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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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