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My Korean Starcraft Adventure – by EscapisT

안녕하세요!
Annyeonghaseyo!

As some of you may have heard, I have recently been to the IeSF World Championship 2011 in Andong, Korea and I would be sharing my experiences through this blog. I sincerely hope that you will enjoy a glimpse into what I did and experienced during my time there.

Firstly, I would like to make known that I’m not a person who is into blogs or whatnot; I never really understood the act of revealing your personal experiences with the whole anonymous world. However, I have decided to make an exception as this adventure has been such an exhilarating experience and given me the opportunity to meet so many awesome people that I would have otherwise never knew walked the face of this earth. As I have only decided to do this after the conclusion of the trip, and having so much has happen in such a short span of time, I may not recollect everything; or I may simply just not wish to share.


Prelude
Although I am extremely grateful for this opportunity presented to me, it has had me feeling somewhat “guilty” that I did not earn this in my own right. Just to refresh thoughts, the results for the IeSF Qualifier held in Singapore are as follows:-

1. FlashRevz
2. FlashMuse
3. aLtEscapisT
4. GGFiery

Although sometimes you can’t help but think if I did this sooner, that did not happen, I did not screw up, messed up my game plan(you get my point), the results might have been different; but regardless, at the end of the day, everyone still has to respect the results. I personally felt Rev would have no doubt have had a better showing for Singapore as I feel currently I still have so much to learn and improve on before even being considered “reasonably decent” to put up a fight at these international events.
In other news, Rev won ESTC so I feel much better! Congrats to both him and Flash!

With that aside, I present to you…



Day One- The waiting game

It’s very hard to translate feelings and emotions into words, therefore I am going to use songs help describe how I felt. >_<

So I wake up, and then I remember..

I’m going to Korea?

I’m going to Korea!

Then it struck me,

I'M GOING TO KOREA!!!



Current Mood-


That feeling of venturing into the unknown with uncertainty…

Some enigmatic place where you only hear stories of…

Then time just dragged by, freaking boring stuff so I am going to fast forward
4hours at Changi Airport >>>>>>>> 6hours Flight to Incheon >>>>>>>>>>>> 1.5hours wait for bus >>>> 4-5hours Bus ride to Andong >>>>>>>>>> 2hours waiting for hotel >>>> (no sleep AT ALL)

Arriving at Incheon International Airport; I saw a familiar yet unfamiliar face, l0l, turned out it was Hwanni! We chatted about Starcraft2 and being the ignorant prick I am; I did not know what was RTS or Starcraft1/BW before Sc2, let alone who he was in SC1/BW. (And yes I used think that WC3’s standard melee game was a noob and boring rip off from DotA, that’s my extent of ignorance about RTS)

Being the giant baller he was, and is, he told me stories about SC1/BW what he used to do etc. Foreigners like IdrA, NonY, Ret who came to Korea and the sad dismal story of players under his care in eSTRO who practiced BW for 13hours a day, 7days a week, and were only B teamers. Don’t worry, all sad stories have a happy ending; those players are known today as FruitDealer(?), STBomber and EGPuMa. The Thai players flights got delayed so we got to talk more ㅋㅋㅋㅋand I got to see pictures of his holiday with Artosis and Tasteless in Cambodia =D
To give you a visualisation about the Airport, watch the first two minutes of this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDBYOQuRKuY
(Our gate was closer to the 7-11, you see it the background at 0.02-0.03)


(Me with Hwanni!)
I owe Zeal big time for helping me pass time on the bus or I might have died- a horrible death

>>>>>>>> Welcome Party!!! It was basically just opening speeches with dinner, and the most important thing, DRAWS FOR GROUP STAGE!
I was just praying I don’t get any Zerg’s in my group, so guess what? ??

Everyone in my group was Zerg ㅜㅜ (in Korea you don’t do T.T or T_T , its ㅜㅜ or ㅠ)

All I knew was that they were from Bulgaria and Spain. (IeSF used real name and representing country to identify players)

Malcolm = Malcome in Korean, so I had to remember I was now known as Malcome for everything during my time there.

__________________________________________________ ______________________________

I initially gave up the idea of posting this Blog but after persuasion from a certain someone I decided to finish it today, thus sacrificing ALL my sleep for my 8-5 TORTURE tomorrow. no other intention =D really..
better late than never



Day Two- Showtime

After a miserly 3hours of sleep, I found myself on the bus to Andong Art Center. Took around 30mins but we got there.

(This photo doesn't do any justice to how it actually looks)

There was a rehearsal for the flag ceremony which took quite awhile to organise,get positioning correct but was totally dope as I got to make some friends and sort of hold the Flag. Was really just following your buddy assigned to you around.(I got lucky )
I learnt a few things to become a nerd baller.
1.Playing Starcraft2 automatically raises your status to cool(yay for all of us!)
2.Know your Kpop, randomly calling out Kpop stars or songs will do as well(barely passed here)
3.All you need to know is Annyeong-haseyo and Kamsa-haminda to impress(owning!)

(at 3.15+ if you notice, is too imba so you need to call twice for us to come out )

After saying goodbye for the time being, Its time to paartaay.The Andong Stadium!


My groups were the second half.. in other words do nothing for 2hours, so took a look around and chilled, but with the amount of things going on simultaneously in the stadium, 2hours ain't enough!
Of course we decided to check out the Korean Sc2 players, like duhhh. Special shout-out to Brian who was a VIP so I could enter the play area and breath down on pro's necks and see the jealousy on everyone else's face outside . Used his camera and went around taking random footage of the area and bugging people and taking pro's FPS view whilst playing+ an interview with hwanni which was more like asking random questions.(might be added?)

I saw Soulman, or a guy using his account!! But didn't have the chance to say hi, maybe I was starstruck ~.~ he said I was shy boy after I got back to Singapore as I told him I saw him and he confirmed it was him but he had nfi how I looked like. ㅋㅋㅋㅋ

(just a rank3 kr gm, no biggie~)

Next up was the opening ceremony so everyone had to stop practice games and head back to Andong Art Centre which was only a stones throw away. I managed to find my buddy again, we were arranged in alphabetical order,Russia, Spain, Sweden was lined near me, which gave me the opportunity to chat with Sjow . Embarrassingly enough, I was totally in a holiday mood, whereas I could tell that he was very focused as he mentioned that he wanted the ceremony to be over asap so he could get back to practising. Of course I asked him about server rank, so take your guesses!
1.
2.
3.
4.



(It was crazZzy live! We were backstage, thank god it was loud enough, we made so much noise)
The ceremonial speeches took a considerable amount of time after the Flag Ceremony so I took some chill pills and learnt how to say some Korean expressions.

After getting back, group stages started!!
At this point, I was already lethargic but hell with it, lets play some starcraft.
Sorry about the way I describe the scenario, but that's how I roll. The tension in the air was really weeeird, like everyone being edgy, delaying for more practice time.
First game was vs Spain on TDA, I had no idea what the !@#$! I was thinking, I initially wanted to get it over with a 6gate then probe killed, get gases,damn he saw, cancel gas,oh he didnt, get it now? pylon,cancel,block,blah,make gas,denied,damn,killed.die.run,oh no,what now,collo,fasterrrr,get 3rd,def,roach counter attack everywhere,damn ling runby,good stabilised for now,wtf hes doing now,fark mutas,no see it comming,cannons,fark no pylon in mineral line,make pylon,oh no its coming,run probes,army def!,oh fark the 3rd cannons down by the roaches,
after being tossed around like a rag doll for sometime....
@#$%@#$ this sh|t GG.
like wtffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff was going on, lights on but nobody's home.

whatever

Vsing Bulgaria on Xel,naga. loooooong story short- ahahahahaha Epic fail cheese.ezpz def ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ free win
I made 2 cybercores this game which I got teased for by hwanni, repeatedly. ㅜㅜ

After everything was over, practice time? nah..later on.. TWO VEE TWO! !
Me+Brian Vs Hwanni+another organiser(sry not sure who was it)
I felt kind of stupid for wasting time, as Zeal was practicing with so many imba players, yes I got jelly so I joined him after that(why does it say that I spell practicing wrong???!! n|rVaNa!!!)
As Brian was toss, no chance in hell will I tolerate 2P so I used Z instead,
oh and btw we rofl pwned. Hwanni's teamate ran off halfway to attend to something during the 2nd game but w/e a win is a win =D
Kind of surprised all the pro players were so nice, even giving tips and what not while we practiced for the next day.

Back to hotel!! h0ley m0ley was it cold outside, think about the coldest thing ever, yeah its like that, but worse.

Time to attempt to sleep~




Day Three- Koreans are bad at something?


Guess?.


After leveling up to 4hours of sleep the previous night, I found who I was going to play next. Sjow

Game1 on Xel,naga Caverns,
I just decided to blind counter 1-1-1(oh the irony), the only way I'm goona stand a chance.

Scouted his gas, feeling good, my probe gtfo. 1gate Fe-ed nexus on 24, probe poked,bunker 1 marine,reactoring?,stalker out,scouted the back alley,woot scv killed and saw nothing, Stalker pokes, bunker,standarrrrd, 1banshee at main did 0 dmg,woot
then suddenly at 7min+ game time, the inevitable ball of stuff rolled out, almost killing my stalker at the front. Stalkers tried to get free dmg while slowly getting pushed back to my side of the map, chronoed gates, oh my thats alot of tanks and marines, no more banshees o.0
Patrolling the watch towers split my gateway army into 3 parts for the 3 split at my natural, hoping to catch him riding dirty,opps I mean unsieged, and self splash by walked-in zealots past marines. Most T's FF clumped stalkers anyway.
but anyhow, unsieged tanks laughed at everything, long story short. raped
I was like, how in the world....I knew it was coming.. then I realised pressing G didn't work cause my 2 sentries was chilling with the probes in mineral lines along with some other stalker buddies. And a lesson learnt, don't assume siege tanks have siege. Most prolly would have held it with those extra units and waiting for anther warp cycle with gs, but w.e

They see me rollin', they hatin', patrollin tryin' to catch me ridin' dirty

Next game was on TDA,
I got a decent spawn,12 vs 9, 1gate Fe-ed into 2nd gas be4 adding gates, got a fast robo and forge and everything just flowed nicely from there, we just macroed up till 3 base and got lucky with obs placement and deflected drops with no dmg meanwhile, then the mmmvg army rolled out to the centre of the map, 6collosus 15+stalker 20+zealot vs 14+viking 4+medivac MMball, fight took place on the ramp to my 3rd, efficient fight, lost all zealots but retained all stalker,sentry and a few collo, cleared vikings, red-orange mm stimmed and backed out, decided attacking with 0zealots,many stalker+2-3 collo into spread out red-orangy heavy marauder MM would be cool, bad choice, collo couldn't find any clumps to target, mostly only attacking 1-2 units at a time, reinforcements stimmed in, and everyone knows how stalkers do vs stimmed marauders
realised that the zealots I warped in didn't join the fight, somehow my shift move warpin messed up...
and lost EVERYTHING, tried to comeback as storm drops did considerable amount of damage during the big fight, but eventually was too much to handle from losing everything and had to tap out. Strangely enough, I felt good after getting raped 2-0, don't know why, maybe because it was actually a 30+min game and not a roflpwn.

After getting eliminated, I thought I was goona be so bored and emo, however I was wrong.
There were so many games and like game booths going on simultaneously as well as the foosball tournament so theres always something to do, some friends I made were mending the booths so I always got some prize even though I didn't earn it . Zeal and I decided to practice on Kr ladder later on since computers were free to use whenever you want, thanks to F91 from China for lending us his imba kr accs! 1st game I searched IMTerran/sixjaxMajor lololol, got raped and went 1-3 on his acc thus shattering his mmr ㅜㅜ. Who thought that Chinese would come in handy Korea?


Just goona post pics from here on


(Broodwar showmatch!! Leta vs ???, Zeal told me it was Leta, sorry my ignorance shines thru once again)

(At the Andong Mask Festival)

(Press area)

(interviewing the finalists Grubby and Sjow playing tommorow)
You heard me alright, they may rape in sc2 but rest assured I took revenge by roflstomping in the foosball tournament, It was so one-sided I could play with closed eyes.

(roflstomp area of korean tears)

(Starcraft2 Loser)

(Foosball Champ)

(Andong Salted Mackerel Fish, keyword=Salted)

(FINALS)

(Grubby at the finals)

(Sjow at the finals)

(Prize Ceremony!!! Singapore got a podium finish for Fifa2! 0mg0mg0mg0mg)

(Korean WTFBBQ)

The Finals was awesome except for the fact that Grubby got 0-3 The production value was SICKKKK, camera pan's, effects and transitions and just generally everything. God knows how many cameras they had to cover everything.

Mood on the last day


This trip sparked my interest in learning Korean.
Made me realise the realness of the awesomeness of this game.(If that makes any sense)
and lastly, gave me the chance to meet some people I will never forget.


Thank you if you read the whole thing and hoped you enjoyed it, If you wish to know anything else that went on over there that I may have missed don't hesitate to ask!

I can't speak for the other games, but organisation on the SC2 side was really top notch, plenty of table space, actual desktops with monitors placed on top for easy plug n' play, games flowed well with marshals setting up the game for you, all you need to do is say your vetos, don't need to worry about finding your opponent and hosting wrong maps or anything, Kr Sc2 was re localised to English as well.

Final standings

1st SjoW (undefeated champ!)
2nd Grubby (I shook his hand!)
3rd DeathAngel (gave me tips!)
4th SoftBall (baller!)

Random thought: