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| MLG Chicago *Lots of pics, long* | |
| Posted By: Toby Dillman <TobyDillman@gmail.com> | Date: 12/18/05 7:39 p.m. |
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I went to MLG Chicago this weekend. My friend asked me on Wednesday night, 15 minutes before registration closed, if I wanted to go along. I figured I may as well; I didn't have anything to lose, and it'd be a total blast. So I decided to go along and see what happened. The four of us (Team KtW) set out Friday afternoon for Chicago and got to the Hyatt Regency O'Hare an hour and a half later. Here's the four of us: (Left to right: Tom123, DeterrentEnd (me), Yourself 87 and I Erik I Pwns I)
We got to the hotel and get our parking ticket, then walked up to the front doors. The first thing you see when walking in the doors is this sweet, huge fountain:
I'd been to this hotel before for a college presentation (one of those things where they try to recruit you, total waste of time), and I remembered this fountain. I want one in my bathroom. We went and checked in, then headed up to our rooms to put our stuff away and chill. This is Friday, and the FFA was going on. None of us had signed up for the FFA, so we could all just hang out for a bit and watch. We did, however, have to register for the event and the 4v4s, so when that opened we went down to the ballroom and waited around for our turn. The line going into the room:
That's the main stage. The two projectors on either side of the main stage were used to show gameplay from the two teams up there (more on that when I talk about Saturday), and the one on the far right was used for miscellaneous information (brackets, schedules, that sort of thing). This message was prominently displayed on the right screen for a good chunk of the first day:
And it was pretty crazy. The spectators' area was in the center of the room, and to the left and right were the playing stations. In the back right was a place for FarCry, and to the immediate right was a small section for Super Smash Brothers. I was pretty amazed by some of the SSBM players, they're all so quick. KillaOR was there too, so it was kinda cool to see him milling about. As I'm walking around, I'm looking for people I might recognize. Not more than five minutes after I walk in, I see this guy:
He and his brother, along with the rest of Team 3D, were just hanging out talking with other players. For a guy like me, it was a total thrill to see the Ogres in person. It was really cool. There weren't a whole lot of big names in the FFA until later in the night, though I did see a few people like MelloZ and Foxygrandpa (though he totally didn't recognize me. He attributes that to being tired. It's alright Foxy, I still love you). Later on in the night, though, people were just coming out of the woodwork. On one of the FFA stations set up, there were a ton of people. I saw Ogre2, Lil Poison, Poison, MelloZ...lots of people. I got a few pics of the ones I recognized: Ogre2...I can't say that I was surprised by how he played, but it was amazing to see anyway. All the pros are so quick and fluid, they're on a completely different level than most other people:
Poison, with Lil Poison's head at the bottom the picture:
Speaking of Lil Poison, here's a picture of him (That's Vic on the left and Poison in the background):
When I first heard about him, I didn't actually believe it. He's seven years old and plays Halo professionally. I thought it was a gimmick. Then I saw him actually play, and I was totally blown away. He plays like any of the other pros, which means he's lightning quick and accurate, and he's smart too. I didn't think it was possible for kids that age to play the way he does, but he proved me wrong. He's amazing. The FFA went on for the rest of Friday night and into early Saturday morning, and then my team and I went back up to our room. Erik had brought along a small (read: So small that the unsized picture I took of it is actually bigger than the TV itself) TV and an Xbox, so we played on that until we realized that we could plug into the bigger hotel TV. If you want a feel for how small the TV was, just look at this:
We hadn't had any food, so we made a quick McDonald's run (yay for the 24-hour drive thru) and had a late dinner. Probably not the most healthy thing to do, but hey. You only live once, right? By this time, it's around 2:30 in the morning and we have to be up at 8 for the next day's event. So we got to sleep and woke up three and a half hours later so we could all shower and get some breakfast. Walking out of the room, I noticed a monsterous statue/carving (I'm not entirely sure what it was, but it was sweet) protruding from the floor. This is what it looked like from our room on the fourth floor:
Freakin' huge. So around 8 AM Saturday, we go into the ballroom and are told that our match doesn't start until 10:30. We've got a few hours to kill, so we head back up to the room and play more on that tiny TV (we didn't make the realization that we could play on the hotel TV until later on in the day). When it was time, we went downstairs and found our way to the station we were designated to play at. We look at the schedule real quick to see who we're playing against, and it turns out to be a team called C4. We were extremely surprised to see them there, because we didn't know they were going in the first place, but we had also played against them on Live two days before this. And we'd gotten smoked. They were ranked 15th in the LCQ (Last Chance Qualifiers) and we were ranked 114th. That may give you a clue as to how we did. We lost the series in two games (the Slayer game was close, though. They blew us out in CTF), and were went to the Losers' Bracket. Really, though, I was content with this. I didn't expect to win anything, I was just there to play and have fun. Not to take anything away from C4, they're a good team. We have a two hour break until our next match, so we hang out and watch some other matches. Then we're called on again, though this time there's a lot more pressure on us to win. If we lose, we're out of the tournament. But that's not all. When they announced which station we were at, I almost passed out. We were at Station 1, which is up on the main stage. Not only were we in front of everyone, but we were being put on VoD and the Xbox that Yourself and I were playing on was the one being projected on the projector (it's the left one in the picture I mentioned earlier). We were pretty nervous to play in front of all these gamers, and we weren't entirely confident going in because of our recent loss. As it is, we ended up winning both games (TS Ivory Tower 50-35 and CTF Warlock 5-3). These games should be on VoD sometime soon, so check for them. It was the second round in the Losers' Bracket of the LCQ. Give it a look; I'm on the bottom screen and Yourself is on top. Here's a picture of the Xbox we were playing on (that's my controller in the 4th slot):
And here are two pictures that I took (with a notedly shakey hand, I apologize for the blurriness) looking out from my chair:
So with those two games won, we moved on to Round 3 in the Losers' Bracket. We won the first game of Slayer on Lockout by a decent margin, then lost CTF on Warlock and then we lost a heartbreaker TS match on Midship by 1 kill. So that put us out of the tournament around noon on Saturday. It didn't bother me much because we lost to a good team and I was there to have fun, but it would have been nice to keep going. Ah well. Losing meant I got to take more pictures and experience the rest of the tourney :) Since this was still the qualifiers, most of the pros weren't playing (they'd qualified at the last tourney), so I just ambled around and watched. That's the best way to get better at this game, is to watch better people play. I learned a ton. We saw that one station was drawing a huge crowd, so we went over to see what was up. It was one of the teams from Clan PMS playing, and really holding their own. Clan PMS was another thing that I didn't quite believe in. Call me sexist, but I'm a changed man now. These girls are really good at this game, and I'm glad I didn't have to play against them. Here's one of the pictures I got of PMS in action:
Anyway, this day ended around 2:30 in the morning again, though we didn't have to get up at any specific time the next morning. That was good, and we got a lot of needed sleep. We woke the next morning around 10:30, and we had to check out at noon. We got some breakfast and showered, then put all our stuff in the car and checked out of the room. We were able to stay to watch the rest of the tournament though, which was good. We went back into the ballroom to watch the rest of the competition. Team 3D and IGS were up on the main stage, and LegendZ and Shook One3's team were playing at a side station. Here's Capt Anarchy with the rest of his team:
There was another game going on too, so we walked over and saw that T Squared and Fonzi were playing. It was cool to see these guys playing together, too. T Squared was on "True Life" with KillaOR, and it was fun to see him actually playing.
In addition to Foxygrandpa, I met another HBO regular at MLG this weekend. Overswarm, the guy that does Not So Common Sense, was sitting in a chair watching the SSBM finals and I asked him if I could get a picture with him. Not only was he cool enough to actually take a picture with me, but he shook my hand and was really nice. It was great to meet him. This is the picture we took (I looked like a coked-out rapist in this picture, so I extracted myself from to protect the innocent):
Another gamer that I got a picture with was a girl from Clan PMS named Atomica. Here's that one:
Shortly after I took this picture, we decided to head out. We've got school tomorrow (stupid), so we couldn't stay till the end of the tourney and hope to finish everything we need to get done (last minute projects dropped on us, that sort of thing). We headed out around 4 PM, and here I sit typing this to you. This was definitely one of the funnest experiences I've ever had, and I really look forward to going next year. I hope you enjoyed my little write-up of my MLG experience, everyone. Adios --Toby | |
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| Replies: |
| MLG Chicago *Lots of pics, long* | Toby Dillman | 12/18/05 7:39 p.m. |
| Great stuff! Thanks. *NM* | 3Suns | 12/18/05 8:00 p.m. |
| Nice writeup *NM* | Max Power (aka- dewbe) | 12/18/05 8:09 p.m. |
| Way cool | LostRock11 | 12/18/05 8:39 p.m. |
| Re: MLG Chicago *Lots of pics, long* | Yourself | 12/18/05 11:58 p.m. |
| Fun read! *NM* | Mintz | 12/19/05 11:51 a.m. |
| Re: MLG Chicago *Lots of pics, long* | Sundance DiGiovanni | 12/19/05 3:58 p.m. |
| Hey, thanks for stopping by! | Louis Wu | 12/19/05 4:02 p.m. |
| Re: Hey, thanks for stopping by! | Foxygrandpa | 12/24/05 12:58 p.m. |
| Re: MLG Chicago *Lots of pics, long* | Toby Dillman | 12/19/05 4:36 p.m. |
| Re: MLG Chicago *Lots of pics, long* | Overswarm | 12/20/05 3:22 p.m. |
| Re: MLG Chicago *Lots of pics, long* | synide | 12/20/05 4:46 p.m. |
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After about an hour (there were lots of people there; you can't really tell from the picture) we got up and registered ourselves, then walked into the room. Now, this wasn't just some cute little ballroom. This place was HUGE, replete with four mosterous light fixtures on the 50-foot ceiling and people milling about from corner to corner. I knew this was gonna be a big event, but I wasn't sure exactly how big. When I walked in, this is what I saw:
