ESWC 2006 Poland

As soon as me and hodek (a part of eSports.pl crew) arrived to Pozna?, rest of the writers from our site picked us up from the train station. I've heared some time ago, that Pozna? is the city of beautiful women, as the matter of fact the most beautiful ones in Poland. Well, you always can find a good looking women almost everywhere in the world, but YES - they were right, right as hell. As we've found our place to sleep (our cantonment was quite nice, with a hot tub with bubbles, shower, nice and comfortable beds, kitchen 'n everything), we went out to meet with all of the writers & admins from esports.pl, as we were doing live coverage from this event, we wanted to discuss few thinks and of course - drink some nice, cold polish beer.
When we entered the "old town" of Pozna?, I started looking at the people, who were passing me by at the side-walk. Guess what I saw there (in most of the cases)? Yes - beautiful women. Couldn't move my eyes from them, I wonder what would my honey-bunny say about this... anyway, as we got ourselves into the trade centre, rest of eSports.pl was of course... late. We waited couple of minutes, enjoying ourselves with the nice.. views of the side-walks. After having a quite big group of writers & admins, we started to think about some nice place with good beer in the old town. As we arrived to the centre of it, we've found a nice bar with cold Tyskie & Lech. Most of the crew were journalists, admins & writers from our gaming site, but we had some players out there too, well - without counting me, as a retired UT oldschooler - there was zoom, who most of the Q3 players know very well, we were suposed to meet cooller aswell, but as Carmac phoned me, he said that they're too tired to meet with us today, and they're looking for some hotel at the moment. Without thinking any longer, we bought our beer and enjoyed the long preparing conversation, before the tomorrow's start. We (Me, Xaos, hodek and Rostek) decided to leave the old town at about 23:00, and so we did. After getting back to our place, someone said, that we should drink some vodka, for better sleep. Well, noone was against that idea, so hodek went to buy a liter of Smirnoff. After half of the bottle, most of us decided to get some sleep before the start of the event.
As I got up at about 6:00 o' clock with a bit of hangover, I decided to take a fast shower and remind myself and read again a player description, as I was going to do a live shoutcast from the Q4 1on1 finals. We left the place about 7:30 o' clock, and arrived to the ESWC 2006 Poland hall at 8. The place was well prepared, having all the advertisements, logos & everything ready for the visitors. PC's for the players were ready aswell, same as the scene & telebims. The hall was huge, well - this event, was the first big gaming tournament in Poland, so it made an impression on most of the people. As we entered the hall, someone directed us to the VIP's places, to meet the rest of the eSports.pl crew & few important persons, who were responsible for organising the event. After few hours of preparing, nerves & excitement Carmac & Coller arrvied (as cooller was suposed to play a showmatch vs. av3k). We had a short chat, and I had to get back to my buisness. Most of the time I was running & helping with organising things like music for dancers, shoutcasts & players presentations, but I've found some free time to chat with few well known players from polish gaming scene. Then I phoned Carmac, as he was free atlast from taking care about cooller, who played some showmatches at Creative scene at the moment. We had a short chat, and "dated" at some not noisy place to talk a bit more. I asked him if he will help me & Pajda to run a shoutcast from Q4 winners bracket matches & of course - the final. He agreed. After few exciting and some boring matches, we got ourselves to the show match between the russian star and polish youngster. The match was suposed to be between the ESWC Q4 1on1 tournament, and so it was.
First, there was a press conference, where cooller and av3k answered few interesting questions, and some dumb ones, which spectators asked. Afterwards there it was at last - the match. We've (me&carmac) seen it from above, from the studio and the view was nice, as we had telebims near ourselves, plus the direct in-eye spectator's views at monitors in the studio. Match was really exciting and ended with score 2:1 for cooller. Someone said, that av3k had a slight problems with Windows XP 64, for Athlon 64bit, that's why his mouse had a different sense, so he couldn't shaft/rail that good, but he still played a good match. Cooller seemed to rest after 2nd map, so some people thought he just gave up - well, we didn't think like that. After a showmatch, time came for the most interesting winners bracked matches and of course - finals of Q4 and CS. As Counter-Strike was totally dominated by Team Pentagram, which won their 1st place with score 16:01, the Quake 4 final was a lot more exciting and interesting. Matr0x and Cs3 were fighitng till the last frag for the 1st spot, which gave a winner the trip to Paris & some nice prizes. After a two dubble elimination matches (as the Cs3 entered the final from winners bracked, and matr0x won the first 2 rounds), we had a 5th map. Realy nice map controll and fresh thinking from matr0x's side gave him a win, but still I was cheering for Cs3. I think matr0x had another adventage - experience from big LAN tournamnets. Those two things gave him a 1st spot.
After 16 hours of walking here and there, drinking redbulls and eating disgusting mc'donalds, there it was - the ending ceremony. Some of the attenders had a smile on their faces, some of them were sad.. but hey - that's the sport, well as the matter of fact, e-sport.
I think this was a good event, on a high level with a thing , which wasn't organised never before - an invitation of a foregin top-star player, Anton "cooller" Singov to play a show match with the best home-country player. Like the cooller himself said, this was a good idea and other countries should take an example from Poland. I hope, that next ESWC qualifiers will be the same and maybe even more exciting not exactly for me, as me and eSports.pl were the organisers, but for spectators and players. For people, who never saw e-sport on a top level in action.



A little bit about old school

The year is now 2006 and I can still remember, when I started playing my beloved one and only FPS game - Unreal Tournament (yeah, there were couple of them before, Quake 1 or Quake 2 for example). UT (in comparing to only couple of other popular FPP games) has long history and as fallows - a lot of human legends. If I was suposed to write about them in here, few of them would be: GitzZz, Lauke, frag^m or aSim3tRie. As it goes about those guys - few of this oldschool players are still competing in the tournaments and beeing quite active at e-sport scenes. As you probably know, GitzZz play(ed) for SK, Lauke (I think still plays) for fnatic, frag^master (as he said to me today) allready finished with gaming, but the last team we saw him at, was mouz and as it goes about aSim3tRie - he's just living his live actually, somewhere in Germany (cheers by the way). Well I'm missing the point in here - I just wanted to say few words about those guys. I wish to sorry other ones who I've missed - I did not want to offend you, I simply wrote about the ones that I kept in mind at the moment... but anyway - let's get back to the point. I can say, that I feal "oldschool" aswell. I've met most of the old UT players on the servers, while I played it since 2000. When I look at those nicknames now (ok, let's remind few other ones) - Horny or R0X for example, they remind me "the good old days", when the so called "Gaming" had it's beginning, the FPP games were becoming the most popular platforms in it and the money earning had it's start. The one unfair thing by then was that only scandinavian, deutsch and dutch players could compete on "high" level at on-line tournaments, becouse of their equal pings. But let's leave this case alone.
Writing this blog, I wanted to say that everyone has his own memmories, his own "good old times" in their min and this is the most beautifull thing in beeing so called "old school player". To know people from around the world become friends, meet them at events and be able to talk about the old times when you competed not for money, but for your own pleasure. This is like the part of your life you've given those few years to this game afterall. There are tons of thoughts in your head, when you look at the e-sport now - how it's growing, how more and more oldschool players leave the scenes and how the new ones take it over. Not only the scene - they takeover the fame, the money, the fans. Truelly, we can call this e-sport, in every part of the word - it is sport, electronic one. What wonders me, is what will happen with those old players? I'm watching at myself, and thinking "what to do now?", "is this it?", "the end? finito? koniec?" - well, you have to do SOMETHING. Take a look at our well known friend - GitzZz for example. Yeah, he was a pro gamer, yep - he won a lot of money and YES - He has his real life and work. This is a good example of, what to do when you're "old school" player. I'm aware that this text should have the other part aswell - there are tons of old players, who still can give a good match to high skilled top ones, but still I think the time is eating them anyway, and it comes for everyone. You can't be on top for ever.
Now, when I still play my beloved game - people have respect for me. If you achieved something, people still have it for you, even if you're not on top now. (I'm not saying, I'm some kind of CPL or WCG champion - not at all, when I played I did not have money for good connection, visa or trip to go abroad and compete in LAN championships - it's Poland, we were poor.. and we still are, but it's a bit better - yeah). I feal "old" - yes, but I feal good aswell, like at my own home. When I enter the servers to play few games "for fun", I have a smile on my face. I remember myself the times of glory, the times of fame and long, stressful matches and I think to myself... it was worth it. i'm "old school" now, and it feals good, you can't regret of what you've done, if you achieved something by doing it.
What is this "old school" then? Well, it's the best fealing ever, the fealing which sportsmen feal aswell, after they retire. "Old school" player is simply the person, who retired from e-sport, and has all of those thoughts, good and bad times, friends from internet, happy moments in his mind and veins - feals it, feals like e-sportsmen. The good(or some can say bad) thing in all of this is, that he will feal like this all life now. He can try to get back to it, but it won't ever be the same - some of them do get back. Beeing that kind of person, beeing a retired e-sportsmen, "old school player" is a beautifull and very strange fealing.
It was hard to write this blog in "good way", so I wish to sorry all of you, who did not get it. I thank all of those, who red it untill the end aswell.
Greetings to all old players, everyone from all over the world, who I played with and I knew/know personally.

http://www.sk-gaming.com/rss/blog/-j0k3r-

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