EPTEGL = Epic weekend.
GG and WP to all players that turned up.
EGL4 London - 29th-30th of October - Page 11
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aDiGitALLast
27 Posts
EGL = Epic weekend. GG and WP to all players that turned up. | ||
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Vamp
United Kingdom184 Posts
Looking forward to seeing the final. Bakor & other admins thankyou for trying your best, I am sure in the next EGL you won't be using the same providers. Oh and one last thing.. Capped you are a first class idiot. | ||
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ukscnazo
United Kingdom6 Posts
Unfortunately things happen that they have no control over and they jut have to make the most it. The key thing here is that everyone who attended has said that they had a great time. And I'm sure a lot of lessons have been learnt. Help UK e-Sports grow and support the tournaments even through the hard times. | ||
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aShock.Moose
United Kingdom17 Posts
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TotalBiscuit
United Kingdom5437 Posts
On October 30 2011 23:29 Barleyarley wrote: So instead of giving advice and helping one of the few organisations in the UK that are running SC2 events you decide to turn your back on it entirely? Thats proactive... Also the first ECL event for SC2 wasn't that bad, they provided a seperate staging area specifically for SC2 and all the PCs needed to run the event and everything worked to schedule. Saying you didn't work for a fee isn't entirely true either seeing as the SC2 was broadcast via your stream. I couldn't make it to EGL London and it sounds like the faults are somewhat inexcusable, but bitching about them on a forum instead of giving some constructive input is hardly productive is it? They were given plenty of constructive criticism at the event. I have to wonder why you think you can dictate what my job is when you're merely an outsider with no idea how things went down. And no, I did not "work for a fee", the limited revenue generated by EGL went towards SCI3, just like any other event broadcast on me stream, I did not see a dime of that. Not to mention that using my stream for an event like that benefits the event, that stream has a ton of followers and subscribers, it attracts more attention if the event is hosted there. "Turning my back on the event" is also a bullshit accusation. This weekend I had Frag for Cancer and my Charity:Water 12 hour livestream scheduled. Turns out FfC was rescheduled but if you seriously think I'm going to drop 2 charity events just to come down to a mess of an ECL again, then you're out of your mind. So fuck you and fuck your sanctimonious "FOR ESPORTS!" attitude, you have no idea what you're talking about. | ||
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AdrenalGBR
United Kingdom182 Posts
On October 31 2011 21:55 TotalBiscuit wrote: "Turning my back on the event" is also a bullshit accusation. This weekend I had Frag for Cancer and my Charity:Water 12 hour livestream scheduled. Turns out FfC was rescheduled but if you seriously think I'm going to drop 2 charity events just to come down to a mess of an ECL again, then you're out of your mind. So fuck you and fuck your sanctimonious "FOR ESPORTS!" attitude, you have no idea what you're talking about. To be fair, TB, he's probably working from your earlier post; Myself and Apollo both said "we ain't coming back" after the last ECL I'm surprised you'd take that attitude. I had a great time regardless of the problems and I'd say yes to casting any UK event again without hesitation. I guess things might be different for you because (although I'm not sure of your situation) I assume you do this for a job, but even so - it's better to be open to casting events like that again, I feel. | ||
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Sombrero
United Kingdom134 Posts
!!DISCLAIMER!! I am in no way apart of or affiliated with EGL or any of their subsidiaries. I am a eSports fan through and through, having followed a plethora of games over many years, I volunteered to help oversee the tournament. All opinions stated here are my own. Firstly Fuck Scan. Over 3 years ago I spent a grand a half on components from them and after this weekend I plan to invent time travel so I can tell myself to not buy from them. We had 36 people sign up to the tournament and a few more come on the day, 16 computers would have been more than enough to run the tournament smoothly and even give people time to go have a nice meal in the evening, as a matter of fact that was my plan, as with all eSports events in the UK things did not go to plan… On day 1 I got to the venue at 9am and found out that only 8 computers had turned up; I was a little pissed off but things happen, you have to give people some slack. We began setting up the first two groups to face off, hoping that if we started as soon as possible that we could finish the group stages on day 1 and still have a double elimination on Sunday. Groups A and B set up on the correct Computers and 3 minutes into set up I hear a phrase that would continue to haunt me for the entire weekend ‘My Sounds not working….’ I get over to the PCs and see that 4 of the 8 do not have the correct drivers install, I begin downloading the drivers but realise because each terminal is limited to 50kb/s a second it would take forever, we called over the tech guys and had to wait for them to work their magic. We were now running a 36 man tournament on 4 computers and the first games of the tournament had not even been played. The day plodded along at what felt like a snail’s pace and the decision to stop setting up the stream and use the 4 PCs from there was made to try and get more games played. We set up the other 4 PCs and we were back up to 8, with 4 still out of action due to sound card drivers. The games began being played at a faster pace and then the other 4 PCs that had sound issues were repaired, we began telling players to set up on the newly repaired machines only to have 2 of them die completely needing a full format; with a grand total of 10 working PCs out of the potential 20 we carried on. As Day 1 drew to an end we had all the games bar 4 from the final two groups played and it looked like we had made it through the worst of it, after starting the day at 9am I made my way home at 1am to try to prepare for the next day. Day 2 was much better, I came in late as I stayed later than the other admins the previous day and when I arrived the rest of the games from group play had been finished, the stream was being finalised and all was looking well. There is not much to say about Day 2 apart from the fact that the finals could not be streamed due to venue limitations, the main factor that caused the final day to run long was the length of games, with only the top 16 players left each game was played more cautiously and therefore lasted longer than anticipated. I believe the replays for the final games are going to be casted sometime soon and hopefully VODs will be posted. After this experience I feel it’s not worth me administrating tournaments that have components that I do not have control over so I won’t be volunteering again, I will go to events, pay my entry and buy some sponsor products to help support eSports, but when shit like this happens it’s not the faceless entities like SCAN that get the blame but rather the poor sods who volunteer their time to help run the tournament. Frequently Asked Questions. ‘Why did you leave it to the last minute to set up?’ – I personally was not involved in the setup of the gaming area but from what I have been able to gather EGL was only given access to the rooms where the games were being played the night before and had a small window of opportunity to set up. ‘Why are you shit at hosting tournaments?’ – Don’t ask me talk to EGL directly, in my personally opinion it’ because a lot of organisations in the UK treat gaming as more of a community driven entity rather than a professional sport. Hopefully with the entry of IPL into the UK market this kind of bullshit stops happening. ‘Go fuck yourself, why bother hosting a tournament if you are going to fail?’ – I guess EGL want to grab a foothold in the SC2 market as it is without a doubt the biggest eSports at the moment, it’s a shame that they don’t have the experience in hosting PC tournaments and hopefully they get better in time. Just to put this in perspective the power for the tournament had fuses that were designed for PS3 or xbox 360 consoles both of which have approximately 350w PSUs, the PSUs on some of the PCs were over 1000w and caused a few PCs to flip a breaker which caused them to turn off. Luckily this never happened in a game but its small things like this that can cause a whole lot heap of trouble. In closing, I love eSports and I do my best as a fan to try and help it in the UK but when shit like this happens how can I continue to support it. It’s like I am married to UK eSports and its continually cheating on me, how many times can I forgive it and keep taking it back. Fuck all these massive organisations hosting tournaments for multiple games, and failing miserably RO8 Top player Invitational round my house in the new year, I will put up the prize money and sort everything out myself. See you at I-Series... TL:DR Fuck Scan, See you at I-Series | ||
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Capped
United Kingdom7236 Posts
On October 31 2011 20:53 Vamp wrote: Oh and one last thing.. Capped you are a first class idiot. For pointing out that half of their issues were down to poor organisation and lack of planning? If so, i am indeed an idiot. Correct me if im wrong but the main issues were: 1) Computers did not turn up / were not working. 2) Lack of clarification in the rules / enforcement of them. So the first issue is obviously solved by having them delivered prior to the day before the event (5-7 days maybe?) and checking them all over, allowing you time to get replacements or repairs. The second..is just getting the rules written finalised and making sure your staff know them? Instead of having them struggle through not knowing shit. This is a very basic thing, no? I really do take my hat off to those staff over the weekend as in the beginning it seemed they were told diddily squat. Seriously, very simple issues removed with very basic planning. | ||
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AdrenalGBR
United Kingdom182 Posts
On October 31 2011 22:36 Sombrero wrote: ‘Why did you leave it to the last minute to set up?’ This is actually a question I probably should answer that I haven't, because there have been a lot of "you should have sorted it well in advance derpaderp" posts that don't seem to understand the PCs were ordered 3-4 weeks in advance, the company was chased up regularly and we had a window of time between 10pm on the Friday (when the Emirates located our PCs) and 10am on the Saturday in which replacement PCs could have been found. Admins were told PCs would be ready within a matter of days at several points. "Basic planning" FTW. Unfortunately as the company in question was a sponsor, you can't really turn your back on them and say "right, we're gonna go find some other PCs" a week before the event. Nice post Sombrero, you did an awesome job this weekend. <3 | ||
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Sabre
United Kingdom1086 Posts
On October 31 2011 19:59 9sDreAm wrote: I enjoy the tour very much! First LAN for me. And I have made a lots of friends there. All I was trying to do is making good games! But sorry I played bad in the last . too tired and hungry. awesome series against Tan. <3 DreAm fightinggg | ||
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ukscnazo
United Kingdom6 Posts
Adrenal providing brilliant analytical casting again. Unfortunately all the good that has come from this event has been overshadowed by the technical and planning issue. | ||
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Joeeigel
United Kingdom328 Posts
‘Why did you leave it to the last minute to set up?’ We were not even allowed into the room where SC2, GoW3, Halo and PS3 CoD were being played until 10PM on Friday night. This was one setback, but the biggest one for us was that Eremites misplaced all the PCs. They arrived at 12 noon on Friday, and Eremites had no idea where their delivery staff had put them. It was not until midnight when we finally convinced them to check CCTV that they were found. If we had gotten them at noon we would have been able to test them before hand and possibly get replacements sorted, but because of that 12 hour delay, and not being able to get into the room until very late as well, setup and testing times were greatly cut short. This is also why the stream was not running on Saturday, as the stage was nowhere near complete. ‘Why are you shit at hosting tournaments? - Feedback we got from players was pretty positive about how the event ran under the circumstances. And to reply to some comments directed at myself, I think this was part of the problem. If you declare rules, you should stick by them. I can't emphasize how amazing the staff were this weekend but I find it ridiculous that people that were over an hour and half late were not disqualified Saturday morning. Nobody was late for their group games on Saturday to my knowledge, our only cause of delay was the PC issues. | ||
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Serion
United Kingdom12 Posts
Yes, there sadly were delays. Yes, not everything went to plan but considering the massive setbacks that were had the event went pretty well considering how bad things could have gone. It's obviously disappointing when an event that you're excited about and want to see doesnt go to plan but I don't know where some of the rumours in this thread are coming from though since some things I'm seeing here are new to me. Nobody as far as I know was late for the group stages, and certainly people being late was not at all the cause of the delays to games. Being in group A and one of the first people to set up the only things that caused any delay for us was the fact that 4 of the computers had no functional sound. At no point were the group stages delayed due to someone being late. The whole dispute about the rules didn't make any sense to me either. The group in question had 3 players with the same number of wins and one player had more games won than the other players. Surely that makes sense for that player to be put through? And thats what happened. It's a shame that external circumstances have made this event less than what it should have been but as a player it was a very fun experience for me and it was great to meet everyone that I did there. Thanks to Joe and Sombrero for being awesome admins, we love you both <3 | ||
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Slyce
United Kingdom173 Posts
On October 31 2011 22:36 Sombrero wrote: TL:DR Fuck Scan, See you at I-Series Standard. | ||
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Trowa127
United Kingdom1230 Posts
Good quality, good games, would definatley watch again. The only advice I really have is that you don't need a caster like Mr Bitter to 'legitamise' the tournament. Leon and Adrenal (especially Adrenal, no offense Leon) were exceptional and had really good synergy; for once I was watching casters at a small tournament who can actually read builds. So great job on that. Also great job on getting all the best UK players together because I'm a little girl nerd for bling, deranging, lau, gomas etc. Just so nice to be able to cheer for people who you talk to in the UK channel. So yeah, good job with the stream, but if you did another event you'd really have to run it 100% smoothly otherwise it might be lights out. Final point - please stop the stupid bitter in fighting guys. Theres like what, a hundred of us who regulaly play and watch together in the UK. Lets not fuck that up. | ||
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Slyce
United Kingdom173 Posts
Anyone know where these can be found? Wanna see if there are any of my crying after Tan demolished me. Thanks | ||
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LeonStarcraft
United Kingdom173 Posts
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JoRoSaR
United Kingdom143 Posts
On November 01 2011 01:29 Slyce wrote: There was a guy kicking about taking tons of pictures. Anyone know where these can be found? Wanna see if there are any of my crying after Tan demolished me. Thanks I suspect, Slyce, that would be me. At least before the last-minute casting and packing up.I plan on updating tonight or tomorrow at the latest; my problem is that outside of SC2 casting and playing I'm a competitive chess player and am organising a huge tournament this weekend so have very limited time. I'll squeeze something out for blog and for TL tonight though! | ||
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JoRoSaR
United Kingdom143 Posts
Also note - any reference to "This post will be updated" or "Updated here" refers to the original blog post - just a disclaimer as I may not update this TL post. Original blog post is at: JoRoSaR's Dominion The Sunday was going to be a challenge for EGL4′s Starcraft II organisers. I mentioned in my previous post that ‘technical issues’ delayed play on the Saturday but not quite to what extent. In order to better understand some of the difficulties faced by the admin team and organisers, I’d like to start by outlining the challenge faced by the EGL4. On the Friday evening, sixteen computers were ordered in by EGL. Given the strict times where people had to leave the hall, there was a very limited amount of time to set up. This would not have been a problem had all the equipment been there but for some reason only eight of the sixteen computers were delivered to the SC2 tournament hall. These computers were set up anyway for a 36-player tournament on the Saturday morning, and were in-place just before the team had to leave the venue. On the Saturday morning, another problem quickly materialised. These computers were previously used in a "speed-building" event at the previous week's LIT, the London International Technology show. Contestants would race to assemble the PC from basic parts and the fastest were the ones that won prizes. This in itself is not a problem as none of the parts were physically broken from abuse - however, it transpired that the computers did not get re-tested before being sent to EGL. Therefore, of the sixteen actually delivered, only eight would boot up - down to 50% capacity before the event ever started. In addition, several minutes into the games from Group A and Group B it was quickly discovered that sound was not working on four out of the eight PCs left, so down to 25%. Finally, two more computers throughout the day died completely and I believe were completely stripped and reformatted. This means at one point there were only two computers available for use and of course this was unacceptable. Quite a bit down from the original sixteen, I'm sure you'll agree. Insert hero decision number one from the staff, who made the brave move of dismantling the stream and disappointing the viewers worldwide in favour of getting more computers to the players to run the tournament. The four computers on-stage meant for the casters and observers were brought down so that more games could be played while the other computers could be fixed. Near the end of day one, despite the fact that we should have had 20 computers running for the entire day, we had 10 working for the end of the day (and at one point in the morning we were down to 2). There was even a point in time where the possible decision to cancel the tournament was considered. Thankfully, the organisers pulled through thanks to the quick thinking to stop the stream to use the extra computers, and all but four group games were finished on the Saturday by 22.00. One of the organisers was forced to crash at his hotel early (18.00, when all the group stages were originally supposed to conclude) once double-digit PCs were working as he was on two days without sleep and exhausted because the problems that EGL faced were frankly completely unexpected and ridiculous, which is entirely understandable. As for what went on Saturday (all the good stuff) in the mean time, check out my previous blog post. Going into Day 2, the tournament was going strong as all the remaining computers had their problems fixed. The main issue now was that the entire tournament was still behind schedule because of yesterday’s issues, even taking into account the six hour ‘buffer’ of games finishing at 22.00 instead of 18.00 (that’s how big the delay was; not too surprising considering we had a quarter of the computers we wanted for a lot of the day). ![[image loading]](http://www.jorosar.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/IMG_0033.jpg) Setting up the projector for the stream on Day 2 In light of the lack of PCs I offered the previous evening to lug in my old desktop computer (for those who have seen my Equipment Locker page, I’m referring to the original C.H.L.O.E., who recently got replaced and was sitting idle in my room waiting to be sold / passed on) and was told by text at squeaky-o’clock-in-the-morning on the Sunday that it could be used as the second caster’s observing computer. I duly brought the computer in and we were thereby able to use all 10 PCs that we had the previous day as well as a new PC for casting up on stage – with C.H.L.O.E. as the backup for observing. As many followers know, the stream was up on the Sunday and things, while behind schedule, went very smoothly indeed. ![[image loading]](http://www.jorosar.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/IMG_1445.jpg) In fact, not only did this happen but I found myself with a reasonable amount of time to walk around between games since there were no longer problems we could solve flying about! In addition to taking photos I managed to sneak in a reasonable number of interviews with some great players and personalities on the EGL4 SC2 scene, including in no particular order: Michael “dignitas.Odee” O’Dell, team manager of Dignitas Javier “LndnBarcraft” Lee (London Barcraft’s sponsored player) ShiJie “4k.DreAm” Zhu Jay Smith, Co-Owner of BinaryBeast Andrew “Sombrero” Philippou (One of the head admins of the SC2 tournament) Samayan “dignitas.BlinG” Kay A massive shoutout is required here to Robin Lomax Bjerke, who I met at EGL4. He is a fellow London Barcrafter and is also an audio engineer who happened to have the correct equipment to record fantastic quality audio for the interviews! It is thanks to him that you will hear actual voices in the video as opposed to background noise and random cheering. EGL4 Interviews and Photo Diary Video above - Interviews and photo diary (direct link here) I was also privileged enough to get up into the balcony overlooking the main stage, in time to watch the closing stages of the Halo: Reach tournament where Dignitas would take the final in an EPIC encounter with Infused. The game was so intense in the final that even as an RTS gamer (okay, so I have history with Counter-Strike…) I was completely glued to the action, and the crowd were incredibly enthusiastic and cheering many of the ridiculously awesome plays we saw out of both teams. ![[image loading]](http://www.jorosar.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/IMG_1439.jpg) I was not forgetting the incredible Starcraft II games that were now progressing steadily through both halves of the winners brackets, though! After watching the epic conclusion to the Halo: Reach final I dashed back to watch incredible emotional scenes as the brackets slowly progressed. ![[image loading]](http://www.jorosar.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/IMG_1427.jpg) Team Dignitas’ TanDongHo, BlinG and R2k chilling out between games (Spoiler Alert – This paragraph only) + Show Spoiler + One of the upsets occured early on in the winner’s bracket where 4k.DreAm, who told me via interview earlier in the day that the player he fears the most by far in the tournament was Dignitas.Tan, manages to overcome his anxiety and pull out a 2-1 win, relegating TanDongHo (the clear favourite of the tournament by ladder ranking, top-10 GM in Korea means an awful lot!) to the lower bracket where he would go out in a shock loss against team Infused’s Lau later on. ![[image loading]](http://www.jorosar.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/IMG_1430.jpg) 4k.DreAm holds his hands in emotional release immediately after an epic Game 3 In the breaks while some of the preliminary lower bracket rounds were being cast by the wonderful team of Leon and Adrenal (who did a phenomenal job by the way, and were there throughout the entire tournament including during the downtime on Saturday!), some good humour shenanigan-ry was also on the cards. ![[image loading]](http://www.jorosar.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/IMG_0036.jpg) Tan…your build orders are MINE! ![[image loading]](http://www.jorosar.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/IMG_1409.jpg) “What do you mean, we shouldn’t have let JoRo borrow the pen?” (And yes, this got onto the live stream – kekeke ^^) Though we were all having a lot of fun and things were running smoothly, a lot of constructive work was obviously getting done. The casters were doing their thing, the admins were ensuring the player-flow at the computers was optimal and I was running around like a headless chicken with my camera. That is, until I unexpectedly heard the most exciting phrase I’ve ever heard from anyone at an eSports event, ever. “Can you be on stage in five minutes?” Erwut. As things transpired, LeonStarcraft’s voice needed to take a small break due to the accelerated day of cast after cast attempting to run the event back up on schedule. As the other caster at the venue (albeit as a visitor originally!) I was called up to cast alongside Adrenal for the remaining lower bracket games – with Leon coming back to cast the Grand Finals. I was ecstatic and want to thank both of the scheduled casters and EGL4 for giving me the opportunity – I only hope I did the community proud. I’m incredibly happy that the initial feedback I received from the community and those on London Barcraft’s facebook page (who unexpectedly saw me on stream and collectively went “Wut!?”) was very positive. ![[image loading]](http://www.jorosar.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/IMG_1447.jpg) As an added bonus, I was observing on C.H.L.O.E. in what would be her last hurrah as my gaming PC – a fitting tribute! I am sad to report, however, that this is where the tournament encountered its final hurdle that it sadly could not pass. If you recall at the beginning of this blog post I mentioned that one of the problems with the hall on the Friday night was that set up could only be done until 22.00. This was also the case on the Sunday of the event where we would be forcibly evicted at 22.00. These were not EGL’s rules but those of the venue at the Emirates stadium and to be fair, what was outlined in the agreement to rent the venue. This meant that the stream had to be put off-air so that the stage could be dismantled, and thus the viewership lost out on watching the Lower Bracket Finals and Grand Final. Not only this, but power and network connectivity was removed to the hall, meaning that we had no way of communicating to the outside world or updating the brackets (I tried to keep updates going via Twitter for a while but in case the games got cast later I gave no spoilers. I also posted a bit on the TeamLiquid thread). ![[image loading]](http://www.jorosar.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/IMG_0039.jpg) When they said “We need to pack up” they weren’t kidding – this was the original SC2 room just 30 minutes after the stream went offline. Thinking on their feet, the admins made their final hero decision of the evening and quickly dragged two computers to another event hall where we could try and hang out until midnight, and no later. In a room full of monitors and XBoxes, two lone PCs kept going as the Lower Bracket Finals were played to their conclusion, and the Grand Finals began at 23.15. (Spoiler Alert – Reading past this point *may* reveal implicit spoilers about who participated in the Grand Final. However, the final result will not be revealed. Scroll past the next image and the paragraph after it if you wish to keep reading this article spoiler-free) + Show Spoiler + ![[image loading]](http://www.jorosar.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/IMG_0038.jpg) The Grand Final being played in an otherwise deserted XBox gaming hall on the last two networked PCs in a race against time If you don’t want to know who won the Lower Bracket final or who is participating in the Grand Final, do NOT study the preceeding image, by the way. For those of you with sufficient nerd-knowledge to recognise both players participating in the above photograph immediately, my apologies but you were previously warned. This is where unfortunate circumstance comes in for its final call of the evening, sadly. In large part due to the lack of computers on the Sunday still (remember, 10 working is still less than the 16 originally hoped for), and also due to some incredibly long games earlier on in the Lower Bracket including an hour-long epic, at midnight the Grand Final had to be halted after five games had been played out of a possible seven (the score was 3-2, which isn’t giving anything away seeing as it’s the only score possible with five games played). Many of the venue staff had worked a 17-hour shift (not the EGL guys, the Arsenal stadium staff) on the Sunday and we were soberly informed by the duty manager that we would simply be breaking UK law by continuing to use the venue beyond midnight. It was with a heavy heart that we decided the remaining games of the final would be played online in a few days once the two finalists have had a chance to rest. There was zero choice but to apologise to the players and pack away as quickly as possible. The mood was obviously sad and especially so for the finalists who were understandably frustrated, but we huddled together and all agreed (players as well as the EGL staff; there were probably about 15 of us left) that given how ridiculously far behind we were on Saturday and were at one point considering cancelling the tournament altogether, we had done a tremendous job to get this far. It’s unfortunate that another half an hour would probably have concluded the tournament entirely but there was simply nothing we could do to prolong our stay at the venue as once again power was switched off to the ‘backup’ hall where we were trying to blitz out the final games of the evening. Given that there was nothing else we could do, the EGL crew, casters and players went back to the hotel in a minibus to reflect over pizza and drinks in the hotel lobby. A lovely scene at the hotel was where the third placed player in the tournament (no spoilers for those who don’t want it; those that know who the finalists were can work it out) was presented with his giant cheque by Nick Baker. Afterwards, more reflecting and relaxing (which was sorely required after such a stressful weekend) was the order of the evening. ![[image loading]](http://www.jorosar.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/IMG_0042.jpg) The heroes of EGL who, despite all the event’s problems, stuck around until the very last seconds to try and get the tournament finished. At this point I would like to point out that on the whole, the EPL4 Starcraft event was a success. We had some ridiculously epic games and a very tight bracket that made for incredibly close competition, as well as a tremendous team behind the scenes on top of Adrenal and Leon who raced through Sunday to power through as many games as possible. The players themselves were supremely patient with the organisers as they jumped what seemed like a million hurdles and the staff hauled arse to ensure as many games as possible were played. Of course, it must be acknowledged that failures did occur and need to be improved on for the next event. It’s unfortunate that most of the problems stemmed from a basic lack of computers (ignoring the quality problems of having them built at speed in a competition and then left unchecked) but these issues can be fixed, especially if an agreement with a venue is reached for EGL5 where the admins are given a bit more time to initially set up beforehand. The players had to wait a long time between games and as we know the tournament was not even fully finished on the night (but came oh so close). ![[image loading]](http://www.jorosar.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/IMG_1438.jpg) Personally, I believe it’s of paramount importance to note that every single person involved in the event gave a 110% effort to trying to make it more successful, and it was truly unfortunate that not all the problems could be overcome by the end of play on Sunday. The event could have simply been cancelled on the Saturday, People could have gone home sooner on the Sunday, The final two series didn’t have to be moved to the next hall (especially since it wasn’t on-stream anymore)… But no – all possible stops were pulled in a gargantuan effort to get as much done as possible. The EGL team, organisers, referees and casters deserve nothing but our highest praise. The vast majority of the problems encountered by them on the weekend were not their fault – but still they fought through and ended up giving the participants the best experience they could muster. As far as I am concerned, despite all the problems I can’t wait for the next one if the same passionate, hard working and enthusiastic people are involved. Finally, the real reason for no result spoilers – thanks to C.H.L.O.E. being used as an observing computer and also a quiet word to the players before the ‘missed’ games (LB Final and Grand Final), I am actually in personal possession of all the replays that were played at EGL4 over the weekend (although I need to plug in and extract them from the depths of the computer). I intend on creating a replay pack (but won’t release it without EGL’s consent) and to try and make a little something up to the non-attending community, I hope that I can arrange for the games that weren’t cast live on air to be re-cast at some point within the next week. These may also possibly include the final one/two games that weren’t played at the venue on the night. I do ask that you bear with us on this, and I promise to update this blog post when I find out if the games are being cast, and if so also with a date and time. Thank you all for making the weekend what it was – things didn’t go flawlessly by a long way, but the people involved and the concentration of passion in the SC2 hall were second to none and I can only hope that all events have people like this involved in the future. (A footnote / disclaimer: I am not officially associated with EGL4 / organisation of the event nor was I brought in for any specific purpose; I was originally a spectator and I volunteered to help out where I could. This blog post should be considered solely my opinion. I apologise in advance if this blog post contains any factual errors and will correct them if notified. I’ve done my best to be 100% accurate and honest throughout) | ||
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LeonStarcraft
United Kingdom173 Posts
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