When? - 27th-30th August 2010 Where? - Newbury Racecourse, Berkshire, UK Why? - Because it's the motherfucking i-Series.
Might as well keep this short and to the point. i-Series is the one event in the UK gaming calender that isn't worth missing. It's a huge LAN as well as the epicentre of the UK's competitive scene with top-end tournaments for all major games and a ton of money to be won for those competing. Starcraft 2 will be making it's debut appearance there this year and in a sudden unfortunate turn of events, every other Starcraft 2 shoutcaster on the planet has mysteriously fallen down a well and can't get out, so in desperation, they've turned to me to commentate the SC2 tournaments live in the arena. SHOUTcraft's 7 fans will no doubt be thrilled by this, as everyone else scratches their heads and wonders how the hell we got into this mess in the first place.
The purpose of this thread is to talk about i40, register interest, let other TL members know you're coming, arrange meet-ups and discuss the best way to dull your sense of smell when surrounded by thousands of horrendously sweaty nerds.
Prizes for SC2 tournament
Pot is £1000 plus a bunch of SC2 related Razer swag.
YOU CAN STILL REGISTER AND YOU CAN EVEN SIGN UP TO THE TOURNAMENT ON THE DAY
Confirmed attendees
TotalBiscuit matthewfoulkes JBanKs wakefield
Maybes
KwarK AirDraken Stato
Oh and about 82 other people that I see registered for the SC2 tournament already and that's expected to double on the day. I see a number of TL faces on this list, so make yourselves known :>
I went to I-21, was pretty epic. Though i think i was probably the only BW player there. Went with a few friends and played alot of Quake 3. Probably won't go to this as the cost has increased from 70 to 90 and generally not many people play the games i enjoy t_t. Hf to anyone who does go though.
im hopefully going to grab myself a ticket so i can play in the sc2 tournament, just need to get some transport... need a hand shoutcasting? im here ! :D
It's way way way too pricey for me to go. I've been to i34, i35 & i36 @ stoneleigh (because they are closer!) and they were epic. If I had the money I'd definitley be going.
LAN Internet is dodgy usually with sc2 being bnet only, that could make things interesting. That said I might be keen to drive out there for the day, it's not too bad from sw London.
On June 29 2010 04:27 Stato wrote: God its such a long drive from the west midlands, why do they always have it in retarded places :L, anyone heard anything about any pro teams going?
Yup, close to the most populous city in the country is retarded.
On June 29 2010 04:27 Stato wrote: God its such a long drive from the west midlands, why do they always have it in retarded places :L, anyone heard anything about any pro teams going?
Yup, close to the most populous city in the country is retarded.
That implies that most of the attendees are going to be from London. You're ignoring the north, south-west, midlands etc.
Wow I just looked up where this is on the map and it's near Reading. Maybe I'll take a break from the festival and come down. In all seriousness though, if I was better at SC2, I would so be up for this.
I think £90 for a ticket is a bit too much considering players also have to take their own computer and the prize pool is only £1000..... I'd call the event more a gimick to get people in than a real worth wild tournament. Would be better to have a 12 man online tournment with each player paying £90 towards the prize.
I can see where you're coming from aka_star but SC2 at the i-series is us testing the water so to speak - we've not historically had much of an RTS presence there, at least not compared to the likes of CS:S, Call of Duty etc
Tickets are only £90 this close to the event, the majority bought them at £63. Pricey for just a SC2 tournament? Sure, but consider the tournament as an additional activity at the lan - the tickets don't directly contribute to it.
With the interest for this one we could well see bigger and bigger prize funds at future events (the next event being i41 in November and then i42 in April).
Shame its on a bank holiday weekend, I deffiantly cant go, never been to a offline lan at any decent size so im deffiantly going to try go to i41, anyone know how often they have these lans?? Shame thught its not possibble to play Starcraft 2 and Fifa10 though
* i-Series Quick Links * o Stream 1 - Off Air o Stream 2 - Off Air o i-Series Site o i39 Content * i40 Schedule * o Friday - 27th Aug o 14:00 - Opening Ceremony o Saturday - 28th Aug o 16:00 - L4D2 Fighting the Infected with ESET o 18:00 - DJ Dev o 20:00 - The World Famous Pub Quiz o Sunday - 29th Aug o 11:00 - WCG Finals o 13:30 - Call of Duty 4 Final o 16:00 - Team Fortress 2 Final o 18:30 - Counter-Strike: Source Final o 22:00 - Starcraft 2 Final o Monday - 30th Aug o 11:00 - WCG Mobile Finals o 12:00 - Bad Company 2 Final o 14:00 - Heroes of Newerth Final
I am hoping the the biscuit also has another stream...
It's on that list, it's under Shoutcraft as opposed to Totalbiscuit.
We've had a number of network connectivity issues as well as equipment failures. I'm working as fast as I can to get everything sorted for warmups and practice streaming today. Myself and Apollo will co-cast and we'll use today as a testbed to get a flow going and solidify our roles. I will keep you posted.
If anyone wants to come say hello, I'm slaving away up in the Staff area on Floor 5 of Berkshire Stand, the Mubtaker suite. Pop in and say hi. Most of our casting will be done from here, with the finals etc done on the stage.
We've had a myriad of problems but we're setting up a special stage presentation this evening at 19:30 BST/20:30 CEST/14:30 EST which will feature show matches and coverage of tonight's CraftCup, as a warm-up for the start of tomorrow's tournament.
thanks for the casts tonite i enjoyed cheering my heart out. what are you doing tommorow apollo in terms of casting or playing cos u said u were in the tourney. does that mean that tbiscuit will be casting solo?
Thankyou very much for your stream of todays events. I logged on for the advertised LFD2 cast and as a switched feed to yours it came up as SC2 matches, nice surprise
A special kudos to doing it with just a skeleton irc admin staff, sure there was time between games but you pulled it off. To be fair, i rememeber listening to your casts while you were in the middle of a law degree and it seems you've kept pushing yourself, very professional.
Seems the Top Hat kept your casting micro brain nice and warm today, i'll stay tuned over the weekend.
Total Biscuit had been casting for like 9 hours straight, while Apollo was playing for the same amount of time. It's pretty late playing a final at midnight.
So did rANDY play zerg after the beating Apollo took from Pureball? I missed the match, but as i see now, it's better that i did, cause i'd get so mad due to the almighty reapers.
Hey Kharne here, I was the lead admin for this tournament, my first time as lead admin, and the first SC2 tournament at an insomnia LAN, I would be interested on any feedback you guys have.
I am interested in making the UK scene grow and this tournament was aimed at the newer community to bring the interest to the game. I believe it is succeeding because several people I have spoken to over the course of the weekend have said they would be giving the multiplayer a go because they were truly entertained by watching.
Multiplay's LANs have always been a more social event then being all about pure tournaments, but we do try to run legitimate tournaments with decent prizes and community participation in mind.
Because it was the first ever tournament and there were so many unknowns, we used http://sc2ranks.com/ to seed the players. And apparently we were correct on the first seed, with many of the sub 10 seeds in the very late stages.
Next time we may be in a better position to do seedings on a reputation/performance basis from previous events.
Finally congratulations to PuReBall on winning the final, he played very well to beat a player like rANDY, even if Reapers are stupid at the moment vs Zerg.
I would also like to thanks TotalBiscuit and Apollo, both did an awesome job on the stage.
I did like what I saw Kharne, and TB is a great entertainer with using paint in the downtime! I think you would of had more viewers throughout the whole event if it wasnt such a big clash with MLG/go4sc2/djwheat's shows this weekend.
Was there much of a crowd for sc2? if so it would be cool to get a few pictures of the event, its interesting to see all the setup and the crowd area, or even the players playing.
I only saw the last 4 matches, but I think both totalbisquit and apollo did a very good job with keeping the commentary fast paced while still taking time to clarify important aspects of the game for an audience that was not hardcore sc2. That is a skill that is going to be important while the game is still young.
There was an impressive crowd watching live at the event, one of the biggest, probably only beaten by the CS:S. Pretty good for a match that started at midnight! There will be coverage photos and ill find the link.
On August 30 2010 20:01 Kharne wrote: Hey Kharne here, I was the lead admin for this tournament, my first time as lead admin, and the first SC2 tournament at an insomnia LAN, I would be interested on any feedback you guys have.
I am interested in making the UK scene grow and this tournament was aimed at the newer community to bring the interest to the game. I believe it is succeeding because several people I have spoken to over the course of the weekend have said they would be giving the multiplayer a go because they were truly entertained by watching.
Multiplay's LANs have always been a more social event then being all about pure tournaments, but we do try to run legitimate tournaments with decent prizes and community participation in mind.
Because it was the first ever tournament and there were so many unknowns, we used http://sc2ranks.com/ to seed the players. And apparently we were correct on the first seed, with many of the sub 10 seeds in the very late stages.
Next time we may be in a better position to do seedings on a reputation/performance basis from previous events.
Finally congratulations to PuReBall on winning the final, he played very well to beat a player like rANDY, even if Reapers are stupid at the moment vs Zerg.
I would also like to thanks TotalBiscuit and Apollo, both did an awesome job on the stage.
My main gripe was that there was no where to see results (at least not that I ever saw) so I had to ask players to update me.
For seeding, I personally suggest using a combination of tournament results (those you can find), combined with a little personal know-how followed by ranks. Looking at the player list, it was clear (to me)that Pureball and rANDY should be 1 and 2 seeded, Apollo/Bond 3rd/4th. Player rank will work fine for the majority of players, but the top ones should be seeded through a more qualitative way I think. Ladder is a very general gauge for how good a player is and how well they are likely to do.
Aside from that, it all seemed smooth. TB is a great choice (he's my main choice too) and did a great job live.
I am planning on going to i41 and trying to rouse up more of the top UK guys to go, so if you need any help or anything, let me know.
Yes I completely agree we did not put out the news often enough about results. I will need to work with the coverage team a bit closer next time (ie whip them) and get the information out a bit more frequently. I was worked off my feet (partially because of so many no-shows in the group stages) and struggled to find time to post news myself, so this could be improved.
Saying the seeds were more obvious after the final results are out is slightly helped by hindsight on your part, so I still stand by the method we came up with for a last minute set up (sign ups closed 1 hour before we had to have the seeds out).
Any promotion for the i41 tournament would be appreciated, see how big we can make this .
On August 30 2010 21:10 Kharne wrote: Saying the seeds were more obvious after the final results are out is slightly helped by hindsight on your part, so I still stand by the method we came up with for a last minute set up (sign ups closed 1 hour before we had to have the seeds out).
You'll have to trust me on that one. The first thing I told rANDY and Pureball is that they'd get to the finals ezpz. No one knows more about UK/Ire players than I do!
Edit: I suppose you don't know, but I run the UK/Ire SC2 team.
The seeds were good for the players you knew of, but there were also many that were wrong. Handful of diamond players not seeded where some silver and gold were. It made some pretty bs groups.
It was a good turnout for the first tournament and ran pretty smoothly.
Was a fun tournament, im still frustrated at my losses vs bond.. and the seedings were really stupid, 1 Group had all players gold or lower, mine had 3 diamonds and a plat player + some others..
Seeding was done by points NOT by division + points..
despite this the tournament ran smoothly overall and was good fun. Wish i finished top 8 though .
Hope to see kwark, ourk, doomproject and such at the next event. Was really nice to meet randy after all these years lots of other good "unkown" diamond players were there aswell. Great stuff :D.
YOU DONT EVEN KNOW WHAT MACRO IS NEMESIS YOU'LL JUST 2 GATE ME.
GG all that played, and UL randy losing to reapers ): Let it be said that, shouting where a stargate is and then the other player responding to it without scouting.
You saw the smile across Pureball's face when that Stargate was called. I laughed when I saw him delay the eng bay, while getting marines and stim to that call.
On August 30 2010 08:47 DarthSidious wrote: I was expecting something more grand from the finals.
Also, it doesn't seem totalbiscuit and d.apollo work well together.
You're pretty much the only one to have said that, all the rest of the feedback I've read is that we worked well together, but Apollo didn't prepare enough comebacks to my sick burns
its not cool. (Y) new casters for i41 plix;
Yeah that's not going to happen. Don't blame the casters for soundproofing issues, we had nothing to do with it. Starcraft 2 is NOT cast with vague references and censorship, it is cast with properly soundproofed players and full commentary. It was made clear to Multiplay over a month in advance what would be required to make that happen, it was apparently not tested at all and that's something that needs to happen next time. We went in there with the understanding that the players COULD NOT hear anything. Neither player mentioned the soundproofing once and neither of the casters were involved in any way with the production setup (why would we be?).
But yeah, by all means, blame the casters for something they had no control over.
In all fairness, Biscuit. No problems with you doing it;; Just dont let a bias team mate cast "STARGATES TO BRING OUT VOID RAYS" and a engineering bay to follow.
But you're right, i shouldn't blame casters~ just "caster".
How can randy or pureball (receiving the advantage [To prove this arguement, watch the cast again, see how many "tech builds" was mentioned on Pureballs behalf]) mention they can hear shit, "PP" <pause on stage> great. makes alot of sense. Either rehearsals done next time, by that just general testing instead of "Got an idea for a tournament - Starcraft 2 - make it happen Biscuit."
as you mentioned that in your post, just reitterating i can see that Multiplay are infact reading this.
EPT![[image loading]](http://iseries.static.multiplayuk.com/wp-content/themes/i40/images/feature/i40-booknow-feature.jpg)
im here ! :D
