We had three members of the compLexity Academy team attend MLG Anaheim 2011, two of the members won a tournament to make it, one of the members lived close and decided to attend.
Gensulitor ended up getting the furthest. He lost his first match and made it to Round 5 in the losers bracket where he was defeated by the fan favorite White-Ra. We are extremely proud of him making it as far as he did and expect great things from him in future events.
Round 1 Winners: KingSpades 2 – 0 Gensulitor
Round 1 Losers: o-ism-o 0 – 2 Gensulitor
Round 2 Losers: LovE-z33k 1 – 2 Gensulitor
Round 3 Losers Rickter 0 – 2 Gensulitor
Round 4 Losers xFiNaLEx 1 – 2 Gensulitor
Round 5 Losers White-Ra 2 – 0 Gensulitor
Lizzuma was the winner of the last two compLexity Academy tournaments. His results at MLG Anaheim hardly tell what kind of player he is. He told me that he normally plays on a laptop and he is use to a mechanical keyboard. Coming to MLG and playing with a different keyboard really made the difference. He will be purchasing a new keyboard and practicing with that for the next event.
Round 1 Winners: Speece 1 – 2 Lizzuma
Round 2 Winners iNkA 2 – 0 Lizzuma
Round 2 Losers: NoctisSC 2 – 0 Lizzuma
Brobocop perhaps had the most impressive results taking a game off of the Korean Choya in winners round three. We are expecting great things from Brobocop in the future with the results he posted.
Round 1 Winners: Sung123 1 – 2 Brobocop
Round 2 Winners: Temprament 0 – 2 Brobocop
Round 3 Winners: Choya 2 – 1 Brobocop
Round 4 Losers: Ajtls 2 – 0 Brobocop
MLG Anaheim was the largest event I have ever attended. I attended WCG in New York three or so years back, but it was nothing like Anaheim. Before I get into the positives about MLG Anaheim I want to first point out a few small cons. On the first day of the event, the check-in line was absurd. Anyone with half a brain could have thought about the first day being bombarded with spectators checking in to watch. MLG should have most definitely added a second or third line for pre-purchases. I know their goal is probably to get people to go gold to “expedite” the line, but come on… we are already attending your event and pre-purchased.
The second thing that bothered me was the main stages were extremely close to eachother in such a small area. They had Starcraft in the middle with probably 1000 seats and one giant screen. The majority of people were watching Starcraft II and half were standing half were sitting either on the floor or in a chair. I am sure they just were not expecting the huge turnout, but for next time an adjustment I would like to see is separate Starcraft from the other main stages and add more seating.
The venue was awesome though. The player interaction was inevitable because of the setup; players had to walk in the open through the crowd. Most of them were completely ok with it, one person that I could tell did not want to talk to me was Idra… Maybe that was because I was wearing a compLexity jersey. After his completely unnecessary bad manners not shaking Crunchers hand, I threw away his autograph. It is an experience for any Starcraft or gaming lover because you get to interact with a ton of nerds and meet your favorite players.
The highlight of my trip was meeting the players; I talked with Catz, Lizzuma, Ryze, FireZerg, CrunCher, trimaster and Gensulitor. But the best part was shaking hands with the man himself, Jason “1” Lake. He was an awesome guy and shaking hands with him was like shaking hands with your childhood hero. Jason Lake to me is a guy who defines adversity. In the worst times he proved that if you continue to persevere through the hard times, good things will happen. Every person has someone who means something to them and for me it is Jason Lake because of how much gaming has meant to me growing up.