EU Battle.net Invitational 2011

I know it's been about a month since the European Battle.net Invitational happened, but I've actually never made a decent attempt at telling the full tale and recounting most of my experiences there. Why shouldn't I? After all, I had one of the best times in a long while - it was my first live eSports experience - definitely worth talking about.

My first encounter with a progamer would be in a small supermarket on the bottom floor of Złote Tarasy (Golden Terraces, a mall next to the central train station of Warsaw). The Ukrainian Terran, imbaFXOStrelok, was buying something (I can't remember what it was). I simply wished him good luck.

When I arrived at the venue - Multikino - it was still quite a bit early, over an hour before the gates were actually opened. Nerds accrued at a somewhat slow rate - a vast majority of them appeared right before the official opening time. In the meantime, the party of progamers arrived in full suite, led by a tour guide. I could recognize them - it was quite real - they were the players I saw competing in so many foreign tournaments.

The gates were opened really late. There was a stand with 10 PCs for Starcraft 2 and another stand with another 10 for World of Warcraft. The SC2 PCs were equipped with the Razer SC2-themed peripheral sets, the WoW PCs had a set of Steelseries stuff including their famous Siberia headsets.

The first autograph I got was from Mr. Bitter, an ESL/MLG caster. I complimented his cocast with Husky at MLG Anaheim. Tarson was talking to people in the crowd. A lot of people had their own cheerfuls prepared, there was a group of people who had a multi-part sign for both Polish players (a Ret sign was prepared for the next day).

I believe WhiteRa showed up sometime during either the huge downtime before the opening ceremony or inbetween games. I was one of the first people to realize he's actually there to interact with fans, so I ran down there to get a signature. Lucky, too! The queue formed quickly and was incredibly long - the whole length of the stage, I think, since he was standing on one side and the queue spanned the rest of the space underneath the stage.

The atmosphere was tense - not only due to the presence of dozens of nerds, excited about the games, but also because the air conditioning was terrible. It felt like a hot summer day even though it was not nearly as hot outdoors. I rarely sweat this hard while stationary.

The stories behind my other autographs are as such:
I talked to Thorzain, wishing him luck in GSL - I thought he could do well in a tournament like that. He did, however, note he'll have no time to prepare and he will have to face MarineKing for the next match.

Naniwa was done with his games for the day and was heading up the cinema stairs. He was carrying a rather large pillow with him. He stopped for a few autographs and photoes on his way, probably partly due to me being the first to interrupt him. Thankfully, he didn't get too swarmed.

I got Ret's signature on the second day, right after his incredible finals against Naniwa. He was incredibly happy, signing stuff for all the excited nerd fans. I neglected to bring along the notebook I bought for these autographs - all I had was a few pages of SC2 stickers, so I borrowed a pen and he used it to sign. The sticker pages are race-themed and unfortunately I gave him the Protoss page by mistake. Oh, well, I got the signature anyways.

The mexican waves, the loud cheers, Carmac's fantastic crowd management, those were some major highlights. I've also had the opportunity to talk to some fellow nerds there - a good way to kill time in the long queues that formed when the hall was full of people already. The finals saw a 100% seat saturation, with not a single seat left empty. People sat on the stairs on the first day, but security didn't allow that on the second, since the staff (including Carmac) had to be able to run up and down the stairs quickly (and of course the stairs had to be already empty in case something dangerous happened and we had to evacuate).

I think that's all I can remember for now. I'm terrible at clearly remembering things. I can tell you for a fact it was time well spent - and more importantly, a shocking realization regarding the size of the eSports fandom in Poland. It was real and it was happening right here in Warsaw. After being used to experiencing eSport events through streams, whether they were European, American or Korean tournaments, it was a mindblowing realization that this is something that can (and most likely will) happen in Poland with perhaps increasing frequency.

A dream of mine is to experience that once more, to one day go to America and attend an MLG event. It's not likely to happen very soon. Maybe next summer? In any case, I hope it'll be possible one day.

Official picture albums:
Day 1
Day 2