[Intoccabile19]

First off I would like to say that this is not an attack on any of the players or organisers for the WCG Finals. I was reading the ongoing issues in the live chat on sc2sea. If anything I would like to say thank you to all of the players and organisers who worked through the 'crap' to put in a wonderful effort and catch the early flights without even knowing if they had somewhere to sleep.

Secondly, this is just the opinion of myself and my brother. We only went to the twighlight session because we were lead to believe that this is when the WCG Finals were to be played. I have seen some of the photos form the Sunday session and it seems that the setup was much better and more organised. Unfortunately we were unable to get tickets while we were at the venue to the Sunday session.

Once again, I do not mean to attack any of the players with this as I understand that they were sleep deprived and no one wants to play in a tournament if they are not at their best. I actually had a chat with PiG on the night and could clearly see the fatigue from the days events on his face and hold no bad feelings toward him or any of the other players.

I am simply writing this so that someone knows about my poor experience at EB Expo 2011. I feel there was a lack of organisation and I feel that EB Games missed the whole point of the experience, Gaming. I wanted there to big announcements, the ability to play games before release and the experience to see how Australia competed with the E3s or TGS of the world.

EB Expo failed to deliever on all accounts. I attended the twighlight session as I was keen to see the SC2 World Cyber Games Finals. I am trying hard to get involved with the AU sc2 community and thought that this would be the perfect time to meet alot of the players and people involved (also my coach/favourite AU player PiG!). The poor organisation meant that people were crowding around player screens rather than big screens and there was no commentation of the event at all. It was a little LAN of 10 computers where Australia's Pro Gamers got to play on a 19" screen. I was there at 4.30pm and due to poor flight times and schedules the WCG was finished at 7pm because, understandably all the gamers were tired. There was to be no finals that night and they noted that there wasn't even internet in the Arena to make this happen. As previously stated I believe that most of these issues were addressed for the Sunday session with a big screen and a casted stream setup. I would like to congratulate the people who noticed these deficiencies and made the changes for the Sunday session. However I was unable to enjoy these changes.

I moved on from this to find some of the games I wanted to play. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (MW3) was first on the list. I was told at the beginning of the line that I would not be playing, only watching, and that there would be a 45 minute wait to do so. I reluntantly accepted. What I found was that in the 10 minute session I was in the room for 8 minutes was being advertised to about MW3 intergration about Elite, a pay per month service that I had no interest in. I watched menu systems for 8 minutes and then finally the game. Again this was a disappointment. One minute of a inexperienced player stuffing around on a console. He couldn't aim, he couldn't really move or take cover. It showed me nothing of the game. We were asked to leave after this. My friends and I couldn't be less excited about the expo at this point.

Trying to make the most I checked the Skyrim booth. It had a line that ran around the four sides of it so I checked with the attendant if we got to play the game. No was the answer again. Didn't even bother lining up for this.

I moved on to Saints Row 3. The line up was again about 30 minutes but it was playable. You watched and then played for about 5 minutes. They did really well with their booth. They had the promo girls keeping people entertained our front. A questionaire girl keeping people occupied and signing people up for more information in the line and the person letting people in was actually knowledgable about the game. It was the best thing the Expo had to offer so far.

After this we could have lined up for a few more hours to play/watch 5 minutes of menu systems and already seen trailers but we decided that the EB Arena Spectacular would be cool. This was the last straw for me. I was expecting to see new trailers or demos of the new games or hardware we should be expecting. Unfortunately it did not live up to it's title. This was 5 minutes of uncordinated dancers (which we had already seen in the standard hall) followed by 30 minutes of BMX stunts. Little to nothing to do with gaming. No announcements, no live demos of publishers showing why their game was the best on the big screen. Just lots of bikes going over the same jump. I didn't even understand the relevance.

After this my friends and I decided to leave. We gave up on that and we all had a sour taste from what we considered should have been an exciting expo to attend. We were so thrilled as we travelled from the Sunshine Coast with a 3 hour trip down, a expensive hotel room for the night and another 3 hour trip back up on Sunday.

How can you fix it for next year you ask? Simple, start with shorter lines, LAN area for large amount of people to play the games, show bags (paid for) and entertainers in the expo area. I also believe that the main stage could be used for alot of the shows that were being hidden behind closed doors. This would eliviate alot of the problems with lines and waiting times and also ensure that the EB 'Games' expo is all about what it should be all about......

GAMES

I would love to hear other peoples experiences!

Quick Comments

	inFeZa:	Thx for voicing your opinion - hope it's better next year.
	nirvAnA:	constuctive feedback always good, thanks for taking the time to write this up :)
	Doctor:	nice one !
	PiG:	Hey man great to meet you! Yeah I felt horribad thankgod i got to postpone my last match or yoon would have beaten me hands down