[Blizzcon] Day 2: "I Will Destroy Everyone In 2009"

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Plexa

Aotearoa39261 Posts

October 12 2008 10:48 GMT

Only one day left on the ticket...

Teamliquid has been hard at work for yet another day at Blizzcon, trying to get it's members on TV translating stuff, or just featured in documentaries. Today seemed shorter than yesterday, and perhaps that was because the Starcraft games were over a lot earlier today. The progamers were also hidden away from the public seeing as three of them were already eliminated so there wasn't too much of a chance to interview or talk to them. Nevertheless, the presence of Teamliquid was definitely felt and the progamers really appreciated it. Anyway, here is Blizzcon Day 2 from the eyes of Plexa...

Nada and his custom-made Teamliquid Cheerful

The morning started off immediately with the semi-finals of the Blizzcon tournament being held between Nada and Jangbi. Both players were sporting their custom TL cheerfuls - a sign that they respect and value the support of the foreign community. The rest of the cheerfuls are in the official Blizzcon thread. Teamliquid filled out the floor once again and was very vocal; LosingID8 lead the chants once again, and if you were watching the stream you would have definitely heard us. The games themselves were very entertaining. Game 1 opened up with Nada going double hidden rax vs Jangbi's 12 nexus. By some miracle Jangbi was able to hold it off and Nada dropped the first set. The second game on Blue Storm had Nada going 2 fac vultures against Jangbi's fast expand.

+ Show Spoiler [NSFW; penis creep] +

The map for the first set was;

LosingID8 was able to get behind the scenes and listen in on the conversation between the coaches, Nada and Jangbi. What happened was that firstly Jangbi was forced to play blind thanks to Nada's wall-in. Once he did see the vultures coming at him he ordered his probe to build a pylon to block the choke, but just at that moment a dragoon popped out and the probe couldn't start building the pylon. Obviously, Jangbi didn't notice this as he was doing many other things, so when he checked his choke and saw that there was no pylon it was all too late. Vultures came streaming in and there was really nothing he could do to wall it off. Thus, he dropped the second set.

The final game could possibly be the game of the tournament (or second behind Savior-Jangbi game 2). The game was so intense - Jangbi opened one gate into double expo while Nada went 1fac FE into 2fac before third. Nada then made a fast push with strong vulture support which devastated Jangbi's gas natural once the mines came up. Jangbi had teched DT, but Nada opted for a fast scan so made the DT's relatively useless. But that also mean that Jangbi had no detection for a long time - so the vultures delay mining for a long time. Nada set up a containment from which Jangbi never escaped. Despite looking like he might be able to break the containment at any given time, Nada was always able to hold it off and won a very close match to go through to face Savior in the grand final.

After the SC was over we took some photos with Nada and cheered him on after his epic win. The TL group (or what was there at the time, as most of them were still coma'd out) then went their separate ways. I went off to the press room to play some unlimited SC2 and work out all the questions that were being asked. Most of the answers are now in the thread, but here are some of my personal highlights:

Infestors
Infestors are my new favorite unit. The devs said they were good at the Community Summit but it was only today I got to realize the full potential of the unit. It comes equipped with three spells; a mind control spell, a spell called "fungal infection" and the last spell which summons infested terrans. The mind control spell is situational, but can be very useful if you have the infestor burrowed (as it can cast while burrowed) and steal some vital casters from their army before the battle begins. The fungal spell is awesome. It's basically like irradiate without splash damage, then once the unit dies it explodes doing massive splash damage. One story shared around the dinner table was that one marine got hit with the spell and after it died it took out about 15 more marines with the splash damage. However, my favorite spell was the infested terran spell. It summons 5 infested Terrans to help (it lays them down as eggs which take about 3 seconds to hatch, you can make the eggs pop up anywhere within the spell radius). One of the best moments of today was when my Zerg army clashed with another press guys Terran army and I summoned up 50 Infested Terrans with 10 infestors. It was a great feeling.

Nydus Worm
The Nydus worm is the most satisfying thing in the whole game. Basically you create a nydus network which required lair tech to make. Then if you morph an overlord into an overseer you can call up a Nydus worm below (with or without creep there). Once the worm is called up then units can flow out of it. Seeing a huge mass of Zerglings, Banelings and Roaches flow out of the worm and proceed to decimate a Terran or Protoss main. It's such a good feeling.

Pace of the game
As we all know, one of the critical components of a successful game is how face the game plays out. Starcraft II is a very very fast game, possibly even faster than SC1. This is great as a spectator. It's also important to note that there's no turning animation to stall firing, so moving shot is still in as well as dancing.

Of course there is more to talk about, and that will be done in the coming days. After play testing for ages I met up with mnm and talked about SC2 and its relation to esports. It was an interesting discussion which will probably surface at one point or another. After meeting up with ViRii and his camera man we all headed off to the SC Grand Finals between Nada and Savior.

From left to right: Last Romantic, Gaetele, semioldguy and thedeadhaji

The finals games were pretty bland, Savior was by far the better player and his dominance in both games showed. The pre-game chants proved to be popular, and a number of non-TL people got in on the action as well. So the last few games had a much larger chant than we had previously had. The enthusiasm of the crowd, and the size of the crowd, was heartening. Especially since most were probably wowtards. After Savior won the crowd went absolutely nuts and Savior was loving it. However when the Blizzard appointed translator didn't show up and the interview between Tasteless and Savior was in jeopardy, Teamliquid stepped in, as usual, to save the day. LosingID8 assumed the role of translator during the post match interview.

LosingID8, Savior and Tasteless conducting the interview

Savior and epic translator LosingID8

Savior being swamped by press and fans after his game with Nada

The Teamliquid Press Team

After watching the Grand Finals we all headed over to Pizza hut to grab some food before the SC2 showmatches started. The show match featured YellOw vs sonkie; sonkie was one of the Warcraft III players that was attending the Blizzcon tournament. After eating pizza we all headed up to my hotel room just to relax, and post on TL for a bit. It wasn't long before we realized that the showmatches were on, once LR found out that YellOw was playing he literally ran out the door to get there as fast as he could.

YellOw ended up victorious over sonkie and TL gathered in a little huddle to discuss the games. Peanut and some guy joined in to our group and Last Romantic started bashing on the Warcraft III player and how badly "YellOw crushed that War3 noob" (direct quote). The guy with peanut spoke up and said "Uh, that guy was me". Hilarity ensued.

After the SC2 showmatches Blizzcon was effectively over for the TL'ers. so most of us just played SC2 repeatedly. Particularly, Sp1ral played SC2 a lot in preparation for a indepth analysis of the current build, he even got to chat with Dustin about the game so that's something to look forward to in the near future. After we got tired of SC2 we headed over to the epic Motel 6 where we just chilled out for while.

Haji and his LOL face

This is how Zatic browses TL

LR showing off his quintuple signed exclusive SC2 poster

It wasn't long before we were all hungry so we went to the Korean district and got some Korean food to cap off the night.

Sp1ral and Intrigue outside the restaurant.

Semioldguy and LosingID8

LosingID8 and Last Romantic

SpiritoftheTuna and NeoIllusions

Plexa and Haji - the crazy writers

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Men in Red - Plexa and Chill

Semioldguy, Last Romantic and Haji

Last Romantic and Haji doing... well I'm sure you can figure it out

Korean Girl Pose - Semioldguy and Brian

Zatic and Last Romantic (with Haji in the background)

And that brings us effectively to the end of the day-by-day coverage of this years Blizzcon. There will undoubtedly be many many follow up articles from the Staff and other users that attended. MYM has a host of interviews, some of which were made possible by our epic translating team (i.e LosingID8). Most of their interviews, and all other things SC2 can be found in this thread. Everyone from TL had a lot of fun, and it was good to meet the people behind the usernames. If you ever have the opportunity to attend Blizzcon (or the WWI) it's a great thing to do; given you hang out with the TL guys

. As you can probably see there was a lot of photos taken, so if you were here this year - please upload your photos because they are very much appreciated. So from Anaheim CA for the last time this year, here's hoping you've enjoyed our coverage of Blizzcon 08.

Plexa

Teamliquid from Blizzcon 08 (left to right)

Backrow: Littlechava, Intrigue, mahnini, Zatic, XCetron, NeoIllusions, Chill, SpiritoftheTuna, Plexa
Mid row: LosingID8, Last Romantic, thedeadhaji, Gaetele
Front row: semioldguy, Brian

kAra

Germany1360 Posts

October 12 2008 10:52 GMT

fun read : )

clazziquai

6685 Posts

October 12 2008 10:53 GMT

FIRST! Hopefully. Err nvm Haha!

Looks like you had an awesome time. I'm glad you guys enjoyed it!

Makes me want to go because it looked like you guys had a lot of fun^^

Plexa

Aotearoa39261 Posts

October 12 2008 10:56 GMT

come next year its totally worth it

grobo

Japan6199 Posts

October 12 2008 10:57 GMT

Again, looks like you had a great time.

Also Plexa, you look like a mix between a young Edward Furlong and Jorja Fox, hot.

xnealz

New Zealand2 Posts

October 12 2008 11:00 GMT

Awesome!

ahswtini

Northern Ireland22208 Posts

October 12 2008 11:01 GMT

Great read :D

DhakhaR

United Kingdom721 Posts

October 12 2008 11:02 GMT

nice job on the translation LosingID8 :D

and well done to everyone else for the TL cheering and coverage

Fish_Baguettes

Australia589 Posts

October 12 2008 11:05 GMT

Wow you guys had so much fun, hahaha that is awesome.

And that Savior interview is pure win. It will never get old. I love his english!

Pungyeon

Denmark37 Posts

October 12 2008 11:10 GMT

#10

Savior is so great, happy for him.

Great speach as well.... hope he keeps his promise :D

mIsUZu

New Zealand528 Posts

October 12 2008 11:11 GMT

#11

GAWADD DAMM U PLEXAAAAAAAAAAA TAKE ME N UR SUITCASE NEXTIMEEEEEE

RaGe

Belgium9947 Posts

October 12 2008 11:13 GMT

#12

amazing read

pokerface

507 Posts

October 12 2008 11:22 GMT

#13

Nice job TL!
Man the next time i have to go :D Looks like it was a lot of fun ^^

DownMaxX

Canada1311 Posts

October 12 2008 11:26 GMT

#14

I'm definitely coming next year as long as I have the funds (living on the East coast).

Thanks for the write-up Plexa. Can't wait to hear more of your opinions on SC2 - you covered my favorite points of my favorite race.