UKTerrorist
What began as means of killing time has grown to well, not much more than that really. No matter, the diary, is back in all of its boredom relieving goodness.
Every time I attend an event the experience never quite strikes me like it should. I can never really grasp the fact that "hey I'm in Dallas" or "hey I'm in Vegas" "hey I'm in Korea" etc. For some reason I just seem to fumble my way through. Anyway, before I begin let me take the time to thank AMD and PCGamer for their considerable contributions to me being here this week, please can some of you reading this buy AMD processors to make it worthwhile!
Unfortunately, my persistence in approaching my current work much akin to my previous schoolwork led to a last night full of frustration, headaches and eye-straining goodness. I finally got to sleep at 1:00am before getting up at 4:00am to pack/finish work and get to the airport in good time for my flight. Arrived at Gatwick at 7:20am, met the TAG.UT team straight away (CS team flying from Stockholm) and was fortunate enough to get upgraded to 'World Traveller Plus' (bigger seats, more leg room and the opportunity to turn our noses up at all the cattle packed into economy). Our flight left at 10:20am.
Sadly I have no humorous on-board incidents to report this time, it was your run-of-the-mill 10hr flight watching the movies (Man on Fire, Hildago, Laws of Attraction) and eating the food (plastic beef). We landed in Dallas at 2:30pm local time and were forced to wait in line at immigration for 20 minutes.
Here's a tip for those of you likely to attend a CPL in the future. When they ask you at immigration what the purpose of your trip is, do not, and I repeat DO NOT, reply "gaming tournament". Whilst chips/fries jam/jelly can confuse the UK traveller enough, gaming in America translates to "gambling". I was taken to a secure office behind for roughly 20 minutes for reasons of "further questioning". Several photographs, finger prints, signatures and questions later I was set loose upon this fine country. We collected our luggage and arrived at the motel about 30 minutes later.
The motel (Super 8 motel) was much better than we thought it would be, free breakfast, swimming pool and shuttle to/from pretty much wherever we wanted (including the Gaylord Texan Resort). The CS team arrived about 3 hours after us. I decided to use these 3 hours to assimilate myself into the American culture. Two doughnuts and a baseball game later, I had Americanised myself enough.
Although registration begins on Wednesday it was important to arrive on Monday to overcome jetlag. Most players had remained away for their whole flight and struggled through to 24hrs+ of no sleep. Swimming, watching TV, all parts of a great purpose to avoid the shuteye. I ate with the TAG.UT side at the SteakHouse (ridiculously American), a handful of babyback ribs and chicken breasts later we were ready to sleep.
For future reference, if you travel to America and set your alarm clock to wake you up at 8:00am, please also change the clock on your phone to match the local time, it prevents much anger at 2:00am in the morning. Aside from that disturbance I constantly drifted in and out of sleep before finally getting up at 8:30am for breakfast. Most of the players joined me, aside from Duck and ZaG who "were hyper on snufs (snufs?, Snuffz?)" until the early hours of the morning. *strong form of tobacco, and yes it is legal*.
I went down to the Gaylord (name of hotel where the event is being held, get over it!) Texan Resort at 10:00am to check in on the TAG.CoD team staying there. The Gaylord is a newly constructed $515 million construction complete with 15,000 rooms, indoor/outdoors swimming pools, sports bar, normal bar, gym, enclosed 'park area' etc. etc. This building is impressive.
Obviously intended for the well-healed amongst us, this week the suits are a minority, slinking into corners aghast at the horrifying site of the eSports generation trespassing upon their turf. I was surprised by the number of players wondering around, considering the event doesn't begin for another 2 days (just for registration). SK, Team64, 4K, Geordie (clearly a separate entity), CSNation journalists, GotFrag Journalists etc. After meeting up with the CoD team I tagged along to one of the Intel tour groups as a spokeswoman explained the purpose of the event and Intel's benefit from sponsoring it. It was a fascinating tour, through much of the venue, until someone (obviously noting my age/lack of suit/non-eye catching manner) asked which group I was with. "Team AMD Gamer", I was quickly asked and escorted back to public areas.
After seeing a small section of what the CPL has planned for us I feel confident to say that Angel Munoz's jigsaw is finally starting to take shape. The pieces have been accumulated and correctly positioned over the years. First came the concept (playing games for money), then the sponsors (Intel, Nvidia etc), then the evolution/professionalisation of the community (us) and now a $515m venue complete with extensive convention facilities. Yes the picture is taking shape, and it's one of a huge CPL logo.
On an extra note credit goes to the sports bar with the largest projector screen I've ever seen and these fantastic swivel/recliner chairs. Pity it shows paintball games though. Anyway came back at about 2:00pm, went swimming, relaxed, read and wrote a diary. Now going swimming again, peace out! :x
Tournament registration day. Most of us had a fairly good idea that today would be hectic, aggravating, frustrating, tiring and generally bad. Sadly my 4 hours of sleep (woke up at 3:10am) did little to help matters. Anyway we left the Super8 motel at 10:30am and arrived at the Gaylord (HAHA) shortly after.
The registration for this event was the worst I've ever seen with some people waiting up to 4 hours to get in. After spending a few hours in the sports bar (not drinking) we came back to find the queue was still pretty much the same. So in a precise tactical manoeuvre we slipped in behind the Intel poster (at least Intel are useful for something eh? :p) and managed to get fairly close to the front of the line. Thankfully Angel then spotted me and invited me through for a chat, and then let all of TAG through, he really is a nice guy. Angel gave me the tour for a few minutes, he's so enthusiastic about everything he does and loves the press, rare qualities.
The venue was impressive with a huge two-sided stage, considerably sponsor areas (hitchahi "booth" is huge). This venue is what CXG could/should have been. The byoc area is several times the size of previous events and unlike CXG is nearing full capacity. Several of the top teams have brought their shuttles to the byoc, Team3D, SK, mibr, g3x etc.
An opening announcement was given by Angel and Intel on the main stage at 5:00pm, at which a long list of Intel-associated activities were announced. A lot of these seemed quite fun, e.g. midnight screening of The Village the day before it's released in the USA.
At around this time we received our first dose of Texan weather, not the scorching white heat but the torrential rain. Although the venue was impressive and several times the Hyatt's facilities it was still somewhat dull after a few hours. The CPL is definitely on the road to realising it's dream, but it's still got a long journey to make.
The CAL I game was quite entertaining but the lack of any HLTV or the big screen resulted in a hundred or so people lined up against the tournament enclosure trying to catch a glimpse of the players' screens. In the end Rival defeated zEx to win the CyberAthelete Amateur League and various sponsorship prizes.
Duck, NIRee and ZaG went back to the hotel early to get NIRee's hair cut(?). I left at around 7:00pm, gradually losing my battle to stay awake. The road back to our motel was a little unnerving to say the least. Several roads were partially flooded and the rain was still coming down as hard as ever. I went to sleep at about 7:20pm.
The time is current 4:30am, the thunderstorms outside are the worst I've seen in a long time. We are officially on a *flash flood warning* and the Dallas Fort Worth Airport closed last night.
I have decided that the weather channel are not the most optimistic of people. Rather than focusing on the positive points e.g. "There will no hurricanes or tornados" they have decided to show some footage of various blocked off roads and floods. I'm not sure we will be able to get to the Gaylord Resort today, if several of those roads were partially flooded yesterday they must be submerged by today.
It has been raining for nearly 18 hours, there are currently no signs of it stopping anytime soon. I'm not sure what to do if we can't get to the venue, hopefully we can phone them and they'll be ok with delaying the games for a while. I imagine a lot of other players and teams will be cut off as well, so we should be ok. We are opposite the Holiday Inn Express in the Grapevine, which is a CPL recommended hotel, so I doubt they'll disqualify players that can't make it there.
Anyway I remain on constant guard downstairs ensuring any players trying to sneak down to use the Internet go back to sleep, insomnia must be much more contagious than doctors lead us to believe.
Yesterday the seeds were announced, 4K.cs received a good seed at no.8 as did TAG.cs at 32nd, a seed which would witness them play only one game in the prelims before taking on GateKeepers of Denmark. In other games the Call of Duty seeds are a joke and pathetically USA-biased. 4K were given 6th seed whilst TAG (despite beating 4K) are seeded 15th. In UT2004 TAG were seeded 8th, which works out quite well for them.
Anyway, I best be off and get some breakfast, I'll update probably around the same time tomorrow morning, or night, or afternoon, or whatever you limeys currently use for time out there.
Hopefully the rain will die down soon...I wanted to get a tan :(.
6:30am update: The never ending ray of hope that is the weather channel has forecast "heavy rain" for the rest of today, tomorrow and Saturday. God bless them....
Ok, what a day, had so much to do and now have so much to say. Before I begin i'd like to introduce you to a guy i've nicknamed the Airhockey Airhead. We arrived at the Gaylord Resort at 9:45am, 15 minutes before the doors open. The players were only allowed into the byoc area, whilst I, with my fancy media pass could enter. As I was strolling around I came across a guy playng airhockey against himself. He'd score a goal, walk round to the other side of the table collect the puck and do the same thing again. I watched him for about 30s before asking if he wanted a game. He replied with "no, i'm just practicing", "surely you'd practice better if you were playing against people?", "nah, i'm just working on a few tactics".
Another point, and a surprising one, Angel approached me today and thanked me for what I wrote in the diary. Now when the founder and president of the CPL tells you he read what you wrote you really do tend to wonder how he finds the time. He must be an insommniac, anyway i'm not sure how he's going to take what I write next, I'm sure he'd appreciate honesty.
I have been surprisingly disappointed by the tournament organisation of the CPL today. When I arrived I asked when TAG.cs would be playing and the admin replied "I don't know". So i asked when it would be announced and was told "soon". The sign of a bad event is when players receive more information by rumour and hearsay than from big signs around the event or proper announcement. This is the case today, players have been wandering around the venue asking eachother when they're playing simply because the admins have failed to release the proper information.
They have made several crucial mistakes:
It becomes frustrating for teams to be told they have a game at 1:30pm, spend a few hours discussing tactics on the map etc, then find out that their game is against a team that hasn't shown up. Several times i've heard "this is the final call for Infinity-eSports" who we know folded over a month ago. To the untrained eye it would appear that the CPL are struggling to accomodate 1,500 competitors when really this isn't the case. The problem lies with their tournament stuff and their current incompetence to communicate with eachother and the players properly. They need to use the big screen to display the tournament brackets or what games are up next or what time the teams are playing. At present you have to ask a tournament staff member for information, and you get different information from every staff member you ask. It's difficult to imagine any of this happening during Frank's day.
Anyway as the day progressed both TAG.UT and TAG.CoD had default wins over their first opponents. TAG.cs arrived early and were informed they didn't have to be there as their opponents weren't going to show up, so they went back to the hotel to relax.
I personally spent most of the day hovering around between watching the UT and CoD side practice. The UT side were told they could play their game against AMD-sponsored rivals, Team64 early in the 2nd round as both were setup. They won the game quite easily and have advanced to play 1st seed SK in the next map. The CoD team got in some good practice and appeared to be on good form against various American sides.
I left the venue with the UT team and decided to catch up on some sleep at the hotel...after watching gone in 60 seconds and jurassic park (twice).
Nothing quite compares to being woken up by the world's largest car alarm at 4:30am. I really haven't got much to write about today, except the TAG.cs situation. The admins told the CS side they didn't have to be there as their opponents weren't going to turn up. I found out via a call from ZaG at 10:00pm last night that they have given a default victory to no-show opponents Zero-Gravity. Something to sort out today, bit ridiculous to disqualify a team under those circumstances, i'm pretty certain it's just a mistake or poor communication (no surprise here) by the tournament staff.
Breakfast, cya later.
What a difference a day makes. Fortunes change faster at the CPL than they do in Vegas. Within the space of 15 minutes TAG.cs went from facing disqualification from the CS tournament to being given 16th seed (up from their previous 44th seed) and told that instead of playing EYE in their first round they'd be playing Surreal Skills.
It turns out that at 8:00pm last night they made an announcement over the PA for the TAG.cs team to turn up for their game (against the opponents that were still in Portugal), when TAG failed to show, naturally, they decided to default the game to the opposition. I made a complaint to the head CS admin at about 9:30am and they decided that they couldn't put TAG through in Zero-Gravity's position as that would be unfair on them. Instead they would give TAG the vacant spot left by 16th seed GRB Titans, about time poor organisation worked out in TAG's favour.
TAG played their first game against Surreal Skill on de_inferno this morning. In a very impressive performance TAG defeated their American opponents 13 - 0, setting up a clash against rS some 8 hours later.
During this time I watched the CoD side unfortunately lose their first game 8 - 11 after taking a 5 round lead over GameWyze. This was the first time they had lost a game at a major LAN event and they were understandably frustrated. However a few hours in the sports bar and a waitresses' phone number later they were back to their old selves defeating visions of Warfare 11 - 2. Their next game will now be either 4K or Saviour 6 on mp_neuville.
The UT2004 side did not have a game today due to the team64/TAG game being brought forward yesterday. They will be playing SK at noon tomorrow. Current fixtures for TAG currently stand at:
With plenty of hours to kill I spent time roaming the event speaking with countless people. I had what must've been my largest meal in quite some time at the Sports bar Restaurant with the cod side. $15 goes a long way over here, or to be more precise, buys you refillable cokes, whipped potatos, plate of fries and the biggest chicken leg i've seen in a long while.
After dinner I went to watch the CS game vs rS. TAG began the game on great form winning 10 rounds as terrorist on inferno to their 2. Then it all went to pieces in the 2nd half as rS were able to equal the score, and take the game into an incredibly tense overtime. TAG won the pistol round in OT and the subsequent two rounds (a great 1 v 3 by ZaG) ensuring they'd need just one round in the next half to win the game.
They won the pistol round and the game meaning they advanced into the top 16 teams of the upper bracket to play world champs SK. The result also ensures their spot in the top 24, a feat many didn't think possible beforehand. On an unfortunate note however, by my calculations NoA's shocking upset at the hands of TAU means they will play TAG in the lower bracket after SK (assuming the obvious). If this is correct it is unfortunate that they had to play 1st and 2nd seed one after the other, but who knows, momentum in their favour and wind behind their backs, anything can happen. Probably shouldn't have told NIRee AMD would buy him a ferrari if they beat SK.
So Saturday will be the toughest day for TAG, and if any sides advance through to the finals on the Sunday I will be extremely happy. Several other sides seem to be playing well at the moment, 4K.intel have been on great form thus far so lets hope they can keep it up, mibr and Mouz also looking good in the CS tournament.
Anyway time for breakfast, cya tomorrow.
I have a sickening habit of never finishing these diaries, WCG 02, ESWC, WCG 03 all remain in the black hole of my 'to be completed' lists. Usually the PCs i'm using are remained on the last day and I lose my access to the internet until I get home. Once home i'm too tired to update the diary, and by the time I can actually be bothered to do it I can't remember it. Well it's time to break this 2 year old habit.
After my usual 5:00am start (ShaQ must love my extreme early morning wake ups) I had breakfast and the whole team headed down to the venue at 10:00am. The CS team were first up against the world's undisputed top side, Schroet Kommando of Sweden. Fortunately they were playing on nuke, one of their better maps.
It's hard to say how you approach a game like SK.swe, especially when you've had almost 24hrs to think about it. Would you spend those hours studying their demos, analyzing their tactics? Or would you approach the game with a "We'll play our game and lets see where it takes us? Or perhaps you don't even think about the game at all, you just don't discuss it, don't reflect upon it just sit down, setup your computer and go live on 3 restarts. I can't say what the best answer is, all have their good/bad points.
The great thing about playing SK, is that if you ever have a chance to prove yourselves, this is it. One fantastic round, a handful of brilliant shots scratches your name into gaming legend. The game began with a great start by TAG, winning the pistol round and the subsequent two rounds to take a 3 - 0 lead. SK took the 4th round giving belief that SK would now up the tempo and take the remaining rounds. TAG just got better and better however, winning the following 3 rounds and taking a 7 - 1 lead.
I promised Kasper (NIRee) before the game that if TAG beat SK i'd buy him a ferrari, at 7 - 1 up he turns to me and says "you'll owe me a ferrari soon"...they lost the remaining rounds of the half. With a half time score of 7 - 5 they would need just 6 rounds to win the game as CT. Surprisingly though SK were taking ages to get ready for the next half, at this point no CPL admin had spoken with us at all, and they were just waiting for the half to begin.
At around the 6th round an admin warned TAG about FBing under the box and if it happened against they would default all the rounds that half.
So TAG played on and won the first half 7 - 5 vs SK. Then after waiting for about 5 minutes to find out what the delay was, (no admin told us) we were informed that the CPL were reviewing a demo of the game to see if the FB under the crate was intentional or not. If it was they would lose 2 rounds and if it wasn't the score would stand.
About 20 minutes later I saw 4 admins marching over to where SK were sitting so decided to see what was going on. The admins told SK that they had reviewed the demo and decided that the FB was not intentional so the result would stand.
SK then spent about 5 minutes complaining to the admins until they said they would be back in a few minutes. 2 minutes later an admin told me that the result woudl stand as the FB was not intentional. Then 30 seconds after this another 3 admins came to where TAG are sitting and said that the FB was not intentional, but they were deducting two rounds anyway because it was against the rules. (p.s. I can't find this in the rules, let me know if you can).
After about 5 more minutes of arguing that they had changed their decision because SK complained they said that their decision was final and that was that. During this time Pott1 explained the situation with a simple, relevant and effective metaphor, "if you crash your car you don't get a warning and then told you'll be jailed for it later"...good point!
Anyway the final score was 7 - 13 to TAG, I do strongly believe they if the original score had stood TAG could've defeated SK, sadly no-one will ever believe me.
TAG then came up against 2nd seed NoA in the lower bracket. TAG hadn't prepared for de_cbble at all, and had no tactics for it, as CT NoA took a 10 - 2 lead. Strangely TAG began pulling the rounds back as terrorist, 1 - 0, 2 - 0, 3 - 0, 3 - 1, 4 - 1, 5 - 1, 6 - 1, 6 - 2, 6 - 3, alas, NoA won the game 13 - 8, but it was a mighty fine effort by the CS team. No doubt they will do better at the Winter CPL event.
Given the circumstances, TAG were content with a 17 - 24th position out of the 128 teams in attendance.
In the other competitions TAG excelled, following their upsetting early defeat, the Call of Duty side dominated the lower bracket winning 5 games in a row before losing out to American side Eminence on Neuville (the cs version of Mill in terms of European useage of the map). In the 7th/8th place playoff TAG defeated 2nd seed Awakening to win a mighty fine $1,500 between them.
The Unreal Tournament side exceed even this placing despite losing to SK. In the lower bracket they defeated eScuardron201 and Retribution to earn themselves a 5th/6th place playoff against American's top side Kaizen. Cool heads prevailed and TAG won the game 2 maps to 0 to and won $4,000 between them.
Spend the remainder of the day swimming and at a nearby arcade with a few of the cs team, playing basketball, racing games etc. Arcades are so pre-puberty.
I'll update this when I get round to it.
