Day 1 is over and it has been a long day, which makes it kinda unreal that tomorrow is going to be even longer.
We started out alright - meruna couldn't sleep due to my snoring and I got kicked multiple times because of it. We woke up early, had a good breakfast (met TCM, they and v1lat are staying at the same hotel as we do) and headed to Elmia at like 10:00. A busride that would've usually taken 10 minutes took us at least 25 because people kept entering the bus with their gears. Dreamhaaack!
At the venue, we dodged standing in line thanks to press passes (shotout to...well, you know who you are, let's not get you in trouble) and immediately entered the press area. We got a sweet table directly next to the entrance. I proceeded, going through with meruna helping with the walkthrough video as I wanted to get a glimpse in first. I met joinDota's Sun_Tzu and the whole mousesports squad - with whom we hung out the day before - who came in for an epic photo shoot, followed by Fnatic. The players encouraged Fly to undress as well and ... he did! Only removing his shirt though. We seized the opportunity to take a few pictures of our own.
Anyway, afterwards we headed downstairs. I saw the new venue arrangement for the first time and like most people, I was disappointed with the whole setup. Dota 2 is located right next to the League of Legends crowd seats. So the spectators for Dota 2 could barely understand the casters at some point and the lack of seats discouraged many people from staying there. Obviously, diehard fans stayed but you kinda want to attract new players as well.
Either way, I set up interviews with AdmiralBulldog and Alex, both really great guys. Meruna and I stayed in the twitch lounge a lot, watching HotBid from TeamLiquid destroy pros in ping pong. syndereN played really well also, but HotBid's backhand is simply unbeatable. Black, Bdiz and Fear played some awkward triple against HotBid and syndereN, and needless to say they got destroyed. Although, Black did put out some great dives and jumps.
We desperately searched for Ayesee but only found him when he was about to cast; the man had a long trip, an interview should be expected for tomorrow. As part of the staff you didn't really get to watch the games properly, most of the time just from behind the players backs and a few scenes at the stage. I got to meet a lot of players when the latter arrived, talked to some of them. All of them were kinda disappointed that the stage for Dota 2 was small, but at the same time the noise coming from the World of Tanks stage didn't bother them much.
Most of the time I just ran around with a camera, taking crappy and blurry pictures - like 1 out of 10 actually turned out good, better leave that stuff to Trisnt. I felt like the stereotypical Asian tourist, but then again, it's Dreamhack. Speaking of Asian tourists, there were three Chinese exchange students from Jönköping who were also Dota 2 fans. One of them told me he thinks Chinese Dota is boring and he was rooting for Alliance. #westerndota. They also asked me if Vigoss was playing today and pointed at VP. It didn't surprise me that my revelation disappointed them.
As group A ended, we conducted an interview with Fluff. A really good guy and super professional at heart. He had multiple requests and still accepted ours. Mousesports went to grab some food first - they were already there really early - and there should be an interview coming out soon tomorrow instead.
Group B ended kinda late so it was understandable that the teams didn't really want to stay any longer. However, Virtus.pro agreed to an interview and it was simply great. I interviewed kSi and his nick is not actually pronounced k-S-i but rather kSy. You will hear it tomorrow, as we had some issues, which prevented us from uploading it. His manager LeX was translating and did an awesome job!
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Afterwards, we met Ayesee (he gave us hugs!) and Bruno and we talked to them a bit about today's event and their thoughts about the upcoming one. It's going to be really exhausting and Ayesee is not intending on taking any breaks - what a man. Speaking of man, that chesthair from Bruno. Seeing it on stream does not live up to the real deal.
This was basically the end of day 1, we packed our stuff and went to our hotels (I almost missed the bus), still rather late though. I really hope you guys enjoyed our coverage so far. Make sure to check out our live-blog on our coverage site, our live-ticker regarding the games on GG.net's main page and our gallery. I think we took some amazing pictures, or Trisnt did. Tjernobylbarnet and I just pretended to. If you do or did enjoy our coverage, give us feedback, we really appreciate it!
Random notes:
Telia set up a booth where pro players can give autographs and have meet and greets, so if you are there you should be looking out for them. EG and Alliance already did theirs, I'm not too sure about the rest.
The 4FC guys are really nice - although they dodged interviews like a boss - and fun to talk to. I was rooting for them, but it wasn't their day. Also I spoke a lot with Mini and HawaioO. If you are at the venue, I can only encourage you to talk to the pros, they are really nice and fun to talk to.
Nobody expected bone7 to look like he does (I imagined a Romanian version of Bamboe). He is quite good at pool, but no match for the king of table-related-sports, syndereN.
v1lat is casting from the press area and is kinda spoiling teamfights for us (usual stream delay of like 20-30sec). But he's doing an amazing job and listening to him makes me wanna learn Russian. Huge respect for the guy.
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