip's fault, it's just they aren't compressed heavily so you get that crisp clear video quality. (compare these 400mb 20min videos to the usual 600mb 60min dailies)
Anyway I'm not sure if you guys that are complaining about buffering just haven't noticed or what, but there are download links.
I'll post them here anyways, game 4 and 5 of the final have a spoiler file name, so you might not want to dl them straight up (if you were going to put it in a dl queue or something).
I've been going through watching one, while downloading the next one. It's not bad, and sure as hell beats the stupid buffering.
{edit: sry, updated with links for the url's, i have no idea why some are flv and some are m4v :s}
Can't seem to view any of the games after game 3 of Tester vs IntoTheRainbow, except for game 5. Tried VLC, tried Windows Media Player. I have latest ATI drivers.
EDIT: nvm it seems that I got it working with Media Player Classic.
seems odd that vlc couldn't play it for you. worked fine here...vlc plays everything known to man kind :O
never seen an actual show where a live crowd watches a game being commentated and i do have to say it's pleasing to hear people clap after a player does some sick defending/attacking. thanks for the upload, Day[9]! just started to watch and i'm already loving it!
I really wanted to watch these, but the buffering is horrible coming from Blip.tv. I was hoping maybe it was just that so many people were trying to watch it, but after trying multiple times on various days, I have to just give up. It's unwatchable. I've tried leaving it open and letting it load up and then coming back. No luck, Tried all kinds of things. The videos just won't buffer or load acceptably.
Hopefully another mirror site or some direct downloads will make it to the net at some point or for future broadcasts.
On August 03 2010 03:31 Aurdon wrote: I really wanted to watch these, but the buffering is horrible coming from Blip.tv. I was hoping maybe it was just that so many people were trying to watch it, but after trying multiple times on various days, I have to just give up. It's unwatchable. I've tried leaving it open and letting it load up and then coming back. No luck, Tried all kinds of things. The videos just won't buffer or load acceptably.
Hopefully another mirror site or some direct downloads will make it to the net at some point or for future broadcasts.
Yeah, same here I managed to watch a couple games by loading them up while doing something else, but I think I'm just fed up with this.
Thank you to everyone who made this possible, specially Day9 of course. The games are amazing and I'm watching Game 4 of the finals as of this post and it's all very exciting. BTW I find it pretty funny how the quality of the commentating decreased but the funny moments increased as time went by, but it's only natural if you've been talking non-stop for 12 hours.
On August 03 2010 03:31 Aurdon wrote: I really wanted to watch these, but the buffering is horrible coming from Blip.tv. I was hoping maybe it was just that so many people were trying to watch it, but after trying multiple times on various days, I have to just give up. It's unwatchable. I've tried leaving it open and letting it load up and then coming back. No luck, Tried all kinds of things. The videos just won't buffer or load acceptably.
Hopefully another mirror site or some direct downloads will make it to the net at some point or for future broadcasts.
Yeah, same here I managed to watch a couple games by loading them up while doing something else, but I think I'm just fed up with this.
Other than that, thank you so much as usual Day!
I had the exact same problem but then I found a program called "Jdownloader" to grab the VODs. Also there's this website called Videosnag which allows you to grab the .flvs.
Great tournament, but man on those vods there's some ads at the bottom of the screen that refuse to let you click on the x to close them. They like fade away when you hover mouse over them to click but return when you hover away. And if you just keep your clicker on the ad faded, it'll come back and disable the close function entirely! Most vehement ads I've ever seen
Someone in this thread must be IRL/online buddies with Day[9] and make him aware of this issue??
I'm (we're) not demanding anything but personally I'd love to see IdrA play as I guess I can learn a lot from him and these high-caliber games (I'm a Zerg player). But would really appreciate his effort to put this on YouTube or something so it's actually watchable!
Congratulations to IdrA for winning King of the Beta, I'm looking forward to watching you compete in the HDH 2 tournament as well. I will be rooting for you!