Hey guys I hope you all had fun watching the streams of MLG Raleigh over the weekend. I had an absolute blast there! I was able to get 4 1/2 hours of footage over the 3 days so I planned to edit all that on Tuesday but I spent it moving into the new LXG House(I'll film some of that soon too). I'll be posting up each days video in this blog as soon as i get them edited i'm hoping to have them up on Thursday.
But until than I just wanted to write up a little blog post about things.
So friday we left at 9am only to run into completely stopped traffic on 15N Luckily my dad was able to navigate us around that and we were able to get back on track after about 45minutes. The rest of the drive was pretty much smooooth sailing. We arrived at the Hotel at about 3:20pm since everything didn't start until 5 we decided to grab some food. We were staying on the 16th floor and when the elevator doors opened to take us down to the lobby we see Sundance standing there rocking out to some music on his headset. At that point I knew this was going to be a start to an awesome weekend.
We walked across the street to zpizza (since they have gluten free pizza crust) and grabbed some pizza before heading to the convention center. Since it was about 4:30 when we got to the convention center there was no lines or anything that we needed to deal with. So we got our spectator passes and headed into the convention area. (Be sure to check out the day 1 video the footage starts here) We walked around for awhile checking out each of the different stage as well as the open bracket area for Starcraft II before heading back to the man stage to get seats for the epic starcraft II matches that were going to take place that night. As the night progressed we decided to do a mix of walking around and viewing starcraft. After the final broadcasted match Holly and I watched state of the game live on the main stage while nick walked over to the open bracket area and watched the reaming games for the night. After state of the game Holly and I walked over to the open bracket area and we were able to see a couple more minutes of games before stumbling up to bed for the night. At this point it was about 1:30am and after the drive down I was a bit tired. Nick stayed and watched the reaming games of the open bracket before coming up to pass out for the night as well.
The convention center wasn't as crowded as I expected it to be but it was the first day and everyone was freaking out about the Hurricane. The weather wasn't even that bad on Friday just cloudy.
Day 2 I wanted to wake up and be down there by 10am when the matches started but I decided it would be better if everyone just slept in a little today. So we didn't wake up until 10:40. First thing we do when we get down is check the brackets for the open tournament. After that we head over to the Main stage and grab some seats to get ready to watch the first match. We wanted to get in a little bit of starcraft before running across the street to get lunch. It was pretty windy and and rained but overall the weather wasn't bad at all. Nick and I put on sweatshirts and just walked across the street. I wanted to get another pizza but sadly zpizza's system was down because of the storm and they were only doing pizza's by the slice not pies T_T Holly wanted a sub so we walked to Jimmy Johns which was pretty much next door to Zpizza. Nick and I than walked back across the street to the Kabob place. I got 2 chicken kabobs and some fries and nick got a gyro. After stuffing our faces we headed back down to the convention center.
A couple people from the DC LAN events were attending MLG as competitors so I was keeping an eye out for them. A few notable players were LuckyFool who ended up getting knocked into the loser bracket in his last game Friday night. VileIllusion who ended up playing his teammate first round (Spanishiwa) but did quite well and was working his way through the winner bracket of the open. Sadly he ends up running into EGDemuslim and gets knocked into the loser bracket. Eventually Spanishiwa goes on a rambage in the loser bracket making it to the round of 8 or something before he runs into EGDemuslim and is taken out of the whole tournament. I wish MLG had more casters/streams going for the open bracket because there are some epic story lines that took place over the weekend that a lot of people missed out on. I did a good amount of walking around on Saturday as well checking out the LOL stuff for a little bit watching the Gears of War 3 show match but most of my attention was spent on Starcraft and the Open tournament. Of course another thing that I spent my time doing in between games was running around and getting as many pro players as possible to sign my TeamLiquid Poster. I was able to get 28 pros to sign it by the end of Saturday.
Saturday ended a little bit earlier than Friday which was good because champion Sunday was going to be epic so I had no problem going to pass out for the night.
Day3
Apparently there was some sort of basketball black tie event going on because when we went down to the lobby that morning Charles Barkley was there getting his picture taken with fans. Rumors had it Shaq was also there but I never saw him. To be honest I was much more excited about riding the elevator with Sundance than seeing Charles Barkley.
After checking out of the hotel we headed straight to the main stage to grab seats knowing that it was going to difficult to find any. Lucky it wasn't so bad in the morning we were able to watch some epic matches and than decided to grab some lunch right before the Huk vs Nada rematch. Sadly you weren't aloud to bring food into the convention center unless you had it in your bag so I ate my pizza in the lobby area of the convention center while being able to see half the main stage screen. I could hear what was going on during that match and I had twitter so it sucks I couldn't really expierance it but that was pretty much the only time to eat. Nick ate his food while my pizza was being made so he went into the convention center and was able to watch the games no problem. After that of course there were no seats left we really should have had someone stay with the seats while the other two grabbed food >.< I took the time to film a lot more and luckily we were able to get 2 seats for the 3rd-4thplace match as well as the finals. Day[9] and Husky were supposed to do their signing at 5pm but were running late due to casting so around 5:30 they finally were able to get off casting. Holly and I left Nick to watch the seats/the 3rd-4th place match while we went to wait in line. Husky was able to come to the signing area first because Day[9] was on the phone. About 7 minutes or so after Husky was there Day[9] came out and there were cheers from the line. Everyone with a gold membership was able to by pass the line (about 15 people) which kinda sucks seeing as there was a good 100 people in the regular line. Sadly we weren't able to get either casters signatures and they weren't even able to get half way through the line being having to go eat and cast the finals. Next time i'm defiantly going to be a gold member for when I go to MLG... We walked back a little bit dissapointed but I was ready for the finals. It was clear most people were rooting for Cocoa after all he is a Slayers player. I was one of the few people to actually be rooting for Bomber. I've been a big fan of him back before he made it into Code A and I always love watching his play he really is one of the best Terrans in the world. The award ceremony was pretty shweet sadly a lot of people left after the finals before the cermony I don't know if it was because they just wanted Cocoa to win or they just had to leave either way it was lame of them But now that the award cermony was over it was time to head home we jumped in the car and started the 5 hour drive back to VA. I was making great time until we hit horrible pocket on 95N. They decided to make the 3lane highway a 1 lane highway... My max speed going through the hour delay was 15mph my average speed was 6mph. Also another annoying thing was a good chuck of Virginia apparently didn't have power but what was really annoying was that one side of the High way would be completely lit up and our side of course pitch black with no power so that was a little rough when we needed a bathroom break 
But overall the ride back wasn't so bad we left around 9pm and dropped Nick off at 2:30 I was able to get home a little after 3 and I passsed right out since classes started for Nick and I monday. Overall MLG was a BLAST! You'll get ever more of an idea of how things were when I get the video footage edited up later this week.
I don't have time to edit this more right now since I have class so i'm just going to submit it and go back through and edit it later
-NAN-
But until than I just wanted to write up a little blog post about things.
So friday we left at 9am only to run into completely stopped traffic on 15N Luckily my dad was able to navigate us around that and we were able to get back on track after about 45minutes. The rest of the drive was pretty much smooooth sailing. We arrived at the Hotel at about 3:20pm since everything didn't start until 5 we decided to grab some food. We were staying on the 16th floor and when the elevator doors opened to take us down to the lobby we see Sundance standing there rocking out to some music on his headset. At that point I knew this was going to be a start to an awesome weekend.
We walked across the street to zpizza (since they have gluten free pizza crust) and grabbed some pizza before heading to the convention center. Since it was about 4:30 when we got to the convention center there was no lines or anything that we needed to deal with. So we got our spectator passes and headed into the convention area. (Be sure to check out the day 1 video the footage starts here) We walked around for awhile checking out each of the different stage as well as the open bracket area for Starcraft II before heading back to the man stage to get seats for the epic starcraft II matches that were going to take place that night. As the night progressed we decided to do a mix of walking around and viewing starcraft. After the final broadcasted match Holly and I watched state of the game live on the main stage while nick walked over to the open bracket area and watched the reaming games for the night. After state of the game Holly and I walked over to the open bracket area and we were able to see a couple more minutes of games before stumbling up to bed for the night. At this point it was about 1:30am and after the drive down I was a bit tired. Nick stayed and watched the reaming games of the open bracket before coming up to pass out for the night as well.
The convention center wasn't as crowded as I expected it to be but it was the first day and everyone was freaking out about the Hurricane. The weather wasn't even that bad on Friday just cloudy.
Day 2 I wanted to wake up and be down there by 10am when the matches started but I decided it would be better if everyone just slept in a little today. So we didn't wake up until 10:40. First thing we do when we get down is check the brackets for the open tournament. After that we head over to the Main stage and grab some seats to get ready to watch the first match. We wanted to get in a little bit of starcraft before running across the street to get lunch. It was pretty windy and and rained but overall the weather wasn't bad at all. Nick and I put on sweatshirts and just walked across the street. I wanted to get another pizza but sadly zpizza's system was down because of the storm and they were only doing pizza's by the slice not pies T_T Holly wanted a sub so we walked to Jimmy Johns which was pretty much next door to Zpizza. Nick and I than walked back across the street to the Kabob place. I got 2 chicken kabobs and some fries and nick got a gyro. After stuffing our faces we headed back down to the convention center.
A couple people from the DC LAN events were attending MLG as competitors so I was keeping an eye out for them. A few notable players were LuckyFool who ended up getting knocked into the loser bracket in his last game Friday night. VileIllusion who ended up playing his teammate first round (Spanishiwa) but did quite well and was working his way through the winner bracket of the open. Sadly he ends up running into EGDemuslim and gets knocked into the loser bracket. Eventually Spanishiwa goes on a rambage in the loser bracket making it to the round of 8 or something before he runs into EGDemuslim and is taken out of the whole tournament. I wish MLG had more casters/streams going for the open bracket because there are some epic story lines that took place over the weekend that a lot of people missed out on. I did a good amount of walking around on Saturday as well checking out the LOL stuff for a little bit watching the Gears of War 3 show match but most of my attention was spent on Starcraft and the Open tournament. Of course another thing that I spent my time doing in between games was running around and getting as many pro players as possible to sign my TeamLiquid Poster. I was able to get 28 pros to sign it by the end of Saturday.
Saturday ended a little bit earlier than Friday which was good because champion Sunday was going to be epic so I had no problem going to pass out for the night.
Day3
Apparently there was some sort of basketball black tie event going on because when we went down to the lobby that morning Charles Barkley was there getting his picture taken with fans. Rumors had it Shaq was also there but I never saw him. To be honest I was much more excited about riding the elevator with Sundance than seeing Charles Barkley.
After checking out of the hotel we headed straight to the main stage to grab seats knowing that it was going to difficult to find any. Lucky it wasn't so bad in the morning we were able to watch some epic matches and than decided to grab some lunch right before the Huk vs Nada rematch. Sadly you weren't aloud to bring food into the convention center unless you had it in your bag so I ate my pizza in the lobby area of the convention center while being able to see half the main stage screen. I could hear what was going on during that match and I had twitter so it sucks I couldn't really expierance it but that was pretty much the only time to eat. Nick ate his food while my pizza was being made so he went into the convention center and was able to watch the games no problem. After that of course there were no seats left we really should have had someone stay with the seats while the other two grabbed food >.< I took the time to film a lot more and luckily we were able to get 2 seats for the 3rd-4thplace match as well as the finals. Day[9] and Husky were supposed to do their signing at 5pm but were running late due to casting so around 5:30 they finally were able to get off casting. Holly and I left Nick to watch the seats/the 3rd-4th place match while we went to wait in line. Husky was able to come to the signing area first because Day[9] was on the phone. About 7 minutes or so after Husky was there Day[9] came out and there were cheers from the line. Everyone with a gold membership was able to by pass the line (about 15 people) which kinda sucks seeing as there was a good 100 people in the regular line. Sadly we weren't able to get either casters signatures and they weren't even able to get half way through the line being having to go eat and cast the finals. Next time i'm defiantly going to be a gold member for when I go to MLG... We walked back a little bit dissapointed but I was ready for the finals. It was clear most people were rooting for Cocoa after all he is a Slayers player. I was one of the few people to actually be rooting for Bomber. I've been a big fan of him back before he made it into Code A and I always love watching his play he really is one of the best Terrans in the world. The award ceremony was pretty shweet sadly a lot of people left after the finals before the cermony I don't know if it was because they just wanted Cocoa to win or they just had to leave either way it was lame of them But now that the award cermony was over it was time to head home we jumped in the car and started the 5 hour drive back to VA. I was making great time until we hit horrible pocket on 95N. They decided to make the 3lane highway a 1 lane highway... My max speed going through the hour delay was 15mph my average speed was 6mph. Also another annoying thing was a good chuck of Virginia apparently didn't have power but what was really annoying was that one side of the High way would be completely lit up and our side of course pitch black with no power so that was a little rough when we needed a bathroom break But overall the ride back wasn't so bad we left around 9pm and dropped Nick off at 2:30 I was able to get home a little after 3 and I passsed right out since classes started for Nick and I monday. Overall MLG was a BLAST! You'll get ever more of an idea of how things were when I get the video footage edited up later this week.I don't have time to edit this more right now since I have class so i'm just going to submit it and go back through and edit it later
-NAN-
