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On April 24 2012 09:10 ninjamyst wrote:
No one is going to remember DRG winning MLG Spring Arena, but many people will remember Thorzain for winning Dreamhack.
That's a damn shame, because what DRG did was harder than winning Dreamhack.
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MLG was kind of a joke, it took 3 days to decide a winner of a 8 man event. Why? These players would have been better off going to DH and playing for some real money. MLG needs to stop scheduling events the same weekend as other big events its not helping esports or the players.
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On April 24 2012 09:10 ninjamyst wrote:
No one is going to remember DRG winning MLG Spring Arena, but many people will remember Thorzain for winning Dreamhack.
Or maybe its because Thorzain isnt Korean...
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I have to disagree with this OP. This was a tiny 8 man event that was dragged out 3 days to justify people paying 10 dollars for. In addition, the OP claims no one was disappointed. I've heard more negative feedback than positive. I've was quite disappointed myself in MLG. Not in the format. Not because it was only 8 people. Before I lay it down, please keep in mind that i paid for winter arena and that i also paid for this one as well. Winter Arena was plagued with many issues when trying to view it. Having to constantly refresh and log in, screens going black, it was a serious inconvenience to paying customers trying to watch this event hassle free. I decided you know what, this is their first ppv event I'll show them a little grace since this is the first time they've had a pay wall. I was so sure they would work through these issues to perfect the deliverance of this event over the internet for the next. I made the purchase for Spring Arena.
BOY WAS I WRONG!.
Not only did they not fix the existing issues, but they got worse! No matter which browser i used(IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari), the audio would cut out every 30 seconds. There was constant refresh issues. Constant log in problems. At times, the audio wasn't even synced properly(up to 1 minute delay in audio from video which is completely unacceptable). I tested all other streaming services I used as well. No problems on my end. What a disappointment 
I've decided to stop supporting MLG completely. They can't seem to deliver a clean watchable product, and yet these guys are supposed to be considered professional. Completely amateur in my eyes.
MLG's response to this? A refund and a possible discount on the next event. I Loled hard when their admin said this to me. It baffles me that they would offer me a discount thinking I would want to continue to hand money to them for a sub-par product. They wasted my time and money = disappointment.
Perhaps the Reviewer should have included all the issues in the review instead of spreading misinformation. Perhaps this is just a review to PROMOTE MLG? I'm not so sure. One thing I do know, I will no longer be supporting MLG.
Edit: Since the OP shared a review of this event, I felt it was only fair to share mine. Cheers!
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On April 24 2012 09:10 ninjamyst wrote:
MLG Arena is not a real tourament. It's just 8 players messing around for a small amount of money. There's no glory, no sense of accomplishment in winning MLG Arena. No one is going to remember DRG winning MLG Spring Arena, but many people will remember Thorzain for winning Dreamhack. If MLG didn't pay for everyone's expenses, no one would show up.
Sure there is. Not to mention....*whispers* they're fighting for seeds into the pools for the "real" tournament at Anaheim (which is projected to be HUGE) in addition to the small amount of money (5k is nothing to scoff at for first imo). With a pool seed they're more likely to win and get more stage time and more glory. So yeah...I'd call it a real tournament with meaning.
Also, ofc people are going to remember Thorzain winning. Foreigners winning major tournaments is getting very scarce these days. 90% of the rest of the tournament was pretty forgettable.
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There aren't very many esports articles that I dislike, but this is one of them. It seemed to me that the author was much more focused on scolding the community and glorifying Sundance, instead of actually reviewing Spring Arena. 3 out of 10 paragraphs were actually about the event. 7/10 paragraphs were incredibly biased opinion that had nothing to do with Spring Arena.
Even that wouldn't be so bad if the article didn't come across as sooooo incredibly preach-y. If you must review something with incredible bias, then please just admit it at the very beginning of the article. That way I won't waste my time reading it, and you won't get a negative response like the one I'm writing right now
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On April 24 2012 12:02 FrostedMiniWheats wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2012 09:10 ninjamyst wrote:
MLG Arena is not a real tourament. It's just 8 players messing around for a small amount of money. There's no glory, no sense of accomplishment in winning MLG Arena. No one is going to remember DRG winning MLG Spring Arena, but many people will remember Thorzain for winning Dreamhack. If MLG didn't pay for everyone's expenses, no one would show up. Sure there is. Not to mention....*whispers* they're fighting for seeds into the pools for the "real" tournament at Anaheim (which is projected to be HUGE) in addition to the small amount of money (5k is nothing to scoff at for first imo). With a pool seed they're more likely to win and get more stage time and more glory. So yeah...I'd call it a real tournament with meaning.
sooo...it's a qualifier...a PPV qualifier for the free main event...lol
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Personally I skipped Dreamhack and watched MLG Arena and it was totally worth it. For those saying that the Arena doesn't matter, it is for seeding for MLG Anaheim which is pretty damn important 
Also, MLG Arena had the top players, so automatically more interesting in my book.
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My thoughts, having watched MLG Spring Arena 1...
Pros:
- Fantastic player list. There were only 8 players, but they were all high-quality pros and every match had the potential to be interesting
- The round-robin format meant we got to see a full set of games out of every player. Being a foreigner and a Protoss player, I enjoy watching Huk play. The round-robin format meant that I got to watch each of Huk's games (21 games all up) in the round robin, whereas he would have been eliminated after just two matches in a standard double-elim format.
- The 2v2s were great. Cheesy, bad mannered, and hilarious.
- Good to high quality casters on all streams. I think having two streams with good casters is better than having four streams with mediocre casters.
- Adebisi did a great jobs with observing. Was constantly pointing out things with the camera, was always at the right places on the minimap, pointing out things like vision. It was top notch.
- True POV player cams for *every* match. (In Winter Arena 1 it was an observer set to the same player cam, but this time it showed the player's mouse, selections, etc)
- Matches generally ran on time, very little downtime. Having the round robin games as three games every time (rather than a best of three) meant that almost every match went for a full hour. Only the PVP matches ended up being shorter and having 30 minutes or so downtime before the next scheduled match
- Fantastic use of analysts, particular on Day 2 and 3. After each match on the main stream the casters passed over to Sheth, qxc and Axslav for comments. Their knowledge about why certain things worked or didn't work were a lot more in depth than the type of stuff you get from most casters.
- For me, perfect streaming at 720p. Crisp image, no audio problems. (My net connection isn't fast enough for 1080p, so I won't comment on that)
- Fast uploading of VODs, including the player cam VODs
Cons:
- A lot of people were having problems accessing the stream from the MLG website. The fix for most people was to sign out and into twitch.tv again, but it was something that came up constantly in the chat. MLG/Twitch need to sort this out between themselves to prevent it happening next tournament.
- The player POV streams did not have any sound. Also with MLG's player, you couldn't have the sound of the casters playing while watching the POV stream in fullscreen without opening up a second window.
- There was sometimes a small delay between the main stream with the casting and the player POV cams. Meant sometimes they were playing ahead of what was being cast.
- There were some mediocre matches, particularly on Day 1. Jetlag involved? The Parting vs MKP games (which there was a big hype for the rematch after GSTL) were in particular short and disappointing.
- On Day 1, they sometimes passed to people like Tasteless or Rob for analysis after the games. This is something that works fantastic with people like Sheth, qxc and Axslav, and not so fantastic with non-pro players. Tasteless and Rob in this situation basically just said 'wow, that was an exciting game' and then asked questions to the actual pro-player sitting next to them. There was less of this on Day 2 and 3, fortunately.
- The secondary gameplay stream had a crappy webcam for the casters. Looked really unprofessional compared to the main stream.
- Because the round robin system is ranked by overall matches > H2H matches > H2H games > overall games, it meant that tiebreakers were very common but took sitting down and calculating to figure out. The score screens showed the overall match rankings, but there were times with 1 clear winner (MKP), 1 clear loser (Huk) and everyone else tied, with no indication of their standing in the tie because no one had figured it out yet. Even after the final match there was about 20 minutes of downtime while they confirmed who won the tie between Heart, DRG and Parting. I had an Excel sheet to figure out the H2H tiebreakers and was using that to maintain the Liquipedia article after each match, so I don't see why they couldn't have been doing the same and updating their score screen.
- There were times when they were using Liquipedia as the source of their rankings (e.g. 'we've just found out that Parting is actually in fourth place, thanks to the people at Liquipedia'). But due to the unintuitive nature of the tiebreakers and the fact that anyone can edit Liquipedia, there were times when people changed something in a way that was actually incorrect, it was taken as a fact, and then the casters repeated on stream. There was a time when someone had marked Parting as eliminated on the article, and shortly afterwards they said on stream 'We can confirm that Parting has been eliminated' when this was actually false -- if Ganzi had lost his final game then it would have been four-way tiebreaker between Ganzi, Heart, DRG and Parting with Parting advancing, whereas if Ganzi had won then it would have been a three-way tiebreaker between Heart, DRG and Parting with Parting losing. And then of course people would hear on stream that "Parting has been eliminated", and they would then go over to the Liquipedia article and change it back to match what they'd heard after we'd already fixed it. If MLG had been figuring this stuff out for themselves as they went they would have known it came down to the final game, and if the casters knew that then Ganzi's final game (the last of the round robin) would have had a lot more tension and excitement.
- Lacklustre atmosphere at the end. I understand why they want a small tournament with no crowd for these, but there wasn't as much emotion when DRG won compared to a major MLG championship or other tournament. And then the broadcast just kind of... stopped. :-/
- Lack of enthusiasm elsewhere. Usually there are heaps of people to chat to about the tournament and stuff, but a lot of people I know weren't watching it because of the price factor and the fact that DreamHack was on the same weekend. Personally I think it was well worth the value (hell, the $10 admission fee for the 3 days was cheaper than the $12 takeout I had on the Saturday night when I was watching it), but the lack of community aspect meant something felt missing.
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Dreamhack wasn't actually that good. The level of competition was pretty damn disappointing, especially when you realize how fucking stacked the Spring Arena 1 was.
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On April 24 2012 11:37 ReachTheSky wrote:MLG's response to this? A refund and a possible discount on the next event. I Loled hard when their admin said this to me. It baffles me that they would offer me a discount thinking I would want to continue to hand money to them for a sub-par product. They wasted my time and money = disappointment.
I understand that you're mad and hate MLG and blah blah, but I hardly consider a refund of your money to be 'laughable'.. and then you complain that you wasted money?
Just say you hate MLG and be done with it. I see that they at least tried to compensate you for your troubles, and you won't even give them credit for that.
---
On topic: The 'review' in the OP is definitely biased. 
This MLG arena was worth $10 to me, even though it wasn't the most spectacular tournament I've ever seen. But not every tournament has to be that.
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On April 24 2012 13:53 hacky wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2012 11:37 ReachTheSky wrote:MLG's response to this? A refund and a possible discount on the next event. I Loled hard when their admin said this to me. It baffles me that they would offer me a discount thinking I would want to continue to hand money to them for a sub-par product. They wasted my time and money = disappointment. I understand that you're mad and hate MLG and blah blah, but I hardly consider a refund of your money to be 'laughable'.. and then you complain that you wasted money?
He even explains it in the sentence you quoted.. At least pretend to read. Or if you try to flame someone, at least dont quote the parts of the sentence, that would make your statement look stupid.
Let me help you. Not the refund is laughable. Its whats NEXT to the refund. And i actually think its funny as well.
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On April 24 2012 13:27 Tntnnbltn wrote:+ Show Spoiler +My thoughts, having watched MLG Spring Arena 1... Pros:- Fantastic player list. There were only 8 players, but they were all high-quality pros and every match had the potential to be interesting
- The round-robin format meant we got to see a full set of games out of every player. Being a foreigner and a Protoss player, I enjoy watching Huk play. The round-robin format meant that I got to watch each of Huk's games (21 games all up) in the round robin, whereas he would have been eliminated after just two matches in a standard double-elim format.
- The 2v2s were great. Cheesy, bad mannered, and hilarious.
- Good to high quality casters on all streams. I think having two streams with good casters is better than having four streams with mediocre casters.
- Adebisi did a great jobs with observing. Was constantly pointing out things with the camera, was always at the right places on the minimap, pointing out things like vision. It was top notch.
- True POV player cams for *every* match. (In Winter Arena 1 it was an observer set to the same player cam, but this time it showed the player's mouse, selections, etc)
- Matches generally ran on time, very little downtime. Having the round robin games as three games every time (rather than a best of three) meant that almost every match went for a full hour. Only the PVP matches ended up being shorter and having 30 minutes or so downtime before the next scheduled match
- Fantastic use of analysts, particular on Day 2 and 3. After each match on the main stream the casters passed over to Sheth, qxc and Axslav for comments. Their knowledge about why certain things worked or didn't work were a lot more in depth than the type of stuff you get from most casters.
- For me, perfect streaming at 720p. Crisp image, no audio problems. (My net connection isn't fast enough for 1080p, so I won't comment on that)
- Fast uploading of VODs, including the player cam VODs
Cons:- A lot of people were having problems accessing the stream from the MLG website. The fix for most people was to sign out and into twitch.tv again, but it was something that came up constantly in the chat. MLG/Twitch need to sort this out between themselves to prevent it happening next tournament.
- The player POV streams did not have any sound. Also with MLG's player, you couldn't have the sound of the casters playing while watching the POV stream in fullscreen without opening up a second window.
- There was sometimes a small delay between the main stream with the casting and the player POV cams. Meant sometimes they were playing ahead of what was being cast.
- There were some mediocre matches, particularly on Day 1. Jetlag involved? The Parting vs MKP games (which there was a big hype for the rematch after GSTL) were in particular short and disappointing.
- On Day 1, they sometimes passed to people like Tasteless or Rob for analysis after the games. This is something that works fantastic with people like Sheth, qxc and Axslav, and not so fantastic with non-pro players. Tasteless and Rob in this situation basically just said 'wow, that was an exciting game' and then asked questions to the actual pro-player sitting next to them. There was less of this on Day 2 and 3, fortunately.
- The secondary gameplay stream had a crappy webcam for the casters. Looked really unprofessional compared to the main stream.
- Because the round robin system is ranked by overall matches > H2H matches > H2H games > overall games, it meant that tiebreakers were very common but took sitting down and calculating to figure out. The score screens showed the overall match rankings, but there were times with 1 clear winner (MKP), 1 clear loser (Huk) and everyone else tied, with no indication of their standing in the tie because no one had figured it out yet. Even after the final match there was about 20 minutes of downtime while they confirmed who won the tie between Heart, DRG and Parting. I had an Excel sheet to figure out the H2H tiebreakers and was using that to maintain the Liquipedia article after each match, so I don't see why they couldn't have been doing the same and updating their score screen.
- There were times when they were using Liquipedia as the source of their rankings (e.g. 'we've just found out that Parting is actually in fourth place, thanks to the people at Liquipedia'). But due to the unintuitive nature of the tiebreakers and the fact that anyone can edit Liquipedia, there were times when people changed something in a way that was actually incorrect, it was taken as a fact, and then the casters repeated on stream. There was a time when someone had marked Parting as eliminated on the article, and shortly afterwards they said on stream 'We can confirm that Parting has been eliminated' when this was actually false -- if Ganzi had lost his final game then it would have been four-way tiebreaker between Ganzi, Heart, DRG and Parting with Parting advancing, whereas if Ganzi had won then it would have been a three-way tiebreaker between Heart, DRG and Parting with Parting losing. And then of course people would hear on stream that "Parting has been eliminated", and they would then go over to the Liquipedia article and change it back to match what they'd heard after we'd already fixed it. If MLG had been figuring this stuff out for themselves as they went they would have known it came down to the final game, and if the casters knew that then Ganzi's final game (the last of the round robin) would have had a lot more tension and excitement.
- Lacklustre atmosphere at the end. I understand why they want a small tournament with no crowd for these, but there wasn't as much emotion when DRG won compared to a major MLG championship or other tournament. And then the broadcast just kind of... stopped. :-/
- Lack of enthusiasm elsewhere. Usually there are heaps of people to chat to about the tournament and stuff, but a lot of people I know weren't watching it because of the price factor and the fact that DreamHack was on the same weekend.
Personally I think it was well worth the value (hell, the $10 admission fee for the 3 days was cheaper than the $12 takeout I had on the Saturday night when I was watching it), but the lack of community aspect meant something felt missing
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Amazing feedback, I hit enter on what I thought were your closing remarks. Did you forward this to MLG? I am sure they would love to read this(no jokes this was well done feedback).
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On April 24 2012 11:18 Jojo131 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2012 09:10 ninjamyst wrote:
No one is going to remember DRG winning MLG Spring Arena, but many people will remember Thorzain for winning Dreamhack. Or maybe its because Thorzain isnt Korean...
Can you imagine if Polt had won Dreamhack and Genius had gotten second place? It would be forgotten in a day. People only care about foreigners and this is just more of the same. Foreigner does well - EZ money for the event organizer. Fans are so predictable its sickening.
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On April 24 2012 14:55 zefreak wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2012 11:18 Jojo131 wrote:On April 24 2012 09:10 ninjamyst wrote:
No one is going to remember DRG winning MLG Spring Arena, but many people will remember Thorzain for winning Dreamhack. Or maybe its because Thorzain isnt Korean... Can you imagine if Polt had won Dreamhack and Genius had gotten second place? It would be forgotten in a day. People only care about foreigners and this is just more of the same. Foreigner does well - EZ money for the event organizer. Fans are so predictable its sickening.
If you'd prefer, fans who like storylines can not watch any E-Sports. People like all sorts of different aspects of E-Sports - Liquid'Nony has made a series of good posts today around this idea. It's not any of our places to chide / deride / insult others for enjoying certain parts that we do not. I'm sorry you are "sickened" that people have disparate tastes.
On topic for MLG - FPView was very nice. I agree with the abrupt ending of the broadcast which was unfortunate.
On extra topic, this article was not readable for me after a few paragraphs for the many reasons highlighted in this thread. A review and a historical overlook are two different fields that should be separated.
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I have a hard time paying the 10 dollars for MLG arena when its on the same weekend as another major event that is free.
I feel like MLG needs to schedule their stuff a little better so it stops overlapping on major events. Winter Arena was during Dreamhack as well I believe.
That aside, just from the preview, it seems like it is well worth it, but it can't overlap on other major events =\
VODs get reposted for free too, so unless I just need to watch it right then and now, I can easily wait, SC2 tournaments aren't all that high on my "must have now" list.
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On April 24 2012 13:59 m4inbrain wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2012 13:53 hacky wrote:On April 24 2012 11:37 ReachTheSky wrote:MLG's response to this? A refund and a possible discount on the next event. I Loled hard when their admin said this to me. It baffles me that they would offer me a discount thinking I would want to continue to hand money to them for a sub-par product. They wasted my time and money = disappointment. I understand that you're mad and hate MLG and blah blah, but I hardly consider a refund of your money to be 'laughable'.. and then you complain that you wasted money? He even explains it in the sentence you quoted.. At least pretend to read. Or if you try to flame someone, at least dont quote the parts of the sentence, that would make your statement look stupid. Let me help you. Not the refund is laughable. Its whats NEXT to the refund. And i actually think its funny as well.
You think I didn't read the response well enough to get his point? The response degenerated into simple flaming over technical difficulties. He even admits it with an edit:
On April 24 2012 11:37 ReachTheSky wrote:
Edit: Since the OP shared a review of this event, I felt it was only fair to share mine. Cheers!
I disagree that the discount is funny. Though he has no intention of taking the discount, it's still something in an attempt to make up for lost time, and you are both making light of that. If he was offered a free Arena 2 instead of a discount, would he still be laughing at the MLG admin?
Customer support is never easy, and sometimes, the customer has completely unreasonable expectations on what would make up for a subpar experience. Couple that with the "vocal minority" anti-MLG opinion, and you have people that sound like they are mindlessly flaming.
Let me make this clear--I did have minor problems with the MLG stream as well, and it wasn't perfect. I still feel like it was worth the money to me.
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On April 24 2012 15:33 hacky wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2012 13:59 m4inbrain wrote:On April 24 2012 13:53 hacky wrote:On April 24 2012 11:37 ReachTheSky wrote:MLG's response to this? A refund and a possible discount on the next event. I Loled hard when their admin said this to me. It baffles me that they would offer me a discount thinking I would want to continue to hand money to them for a sub-par product. They wasted my time and money = disappointment. I understand that you're mad and hate MLG and blah blah, but I hardly consider a refund of your money to be 'laughable'.. and then you complain that you wasted money? He even explains it in the sentence you quoted.. At least pretend to read. Or if you try to flame someone, at least dont quote the parts of the sentence, that would make your statement look stupid. Let me help you. Not the refund is laughable. Its whats NEXT to the refund. And i actually think its funny as well. You think I didn't read the response well enough to get his point? The response degenerated into simple flaming over technical difficulties. He even admits it with an edit: Show nested quote +On April 24 2012 11:37 ReachTheSky wrote:
Edit: Since the OP shared a review of this event, I felt it was only fair to share mine. Cheers! I disagree that the discount is funny. Though he has no intention of taking the discount, it's still something in an attempt to make up for lost time, and you are both making light of that. If he was offered a free Arena 2 instead of a discount, would he still be laughing at the MLG admin? Customer support is never easy, and sometimes, the customer has completely unreasonable expectations on what would make up for a subpar experience. Couple that with the "vocal minority" anti-MLG opinion, and you have people that sound like they are mindlessly flaming. Let me make this clear--I did have minor problems with the MLG stream as well, and it wasn't perfect. I still feel like it was worth the money to me.
The discount is laughable because of my experience. Two purchases in a row. To offer this thinking i would come back after my experiences, for me, is quite laughable. There is a fine line in customer loyalty. I do know what its like to work in customer service since I've managed a food establishment for years. Their offer was laughable. If i was in their shoes, i would have offered the next one for free, like you suggested. That would have been the best way of saying sorry we have disappointed you twice. Its all good though. I won't be supporting them again until I see a track of events where there aren't a ton of issues like the ones in my review. I was always for MLG. Hell, I have gone to a live event once and subscribed twice. Do I hate MLG now? No. Do I think they have a ton of room for improvement in customer service and their product? They certainly do.
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How to create a successful tournament -
Atmosphere created by audience and casters
Player quality
Match quality
(Optional) - Crowd favourite/underdog winning the entire thing
DH > MLG for this one because of atmosphere. Yes, DRG coming back and showing emotions is a great story, but if there's no chanting, no support, no atmosphere, it's just like winning a ladder game online while streaming (albeit a very important ladder game)
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A bone to pick with those of you, aside from the competitors themselves, that give MLG shit about the "extended series" format. Guess what? You're not entitled to watch the stream. If you don't like the format, watch DreamHack, a players' stream, or go ladder or something. I couldn't care less what a group of people think about the format of the tournament and I see no reason why MLG has gotten so much trash talk over it.
Honestly, people, be thankful for what you all get out of e-sports and SUPPORT the damn organizations that are trying to make it entertaining to watch, don't bad-mouth them for something that annoys you a tad
Is the guy that wrote this really that retarded? I am not entitled to watch the stream that I PAYED FOR? Dreamhack could say "fuck off" to anyone who complains because IT'S FREE. MLG has to listen to the customers.
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EPT
