IPL4 - Day 1 (aka Vegas Day 2)

I almost forgot to write this.

I meant to last night but ended up spending a couple hours watching TV before crashing.

So yesterday was a fucking FANTASTIC day. Roll out of bed and get ready to head off to IPL4. I had originally intended to pick up some breakfast before heading over the Cosmopolitan, but everywhere had a lineup a mile long (figure of speech).

I didn't have that much time to waste on it so I just went straight there, figured I'd pick up some baked goods or something. There's a little basically "on-the-run" shop on the 2nd floor of the Cosmo that I picked some grub up at. The chocolate croissant was delicious, however their "Orange Juice" wasn't orange juice. It was some sort of disgusting tropical fruit thing that I immediately threw out. Blech.

So I get upstairs to the registration desk and pick up my badge. It's a regular spectator pass though. Odd. I start looking for the SC2 entrance. Basically nothing going on in terms of signage (wtf IPL), so it took me about 15-20 minutes to finally figure out the SC2 main stage was in the "Chelsea" hall - hahaha irony.

I ask the nice guy at the door about VIP passes. Turns out the registration desk had given me the wrong pass. /sigh. Go back, get right pass. Much better.

Get back in line and I start to feel at home in nerd-dom. The security guard at the door has never heard of SC2 before, but is interested to know what all the fuss is about. Pretty cool lady. Had a lot of fun chatting with her and the other nerds in line. There was one physically disabled person there that had just gotten back from a trip around the world to talk to other disabled gamers and how they play. I thought that was super awesome, and we chatted about who we thought was going to win. We agreed that MKP was likely to take it.

Doors open, and I get to walk right TO THE FRONT. I was literally 6 feet from the stage. I'm not shitting you. I took a bunch of pictures from where I was sitting and uploaded them to Bookface. It's shared globally so I'm pretty sure everyone can see them.

The games were pretty good overall. Some were obviously better than others. NesTea and MKP looked incredibly dominant. Poor White-Ra :(

The problem though is the casting was kind of lackluster. Other than Painuser and HDStarcraft it was kinda....."meh". I don't think Doa and dApollo are a good match, and I think the tournament suffered from not having Day[J], Tastosis, Wheat, or Rob Simpson casting. Also the lack of "analysis desk" that MLG has kinda hurts. I still get a lot out of it since I know what's going on in SC2, but anyone that might be checking out the stream for the first time, or is new to SC2 would be lost I think. Even with Anna Prosser and Rachel Quirico (SeltzerPlease) there, still not enough.

Regardless I'm looking forward to day 2!