Venue: O² Resort, Taebaek city, Korea Date: December 10th 2009 – December 14th 2009 Games: Warcraft III, Fifa Online 2, AVA (demonstration) Countries participating: 20 9 Founding members Korea, Austria, Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Taiwan, Denmark and Vietnam 6 New members Bulgaria, Romania, UK, South Africa, Spain, Singapore 5 Invited countries Malaysia, India, China, Japan, USA
The Belgian delegation
Although the competition at the IeSF challenge is more for exhibition purposes, top gamers from the participating countries still flocked to Korea for this global challenge. Among them top FIFA players Styla and Hero from SK Gaming, Ovvy and Geenens from LowLandLions and top Warcraft III players Check and WhO from Korea.
All expenses for the event are covered by the IeSF as the players are offered a full expense paid trip to the event, free meals and a wonderful experience. I grabbed my plane on the 9th of December and a 24-hour long trip awaited me as I met up with the Belgian players in Brussels airport. Flying down to Munich, where we met the Netherlands, Spain, Bulgaria and Romania we headed down to Incheon airport, the main airport for international travel to Seoul.
Luckily, I was able to catch several hours of sleep before we arrived which meant I was still fairly fresh as we received a warm welcome by IeSF officials and both national and international press. Suddenly I heard someone say my name as US Call of Duty star Keith Hullenaar, formerly part of the AEF winning Pandemic line up, was calling my name after spotting me in the crowd. Surprised as I was I learned that he was there on an invitation to participate in the AVA tournament, a free online game which resembles Counter-Strike and Call of Duty. We both headed into the bus which would take us to the O² Resort in Taebaek city, a good 4 hours away.
Travelling through Taebaek was quite entertaining as everywhere we went IeSF challenge advertisements were displayed which meant that the city was really supporting the event. After a long climb up a mountain with what might just be the worst bus driver ever we arrived in the beautiful O² Resort. We had a welcome party and dinner and surprisingly enough the food was actually pretty good. After the food and several drinks I headed down to my room. Settling down in my room I decided it would be best to take a rest so I switched on the TV and after zapping through some weird Asian game shows I bumped into a live Starcraft game. Watching the Koreans go crazy over their beloved game I felt my mind slipping away and decided sleep would be a good option.
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Gd blog Steven, now all they need to do is get more games involved and we can finally have an immense event such as this in (hopefully) alot more country's
Thankful some one did a cover, I was wondering how many people knew about it. I got aware of it via twitter just few days before its beginning. Nice read.
"top Warcraft III players XXXX from Korea and China" Some big names there!
I hope the games for next years event are more worldwide instead of featuring a version of Fifa only available in Asia, an only FPS which very few people in the western world play, and WC3 which is slowly dieing. That said, I hope IeSF does what it is setting out to do, but it would be nice to know what exactly are their plans, how it affects us, the gamers, and who is representing us. For example I've no idea who was part of the UK delegation.
Luckily, I was able to catch several hours of sleep before we arrived which meant I was still fairly fresh as we received a warm welcome by IeSF officials and both national and international press. Suddenly I heard someone say my name as US Call of Duty star Keith Hullenaar, formerly part of the AEF winning Pandemic line up, was calling my name after spotting me in the crowd. Surprised as I was I learned that he was there on an invitation to participate in the AVA tournament, a free online game which resembles Counter-Strike and Call of Duty. We both headed into the bus which would take us to the O² Resort in Taebaek city, a good 4 hours away.
nice read ;]
<3
Sick read Steven, looks amazing...
I hope the games for next years event are more worldwide instead of featuring a version of Fifa only available in Asia, an only FPS which very few people in the western world play, and WC3 which is slowly dieing. That said, I hope IeSF does what it is setting out to do, but it would be nice to know what exactly are their plans, how it affects us, the gamers, and who is representing us. For example I've no idea who was part of the UK delegation.
edited 2009-12-16 17:24:13
And yes, I agree :)
And the UK part is basically the people trying to undo where the previous management of UKeSA went horribly wrong...
Hate being outpinged by "silver ping bar" players ;|
those are 2 attractive lads i'll tell you what
very nice jacket Eric <333