Blizzcon Finals: Frustratingly Good

Howdy doody!

Well, Blizzcon was on the other night and in case you missed it there was some pretty good announcements made! There was also playable versions of the new Diablo 3 expansion, Reaper of Souls and Heroes of the Storm a Blizzard take on League of Legends/DotA and a Hearthstone competition.. but for this post I'm going to focus on the Blizzcon WCS Grand Finals!

Let me start off by saying how good the overall production/competition was at the blizzcon finals. As someone who hasn't been keeping too up to date with the professional Starcraft scene for some time, it sparked that glimmer of enjoyment and threw me from watching it passively into me being an avid watcher and I found myself watching the entire tournament(picking the matches I found most interesting from the two streams available).

I have to give a shout-out to all the host/casters because without their animated commentary, it would have been a much duller affair. The list of casters was rather huge, with the biggest names in the industry there to give their expert analysis - Day[9], Tasteless, Artosis, RotterdaM, Mr Bitter, , Apollo. I also loved the fact that when they weren't casting they were at the analysis desk with good old DJWheat, iNcontroL and ToD giving their thoughts about the matches that were going on. I also have to say that ReDeYe and Chobra did a great job, their hosting has become a welcome mainstay of the WCS competitions in my view.

As has been said before, there was a distinct lack of Zerg players in the finals and as a zerg lover myself I found it easy to get behind the two players who had succeeded where so many had not. Those two also happen to be veritable giants in the race; Woongjin_Soulkey and EG.Jaedong.

It would be easy for me to discount the other amazing players who showcased their skill in an attempt to become the worlds best player of Starcraft 2. Such players as Acer.INnoVation, ST_Bomber, sk_mc, MaruPrime and [A]NaNiwa.. to name but a few. Maybe it was the fact that it kicked off right after an amazing opening ceremony, I found myself enthralled and unable to not pay attention as the first game of the show kicked off and it was a Terran Vs Terran, perhaps one of the most uninteresting matches for me to watch.

There were numerous upsets throughout the tournament, which is always nice! Now I say upsets like that because as with any tournament there are players who are expected to do very well in the competition and those who are not. Technically though there shouldn't be too many players who are at a lower skill cap in the Blizzcon Grand Finals.

However, with that all said.. when the grand finale was kicking off.. one of my Zerg heroes Jaedong had fought his way to the final to play against the Protoss sOs.. something stirred in me that had long been a part of playing Starcraft 2.. an intense feeling of frustration and possibly helplessness, I think it stands as testament to how well SoS was playing and perhaps also stretching the limits of my understanding of the match-up, Protoss Vs Zerg.

Again, I have to say that I don't think the finals were bad at all, the level of skill shown in all the games was unreal and a lot of the time had be gawking at the screen with an unbelieving look pasted on my face. But it left me with a bad taste in my mouth and caused me to immediately switch over to watch something else when it was over.

Ah well.. What was the highlight of Blizzcon for you? Let me know your thoughts!

Ciao for now!

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N00bc0n Postponed!

As the title says, the much anticipated first e-sports event in Ireland has had to be postponed for undisclosed reasons. This was a sad thing to wake up to as I for one was looking forwards to this as a starting point for events in Cork and Ireland on the whole.

The CEO of n00bgaming posted this early in the morning to inform the world of the bad news.

Due to circumstances outside of our control, n00b c0n has had to be Postponed until a later date.

We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused, and if there was anything we could possibly have done to make this event go ahead next week, you have our assurances that we would have done it. Unfortunately the issues we encountered were outside of our control and have left us with no choice but to reschedule the event. 

It is however, still our intention to help bring eSports to Ireland and we will aim to announce an online event in the next few days with similar players that would have been at n00b c0n, with €1000 prize pool, and are working hard to bring an offline event to Ireland in the near future.

Rest assured, all ticket refunds will be processed tomorrow.

Additionally, we would like to thank everyone who are working hard behind the scenes to make this event possible, and would like to confirm that we do still have the support to run this event in the future.

As I live in Cork myself, it doesn't really affect me that much but with only a week to go till this event was scheduled to take place, quite a lot of people are not best pleased with this move as they had booked hotels, time off work and even flights.

Without more details it's easy to jump to conclusions but really, doing that helps no-one and only really pushes us towards being in a worse state than we are already. I've seen already some talk that this has killed off any aspirations that Ireland has of becoming a new mecca for e-sports, but I don't think so. While I admit that it is a set-back, it's not something that the Irish scene cannot recover from.

There are a lot of dedicated people over here and with dedication and hard work, we can achieve anything.

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My stream and n00bc0n update

Well well well, that was fun! I only wish I had more stuff to give away! I hope everyone who got something got what they wanted!

In other news, the n00bc0n hype is starting to build up! They announced that they have a new sponsor.. none other than Riot Games(the makers of League of Legends for those not in the know). What does this mean for the tournament? Well I guess for anyone who had doubts as to the validity of the tournament it should quash them somewhat. It also means that they now also have a Riot caster for the League matches, none other than RiotQuickshot.

On top of this, I was casually informed the other day that the CEO of n00bgaming would be taking part in an interview on the RedFM radio station. As I expected, the DJ didn't really have a clue what he was asking but Paul sounded passionate about bringing a high level e-sports event to Ireland, which is super good!

My other half has also informed me that I should enter the tournament as a SC2 player instead of going along with a view to blogging about it.. so now I apparently need to learn how to play the game again.. I need to get over my addiction of playing against the AI and kick the ladder anxiety in the butt.. cause if I can't even ladder how could I expect myself to play live?!?!

In completely unrelated news, I have been streaming again for the past week or so and I have really enjoyed it. I really hope that I will be able to continue this when I start back at College on Monday. I also think I need to start to stick to a specific game in order to build a regular viewership.. I am thinking it might have to be Diablo 3 or Path of Exile because quite frankly I suck too much at the other games I have played!

In streaming news, last night I was messing around and found a handy little bot to sit in my chat and be a lovely moderator or something.. it also has some other features.. like it can enable users to request songs and place them in a list. The only problem I found with that is the volume.. it is too loud and it seems to me that the volume controls do nothing.

One thing that I need to do, is to commission some artwork/channel graphics so that my channel and things all fit together and don't seem disjointed as I think it seems now. So if anyone knows someone, point them in my direction and we can jam!

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