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It was good to see everyone at the WCG open, and starcraft tourmanets are fun in general. However, in terms of shitty tournaments, this one takes the cake. All I cared about was for my brother and I to get into the top 4 (which we did barely lol 4th/3rd). And, even though I met my goal, I was still fucking livid at the tournament organization. Below is an e-mail i sent to WCG and I encourage other people who attended to e-mail WCG so the finals aren't so shitty.
Hello Mr Lee,
I'd like to make some comments regarding the WCG US Open tournament. Overall, I felt the tournament was very poorly-run (note that this is all from the perspective of a player in the Starcraft tournament).
Equipment: First of all, the monitors were 15 inches, hardly an adequate size for any of the games there. Moreover, the computers which ran Starcraft crashed four times during games: one of them was 10 minutes into my first round game; in another, both computers crashed when one player was literally seconds from victory (the match had to be replayed); and the last occurred during the last game of my 2nd/3rd place match vs Nyoken. Leading up to this disconnection, I had a decisive advantage and would have consequently won the series but, again, the games had to be replayed. Such crashing is unacceptable for a tournament of this nature. It is critical that computers function properly during games at such a tournament.
Referees: There were no referees anywhere near the Starcraft matches. Occasionally, the referees would approach me to ask what the status of the matches. Not surprisingly, their absence was the reason that all the crashed games had to be re-played; since the computers crashed, no replay files could be saved. Normally, any referee present would have seen the decisive advantage a player held before the game crashed and would therefore be able to make an appropriate decision. However, due to these absences, the referees would lazily repeat, "If there's no replay file, the game must be replayed." In general, the referees were irritable, defensive, and extremely unhelpful. When I had to play the stage match, there was a horrible glare coming from the window. I asked the referee if anything could be done and he impatiently said "no." After more spectators complained that the glare was blocking the view of the big screen, the referees begrudgingly moved a divider to block the sun. Although setting up the divider took less than one minute and blocked the glare completely, it took over an hour to get the referees to do anything.
Scheduling: Everything was late and poorly-scheduled. Registration was set to begin at 10 AM and it didn't open until 10:40. As a result, many players who showed up early had no place to sit and were standing around outside for close to an hour. Before the Starcraft tournament began, we were set to have only seven players, (one had moved to Panama) but the brackets displayed on the tournament computers misleadingly included this player. So, the brackets had to be redone appropriately. However, these "new brackets" were created 10 minutes before the matches actually began and were never posted anywhere for the players to see. The confusion magnified the stress of many players who were already nervous about the tournament. Moreover, there was no schedule posted as to when the games were to be played. The referees simply said, "In about 30 minutes," to every question I asked. What's even worse, is that immediately after I had to play the winner's bracket finals at 6pm (many hours late), the referees said "You have to play your 2nd/3rd place match now" (I was told I'd be playing that on sunday). Having not eaten much that day and being exhausted after a day of stress, I was in no condition to play an important match on a whim. Moreover, the games couldn't be played because the network had already been disabled. When we asked them to turn on the network so we could play the match, we were not surprised to see all the referees watching some soccer game projected on the stage screen. Upon 2nd request to turn on the network, the referees mumbled "Oh…umm…go ask that guy." 30 minutes later, we are finally able to start the match, which was difficult to focus on since WCG organizers were packing monitors, moving tables, throwing equipment, shouting instructionsand generally making a great deal of unnecessary noise.
Spectators: Nobody came because it wasn't advertised anywhere. The stage was essentially setup for nothing. In fact, at the venue itself, there was such little signage to indicate where the event was taking place; it took over 30 minutes to find WCG once we arrived at the Kodak theatre.
Other: The chairs were horrible. There needs to be some height adjustment to be able to play without terrible back pains during games and at the end of the day. Also, the food was inadequate for an event of this size. In regards to beverages, water and coffee (the only drinks available) are not the best choices for gamers. In my experience with tournaments, gamers are always given access to energy drinks or soda to help them focus on matches.
I would like you to know that I did qualify for the national final as a result of this preliminary. I don't want to give the impression that I am an embittered gamer. In fact, I have been attending WCG since 2001 and have attended the Grand final in 2004 and 2005. I have always had a positive experience, but this tournament was particularly frustrating, confusing and wearisome: there were no schedules anywhere; the referees were uninvolved and made all players feel as though they were nuisances; when we finally could play, the games kept crashing.
In the future, I hope that WCG has a much tighter schedule and is significantly clearer about the situation. Also, I hope they have better equipment for the games. Finally, since it is the entire purpose of WCG to help promote sponsors, it is important to advertise the tournament and make it a fun experience for the spectators.
Thank you for your time,
-Sean
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iNcontroL
USA29055 Posts
Nothing really new at all, WCG USA sucks and always will blow complete ass. Sadist WON a computer and had yet to receive it. He got an email like a year later saying basically "those guys were fired, they have your computer."
Lol.
To a lesser degree, i won a fucking keyboard @ WCG 2004. No sign of that yet at all.
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it's still better than wcg austria :/
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sorry to hear about it. Why dont they let gamers organize shit themselves, Personally, i would gladly help give advice to wcg about what to do/ set ups for regional tournaments.
That shit is pathetic, it sounds like WCG USA 2 years ago having to play all the games in 1 day despite having 2 days.
not to mention since it was in california you have numerous people in there who go to shit like this and could help organize/give advice(mnm, xg3, etc)
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thats what happens when u hand down the job of organizors to americans from koreans. Koreans did a much better job in past years. Was handed down to americans this yr and as a result this is what happens
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That was well-written and hopefully it gets some message acrossed. I've only been to WCG one year and it wasn't run well either.
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Thats really sad DAy. I mean they really should be able to give you at least good computers since their sponsors wouldnt really mind. However lets hope they take notice of your email and does something to change it.
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On June 04 2006 18:36 2GangstaForBW wrote: thats what happens when u hand down the job of organizors to americans from koreans. Koreans did a much better job in past years. Was handed down to americans this yr and as a result this is what happens
its been horrible since the start of wcg, the prelims last year werent run very well due to a lack of information given to the providers. We had fucking pieces of cardboard that woudl fall over between computers to keep people separate
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Korea (South)11558 Posts
On June 04 2006 18:03 {88}iNcontroL wrote: Nothing really new at all, WCG USA sucks and always will blow complete ass. Sadist WON a computer and had yet to receive it. He got an email like a year later saying basically "those guys were fired, they have your computer."
Lol.
To a lesser degree, i won a fucking keyboard @ WCG 2004. No sign of that yet at all.
i won a comp, a mouse, and keyboard in 04. they said that they guy got fired and stole the equipment...
that's a bunch of BS!!! They would of sued someone for stealing thousands of dollars of competitive computer gaming gear.
Anyhow, I was going to participate in WCG this year, but since it's all online, i can only assume a crap load of abusing/hacking will take place. And qualify for the regionals, which were HORRIBLY ran last year, is no thanks...
Maybe once WCG is doing well, and has referees/computers/lounge has improved i'll give it another shot. Until then, WCG is out of the question for me.
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Bill307
Canada9103 Posts
First of all, I think it is a BAD idea for people to email Mr. Lee unless they can do it professionally like Day did. Every crappy or insulting complaint email he receives will just make him less motivated to do anything about it.
On June 04 2006 18:00 Day[9] wrote: Moreover, the computers which ran Starcraft crashed four times during games: one of them was 10 minutes into my first round game; in another, both computers crashed when one player was literally seconds from victory (the match had to be replayed); and the last occurred during the last game of my 2nd/3rd place match vs Nyoken. Leading up to this disconnection, I had a decisive advantage and would have consequently won the series but, again, the games had to be replayed. Such crashing is unacceptable for a tournament of this nature. It is critical that computers function properly during games at such a tournament. I don't think you should have mentioned this. Sometimes SC just crashes and there's nothing that can be done to stop it (or at least nothing that we know of) =/. I think those crashes were random and unavoidable. Furthermore, you don't suggest any way for them to avoid it. Generally, you should never criticise something unless you can suggest something better.
To make things worse, this is your second complaint. People read things in order, one sentence at a time, and the stuff they read at the start affects their interpretation of the stuff later on. Complaining about something they have no control over is bad in itself, but when it's right at the start, it tends to makes the reader read your later complaints with a less-sympathetic attitude.
You even concluded by referring to it again .
when we finally could play, the games kept crashing.
With regards to the complaints about equipment, I think you have to ask yourself: where is the money for a large number of height-adjustable chairs and 17" monitors going to come from? Are you, and all the other gamers, willing to sacrifice all prize money and/or airfares (if you won any of those) for better equipment?
In fact, the money problem could apply to all of your grievances. For example, advertising costs money. Actually, on another note, I think you should have suggested specific places where they could have advertised. One that I can think of is Battle.net, because it, better than anything else, will reach the target audience, and hopefully Blizzard will be more sympathetic about the price than other companies would. Aside from BNet, I think the best advertising is simply word-of-mouth, i.e. posting about it on many different SC websites.
In addition, with more money maybe they could actually hire referees who do their jobs. Why would a random kid doing a one-time job for minimum wage care about doing his job at all? What is WCG going to do, fire him and take his 50 bucks? The supervisors have to get paid too, and if they're getting paid a crappy wage for a one-time thing then they generally aren't going to care very much either.
Well, maybe the ref problem, for one, can be solved without bringing in more money. WGTour does it. PGTour does it. The question is, can you get decent SC refs nearby who are willing to ref for free, or for whatever the existing refs were paid? If so, then I suggest pre-empting WCG USA next time and finding the refs for them, then presenting the offer to WCG. Solutions that cost them no additional money are solutions that they will most certainly agree with.
Overall, it's clear the WCG USA Open was run terribly. In fact I'd be interested in hearing more details about it too. But I have to admit, aside from the referee and scheduling problems (which probably have the same cause), I can't think of any good, specific solutions because of the cost issue. We require more minerals.
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Bill307
Canada9103 Posts
On June 04 2006 18:41 CaucasianAsian wrote: that's a bunch of BS!!! They would of sued someone for stealing thousands of dollars of competitive computer gaming gear.
It's not uncommon for professional software companies to hire a contractor who ends up doing essentially no work and gets paid for it too (e.g. "Paula"). Thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars down the drain. But at least some of the companies (probably most) do not sue to get their money back. So I imagine the issue in this case here is more complicated than you realize.
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Bill you dont seem to understand this isnt a 1 time issue.
There have been problems EVERY FUCKING YEAR theres been a wcg usa.
You dont need to pay people to ref, have one of the fucking people who come who plays starcraft referee. mnm or anyone else couldve been a fucking ref. WCG people are just really dense.
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Bill, Starcaft hasn't crashed for me in 3 years or so. If yer into pubbies, then im sure it will happen, since that's when it would happen to me.
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Bill307
Canada9103 Posts
On June 04 2006 18:56 PuertoRican wrote: Bill, Starcaft hasn't crashed for me in 3 years or so. If yer into pubbies, then im sure it will happen, since that's when it would happen to me.
My anecdotal evidence > yours. IntoTheWow, Rink11, and I all had our SCs crash last night during different in-house games on BNet.
Also, even if there is a way to make SC more stable, if we don't know what it is then what are the odds WCG will figure it out?
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On June 04 2006 19:01 Bill307 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2006 18:56 PuertoRican wrote: Bill, Starcaft hasn't crashed for me in 3 years or so. If yer into pubbies, then im sure it will happen, since that's when it would happen to me. My anecdotal evidence > yours. IntoTheWow, Rink11, and I all had our SCs crash last night during different in-house games on BNet. Also, even if there is a way to make SC more stable, if we don't know what it is then what are the odds WCG will figure it out?
the crashing sucks, but i think if day was going to win nyoken shouldve manned up and accepted the loss. Maybe he felt he could win i guess. if he felt he couldve won thats ok. But i mean if it was obvious then he shouldve accepted it. However, the admins have been really dumb at most of the wcgs ive been too. they take WAY too long alot of the time, i think sometimes they should split shit up more evenly between 2 days.
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Is it just me or does it seem like WCG gets worse every year? I played in it since 2001, mostly just for fun and to get some good games in. And every year it gets harder and harder to find news on WCG USA. Also, I think they need to try to bring back the regional events, it's always more fun to go to a LAN and play a bunch of games. I remember in 2001, I went to the regional event in WA, and afterwards we were allowed to just game on the computers for the next hour or two for fun.
They need to try to find some people who care about the communities to run each event. Have somebody that is active within the SC community to run the SC part of WCG. I am sure that there are many people who will devote time to help make it better. That's just my 2 cents on the entire thing.
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Bill307
Canada9103 Posts
On June 04 2006 18:55 Sadist wrote: Bill you dont seem to understand this isnt a 1 time issue.
There have been problems EVERY FUCKING YEAR theres been a wcg usa.
You dont need to pay people to ref, have one of the fucking people who come who plays starcraft referee. mnm or anyone else couldve been a fucking ref. WCG people are just really dense.
Then I suggest getting mnm or other "old" USA players to apply to take the referee and scheduling jobs.
Key element is that you guys have to take the initiative and apply.
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On June 04 2006 19:14 Bill307 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2006 18:55 Sadist wrote: Bill you dont seem to understand this isnt a 1 time issue.
There have been problems EVERY FUCKING YEAR theres been a wcg usa.
You dont need to pay people to ref, have one of the fucking people who come who plays starcraft referee. mnm or anyone else couldve been a fucking ref. WCG people are just really dense. Then I suggest getting mnm or other "old" USA players to apply to take the referee and scheduling jobs. Key element is that you guys have to take the initiative and apply.
i just posted on the wcg forum so I will, california has plenty of people who could be referees or help set on the structure of the event.
If I can convince wcg usa to hodl the starfraft regional at a PC cafe across the street from Michigan State University I would gladly help set up and partake in adminning along with playing.
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It's not up to single people to run these events.
Companies are hired to run them, and this one isn't too good.
I'm sure that there won't be any outside referee's this year at the USA finals, like Choblar/me. We'll see though, hopefully things get better, and hopefully the online events are shitty. <hr> btw, who won?
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Would that mean that Day won't be going to Italy?
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....
this was jsut qualify for wcg usa finals
top 4 go to usa finals... still whole wcg to come -.-
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United States5262 Posts
Congratulations on making the final Day, it's a shame that the event was so poorly organized for a game that is taken very seriously in the world.
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I thought, that it's possible only in Poland. I was wrong!
o,o
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Bill307, the games crashed unusually much. I've had BW crash all the time @ my house, but never 4 times per 25 games, which is what happened at WCG. That's unusually much
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On June 04 2006 19:14 Bill307 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2006 18:55 Sadist wrote: Bill you dont seem to understand this isnt a 1 time issue.
There have been problems EVERY FUCKING YEAR theres been a wcg usa.
You dont need to pay people to ref, have one of the fucking people who come who plays starcraft referee. mnm or anyone else couldve been a fucking ref. WCG people are just really dense. Then I suggest getting mnm or other "old" USA players to apply to take the referee and scheduling jobs. Key element is that you guys have to take the initiative and apply.
knowing mnm she'd be the first one to apply. the question is, is it obvious how to do that? personaly id have no idea where to even turn if i wanted to apply for a ref position. official wcg website had links to apps for grand finals, but i imagine its not the place to go to for each country's own preliminary/qualification rounds. does wcg usa even have a site this year? the only time ive even heard of a wcgusa webpage was back when we went to vegas prelim, and even then all they did was post a bunch of pictures and not even the replays as promised. im not really sure what ure trying to do here bill, try to defend/justify all wcgusa's shortcoming in organizing? yes it takes tremendous amount of time and effort to organize these events and im sure everyone realizes it, but there is a line between having a few faults due to the events maginitude and doing a completely pisspoor job overall, and from teh looks of it wcg does exactly the latter.
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On June 04 2006 19:01 Bill307 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2006 18:56 PuertoRican wrote: Bill, Starcaft hasn't crashed for me in 3 years or so. If yer into pubbies, then im sure it will happen, since that's when it would happen to me. My anecdotal evidence > yours. IntoTheWow, Rink11, and I all had our SCs crash last night during different in-house games on BNet. Also, even if there is a way to make SC more stable, if we don't know what it is then what are the odds WCG will figure it out?
I can not remember a single time Starcraft crashing on me, that wasn't because of hatchbug or the mutalisk out of everyunit bug(old patches). I have played unleast 10 games a month(up to several hundred) from 1998 to nowadays. I haven't played in battle.net much(bulgarians are legendary with their awful lag), mostly lan, later PGTour, so that I haven't had to deal with hacks and such, so no crashing for that. I have also played the game on multiple computers and it didn't have problems with crashing on any of them. The only problem was the game lagging a bit even on lan, but it had something to do with drivers, so it's very hard for me to imagine, that the most stable game I have ever played just randomly crashes.
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Sweden33719 Posts
On June 04 2006 18:45 Bill307 wrote:First of all, I think it is a BAD idea for people to email Mr. Lee unless they can do it professionally like Day did. Every crappy or insulting complaint email he receives will just make him less motivated to do anything about it. Show nested quote +On June 04 2006 18:00 Day[9] wrote: Moreover, the computers which ran Starcraft crashed four times during games: one of them was 10 minutes into my first round game; in another, both computers crashed when one player was literally seconds from victory (the match had to be replayed); and the last occurred during the last game of my 2nd/3rd place match vs Nyoken. Leading up to this disconnection, I had a decisive advantage and would have consequently won the series but, again, the games had to be replayed. Such crashing is unacceptable for a tournament of this nature. It is critical that computers function properly during games at such a tournament. I don't think you should have mentioned this. Sometimes SC just crashes and there's nothing that can be done to stop it (or at least nothing that we know of) =/. I think those crashes were random and unavoidable. Furthermore, you don't suggest any way for them to avoid it. Generally, you should never criticise something unless you can suggest something better. To make things worse, this is your second complaint. People read things in order, one sentence at a time, and the stuff they read at the start affects their interpretation of the stuff later on. Complaining about something they have no control over is bad in itself, but when it's right at the start, it tends to makes the reader read your later complaints with a less-sympathetic attitude. You even concluded by referring to it again . With regards to the complaints about equipment, I think you have to ask yourself: where is the money for a large number of height-adjustable chairs and 17" monitors going to come from? Are you, and all the other gamers, willing to sacrifice all prize money and/or airfares (if you won any of those) for better equipment? In fact, the money problem could apply to all of your grievances. For example, advertising costs money. Actually, on another note, I think you should have suggested specific places where they could have advertised. One that I can think of is Battle.net, because it, better than anything else, will reach the target audience, and hopefully Blizzard will be more sympathetic about the price than other companies would. Aside from BNet, I think the best advertising is simply word-of-mouth, i.e. posting about it on many different SC websites. In addition, with more money maybe they could actually hire referees who do their jobs. Why would a random kid doing a one-time job for minimum wage care about doing his job at all? What is WCG going to do, fire him and take his 50 bucks? The supervisors have to get paid too, and if they're getting paid a crappy wage for a one-time thing then they generally aren't going to care very much either. Well, maybe the ref problem, for one, can be solved without bringing in more money. WGTour does it. PGTour does it. The question is, can you get decent SC refs nearby who are willing to ref for free, or for whatever the existing refs were paid? If so, then I suggest pre-empting WCG USA next time and finding the refs for them, then presenting the offer to WCG. Solutions that cost them no additional money are solutions that they will most certainly agree with. Overall, it's clear the WCG USA Open was run terribly. In fact I'd be interested in hearing more details about it too. But I have to admit, aside from the referee and scheduling problems (which probably have the same cause), I can't think of any good, specific solutions because of the cost issue. We require more minerals. WCG Sweden 2004 - 100+ people, everyone with GOOD computers + nice and big monitors.
How did they afford it? It was held at a pc cafe.. I'm sure there are highclass PC Cafe's in the US? Sure, there were problems (100+ people in a pc cafe for 20 hours straight.. yeah) but nothing this bad - I can't remember a single crash etc. The only problem was when they had to make the brackets by hand for one reason or another which caused a huge delay, but other than that they managed to run this smoothly and by they I mean the people at gosugamers.net.. They aint getting paid, and they managed..
The attitude of the refs at the US Open seems SAD - it's sad that anyone who isn't going to do their job would sign up for it. If I did, I'd do it wether I made 50 000$ or 5$. Bleh.
And they need to work with the community, as you pointed out.
Now, crashing can be solved by not giving them archaic hardware (15" IS archaic so I'm guessing the computers were no better ^_^).
So, better organization -> Solved by working with the community. Better equipment -> Hold it at a god damn pc cafe -.-; Or pay up. Having comfortable, adjustable chairs, should also be solved by doing this.
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I have no problem with organizers that like dont know anything about the game and cant really referee. But like if ur gonna host an event, you better give proper chairs, schedule, and fun for hte gamers. Dont be watching the world cup or whatever when theres WCG ur hosting... Two, get better connection for lan. I understand that sometimes comps can freeze at lans(happened to me once)... but you need to have like backup computers and what not. My first time at wcg last year, they were hella nice to us, like family. They let us choose what kind of comp, monitor, mousepad, mouse.. etc.
Number 2, have a place for the gamers to be when ur setting up.
Number 3, give them a 20 min break at LEAST after playing a lot of matches and not letting them eat. Thats just fucking ridicoulous. It proly takes like less than 15 mins to go buy food and eat it. And it's Not like it's the players fault for playing in tournament and you were late for the schedule. How can they start tournament way late, after players suffering, then try to rush the players? That's just plain fucking rude to me.
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Hi all,I'm a new comer, It's the first post ^-^
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wow, didnt know about that WCG is this bad... isnt it like the biggest global tournament besides maybe the olympics?
i thought they wouldve have billions of money... guess i was wrong.
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What is wrong with 15''?:-\
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On June 05 2006 03:45 Sr18 wrote: What is wrong with 15''?:-\
Nothing wrong it's just not as large as 17" or 19". bleh. Nah I always believed how good your pc system is is all reflected on your monitor. You enjoy the goodness of your pc from where? the mouse? keyboard? the cpu? Nah, the goodness is all found on the screen, so a good screen is somewhat important.
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guys dont worry i bet WCG BULGARIA has the worst organization ever! 1) You are talking about monitors ? ahha ? Our wcg Semi finals were on 10 computers ( FIFA SC:BW and W3) Organizators didnt have any head phones so I should ask someone to let me then I should w8 till someone finishes his game. 2) I was going to the stage area to put on my keyboard and mouse when some admin told me " wtf are u doing here go away " i told him " I am from the finalist and i need to put my equipment" He said " i dont care go away " 3) It was said that our online finals will be one week after the offline finals . Yea, but now it's already running the 4th week since the finals and still no INFORMATION. Want more? nah I am getting nervouse writing for the stupid organizators.
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just stfu at least you all have wcg for starcraft:broodwar we have only for cs/nfs/fifa T_T i wanna move to koreea T_T
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On June 05 2006 04:49 Pika Chu wrote: just stfu at least you all have wcg for starcraft:broodwar we have only for cs/nfs/fifa T_T i wanna move to koreea T_T maybe you are right
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This tournament would have been greatly more enjoyable with good referees. It's not that hard to find some... You simply need to find, for each games, people who play the game. If you have some morons who play counter-strike 24/7 as starcraft referees, the only contribution you will get from them is probably something like '' huh where's the shootin yo?''.
Find STARCRAFT PLAYERS to do STARCRAFT REFEREES. Some people where saying: Who would do this for free? Well.. I'll do. I am a starcraft player and I like to watch games and I would be very happy to act as a referee in a tournament@WCG FOR FREE. I could also do the brackets or at least re-arranging them the day of the event in no time if there was any problems like an unattending player on the brackets.
I really don't think I'm the only guy out of north america who would like to spend 1 or maybe 2 days doing voluntary work for an organisation like WCG. You can even put that on a C.V. afterwards.
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crashing could probably be minimized by using windows 2000/xp on a cleanly installed computer
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I think it was fine to complain about crashing. How often do you get that many crashes in such a short period of time? It's obviously not only SC, to me at least.
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Calgary25940 Posts
Yea the refs were terrible at WCG British Columbia too. There were 16 players. Mora asks how they're going to run it. He's like "I think we'll just put you all in a game and let you duke it out. Oh wait, Starcraft is 8 maximum right? Ok we'll have 2 big games and the winners will play in the finals." Eventually Mora just told him it's going to be double elim, bo3, finals bo7 with winner having a one game advantage, using the three official WCG maps starting with Gaia and then loser's choice. I think Mora was basically the SC admin at WCG.
In the future I think the BW community is going to have to help itself out and get a capable admin present without waiting for WCG to invite the admin. I know WCG Ontario always ran smoothly (bracket and ruling wise, it didn't run smoothly because there were never enough computers) because there was someone who actually played SC running the show (Dianne). Like when Testie only wanted to play Paul on Gorky, and Paul wouldn't play on that, she actually understood the problem and made a sensible solution. Someone who didn't understand SC wouldn't have understood the problem and would have made some wild ruling that didn't make sense.
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My Starcraft never, never crashed since i am running winxp on a virus-scanned, clean comp. 4 crashes/25 games is just sick. SC is by far one of the most stable games. if its only for the fame, i would have refused playing any longer on this shit. seriously, its a impertinence to run wcg reg finals this way, sad that this is the only way to get the ticket. and buying 10 monitors of 17" doesnt cost more than 750-1000 USD i guess - "hello sponsors"- but if you had to play on 15", its wiser not to ask on what computers you had to play.
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Yes in my experience mid-game crashes happen rarely and are usually caused by some kind of obscure player-initiated bug.
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i honestly would have been fine if
1) scheduling/bracketing were clear/posted somewhere 2) the referees were not assholes
We don't really need starcraft educated referees, but we do need a referees who aren't defensive and irritable at any request.
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Ah yes, those were the two biggest problems I saw with WCG this year - the crashing and the referees.
For one, the game never crashed that much in previous tournaments or even in my own computer even though i use the shuttle. I wonder if it had anything to do with the version of the shuttle computers they were using this year. The games crashed five times I think: Day's computer on Day vs Nero match within the first 10 minutes, Froz's computer on Froz vs Slog match, Slog vs Tasteless match where Slog chose Zerg, Day vs Nyoken match around mid to late game already and Tasteless's computer while the game was being played on stage Froz vs Nero match. In a few of the crashed games, the spectators had unanimously agreed upon who was winning at that point in time. The referees kept asking for reps and wouldn't just take the opinion of the spectators.
I must say also that the referees clearly did not know a thing about StarCraft as they had admitted it themselves in a passing comment (i forgot exactly what they said). Even if they were viewing the match I highly doubt they would be able to really figure out what the heck was going on and who was winning.
I do agree that whoever referees this game should have a clear idea of StarCraft and of course a StarCraft player would be ideal for this job. This isn't just like any other of the wcg games where a ref can have a clue right away because RTSes in general are more complicated than FPS where you know clearly who is winning just by kill count (or mid game by who has more players still in the team or who has more health), or racing games where you know clearly who is winning just by who is farther ahead, or fighting games where you know clearly who is ahead just by who won more (or mid game by who has more health) -_-. You really have to know the game to know who has the advantage in StarCraft.
I do believe that if someone was really adamant about how they thought the situation should have been handled, then perhaps the referees may have been persuaded simply because they didn't know what to do either. I could have talked to the referees if I felt that someone was feeling strongly about how the situation should have been handled but I didn't get that vibe from anyone. People seemed very accepting of the decision to replay all the games (maybe I just read people wrong). The indecision was a big problem though. The referees didn't know what to do. There were no set rules for how to handle situations like the crash. Maybe it would have been cool if the referees just got the consensus of the crowd as well as the players if they themselves were clueless.
Despite all this though, I had a lot of fun in WCG USA Open. It was awesome having everyone show up and hanging out afterwards. I have a ton of pictures from all that =D. Day, I really wish you could have hung out with us too.
I have the sclegacy site updated up to the finals (except i dont have descriptions from the froz vs nyoken games yet, i'll do those later.. or I'll wait til smi.newb gets around to them =x). I will upload replays and pictures soon.
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fuck, let me be a wcg referee for starcraft War3 and CS Ref's, reffing Starcraft is a joke... One time at wcg my computer froze and the only ref was a CS player and he looks at my minerals and then my gas and says "well its 380 to 40, blue wins" and I am sitting their like .......................
Ref's don't know shit about Starcraft because they all play different games, get some SC players in der and it will be fine. Have a ref or 2 for every game and make sure that the ref's actually know the games they are watching and everything sould work out fine.
P.S. Go Day! sorry to hear it sucked so badly T.T
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Where did they get these computers? I don't think I could screw up my computer enough to crash Starcraft even if I tried.
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i won a mouse wcg 2004, nothing yet, puertorican and nero were there, dunno if u guys remember , well i havent played a game since the end of november, but i wouldnt mind helping out being a ref for wcg or something around here in south florida.
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Yes, Wcg is overall bad organized... It could be such a nice action if profesionals were doin it.. Especialy regional wcg.
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They should use an already established area, not rent out a warehouse and throw together a network. That's how it was when I went. It was completely shit. I had a cough for a week from the layers of settled dust that got kicked up, lighting was horrible, nothing was organized, and no one in charge knew what they were doing. It's unprofessional and no one is accountable.
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/me applauds
I wasn't as stressed about it since I wasn't gaming, but everything day mentions here was very true. Poorly run tournament with 0 spectators. The only thing I disagree with in Day's letter is that yes, there was soda - i had a few cokes =) But the food did suck and the drink choice shoulda had energy drinks in there.
Day, if it's ok with you I'd like to quote ur email to some of the WCG organizer people that I met during the weekend. That aight?
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That sucks .
But gj Day .
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Bill307
Canada9103 Posts
On June 04 2006 22:14 collegeBored wrote: im not really sure what ure trying to do here bill, try to defend/justify all wcgusa's shortcoming in organizing? yes it takes tremendous amount of time and effort to organize these events and im sure everyone realizes it, but there is a line between having a few faults due to the events maginitude and doing a completely pisspoor job overall, and from teh looks of it wcg does exactly the latter.
For one thing, I'm trying to represent WCG's point of view. The better our understanding of their perspective is, the better our suggestions for improvement will be.
I'm also emphasizing the need to suggest specific and feasible solutions to these problems. And in general, to minimize the amount of effort WCG needs to put in to figure out the details and to do it. It's our (your) best shot at seeing actual improvement.
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Korea (South)11558 Posts
I'm still waiting for the pics mnm...
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=) I have them up but I'm waiting for Brett's pics before I show everyone. He should get it to me by today or tomorrow (hopefully today).
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the best is 1 player only goes to italy wootz
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just got home from the airport and will be sending pics your way (and reps).
Day I'm sending a copy of your letter to the WCG organizers that I met. Hope it does some good.
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Oo... i actually don't think USA has very many upscale PC cafe. We really don't have many at all.
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Although I do not play SC anymore, I was there(for crappy NFS) and could not agree more.
When they actually DID get around to start letting people in, we still had to sit around for about a hour before they would even let us practice. I too was surprised at the monitor size....for NFS, it is not much of a problem, but I can understand.
The admins attitude was completely piss poor though. When I asked to install a completely legal driver, all I got was a "scuff" and had to sit around for a while before I was able to actually set-up. And when it was actually time to play, I had to go into my first game cold and rushed because they were suddenly in a hurry to get the games started after sitting around for what seemed like forever...and this was after the trying to figure out for 20 minutes what was wrong with the network.
During the games, they had no dedicated format for map selection. Coin toss..and then a completely random 3rd map. Not to mention very little setup and warmup time on whatever the next map may have been.
On top of all that, we had 3 out of 4 people show. First games started at noon...finals at almost 8pm. Something that should be done in about 35 minutes should not take all day.
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when i sneaked into the gaming area of WCG 2004 i saw some nice ass computer shit..there was hella shuttles computers, steel-pads, and some razor mices.. i never seen a razor and i was laughing at how it felt and looked.. we my friends and i regret not stealing that shit, it would have been so easy..
if you can dig up those WCG 2004 pics, my friends and I were in a picture where you were taking pics of ForU playing
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On June 05 2006 23:30 RaYhN wrote: when i sneaked into the gaming area of WCG 2004 i saw some nice ass computer shit..there was hella shuttles computers, steel-pads, and some razor mices.. i never seen a razor and i was laughing at how it felt and looked.. we my friends and i regret not stealing that shit, it would have been so easy..
you are scum
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On June 05 2006 11:19 G5 wrote:fuck, let me be a wcg referee for starcraft War3 and CS Ref's, reffing Starcraft is a joke... One time at wcg my computer froze and the only ref was a CS player and he looks at my minerals and then my gas and says "well its 380 to 40, blue wins" and I am sitting their like .......................
Best use of smiley ever. Hahaha, I can't stop laughing.
And man, that sucks really bad to be jipped like that. Day is one of my more favored non-korean players. I would hate having to be in a tourney that is just horrible quality. Its like waiting in a long line to find out that they ran out of the cupcakes and chocolate milk or something. Well at least you are in.
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I encourage any of you to contact me directly with your concerns about problems at the WCG US Open.
I was at the WCG US Open and I was assigned the role of running Starcraft, Warcraft 3 and Counter-Strike. Several admins who were local decided to flake out at the last minute and that did not making refereeing the games easy. Some of you know me, and I dont want anyone to have a bad time. I did my best to do what I could while trying to control the other games.
1st, the monitors were 17", not 15". And we bought those at the last minute to replace the LCD's, WCG Korea wanted to make all the players use. We did this believing CRT's would be preferred over LCD's.
Yes, the computers for Starcraft crashed alot, and im sorry about that. The company organizing the shipment of equipment delivered the computers 6 hrs late, which didnt give us much time to test everything and replace the bad computers with good ones.
Chairs - those are provided by the hotel, we have no control over which ones they provide and we cant force them to provide adjustable chairs.
Im sorry to say it but WCG Korea is stingy, they make us cut back on alot of things that shouldnt be cut back on. Sometimes you blame the wrong people without looking deeper into the problem.
Ill take the blame for some of the decisions that had to be made about watching the matches to decide the games. Not everyone is gonna be happy from them.
Im really bad at typing forum posts and once again, if any of you have any concerns for the upcoming events, I encourage you to contact me directly. We only want things to get better, not worse.
And for those of you complaining about past yrs. Every yr WCG picks someone differtent to run their events, which is causing alot of inconsistencies, so there is really no point in bringing up those past events.
AIM - UTDRunt IRC - #rsgaming on Gamesurge - Glostik MSN - lordrunt@hotmail.com
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It's nice to see someone coming forward to say all that.. I hate to seem like a jackass but every nation seems to be having WCG troubles.. This is the first year WCG Canada is doing an actual event out of everything, so while you guys are pissed off.. We've got something more to look forward to than go there, play, go home.. within a few hours.
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WCG Philippines site has a virus so nobody knows what's going on there =X
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On June 06 2006 19:41 mnm wrote: WCG Philippines site has a virus so nobody knows what's going on there =X
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On June 04 2006 18:45 Bill307 wrote: We require more minerals. Lmao
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On June 06 2006 19:09 Glostik wrote: I encourage any of you to contact me directly with your concerns about problems at the WCG US Open.
I was at the WCG US Open and I was assigned the role of running Starcraft, Warcraft 3 and Counter-Strike. Several admins who were local decided to flake out at the last minute and that did not making refereeing the games easy. Some of you know me, and I dont want anyone to have a bad time. I did my best to do what I could while trying to control the other games.
1st, the monitors were 17", not 15". And we bought those at the last minute to replace the LCD's, WCG Korea wanted to make all the players use. We did this believing CRT's would be preferred over LCD's.
Yes, the computers for Starcraft crashed alot, and im sorry about that. The company organizing the shipment of equipment delivered the computers 6 hrs late, which didnt give us much time to test everything and replace the bad computers with good ones.
Chairs - those are provided by the hotel, we have no control over which ones they provide and we cant force them to provide adjustable chairs.
Im sorry to say it but WCG Korea is stingy, they make us cut back on alot of things that shouldnt be cut back on. Sometimes you blame the wrong people without looking deeper into the problem.
Ill take the blame for some of the decisions that had to be made about watching the matches to decide the games. Not everyone is gonna be happy from them.
Im really bad at typing forum posts and once again, if any of you have any concerns for the upcoming events, I encourage you to contact me directly. We only want things to get better, not worse.
And for those of you complaining about past yrs. Every yr WCG picks someone differtent to run their events, which is causing alot of inconsistencies, so there is really no point in bringing up those past events.
AIM - UTDRunt IRC - #rsgaming on Gamesurge - Glostik MSN - lordrunt@hotmail.com
there is a point because whoever is hiring these people and explaining to themw hat to do isnt doing a very good job.
Theres no excuse for the lackluster wcg performances. Why not have these event run at pc cafes. Theres a nice PC cafe across the street from Michigan State that has 40 comps, It could easily host the regional for the midwest. I tried posting on wcg usas horribly inactive forum and find out about possibly hosting the regional there and havent gotten a reply yet. While I understand that problems can happen (computers arriving 6 hours late and stuff) admins are generally dickheads about warmup/practice times on computers and such. At the USA final we had to basically sneak at night to play any sort of warmup games on the computers.
Its not rocket science to run some of these events, if you are going to ref a game, read up on it a little bit so you at least know sort of whats going on and standard practice for these types of events. Remember, you are there for the players, you should do your best to help them out, WCG is once a year and aside from WCG theres really no tournaments in USA for starcraft, so this is the be all and end all and should be as professional as possible. Just about every year theres been some sort of problem, it gets ridiculous.
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yea they were 17' inch
my bad : [
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Sadist,
The US Open wasnt held at a PC Cafe because WCG Korea wanted to have it somewhere, where the public might walk by and experience the WCG.
Michigan is not an ideal place for a regional in the US. Just cause its close to you doesnt mean its the place to be. There will be a regional in a good location nearby that should meet the needs of everyone.
I dont think warmup time was a problem at the US Open, each player had their own computer to begin with. I have been at the last 2 world finals and the last US final and my players dont complain about warmup time. Its a per admin experience, just go ask another admin to warmup instead of sneaking around. Most of those admins you talk to who are dicks are people who are told not to let people practice. If you have a problem with that , you should take it up with someone above them, its not hard to ask to speak to someones boss.
Its not rocket science to you, because you dont crunch numbers and handle logistics. It might seem easy to someone from the outside, but it is by no means an easy task.
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There was a regional in Michigan last year , and it was in fenton, some random hillbilly town in the middle of nowhere, Sadist assumed there would possibly be another regional held in MI and hes just suggesting Lansing since its the capital and the cyber cafe is pretty nice and not too hard to locate since its basically on campus of a major university
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Bill307
Canada9103 Posts
My I suggest hiring some admins and refs who are better in-touch with the needs of the gamers, and who can be trusted to make good decisions for themselves? This would allow you to off-load some of your work to them. In fact, I imagine you could hire people like Sadist and mnm as SC-specifc admins and then, once all the equipment is in place, just tell them "ok go run the SC tournament and report the results back to me when it's done". And maybe give them some generic subordinates too, depending on what their workload will be like.
It saves you time and it saves the players frustration.
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On June 04 2006 18:08 bioboyAT wrote: it's still better than wcg austria :/ HEY you should have showed at the eswc qualifier! from players and spectators point it was awesome.
but i agree that austrian wcg blowed last year ... well see about this year.
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I saw pictures of some of the better known wc3 players like wizard, incinerator, and others playing. Looked pretty good to me. sc is sorta a ghetto game so its best on a ghetto comp
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Sounds like I could have ran a better WCG SC out of my fuckin garage
L2Organize pzl
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On June 06 2006 22:26 caloriecount wrote: I saw pictures of some of the better known wc3 players like wizard, incinerator, and others playing. Looked pretty good to me. sc is sorta a ghetto game so its best on a ghetto comp
your mom is ghetto.
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WCG Germany was cool and perfect the two times i went for it. Dunno whats so hard for other countries to run it at least 'okey'.
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On June 04 2006 19:01 Bill307 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2006 18:56 PuertoRican wrote: Bill, Starcaft hasn't crashed for me in 3 years or so. If yer into pubbies, then im sure it will happen, since that's when it would happen to me. My anecdotal evidence > yours. IntoTheWow, Rink11, and I all had our SCs crash last night during different in-house games on BNet. Also, even if there is a way to make SC more stable, if we don't know what it is then what are the odds WCG will figure it out? Wait, wait, wait, how is your evidence stronger than his? All it says is that on three computers in one night, the game crashed. That doesn't necessarily mean that starcraft crashes randomly. There's still no direct relation. It could have been the computers. My SC hasn't crashed for about a year now (since reinstalling windows on a new computer), and I'm guessing that when it does start to crash, it won't be because of SC, but because of something else running at the same time as SC. My suggestion? BETTER EQUIPMENT.
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Bill307
Canada9103 Posts
On June 07 2006 14:39 5HITCOMBO wrote: Wait, wait, wait, how is your evidence stronger than his?
It was a joke, meant to illustrate the silliness of anecdotal arguments.
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I'll admit I skimmed the ~4 pages of assumed rants and complaints about wcg with some petty bickering mixed in, but I just needed to comment on the advertising portion. I was going to go to WCG USA Open 06, considering I only live 2 hours away and was going to cover it for gosugamers.net where I'm a new editorial admin (aka = natedowgg). However, I searched online for probably 2 hours and the only information I could find was that it was held at the Kodak Theatre on Saturday/Sunday. It didn't explain which games were being played which days, whether the finals for SC would be on Sunday, etc etc. I ended up not even making the trip because the only information I could get on times was rS.Colbi telling me it *usually* starts around 11 AM. Its ridiculous to call yourself a "world" gaming organization, and then not be able to handle yourself in a manner that even comes close to the decorum and professionalism that one would expect from a simple small business, let alone a supposedly huge organization. I call foul.
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On June 06 2006 21:31 Glostik wrote: Sadist,
The US Open wasnt held at a PC Cafe because WCG Korea wanted to have it somewhere, where the public might walk by and experience the WCG.
Michigan is not an ideal place for a regional in the US. Just cause its close to you doesnt mean its the place to be. There will be a regional in a good location nearby that should meet the needs of everyone.
I dont think warmup time was a problem at the US Open, each player had their own computer to begin with. I have been at the last 2 world finals and the last US final and my players dont complain about warmup time. Its a per admin experience, just go ask another admin to warmup instead of sneaking around. Most of those admins you talk to who are dicks are people who are told not to let people practice. If you have a problem with that , you should take it up with someone above them, its not hard to ask to speak to someones boss.
Its not rocket science to you, because you dont crunch numbers and handle logistics. It might seem easy to someone from the outside, but it is by no means an easy task.
There was one in Fenton michigan at some Shit PC cafe last year it had like 15 comps and it wasnt very nice. I had never heard of Fenton until wcg. they had one in some obscure town in indiana last year too. I dont understand there choices. If you wanted people to walk by and catch a wcg, east lansing would be the palce to do it, this PC cafe is on the main street of the campus and you can post signs outside etc. If youwant a midwest region it could be in Michigan easily, the best spot is probably northern ohio, but this PC cafe is nice, and if cafes are the issue, this would easily solve it.
You being at the world finals is irrelevant, thats run alot more professionally than USA wcg prelims/regions/finals (up until last year the finals had been pretty bad, i geuss it was nice last year)
Ive gone to wcg 3 years prior to this year, i made it to nationals once, trust me, every yrea trhey have been pretty gay about warmup time/horrible organization.
And when i said admins were dicks, maybe i shouldve said they were Rude.
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On June 07 2006 15:24 JaguaR wrote: I'll admit I skimmed the ~4 pages of assumed rants and complaints about wcg with some petty bickering mixed in, but I just needed to comment on the advertising portion. I was going to go to WCG USA Open 06, considering I only live 2 hours away and was going to cover it for gosugamers.net where I'm a new editorial admin (aka = natedowgg). However, I searched online for probably 2 hours and the only information I could find was that it was held at the Kodak Theatre on Saturday/Sunday. It didn't explain which games were being played which days, whether the finals for SC would be on Sunday, etc etc. I ended up not even making the trip because the only information I could get on times was rS.Colbi telling me it *usually* starts around 11 AM. Its ridiculous to call yourself a "world" gaming organization, and then not be able to handle yourself in a manner that even comes close to the decorum and professionalism that one would expect from a simple small business, let alone a supposedly huge organization. I call foul.
Great post, We need to take these over to the WCG Usa Webpage forum though, its not the admin guys fault whos posting here, its the fucking horrible people at the top.
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You guys are a bunch of whiney bitches... J/K WCG has horrible top and lower end management!
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