Tag: event review

Ultimate Gaming Championship 2011 – Coverage Recap

April 4, 2011 /

The Ultimate Gaming Championship came to a close Sunday and I wanted to give it some sort of “comprehensive” write up. Unfortunately my efforts were focused almost entirely on MLG so I probably missed quite a bit of unique content I could have hit up in the Twitter streams. Oh well, it was worth it. The format for this article will be similar to MLG’s and we’ll start it off with Brackets & Results! Updates will be added as I find them!

Brackets & Results

Official UGC Brackets: Quake Live | Starcraft 2 | Call of Duty 4 | PES 2011 | Super Street Fighter IV

SK-Gaming’s Tournament Coverage page.

SK-Gaming sums up the Quake Live coverage.

Match Coverage

Tek-9 has some great coverage pages of the event.

Images & Galleries

The UGC Facebook has uploaded a bunch of pictures!

SK-Gaming: Image Gallery

Videos & Channels

own3D.tv: Stermy’s uploads from UGC

Stermy: Stermy’s YouTube Channel

QuadV: QuadVtv’s YouTube Channel

popsQ2: PopS YouTube Channel

Furiousvlog: Furiousvlog’s YouTube Channel

If there’s anything juicy I missed, contact me on Twitter (@SpawnRoom), in the comments, or on Facebook!

Other Tags: COD4, COD 4, PES2011, PES 2011, QuadV, QL, StarCraft II, SC2, SSF4, SSFIV, Stermy, UGC

Major League Gaming Dallas 2011 – “The Aftermath” Coverage

April 3, 2011 /

The first pro circuit of the Major League Gaming 2011 season has concluded in Dallas, Texas and a lot has transpired. I wanted to go over some of the random articles, websites, pictures, and videos floating out of this event so you can find them all in one spot! Update will be continually added this week as I discover more and more content.

Stream Issues

The first thing I think we should address and something I’m sure a lot of people are sensitive about is the streams. Both Friday and Saturday were plagued with problematic streaming issues and lag at the venue. Our promised online eSports extravaganza took a turn for the worse as MLG was unprepared to handle all the traffic pouring into their website. Too bad really, I think a lot of people were extremely excited for this weekend and ended up somewhat disappointed. So what can we do? Well here are the important links so you can follow up on what MLG is doing to rectify the situation:

MLG News: MLG Addresses Site Stability Issues | Update #1 from MLG | Update #2 from MLG

MLG Forums: MLG Addresses Site Stability Issues

SK-Gaming News: MLG Dallas has chronic issues, MLG responds

I also want to make note that on Sunday, MLG’s Sundance DiGiovanni, the current CEO, made a live apology to the MLG audience, fans, players, and everyone else. It was heartwarming and I believe that the vast majority of MLG supporters are still behind him. The rational minds know that sometimes, shit happens, and I believe MLG and their staff did everything possible to fix the situation. So thanks for the effort, it was still a great weekend and I look forward to future MLG events!

I also want to throw in my appreciation for djWheat, day9, JP McDaniel and the rest of the commentators. You guys are amazing! Good job all weekend.

Brackets & Results

For those of you wanting to follow up on brackets and results, here is a list of resources for you to check out:

MLG: Championship/Pool Brackets – Starcraft 2 | Halo: Reach

MLG: Open Brackets – Starcraft 2 | Halo: Reach | Call of Duty: Black Ops

Team Liquid: Event Coverage

Match Coverage

Here are some match coverage links and resources so you can find all the games you missed, or want to rewatch:

MLG should be uploading VOD’s of the matches to their MLG TV section.

From what I was able to watch this weekend I thought these SC2 games were of notable importance:

Ret vs seleCT (SC2)

INcontroL vs TLO (SC2): Game 1 | Game 2 | GIANT QUESADILLA

NEW: EGidrA vs HuK – idrA’s infamous BM after HuK hallucination win, then the rematch later:

idrA vs HuK

I think this video starring Hitler sums it up well.

NEW: Here’s another awesome idrA interview where he calls HuK “retarded”.

The finals between Naniwa and Kiwikaki we’re awesome! Had a lot of funny rooting for Kiwi to get to the 3-3 game and make Nani nervous, but awesome job anyways.

Obviously there are tons of great games that happened this weekend and unfortunately I will not be going over each and every one, because that’s not what I do on this website. But I will be providing as many helpful links and resources as possible so you can find and watch the best matches.

GosuGamers has uploaded some replays from the event in case you can’t find them elsewhere or the VODs aren’t available.

NEW: An interview with Naniwa.

Images & Galleries

Next let’s cover some of the great pictures coming out of the event:

Evil Geniuses: EG on yfrog

compLexity Gaming: Image Gallery

Team FNATIC: Image Gallery

Team Dignitas: Image Gallery

Sixjax Gaming: Article

Astro Gaming: Astro on Twitpic

WellPlayed.org: WellPlayed on yfrog

Root Gaming: A few uploads from Root Gaming on Zannel

Cyber-Sports Network – CSN on Twitgoo

ESFI World: Image Gallery

Nani's Interview

NEW: HuK getting frisky.

NEW: A victorious INcontroL.

NEW: AskJoshy’s Twitpic account.

NEW: JGrindal’s flickr

NEW: Joshtacular’s MLG Dallas collection

NEW: vVv’s Image Gallery

NEW: Viral Design’s flickr

Videos & Channels

The last section I want to cover is the videos and channels coming out of MLG. There’s undoubtedly going to be millions of them, so this list will just contain the ones I keep seeing on Twitter (which are probably the best ones anyway). As always, I’ll throw up that fancy bolded “NEW:” text as I find more over this week.

Team compLexity: compLexityINSIDER on YouTube

AskJoshy: AskJoshy’s MLG Coverage on YouTube

SK-Gaming: SK-Gaming’s MLG Dallas Channel

EdwardStarcraft: EdwardStarcraft’s Channel on YouTube

Cyber-Sports Network – CSN on Youtube

Houie Louy – You won’t find these by searching on YouTube, or these: Root Gaming Forums

If there’s anything I missed, as always contact me on Twitter (@SpawnRoom), in the comments, or on Facebook. Also, if you have some favorite matches from this weekend, let me know which ones and I’ll add them to the post! Thanks.

day9 is surprised

day9 is surprised by JP McDaniel’s news.

Other Tags: COD BLOPS, MLG, Pro Circuit, StarCraft II, SC2

Major League Gaming: Dallas (2011) is LIVE…well kind of!

April 1, 2011 /

I wasn’t going to write something while the event was happening because I wanted to have all my attention focused on the games, but what with the streams going down, the site going down, and the noisy commercials. I decided to step away, give them some time and write a little ditty. First off, if you’re like me and resized your windows so you could have multiple streams open, then you may have also spent more time than necessary looking for the brackets. I feel stupid now because they were right there in front of me, but what are you going to do? So to help you out and anyone else still looking for them, here are the links:

Championship/Pool Brackets

Starcraft 2 | Halo: Reach

Open Brackets

Starcraft 2 | Halo: Reach | Call of Duty: Black Ops

I think a big topic of discussion tonight, tomorrow, and post-MLG Dallas will be the streaming issues (obviously). Both the free stream and the HQ stream have been failing miserably. Up one minute down the other. This is disappointing because from what I’m told, MLG has a lot of money! I would think Sundance and the boys over there would have expected a potential mass of viewers trying to get all this eSports goodness. So that means they either didn’t plan appropriately or there’s just that many viewers that it was unpredictable. Even still, people like myself have a right to be pissed, we spend the money to support the organization and then can’t access any of the features. Hey Sundance, how about some free t-shirts or something?

But I won’t be too harsh. In fact I can totally understand what it must be like over there. Technology is unpredictable, you can only do so much before an event this large to test it and even then the numbers it brings back are only theoretical. And don’t forget, there’s not much else like this going on in the United States. It’s not like eSports has been around for nearly as long as other sports that got to test, retest, and perfect their mediums of distribution over time. MLG is more or less “shooting in the dark” and hoping that it will work. Give em’ time. I’m sure they’ll be up late tonight fixing these issues and getting the streams all stable for tomorrow and Sunday. At least they better be!

Oh and I try not to “shamelessly promote myself,” but if you have a minute and want to support an aspiring eSports…whatever I am, check out our Twitter and Facebook page and show us some love! Thanks a lot!

Other Tags: COD BLOPS, MLG, Pro Circuit, StarCraft II, SC2

Preparing for Major League Gaming Dallas 2011

March 31, 2011 /

Tomorrow begins another action packed MLG weekend and I wanted to give you a nice pre-MLG warm-up package to begin with tonight and tomorrow before the fun begins. Especially for us poor nubs who are stuck behind and can’t attend the event live (a tear is trickling down my cheek as I write this). First off let’s cover all the event details to make sure we’re all on the same page.

What: MLG Dallas 2011, the first pro circuit of the 2011 season.

When: April 1-3, starting Friday at 5:15 PM CST

Where: Dallas Convention Center, Dallas, Texas, United States.

Spectating: In-person with spectator pass or Live streams on MLG.

MLG Dallas will be kicking off this 2011 season with exciting matches in Starcraft 2, Halo: Reach, and Call of Duty: Black Ops. All three games are scheduled to be played everyday of the tournament, with the finals falling on Sunday the 3rd. Commentating the matches all weekend will be some bright and shining faces you’ll recognize from other eSport events. For Starcraft 2, there’ll be day9, djWheat, and JP McDaniel. Halo will have Chris Puckett, Gandhi and Shockwave. And Black ops will be commentated by Corey Dunn, Derek Drake, and Sean Bellafiore.

So you’re probably eager to find out who is showing up this weekend, well look no further, here are the player lists published by MLG:

Halo: Reach

Starcraft 2

Call of Duty: Black Ops

If you’re like me and in love with Twitter, Facebook, and the social networking craze, here are some key MLG accounts you can look into following:

Twitter

Major League Gaming (MLG) – Official MLG Twitter

Sundance DiGiovanni (MLG_Sundance) – CEO of Major League Gaming

Chris Puckett (MLGPuckett) – Producer and On Air Talent for MLG

Andreas Pierson (NexyMLG) – Video Director/Producer for MLG

Luis Carrillo (MLG_Scoreboard) – Not officially connected to MLG, but useful for following MLG

Spawn Room Twitter Lists – You can find all kinds of people, leagues, and organizations to follow by checking out our Twitter lists. Updated constantly!

Facebook

Major League Gaming – Official MLG Facebook

YouTube, uStream, and Justin.tv Features

MLG / Astro Gaming Dallas 2011 Promo

MLG Sundance’s Pre-Event Tour #1

MLG Sundance’s Pre-Event Tour #2

Hotel Room Tour by Complexity Gaming

Finally I wanted to mention something minor that will help the people at home keep up with everything going on this weekend. First off, Twitter is your friend. You can get all kinds of news and inside information the moment it’s happening by following the right people. Check out Spawn Room’s Twitter lists to find some great people and organizations to follow. You can also use applications like TweetDeck to keep constantly updated all day long, or if you don’t feel like installing anything, Google has a nifty feature called “Realtime Search“. Navigate over there and type in “MLG Dallas” to see what’s happening!

Finally I want to say: have an awesome weekend! It’s going to be a blast start to finish, don’t miss out!

And remember, as always, if I’m missing anything, simply reply @SpawnRoom on Twitter, post in the comments here, or shout out on Facebook and I’ll be sure to investigate! Thanks.

Other Tags: COD BLOPS, MLG, Pro Circuit, StarCraft II, SC2

North American Star League (NASL) Announcement

March 14, 2011 /

This is big news, so big I came out of hibernation, just to post this. If you’ve followed competitive Starcraft 2 at all, you’ve undoubtedly heard of the GSL. You know, that massive Korean tournament that everyone’s always talking about? Well some bright minds and motivated individuals decided the states needs their own SC2 league of that caliber and created the NASL, or North American Star League! This tournament is huge, the prize pot is $400,000 split between 3, roughly 13-week seasons. It starts April 5th, and will feature games 5 nights a week, for three hours. You know what that means, tons and tons of live SC2 matches to get your fill of!

Now the details are still being hashed out at this point, but you can head over to their main site here and watch an epic video about it. You can also cast 10 votes for the 50 players lucky enough to be drafted into this league. So do your research and pick your favorite guys!

Finally I wanted to offer a link to a comprehensive interview about this league, courtesy of G4 and Geoff ‘iNcontrol’ Robinson: G4 exclusive interview

Other Tags: StarCraft II, SC2, NASL

BlizzCon 2010 and StarCraft 2 Invitational

October 22, 2010 /

Today marks the first day of Blizzcon 2010! The event is taking place in the Anaheim Convention Center in California and will be running till tomorrow evening. Unfortunately Blizzard is providing a Direct-TV stream that costs 40-fricken bucks, BUT there is this Ustream feed up RIGHT NOW! Also, if you hit up the main page, there is links to the free RTS and WoW streams. Hopefully there’s be some good shit going down :P I’ll try and follow it as much as possible and provide some recap later. Enjoy!

Another link for streams: http://tv.esl.eu/de/esltv_stream/

Other Tags: D3, WoW, StarCraft II, SC2

Major League Gaming: Washington DC (2010)

October 15, 2010 /

Another exciting stop for MLG starts today and runs all weekend sporting intense Halo 3, Halo Reach, StarCraft 2, World of Warcraft, Tekken, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl matches in Washington DC. It’s going to be a great weekend with some of the best players bumping heads for a chance to be crowned MLG Champions in November! Don’t miss any of the action with the free stream starting today at 5:30 PM ET (4:30 PM CST), and don’t forget you can always upgrade for $10 and get the pausable HD stream. Should be a blast.

Check this page for the main stream and bracket information.

Update: There was some great matches tonight for both Halo 3 and StarCraft 2. Unfortunately I can’t watch everything, so I’m not sure how the other games went. Final stream featured 3 matches between drewbie and SLush. Very exciting micro action between the terran and zerg player (respectively). If you have any time this weekend, I highly recommend checking it out, and if you’re feeling extra fanatical…or generous, you could spend the $10 and get the HD stream. Although beware, the quality, at least on my end, wasn’t that much better for the actual matches (but close-ups of players crying after losses was about 720p). Nice…

Other Tags: SSBB, StarCraft II, SC2, WoW, MLG, Pro Circuit

ESL: Intel Extreme Masters 2010

October 10, 2010 /

Another exciting International gaming event has concluded, this time it was the Intel Extreme Masters, American Championship Finals. Challengers played Counter-Strike, StarCraft 2, and Quake Live. From the little I was able to catch, seemed like some quality matches. But I have to say the streams weren’t helped by some of the announcers. Isn’t IEM pretty big, with decent funding? They should spend a little more time finding good shout-casters. But otherwise seemed cool.

Check out this page for the match results and prizes.

Other Tags: CS 1.6, ESL IEM, QL, StarCraft II, SC2

World Cyber Games Grand Final (2010) – Coverage

September 30, 2010 /

In case you missed the headlines, the WCG Grand Finals are happening today! They just started a few hours ago and we’ve already seen a few exciting matches. Evil Geniuses, a prominent US team took on Face2Face from France, and won the first match of the WCG. Two StarCraft matches followed, one between Flash and iNfeRnaL, and another between Goojila and legend. Next we saw two Warcraft matches between Lyn and Fly100%, & TED- and Happy, finally leading up to the FIFA matches happening NOW. Don’t miss this crazy gamer event, it’s only going on Sept. 30 – Oct. 3rd and then it’s over for a whole year! And just because we’re such nice guys here at Spawn Room, we’ll be sure to keep this article updated with as many helpful links as possible, whether that be stats, ladders, bootleg streams, articles, etc. <(^^,)> Here’s some to start it off:

WCG

QuadV is streaming

WCG Broadcast Schedule (on Cadred)

But before I close this article, there is one piece of bullshit I’d like to talk about. Unfortunately for most gamers, the official WCG Streams are PAY-TO-VIEW! Yes you heard me! If you want to watch the official Live coverage of the games, you’re going to have to pull out a credit card. Why? Who the fuck knows. I suppose because they see MLG do it and think they can make some bank the same way. But what they fail to realize is that MLG has a much tighter, niche group of dedicated followers that are actually willing to pay for those streams, whereas WCG is about a global gaming community, reminiscent of the Olympics! By charging a fee, they are instantly alienating thousands of gamers who may have gotten drawn into the kick ass world of eSports. It’s unfortunate.

If you want to hear another person discuss this BS in a much better, more comedic fashion, check out the latest Live On Three episode with DJ Wheat. Funny as shit.

Other Tags: WCG, CS 1.6, StarCraft II, SC2, Brood War, Warcraft III, Warcraft 3, WC3

http://www.cadred.org/News/Article/122410/

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