So as you may have guessed, I went to the ESWC 2011 this week end, on Sunday 23th Octobre only for the Semi-finals and finals. I went there especially to see MarineKing, MC and Stephano, so I was quite excited about it! But it turned that it wasn't as great as I expected it to be.
I arrived arround 10:00am and the match MKP vs Stephano was starting at 10:30am. To tell you the truth when I saw MKP and Stephano coming on stage for real I felt so happy, excited and weird at the same time! That was the best moment for me! So I was part of the few (well we were many but less than those cheering for Stephano ) who were cheering for MKP even though I wanted to cheer for Stephano aswell (haha being a fan is sooo hard XD), the French casters Pomf&Thud said that MKP was the favourite but they got it all wrong haha. -.-
Yeah so the match was great, it was on the main stage and was casted by the French casters Pomf&Thud (who I don't really like, I shall explain why later on xD) but I was sooooooo upset that MKP lose that ezpzly to Stephano!!! I expected to see some epic matches!!! But I also felt that a BO3 for the semi-finals wasn't apropriate for such a small competition, by small I mean that there wasn't many players competiting compared to MLG or IPL.
The other semi finals (Grubby vs MaNa) was held kinda like on a "backstage" scene and wasn't even casted, and we didn't even know that it was happening lol. ESWC had kinda crappy organisation. Not all the matches were casted (even though there was only 4 matches!!) and we had to wait 5hours (without any sc2 thingy related) for the finals, inside the Hall otherwise if we were going out we had to pay again to go inside :/ But at least there were loads of other video gaming stands to visit but I came especially for SC2 so... !
After eating some really expensive -and not good xD- food (Paris hell yeah xD) I found out that there was a "backstage" scene and there I saw MC and MKP on their computers training or whatever :D
Then MKP had to play the "small finals" against Grubby, too bad it wasn't casted and that we had to sit on the floor to watch it on a little screen! :x The games were interesting but both players looked so exhausted.. like there weren't playing at their best. Then MKP had to go and I didn't have a chance to get his signature!!! Which was the most frustrating part of this XD!
Right after that, I went back to the main stage to watch the finals (Stephano vs Mana), Stephano was like almost completly dominating MaNa.. And the French casters were only talking about Stephano which was pretty annoying!! I know he's French but no need to make a big deal about it.. I'm so used to Tastosis' high quality casts that it was a bit anoying for me to listen to French casts, even though I am xD!!
When the match was over, they gave the cheques to the 3rd first players and played "La Marseillaise" the French National Anthem, which was kinda embarassing XD! While some hot chicks were waving the Korean, French and Polish flags.. haha.
Overall, I was really happy to go to ESWC Paris to see 3 of my favourite players for real ^^ But I think that the French have a LOT to learn from the people organising MLG.. MLG looks so awesome if you go there for real and it's awesome to watch it live, their website is really well made and their streams are perfect, I really LOVE LOVE LOVE MLG, if I could go there I definitely would!!!! But the ESWC coverage was crappy (sorry t.t) for a World Cup it wasn't THAT epic. I am a bit upset about it! If only I could give them advises and help I would! Hahaha.. I know that it's not easy at all to organise such a big tourney and it's sooo easy to critisize, but I would really like to see France have such big SC2 tournaments like in the US
Well I hope you've "enjoyed" reading my day at ESWC.
See you!!!