[Pictures]Brobo's NASL Experience

I woke up around 9:30a.m. and took a shower and did all good the stuff. Apparently, my mom had gone grocery shopping super early in the morning so I waited for her to get home. I was going to use her car because my car is all beat up and whatnot(some of you may recall my incident of the TL meetup after BlizzCon :P). I didn't end up leaving my house until like 10:45, and I got there at 11:20ish A.M. I was pretty disappointed because matches were going to begin at 11:00A.M. and I was going to miss the opening games.

However, everything turned out for the better because the matches were delayed about 2-3 hours if I remember correctly. Apparently there were technical difficulties of the stream, and as for the live experience, the projectors had broken(as explained to us by Day9 at the end of the day) 15 minutes prior to the opening games started, so the games that were projected on the huge screen were wayyyyyy off, but it was still watchable.

So when I first get there, I walk through the door, talk to the dude to get my pass, tells me I need to go outside to buy the pass, so I go back outside, exchange the lady $25 for my awesome blue wristband the has "North American StarLeague Season 1" written on it, and go onward to walk into the venue.

So when I walk into the venue, the first that catches my eyes is the HUGE screen on the wall. Holy fucking shit, this thing was huge. There were 3 screens, 1 big one in the middle, and 2 smaller ones on each side. Also right when you into the door there NASL table where they sell t-shirts and other cool gear. They also had "NASL" cheerfuls there with markers so people could get a paper and make their own cheerfuls; pretty handy.
Then I keep walking deeper into venue, and what do I see? 4 long ass lines. And I wonder, what is this? They are lines to get signatures!! :D. White-RA, oGsMC, Liquid'Ret, and Tasteless were signing autographs. As you would imagine, the Tasteless line was the biggest. I decided to get my picture with White-RA and Liquid'Ret as those were the shortest lines. The tasteless line was really long, and waited nearly 15-20 minutes until I finally got my picture taken, only to be greeted by the lights being turned off because of the beginning of the first match of the day, resulting in a very very blurry picture. Sadface. :(.
I think the best moment of the day was meeting JulyZerg, if not the best moment of the entire weekend. For those of you knew me very well from BW, there was 3 zergs I was a complete fanboy about, ToT)MondragoN(, Savior[gm], and JulyZerg[z-zone]. JulyZerg is by FAR my most favorite Zerg player of all time, just because I'll never forget his epic comeback in Game 5 of the ABC Mart finals against Goodfriend. Holy shit, that game was just amazing(go watch it now on YouTube if you have not seen it yet).

In the games between WeMadeFoxMoon and ST_July, I couldn't find a reasonable seat to sit in. I ended up standing the entire series, as you would imagine, my legs were hurting by the time the last game started. Then, the beautiful Rachel from CSN that does the interviews(and she really is beautiful in person) announced that JulyZerg would be doing autographs at the back of the venue at the Twitch.tv table. Where was I standing? 5 feet away from the table!! So I literally took 5 steps, and found myself at the front of the line to get an autograph from 3 time golden mouse winner himself. I get in line, I turn around and I see a SWARM of people just rushing to get in line. Luckily, I was first :).

So after 5 minutes of waiting after his winners interview, he comes and sits down, and JulyZerg is right there infront of me. In the flesh. Saying that I came in my pants would be an understatement. If there is another adjective, adverb, whatever other form of speech there is that surpasses what I felt, I was exactly that. The conversaton went something like this.

July: "Hello!! :)"
Me: ".......Hi...*choke*...*cough*...*sweat*....(I want to say im your biggest fan ever, I want your babies, but I cant)
July:"Thank you. :)." *signing my small mousepad thing they gave me*
Me: (To the translator) "Can he take pictures or no?"
July: *smiles and gives me a huge a nod*
I walk to the other side of the table, give my phone to the guy behind, July puts his arm on my shoulder and hugs me super tight, I smile like a little 5 year old kid that got a new Pokemon Deck, and I shake and bow to JulyZerg saying "Thank you so much.", and he bows to me and says something in Korean.

Most amazing experience of my life to date. I cannot say more.
The rest of the day consists of me sitting around, talking to people, meeting new people, eating some sandwiches I had taken for lunch, getting a glimpse of Boxer practicing in the restricted area with a blanket before the NASL employees and/or volunteers closed the curtains, and so forth. The day didn't end till around 10:30pm. With the exception of the projectors, I really have to say that the live experience was amazing. Truly truly amazing. I understand now why Day9 says the Sc2 community is the best and nicest community in the world.

Didn't go cause mom was a nub and she took her car to visit my aunt. =(.

Got there around 11:05a.m., games were scheduled to start at 11:00a.m., and when I got there, game 1 was about to start between FnaticMSiSen vs ST_July. This set was amazing. If you guys have not seen it, definitely check it out. All I can say is that there were definitely more people cheering for Sen, not so much because they didn't like July, but because Sen was the foreigner. One thing I noticed in the tournament was the fact that so many people were rooting for the foreigners as opposed to the Koreans. Pretty obvious I know, but still, something to take note about.

Games ended, I went to go buy some water, made a prOXiteam cheerful, and walked around. There wasn't many booths to look around, just 2 lol. Just twitch.tv and iBuyPower. Oh yea, TheGunRun was at the Twitch.tv booth all weekend too. :). I got in line to get an autograph from Tastosis but the line was wayyyyyy too huge so I decided to ditch it. This was when I took this picture of them giving autographs.
Then I go on, talk to some dude about the last matches, and sit around, talk to the people sitting next to me about SC2 and MLG while surfing TL.net on my phone. Then I turn around and see the Tastosis line has gone down in size by approximately 92% :). So I make my move. I'm up in no time, and since I had nothing for them to sign, I decided that they sign the prOxiteam cheerful that I made. And thus the conversation:

Me: "Hey what's up guys. My name is Angel, big fan, can you guys sign this cheerful for me?"
Tasteless/Artosis: "Sure man! Thanks for being here and supporting us."
Me: "Yeah, this is a cheerful for my team where mostly all of them are from Australia. We are all big fans of you guys and I'm sure they'll love it."
Artosis: "Oh yea, I've heard of prOxiteam. Old BW clan from Australia."
Me: "Oh shit, really? No way."
Artosis: "Oh yea man, trust me I spend A LOT of time on Starcraft."

And its just me 3 more times saying "Oh wow, I can't believe it, thats so cool". Haha, me and Tasteless have a little chat about handsomenerd.com and I get the cheerful signed, I shake their hands, and I'm off. They weren't taking pictures, just signing, so I wasn't able to get a picture with the both of them :(.

Then the finals started shortly thereafter. Oh my goodness, can I say the awesomeness of these finals?! Holy fucking shit , these finals were amazing. I have no idea how well the stream portrayed or captured the crowd, but the place was LOUD. I couldn't hear the casters at all at the engagements of battles. All I could hear was iNcontrol screaming but couldn't make out what he was saying because the screaming of the crowd was just LOUD. And when Game 7 started, everyone yelling the countdown gave me so many nerdchills that I got nerdfrostbite. And when Puma cornered MC's forces when he tried to 4 gate; oh man. Amazing. Simply put. Amazing. And the crowd yelling "PuMa! PuMa! PuMa!" and seeing PuMa wipe his eyes, super amazing.

All in all, the experience was amazing. I definitely, definitely, definitely don't regret any of it. Got a mousepad signed by my favorite BW player of all time, met and greeted and talked to professional players, and it made me realize how close the gap is between us and professional players. We are not so different. Like Tastosis said as they casted the White-RA vs Select match; prior to the match, Tastosis was at the hotel and they saw White-RA doing backstrokes/swimming in the pool. Tastosis was like "What are you doing?" in which White-RA responded "Getting ready for match. You come? Join me swim? Come!!" Haha. All in all, those professional players are just gamers like the rest of us. They enjoy the game, they enjoy these big events, and they are so appreciative of their fans, so much moreso than players from professional sports because they realize the development of e-Sports and and love playing SC2; the money, the attention, and the sponsors are just a plus. Deep inside, they are gamers just like us; I get this all from meeting Tastosis, White-Ra, Sheth, Anna(iNcontroL's gf), etc. etc. Really cool, down to earth people, and it makes me appreciate this community even more.



Next up; LAN in Chino Hills, CA, where Sen will be attending! And after that, MLG Anaheim with prOxiWaesnok himself! :D Great month for e-Sports in the sunny lands of Southern California. Cheers guys hope you enjoyed my little write-up.