UKTerrorist

WCG 2003 Diary

Friday 10th October

Woke up today excited about going to Korea. It's been a long time since I've been excited about anything, so it was a welcome change. Spent the day convincing my mum to pack my bags for me whilst I devoted my time towards more useful endeavours, such as throwing a tennis ball against the wall.

Left the house at about 2:00pm, taxi to gatwick, National Express Coach from Gatwick to Heathrow. I arrived at Heathrow at roughly 4:00pm which left me with 3 hours until most of the other guys arrived. I was meant to meet up with Doug at some point during this time to sort out Poog's ticket, but Doug sorted it alone. Was reading The Pelican Brief by John Grisham and sitting in a waiting area surrounded by a wide variety of nationalities, none of them English. It was at around 6:30pm that I began to wonder why I had not seen anyone yet. Sujoy said we would be meeting in Zone C. So I looked around for that...no luck.

Some advice for future terrors of the skies here...when you're going to fly somewhere, make sure you are in the departure gate and not the arrivals gate.

Anyway after that mishap I met up with the team at the departure gate where everyone managed to be late, including Sujoy, who lived just down the road. Got the tickets, breezed through check in and was on the plane by 9:10pm. One thing that was odd, was that there were no McDs or Burger King's through the check in...shocking, simply shocking!

The flight itself was relatively dull, with little to no excitement to speak of. Couple of lowpoints though. One was a somewhat elderly Korean lady trying to grope me as I was trying to get to sleep. She claimed to be looking for her glasses. Sadly this is the most success I've had with a member of the opposite sex in a few months...so yay me..SCORE!!!

After that poog demonstrated what a complete noob he is on the planes. Firstly, Poog needed a stewardess to tell him to shut his window, cos everyone else wanted to sleep. Then at around 4:30am UK time, practically the whole plane is asleep and poog wakes up. Being poog he opens his wide and lets the bright sunshine into the row. Waking up the whole row some people began to complain. This complaining woke up the people near us and so on and so forth. I would even go so far as to accuse poog of waking up the whole plane!

Saturday 11th October

Touched down at Incheon Airport in South Korea at precisely 9:00am UK time, 5:00pm Korean time. We went through the usual dull airport procedures and went through the arrivals gate to be greeted by some WCG officials. These officials
informed us that we'd just missed most of the major media and we were the 5th to last country to arrive... but the important thing was, we had beaten the Americans!

The WCG officials wanted some pictures and footage of us being really enthusiastic about the competition and pictures of us cheering. Maybe they hadn't come across English people before but they were not impressed. Even went so far as to call us the least enthusiastic country at the competition... we are collecting awards fast!

We had to wait for the Mexicans to arrive before we could be transported to the Korean village. This took some time, and was probably one of the most annoying parts of the journey. Once you arrive at an airport you don't really wish to hang around at that airport for ages. Rather just go direct to your next connection. However the Mexicans took another hour and afterwards we were transported by coach to the Parktel Hotel in Seoul.

This journey took about 2 hours due to traffic. Sujoy slept through all of it - he sleeps a lot! As such he missed the awesome fireworks show outside our window. Not quite sure why there was a fireworks show, nothing to do with us. The most odd thing about this show though was the fact that the Koreans lined up 2 lanes of the motorway just so they could get outside their cars to watch. Very bizarre. This caused traffic to block right up, even when we had driven an hour down the road in the opposite direction traffic was still not moving. It must've been a major event,
I'll try and find out what it was later.

We got to hotel and rode the typical rollercoaster of confusion. Being team leader I was tugged in about 7 directions at once. 5 people needed photos taken, everybody needed room keys, Stu wanted to switch rooms so he'd be with marc, I also needed to collect everyone's passport because WCG wanted it. Sujoy wanted me to sort some other stuff out, was not one of my finer moments. Oh and Poog wanted a room :p.

Took about an hour to sort this out, and once done I was immediately looking to sort my own accomodation out. I was not impressed with being paired up with the Turkey team coach. The Turkish team coach seemed like a nice enough guy, but that didn't mean i spent anymore than 5 minutes in that room. My luggage was still in one of the UK player's rooms, thus i had to find the players, get the key, move my luggage.

While I was attempting to do this, i walked past an empty room with the key in the slot (placing a key in the slot provides the room with electricity), considering this room was inbetween two of the UK player rooms I took the key and have had that room ever since. Though I still have to worry about being chucked out and going back to the turkish room :(.

I was very tired for the rest of Saturday, there was a traditional team leader meeting at 10:00pm where team leaders got to bitch about every issue from beds being too hard to the seating arrangements at team leader meetings! (think UKT comments in real life). Much like a government debate, nothing was sorted and it created more problems that anyone could possibly have imagined. By the end there was talk of a player strike!.

After the team leader meeting I taunted US team coach torbull about US overseas policy and the basic fact he was American and then went to sleep in my 2 bedroom hotel room. Sadly due to the noise coming from the next room sleeping was a somewhat lost cause. I went in the room to find most of the UK team watching the England - Turkey game. It was nearly half time at this point and England were awarded a penalty...now this has to be the funniest thing i've seen in quite some time...David Beckham steps up...and what happens next...not only does he blast it over the bar...he sends the ball into the heavens. Haven't seen a penalty as bad as that since Roberto Baggio in the 1994 World Cup Final against Brazil...classic. Anyway as usual 4K were braking practically every rule regarding what you can/can't do in the player rooms, so that was a nice tradition to keep alive.

After the game was finished, at about 5:00am, the 4K.cs team decided that now would be a perfect time to play some football in the hotel carpark. Tired enough, i went to bed at this point. I finally got to sleep at 5:30am Korean time.

Sunday 12th October

Woke up at 7:30am and needed a couple of pro-plus pills to give me the adrenaline to get out of bed. Breakfast was between the hours of 7:30am and 9:30am in this big-well decorated hall. The breakfast was EXACTLY the same as last year shockingly enough, with players being given the choice to eat practically whatever they wanted, fries, scrambled egg, bacon, an assortment of fruit and vegetables, cereal etc...every taste was catered for. Had breakfast alone as most of the players were in bed well into the day's festivities.

The day began with the usual rush of players trying to get on the practice PC's. There are a lot less pcs here than last year. With only around 20 PCs for Counter-Strike players. Now considering there are around 200 Counter-Strike players it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that there's a problem here. The UK CS team have thus far been unable to get a game, hopefully that will improve when all of the poor teams are eliminated from the competition.

After breakfast we had what was meant to be a 10 minute meeting to vote on an issue regarding the fifa tournament. Apparently there is a new patch out which makes all the teams equal. The Koreans have had this patch for the last week, whilst the rest of the world have not. Thus they have been practicing with each teams having special abilities and being used to that. So after the 10 minute vote had lasted 45 minutes, including 2 recounts, the team leaders voted not to use the latest patch. To be honest most players didn't really care, sadly the team leaders seem to feel that if they don't complain enough then they are not fulfilling their role.

At 10:00am this morning we had to collect uniforms that each player had to wear whilst they were playing. Dragging 9 mediums, 6 large and 2 extra large tops around the hotel, handing them out was a mission, but managed to do it eventually. The rest of the morning was spent on a 'guided tour' without the guide. Not sure quite what happened hear but all the players were informed to follow a certain official around the park and he would show us what's what. So naturally we all followed this guide, until he walked into a private staff area of the park, we tried to follow and according to him he was not involved with the WCG in any way. Not one of WCG's better organisational moments. So we banded together to get to lunch (a bannana, 2 cold slices of pizza and pepsi) and then did whatever we wanted for the next few hours, which for most people (except for team leaders and designated flag bearers) was to sleep. The team leaders and flag bearers had to meet at 2:00pm for the rehearsal of the night's ceremony.

The rehearsal was ok, again I missed most of it as I was busy insulting Torbull about his American nationality, ah and it started raining. Which would be a problem as it was all set outside. So, not trying to sound dumb, we got wet. At the end of the rehearsal we spied a fairly recogniseable figure, bds, who had been wondering fairly lost, about the site. He had only just arrived after getting a seperate flight from the rest of the players. So we got him registered etc...and haven't seen him since.

I got back to my room, where Sujoy had 'borrowed' the double bed, cos he didn't have the key to his room, and went to sleep. It wasn't until about 5:55pm that we bothered to get up and make our way to the ceremony, which as most people would expect, was fairly dull. I felt that it had also been cut down due to the bad weather. The highlight of the ceremony were the fireworks, which were truely spectacular. After travelling a lot of the world and seeing fireworks at places like Disney I was EXTREMELY impressed with the fireworks at this event.

Though walking back we spotted what looked like small cocunut shells littering the path, which came from the exploded fireworks. Surely a health hazard? anyone could have been hit by these falling debris.

That evening again hung out in the one of the 4K.cs rooms watching the fairly old, MTV music awards. Yes the britney/madonna/christina one... After about 20 minutes of negotiating our way through the Korean telephone system we managed to order a couple of pizzas from Pizza hut, ate them, went to the team leader meeting. Once again at the team leader meetings, nothing was decided, more problems were created than sorted and I amused myself by reminding the Turkish team leader that his team had to play a qualifier to get into the European Championships. Went to bed at around 11:30pm, 4K.Bond had moved in too after being turfed out of his other room by 4K.stevo.

Monday 13th October

Still suffered from jetlag throughout the night, waking up several times before finally waking up at 5:00am and being unable to get back to sleep. 4K.bond seemed to be suffering from the same problem. So switched on the TV and watched Simpsons (which seems to be on 24/7) until about 7:30am then got up and went to breakfast. Met most of the other UK players at breakfast who were sitting with Heaton/Pott1 and co. Quite shockingly at this point though it had been nearly 24 hours since poog had done anything stupid, very impressed with him, let's see how long he can keep it up.

After breakfast spent about 30 minutes or so updating this diary. Please remember that due to the lack of computers at this place it is very difficult to keep it updated. But I'll do my best...

It's now Monday evening. Well today was fairly eventful with several of the UK players taking part in various competitions. I got to see the inside of the World Arena and the Game arena. Both of which look extremely impressive, the world arena is inside the olympic games gymnasium, which means the whole area is surrounded by seats, you can probably fit around 5,000 people in there. Sadly due to the big screens not yet being connected, this area was empty for the majority of the day.

Today was a relatively mixed day of the UK players. With six players competing in FIFA, XBOX - Halo, Age of Mythology and Warcraft 3. Obviously we were hopeful for a good place in all these competitions, but it wasn't to be.

XBOX - Halo

Today the UK #2 Halo player, Harry Thomas, took part in the Halo competition. This is the first time Halo has been used at the World Cyber Games in Korea, so no-one had a clear idea of who was the best at this game. Though early practice games had seen Zyos from the USA emerge undefeated. Harry's first game was meant to be against the Italian no.1 but he showed up too late, so Harry won his first game by default. From here he needed to win 2 more games to qualify from his group. He won his first game 15 - 8, but then lost the next 2 and was eliminated from the competition. He is now playing Survival Project, a Korean Government sponsored game in preparation for the 2 v 2 nations vs nations competition on Thursday.

Warcraft 3

Both the 4K.WC3 supremos were in action today, with Bond attempting to defy the odds and qualify from a group of death, whilst TillerMan had a slightly easier group.

UK no.1, TillerMan, took his group by storm and won all his games from straight maps which means he finishes 1st in his group and will play the no.2 player in another group. Bond sadly was not able to raise his games to that of his opponents and crashed to 4 straight defeats. Dissappointed?, perhaps, but I always feel that unless these players have a real chance of winning, which Bond did not, then they should just enjoy the trip to Korea, anything else is a bonus!

FIFA

In FIFA I strongly believed that Adam Reid would bring home a medal for the UK after destroying all the UK competition and bringing back Bronze from the European Cyber Games in Paris 2 weeks ago. Sadly Adam did not play as well as he can and was also eliminated in the group stages. No doubt he'll be dissappointed with that, but at least now he can concentrate on the 2 v 2 nations -vs- nations event on Thursday. Can him and Sohail Gooding repeat last years success and bring home silver?

Sohail will be playing tomorrow from 2pm onwards, lets hope he can do better than last year in the 1 v 1 where he didn't make it past the group stages

Age of Mythology

Most people believe that AoM will be the UK's strongest competition with two world class players representing the team. Both of these players recently attended a tournament in Kazahkstan and came back several $$$ - $$$$s richer.

Not much to really say about Geek and Shariff, except they both advanced throup the group stages, with GeeK winning all his games and Shariff winning all bar 1, coming in 2nd. Fortunately they will not meet eachother in the next round.

Walking back from the arena, I looked at my map and decided to take a shortcut which would take about 10 minutes off my 30 minute journey. Instead of going all te way round you trek across one or two pathways that are mainly 'scenic' routes.

45 Minutes later I successfully arrived at my hotel, and divided my map into several pieces and stored it safely in the nearest waste paper basket...don't wanna lose that precious map!!!

Arrived back at the hotel at around 5:00pm and determined not to fall asleep I put on the simpons and decided to watch that for a few hours.

I woke up at around 8:00pm as someone was knocking out the door. Worried that this might be the moment I was ejected from the hotel room i quickly scattered a few belongings round the place, perhaps that would make it harder to evict us?

Resident tramp Sujoy was at the door, asking for a place to sleep for a few hours, as tempting as it was to say no, i decided that if he paid for my flight, the least i could do was let him kip a few hours in my room. Left him in the room ever since and went downstairs to the praccy rooms.

The team leader meeting was at 10:00pm, after last year i was expecting this meeting to drag on for a few hours, so i brought some reading material. Quite shockingly though this was the smoothest meeting to date and I was back at the praccy rooms taking someone elses PC within 40 minutes!

After being kicked out the practice room for the second time, I wondered around for a bit then back to my stolen hotel room and read another 100 pages of John Grisham's The Pelican Brief any read it?..

Finally got to sleep at around 3:00am.

Tuesday 14th October

Woke up at about 6:30am, still having a lot of difficulty sleeping, very random sleeping pattern at the moment.

Dragged myself out of bed at around 7:30am and down 14 floors to breakfast, which was the usual all-you-can-eat buffet catering for everyone's tastes. Spoke with Geek and Shariff regarding their games tomorrow, they seem fairly apprehensive, but then they do have to play 2 of the top 5 players in the world at their given game. We'll see how they do I guess...

Today is pretty much the deciding day of the competition with the Counter-Strike team in action against the world's no.1 clan, SK.swe, who are presently sitting behind me, as well as the other 3 teams in their group. I can't really see 4K.cs defeating SK.swe but as long as they don't make careless mistakes in any of their other games then they should go through in second place. It really all depends on how well newcomer, Poog, can play.

Today all sees both of our Unreal Tournament 2003 Players, Shaggy & Stevo, taking the stage as well as our remaining FIFA and Halo players, Pacman & Jon. Goodluck to them all. Currently our record stands at: UK played played 24, Won 17, Drawn 0, Lost 7.

I'm now writing this at 00:54am, today was just one of those days where heroes are made, losers are mocked, and 13 yr old French cheats are finally taught a lesson or two. Boy had that been a long time comming!

Right, anyway, as I said this morning today was going to be one of the make or break days for the UK players, after day 1 half our players were in, half out.

Unreal Tournament 2003

First challenge to meet the UK today was not some great competitor from an exotic land, but the age old problem of the language barrier. Anyone know what the Korean is for "The monitor is not working, everytime Stevo loads up UT2003 it says the monitor is going out of sync" -? No?..not surprised...shockingly though the phrase was not in the Korean language guide they handed out at the airport. So naturally the only way to solve this was to speak slower and louder, this gives them a few extra seconds to learn our language before we can fill justified in getting angry with them.

Eventually it came down to the universal language of pointing at the problem (the monitor) then pointing at the solution (the admin) then ensuring the problem and the solution came together (anger with a slight suggestion of violence) to fix the problem (change of computer).

To simplify...

(Monitor + admin) * anger = change of computer

Anyway, once Stevo got this sorted he was more or less ready to take on the meight of the Ukraine, or someone similar, can't quite remember, my apologies. Stevo won that game in fine form and was looking like he could go far. Sadly looks aren't everything (re: Poog) and Stevo lost his next couple of games and was eliminated in the group stages.

Our other UK UT2003 competitor was last year's Unreal Tournament silver medalist Samuel 'Shaggy' Boult. Samuel dominated his group and destroyed weaker opposition with the excuse (it could come down to point difference). Then in his 3rd game he was paired up against the USA no.1 infinite, some of you might know infinite for a variety of reasons. He defeated Fatal1ty to get here or from the MTV program True Life: I'm a gamer. Which featured the memorable pre-match quote from infinite - "to beat fatal1ty, i'll have to play half was well as I can play"...final score infinite -1 fatal1ty 17..or something close to that.

Infinite is by far the most arrogant player here. Think Muhammed Ali meets Mike Tyson meets a gamer and you're not far off track. Sadly infinite is not that bad of a UT2003 player and defeated Shaggy pretty badly, as well as the rest of his opponents to finish top of the group.

Shaggy's next game was on paper, equally as tough, as he was due to take on New Zealand's Evenflow, Bronze medalist at the 2002 World Cyber Games Finals. Shaggy had been waiting for this game for a long time, as the Unreal Tournament community generally tends to consider that result a fluke. Well I would say Shaggy let his skills do the talking, but he never shuts up anyway, so lets just say Shaggy defeated evenflow comfortably to finish 2nd in the group and advance to the next stage of the competition.

FIFA 2003

Not much I can really say about FIFA, every year the UK is supposedly one of the favourites to finish on the podium in the singles event, and every year something will happen that will leave us contemplating why people even bother playing FIFA at this level?...why not just buy a football !?!

Sadly Sohail 'Pacman_UK' Gooding repeated his performance of last year and was eliminated in the group stages after some tough games. Hopefully we can perform better in the 2 v 2 on Friday.

Counter-Strike

Been waiting for this huh? mouth watering, console down, demos ready to record. Everyone just waiting for poog to make that perfect mistake so they can create an avi of it with some dumb music in the background. Everyone knew it was gonna happen, everyone wanted it, that perfect mistake, be it an in-game suicide, a teamkill, holding onto a HE for too long, anything!!!...c'mon poog...movie-makers around the world await the game like a sufer awaits that perfect wave (or porn side depending upon the interpretation) or The Sun awaits David Beckham's visit to the hairdressers. For many of them, this night could hold the very meaning of their lives.

Then in an unprecidented event, poog didn't play crap...stunned into silence we looked on as poog played...ok. What was going on?..did the opposition feel sorry for him and let him kill them?...I guess every so often life just throws a curveball you're way. Dissappointed but not distraught we waited...tick follows tock follows tick follows tock. One game went by against the Ukraine, a victory, which most of us expected, but poog was still playing ok. Then came the game against SK.swe...the best Counter-Strike team ever to grace god's green earth...Could poog make it through the next 24 rounds whilst the movie makers sharpen their knives?

Game live!...Pistol round commences, then something even more rather odd happens...4K start winning. Crowds begin to swarm around the gamers, every action becomes even more intense..1 - 0, 2 - 0, 3 - 0. Gradually the attention shifts from Poog's performance to a startling thought...could 4K win?!?

The game progresses, SK.swe begin their comeback, 4K's 5 - 4 lead decreases and they lose the half 7 - 5, a very satisfactory result. 12 rounds left to go, win the pistol round and the 4th round and you're practically grasping victory by the throat.

The second half begins, 4K win the pistol round then the following two, this means the overall score is at 8 - 7 in their favour. The favourites begin to sweat, bite their lip, make small, but crucial, errors. Now the 4th round, SK win, 8 - 8, SK then win the next 2 and go 10 - 8 up...but 4K fight back, with poog leading the way..10 - 9, 10 - 10...Then SK.swe demonstrate why they are the world's no.1 team and win the next 3 rounds, the game is there's, the last round is played out half-hearted at the most. 13 - 11 to SK.swe. Very rarely are teams able to make the giants tremble...is the best yet to come?

4K and SK.swe win the remaining games of their group fairly easily, despite delays and finish 2nd and 1st respectively.

XBOX - Halo

I was not paying much attention to the Halo competition for two reasons, 1) It's about as interesting as watching Ice melt (yr 8 science experiment) 2) The XBOX should burn in hell, along with the latest Black Eyed peas release.

An announcement came over the main speaker asking for both the French and UK team leaders to come to the HALO zone. Which indicated there was a dispute over the outcome of a game.

Anyway, it turned out that the French player had been using a timer during his game to time when weapons and other powerups would respawn. This was forbidden as all the players knew because it was brought up in the team leader meeting the other night.

So we marched off to the head admin quarters (who i'd met at clikarena) to content the result. Think of it like a small claims court, one judge, makes one final decision. No appeals, now other messing about. You state your case, insult the opposition in a language he can't comprehend and await the outcome.

This time I was pretty much in the right, it was just a case of what i wanted, even though the UK player lost the game, the result would not stand so I had 3 options. 1) replay the game, 2) go for a default victory 3) Send the French cheat packing (DQ from whole tournament).

I was all ready to go for option no.3 but it turned out that the player was only 13, so I went for option no.2 instead. The French team leader hardly spoke any english, which made my job a lot easier.

So Jon got the default win, and won 2 of his next 3 games to qualify to the second stage of the HALO tournament. Lets hope he can raise his game now.

Again tried to take a shortcut back to the Hotel, again got lost, but this time decided to cut across the field rather than walk in a circle a few times. Realised I was walking through a cemetary at about the same time as a Korean security guard did, most unfortunate that, he looked angry, got his notebook out, took a few notes, discussed the issue with me (in Korean) and let me go, must be my cheeky grin!

Spent the rest of the day trying to get some sleep, and finding my room key, never fails to amaze me how lifeless keys look, yet the moment you turn your back, they jump down behind the back of the bed.

Team leader meeting was usual tosh...reminded American Team leader that he was America...and challenged him to name countries at the competition which his country hadn't invaded yet...think we found 15 out of 50...

That's all for now...till next time...goodnight!

p.s. Turns out some people are upset about the lack of Poog's stupidity today, so i included a selection of today's poog's quotes to keep you amused, i'll update this as the tournament goes on, or until he reads this :p

Korean Television - "What do you think about Korean I.T?"
Poog - "Nice and clean"

*in elevator*
Poog - "What floor is breakfast on?"
Me - "1st floor"
Poog - "what number?"

Wednesday 15th October

It seems everyday now encapsulates it's own importance. Today the remaining UK players entered the single elimination knockout stage of the competition. The stakes were high, mistakes were crucial and victory was ever so sweet.

Woke up at around 7:00am after another bad night's sleep, haven't had one good night so far. Began the day with the typical breakfast with a couple of the other players, this meal turned out to be the only thing i'd eat for about 24 hrs.

Made my way to the the tournament area with Four-Kings Intel who were due to play French side aAa on the stage. Not sure why but for some reason the stage is meant to be intimidating for the players. If you check out the various pictures floating around, i'm sure you'll agree it's nowhere near as impressive at the stage at ESWC in Poitiers, France. Anyhow, walked with the 4K players to the arena, it takes about 20 minutes. As we were walking through we saw a lot of Korean students, it must've been an art trip, not quite sure, but they made several welcoming remarks.

Korean Child - "hello"
Marc - "I hate you"
Korean Child - *giggle*

Not quite sure how well they understood English...

Counter-Strike

Once at the stage 4K spent about 30 - 40 minutes setting up as did aAa and the game was live. After the SK game many expected 4K to overcome a fairly strong aAa side without breaking sweat. Sadly after the first map, de_inferno, it became clear that this would not be the case. Tactically aAa looked impressive, they looked like a team that had spent some time examining 4K demos and predicted where they would be weak and strong. Diversion after diversion after diversion, these guys had clearly spent some time practicing their tactics. For a while it appeared as though 4K might pull the first map into overtime, but this was not the case.

De_Nuke next, 4K's map of choice, and they started very strongly in it, taking a 9 - 3 lead after the first half. But in typical UK fashion, just when things are starting to go right, they go so disastrously wrong! aAa shut down the map as the defensive CT side, making it practically impossible for 4K to get the 4 rounds they needed to win the game.

The second half finished 9 - 3 in aAa's favour thus taking the game into overtime, where aAa won the first half 2 - 1 and the second half 2 - 1, thus winning the game 16 - 14. One of the closer games in Counter-Strike history.

During the first half of de_nuke however aAa accidently through a flashbang under the crate in the ramp room, something that is strictly forbidden. Unknown to us at this very time American side 3D experienced the same problem against Brazillian's mibr. Torbull, being the somewhat swathe American negotiator, ensured that the rules were used to their full favour and they won the map. After the 4K - aAa game had finished, despite 4K complaining at the time, the result was still standing. So we spoke with the head admins after the game and pretty much forced them to apply the same solution to our game as they had in the American game.

So roughly 5 hours of tense arguing later, the map was awarded to 4K. This meant that the game went into the 3rd deciding map. Which, as the more observant of you will know, 4K lost anyway. But winning 2 contestations against the French team coach in as many days will make anyone feel good.

Unfortunately this was the end of the road for 4K, single elimination didn't allow any teams a second chance. Hopefully they'll do better at CPL 2003 Winter World Championships in December.

Age of Mythology

As I said before Age of Mythology was the UK's best opportunity of getting a medal. With two world class players I was expecting at least one to make the top 5.

One of the pre-tournament favourites, GeeK, was eliminated in the last 16 by an upcoming player from Taiwan. This is very unfortunate for Geek, and after hearing this I was not expecting too much from Shariff.

I met Shariff at around 1:00pm, when he informed me that he had knocked out last year's winner, and tournament favourite, to advance into the Semi-Finals and a garunteed top 4 placing. A huge achievement for him, with just a little more luck could he earn himself a top 2 spot. Sadly not, he lost his semi-final which meant he dropped down to a 3rd/4th place playoff to be played on Friday. Best of luck to him.

Unreal Tournament 2003

The UK were represented in the final 16 of the UT2003 competition by last year's Silver medalist, Samuel 'Shaggy' Boult. Despite some good results this year and a bright outlook, he was defeated by The Netherlands.

This means that he has the nations -vs- nations to look forward to tomorrow, playing alongside Stevo.

HALO - XBOX

I had been fairly busy all day with Counter-Strike that when Harry informed me that Jonathon had reached the semi-finals of the Halo competition, I was somewhat surprised. Jonathon had not looked too impressive throughout the tournament so he must've really raised his game for the elimination stages.

For some reason however, in the Semi-Finals the brackets were switched around and Jonathon had to play Zyos, the undefeatable American, who defeated Jon 15 - 0 and 15 - 4. Sadly Jon did not contest the result so I had no leverage to complain.

Jonathon plays his 3rd/4th place playoff on Friday.

--

Due to delays with the Counter-Strike tournament I got back from the venue at around 7:00pm and went to sleep for about 2 hours. Was woken up by a phone call informing me that unless I ran out of the building right now I would be burned alive by a fire. Assuming that I had a good few minutes to live, I rolled over and tried to get back to sleep. Another phone call a minute later informed me that I had died in the fire.

Received phone call after phone call with a variety of complaints or suggestions about what I should do. Some of the crank calls were good, some were bad. At around 8:00pm Evenflow came rushing into our room and let us know it was none other than U.S player, infinite.

*grin* I happen to know enough about infinite to shut him up for a long time, all of which I used to full effect. Insult after insult after insult led to him slam the phone down and come down to my room...*result*.

Now when someone you've just been slagging off for the last 10 minutes is knocking at your door several thoughts go through your head.

a) You could answer the door and he could punch you straight in the face, he was a pretty big guy too.
b) He could just be making a social call, and will pat you on the back, and laugh about it over a beer.
c) you could not answer the door, true you wouldn't be in any danger of physical violence but not answering would make you seem like a bit of a wimp.

*answered the door*...i'll tell the rest of this story later, no violence, nothing that bad, just it's a loooonnnggg story :).

Anyway had the team leader meeting to get to at 10:00pm, which by now most of the team leaders didn't bother attending. The usual bout of complaints mixed with the odd insult to people's nationality passed the time. Also a new game...a bunch of you are sitting around the table, you spin the phone, whoever it points at has to complain about something...good fun!

Went to bed shortly after, got to sleep at around 3:00am...really having difficulty sleeping.

Thursday 16th October

Apologies for the delay in updating the diary, I have not be sleeping well recently and it has been a struggly to sit down at a computer and type for about 30 minutes. Anyway it is now saturday, but i'll try to explain how Thursday played out.

I woke up at around 6:00am, again another rough night of tossing and turning, I have no idea why sleeping is so difficult, I know i'm not the only one now, a LOT of players have been complaining about how difficult it is to sleep, perhaps it has something to do with the hotel?

Today was the much anticipated nations vs nations competition. Here players compete in 2 v 2 against other countries. We were due to enter players in 5 games, Starcraft, Warcraft 3, Age of Mythology, FIFA 2003, Unreal Tournament 2003 and Survival Project. Survival project was the first to go, I guess the organisers felt that to compete in the competition you actually had to have played the game. Then StarCraft the 4K.cs team decided it might be slightly embarressing to play against the undefeatable Koreans in a game they had never played before. Age of Mythology would have been amongst our more stronger games, had our 2 players not been drinking out to about 7:30am and thus missed their games.

This left us with Warcraft 3, FIFA 2003 and Unreal Tournament 2003 to compete in. At the team leaders meeting the previous day they had told us that our players should be there by 9:30am, the problem was that they had said that everyday and some players have been made to wait for upwards of 4 hours. So not surprisingly I guess some players decided to turn up 4 hours late.

FIFA 2003

I met the FIFA players at the lunch marquee place, they felt they had a fairly good chance, until we went back to the tournament venue and they had been disqualified for missing their game against Brazil. A brazilian side that had 1 fifa player and 1 CS player.

After some intense arguing with both the players and the admins, Sohail went up to the head admin and delivered a real sob story explaining how they'd flown half way around the world to compete in this tournament, and they had been looking forward to it so much and spent hours upon hours practicing for the competition. The head-admin fell for it and after agreement from the Brazilians let the game be played. They won the first game 2 - 0, a game in which they had had over 20 shots on target. Their next game was against the Americans, which everyone knew would be easy as it wasn't an NFL game. A 4 - 0 victory over the yanks saw Sohail and Adam Reid facing off against the Koreans. An EXTREMELY talented team, but a team which was not undefeatable.

The game did not start well, the Koreans dominated the game and the 2 UK players found it difficult to raise their game after 2 easy victories. An early goal saw our boys go 0 - 1 down, and it wasn't until just after half-time that they were able to pull the game level. It looked at this point that they might really have a chance of winning the game. Sadly the goal of the century by the Koreans from about 35 yards out practically sealed the game. Sohail and Adam battled on with a few close chances, but the more they pushed forward the more exposed they were at the back, and in stoppage time of the second half the Korean's struck again winning the game 3 - 1.

Unreal Tournament 2003

I must admit I was paying more attention to the FIFA 2003 competition than UT2003. Samuel and Stevo did fairly well, winning their first game against Poland? before being eliminated by an ever-improving Dutch side.

I'm sure they were hoping for a top 8 finish, but the competition was always going to be strong and they really hadn't been putting in much practice.

Warcraft 3

Half way through the FIFA 2003 game vs Korea TillerMan told me that they had reached the semi-finals and were going to be knocked out by the Russians in the next round. Interestingly though TillerMan and Bond had developed a sly tactic, don't ask me what it was, that if the opponent didn't do something, then they would win. The chess players amongst you will know of the seven-move checkmate, where you move your bishop and queen out early and attack a weak point in the oppositions defence. Well the theory is pretty much the same.

This tactic and generally good teamwork meant that they had defeated all the other teams quite easily up until now. The Russian game was a bit harder but again they were able to co-ordinate attacks quite well with eachother and TillerMan masterminded their destruction and route to the final + podium.

I missed the final due to reasons explained below, unfortunately they lost meaning they take Silver and again the UK still seeks that elusive Gold.

The Great Debate

Now during my team as the UK Team Leader over the past 2 years i've experienced a lot of problems and spent a fair bit of time in the admin 'court room' as it has come to be known. My record for this competition was 3 favourable decisions against 0 unfavourable decisions, but I guess it was only a matter of time before my luck ran out....or I was placed in an unwinnable position.

I was speaking with izn0 a few others when an announcement over the main speaker asked for the team leaders of UK and Japan to come to the main admin room. This was very odd considering the UK wasn't meant to be playing Japan. I walked into the room and sitting in the corner were Shariff (our second AoM player, due to have a 3rd/4th place playoff the next day) and the Japanese player he had knocked out earlier in the tournament.

Shariff had this extremely guilty look on his face that made me worry, and the only word he said at first was 'whoops'.

What had happened was that him and the rest of the Age of Mythology players had been attempting to expand their Korean lingo by passing notes to the women behind the free drinks counter. These notes varied in meaning, nothing serious, just general stupid stuff. "i like you" "come to my hotel with me" etc...Of course as their Korean was so bad these notes were more humourous than anything else.

Shariff and the Japanese guy found an English - Korean translater to write them a note that was a bit more precise in it's meaning. All the AoM players had been trying to do this, just they had managed it best. He wrote them two notes, one which translated to something like "Lets come to my hotel room 1705 at 10:00pm and play" and another that was something like "lets have sex in my hotel".

They passed these notes to the women behind the free drinks counter who passed them onto the admins and the admins got themselves worked up over sexual harrassment. It was meant to be harmless fun rather than an attempt at offending Korean culture. Anyway as the notes had the room number on it, it was pretty incriminating.

So whilst we waited for the admins to show up we came up with an explanation. Basically they were speaking to some people in a bar previous night about how they should go about attracting Korean women, and the people they were speaking to laughed and passed them these two notes without saying what they meant. So they went to the women at the bar and asked them to translate the notes.

As the admins walked into the 'court room' Shariff whispered to me, "forget the bar, that's the guy that wrote the note" motioning at the translater. The game was up. Everyone was going to be in a lot of trouble, including the translater, who we had assumed given himself up.

Everyone sat down, the admins said something in Korean to the translater, and the translater asked "Who wrote the notes?"...then it dawned on me...the translater hadn't given himself up, he just happened to be the closest translater to the 'court room' at the time, so they wanted him to translate. It occured to me that this translater would be in a LOT of trouble if at that moment we pointed at him and it also dawned on me that right now, sitting there, his pulse might well be into the 170s - 180s...

But back to high-school rules, if your gang is doing something you're not supposed to, and you get caught, you take the blame. So we went with the bar story...which the admins didn't believe because the notes had the room number on, and you don't go around giving your room number to random people you meet at the bar.

It was about an hour into the argument I figured out how to resolve the whole thing avoiding both a disqualification, and any further punishment, and making the story we had already used partly believeable.

If I said that our AoM player was gay...all the pieces would fit. They went drinking with a guy at the bar, they gave him his room number because they wanted to meet again before he left Korea. The Korean guy wrote him the notes so he could translate them later and it'd be like a stupid fun game. Then he went to the girl behind the free drinks counter to get them translated. He didn't admit to this sooner because he didn't want to own up to it.

I thought this was an absolutely genius way to win the debate, I just needed to confirm it with the AoM player first. We could ask for the admins to be discrete to ensure this never got out and the Admins would not want to be drawn into any homosexual issue as each culture has different feelings and opinions. Sadly our guy didn't want to go for it, worried that this lie would leak out and others would believe it I guess. It was a really big shame too as he was disqualified from the competition and banned from both the tournament areas. Which means he can't do much over the next few days, which is a pity.

Got back to my hotel room at around 8:30am and collapsed on the bed, woke up at 12:30am and stayed away until the next morning.

Battle Royal

Now before I begin, let me make this VERY CLEAR, I was not present, nor involved with, the fight in any way. Many of you have heard about it from various accounts currently floating around the internet. After speaking to a LOT of people both French and Russian about it, here's what I think happened.

At around 3am on the 11th floor (4 floors below mine) several of the Russians were drinking with the French ladies team and wanted some photos taken. At that point one of the French male players said he wasn't going to get any photos so he should go. Anyway a bit later, the French player came back and accused the Russians of stealing his phone, (everyone here is a bit drunk) everyone got pissed off and the French player kicked the Russian in the face. Then the moment this happened several of the other Russians were called out of the rooms, one of them grabbed a large wooden pole, and the French players, outnumbered, quickly went back into their rooms and locked the door. Sadly the noise woke up several of the other French players who opened their doors trying to work out what was going on. Every person who answered the door was asked if they were French, if they said yes they were immediatly attacked by the Russians, including a 13 yr old HALO player and a member of the French press.

The Russians targeted the door of the French who started this dispute and kicked the door through, as in }{. At around this point the security guards arrived and broke up the whole thing, which was recorded on the CCTV. Several of the French players required medical attention and everyone was up for the rest of the night sorting it out.

Harriman -vs- TillerMan

Now the wisest of the UK team have learnt overtime, that if you start messing with Stu, don't keep taking it to the next level, just cut your losses. TillerMan it seems had not learnt this lesson.

It all started with Stu, TillerMan was standing in the elevator, the doors were closing, and at the very last second Stu chucked a cup of water over him. TillerMan got him back later by pouring a bit of water onto his bed, which turned out to be marc's bed because they switched beds half way through the week.

So stu replied by going into TillerMan's room, removing every key from his keyboard, and then spelling out Y O U W A N K E R on the keyboard (soz for the language mum + dad). Then Stu hid the rest of the keys throughout the hotel, oh and stu chucked a cup of water over his bed.

I think TillerMan then tried to get into their room later, but was caught, so the next morning at around 10:00am Stu + Marc decided to teach TillerMan a permanent lesson. They sneaked into his room, whilst he was still asleep (he had had a rough night, been very drunk) and poured a bottle of pepsi and a bottle of Moutain Dew over his face. He sat up pretty quick and we ran out the room. I think TillerMan has now decided to cut his losses and not go for revenge...some people just have to learn the hard way :)

Friday 17th October

Sleeping pattern was still way off, waking up and going to sleep at completely random times, one of the reasons why this diary wasn't updated for ages. I woke up at about midnight today and stayed awake until the next morning reading the rest of the Pelican Brief and PCGamer.

I went downstairs at about 6:00am and saw quite a few people scattered around with very concerned looks on their faces. I bumped into the French team leader (no loved lost here) who told me what had happened, or the French version at least, it all seemed really serious. Steven (the guy in charge of everything not relating to the tournaments themselves) asked me what I knew people it as did security. I knew nothing, I said so and that was that, I tried to hang around for a bit to see what punishment they would hand out, but I was asked to leave.

Today in general was meant to be a very relaxed day, I guess I might've wanted the players to be eliminated so I would get a day off. It wasn't long before I was informed about the whole Stu -vs- TillerMan saga. Spent an hour or two in the practice rooms not doing much, then went into Stu and Marc's room to see what was going on. In typical Stu-fashion he was planning his next attack on TillerMan.

After the TillerMan-attack, we went to the techno mart...boy is that place huge...

It's like a hotel, 8 floors, filled with all the very latest south-east Asian technology. Floor upon floor of the latest laptops, mp3 players, phones, dish washers, watches, PDF's, CPUs...everything!. The arrangements is slightly odd however, much like an American factory outlet. but still an awesome place. I could write a bit about Poog here, but it'd be harsh :)

Got back at around 2:00pm and fell asleep until 7:30pm, when Sohail woke me up informing me that I was about to miss the awards ceremony...as exciting as another ceremony sounded, most of the UK team decided not to attend. Instead we went to the tent bar (a bar in a tent :) ). Got back at around 1:00am, went to sleep...

Boring day for ya'll i know, but whatcha gonna do..if you don't like it feel free to come to the next WCG and write a better diary!!!

Saturday 18th October

Second to last day, how unfortunate. Must let everyone know i'm now writing this roughly two and a half weeks after I arrived back. Some people (antmoo) started moaning that I never finish any of my diaries, so I guess it was time to finish my first one.

Can't really recall what time I woke up couldn't have been too early.