We have some folks over in Seattle currently, checking out the Benaroya Hall where the games will be starting tomorrow. Or tonight, depending on which time zone you are in. You can read Tjernobyl's blog below to find out what is going on with him, dopeshow, Ning and The International 2013.
So, it's our first official day in Seattle, although we all arrived last night. Me and Mathias were rather dead since we had been up for about 30 hours or so before finally crashing. Ning unfortunately was arriving rather late at night, so we had to wait for his arrival until the final crashing could begin.
Oh and our hostel, man, our hostel! Narrow stairs into narrow so-called-lobby with flyers hanging everywhere. It's both awesome and horrible at the same time. The room contains; extremely yellow walls, two bunk beds, a shaky table, a small chair and a WiFi Internet which is down for 4/5 minutes. It is a pure party place though, lots of young people staying for one night or so before heading onwards with their trip. Apparently we are sort of "hardcore" for staying here for an entire week. Whatever, bro, the sleep was decent although it was quite warm and loud outside and the people living here are nice.
That was yesterday. Today we packed our fun stuff and went down to Benaroya Hall where the entire event will take place. Unfortunately, no press were allowed inside today but we decided to stick around in the lobby anyway, because of three reasons. One, people might show up later providing up with some company. Two, the Internet was actually working. Three, there was air conditioning. We ended up sitting at a Starbucks by the entrance of the hall, leeching some sweet Valve Internet. Ran into a few people from Chinese Uuu9, said hi and so forth. They had a Seattle-based translator with them, the rest of them were more challenging to communicate with except for Ning since he is Chinese.
A little while afterwards, familiar faces started appearing, the first of them being Erik Johnson, the Dota 2 project leader. I talked to him a bit and he had some interesting things to say about the event. The screen at the venue will have some exclusive content which won't appear on Twitch, things like the mini-map being extended, extra stats and whatnot. An incredibly wide screen will be used to incorporate these features. We will take look for ourselves tomorrow and provide photos and videos of said screen. Erik also mentioned that Dota 2 is currently the biggest project at Valve - not just The International but the whole game itself and it's a game which Erik himself and others in crew actually enjoy playing to a great extent. During the group stage and the wild card match, there were some bugs occuring which required some back-end maintenance. The issue that caused "The Longest Game Ever" to start breaking visually (Corsair Gaming Summer Tournament - mouz vs Fnatic, g3) is now fixed and it appeared in the first place due to limitations in the buffers. Unlike other games, you don't just have a release date and move on, the game keeps living and these "The International"-events are the closest thing to a big release seen for other games.
Erik went on to mention that today (Aug 6th) was mostly about testing things out, rehearsing and making sure visuals and sound work out accordingly. For that they obviously need casters, analyst panel and the host present. Not long after, some of these folks did indeed show up. Three quarters of the panel, to be precise - 2GD, Bruno and Maelk. The fourth one, being GoDz, was not with them. I went over and said hello. At this point we could receive our media badges and a gift bag to go with each pass containing a towel, a sticker, a water bottle and a ball with a fluffy Dota hero, in my case Tidehunter. Actually, all of us got Tidehunters, Whatiship with his crew aincluded. A while after that, most of the caster squad arrived. First were LD and Merlini followed Luminous and dpmlicious. They mentioned that GoDz was in fact stuck in Australia due not having a passport available. Since he'll miss out the first day at least, Merlini will most likely take his place until further ado.
Next wave had Tobi and all the Russian casters along with Wagamama, Tobi's co-caster for the event. Sun_Tzu and Moose of joinDota were also checking in to get their badges. Since we were just hanging out in the lobby, it was refreshing to see some familiar faces so I went over to greet them and to have a small chat. LightofHeaven mentioned casting mostly being a fun time trolling, it's just to shout "oh my god" at random things. Nah, but it's more than that, obviously and he's happy to be back in Seattle. A total of six Russian casters are lined up this time around it seems, compared to last year when it was just v1lat and v1lat alone.
Hellspawn from Dreamhack showed up as this year he's also here as a reporter for Swedish TV, a channel called TV6 who will be providing some cool coverage all night every night. I can't watch it though, because it's restricted to Swedish IPs. Boo, will have to check it up when I get back home. I also noticed Sheever standing at the Starbucks, waiting for her coffee. She said she's also staying at a youth hostel, just like we are, although she's at a different one with green walls instead of yellow. The dealmaker of a youth hostel for TI3 naturally is whether sheets and linen are provided, we both agreed on this.
At about 2.30pm, some players arrived. NS and Ars-ART of Virtus.pro as well as FATA-, Black^ and paS of mousesports. The manager of every team had to be present at this time for reasons unclear to every one of them. I presume it was to be briefed about the schedule and the procedures for the coming days.
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I don't know if you guys remember DonaldDuck (aka Ducky) from old DotA(1) times, he played in teams such as Ducky's Dream Team and Fnatic with players like Loda and MiSeRy. He's appearantly been hanging with LGD.int in China for about a month. And he's been also hanging out with MiSeRy here as he appeared in the lobby. I asked MiSeRy what China is like and he said it's okay but too warm and he was looking forward to some vacation. Like other Chinese-based players, he mentioned that the lack of tournaments in China is a problem. Without tournaments there is no real motivation to practice since you never get a chance to test yourself by playing a competition. And then suddenly a patch arrives and some strategies have to be scrapped without even being. When asked which team will win TI3, he said that Alliance will. They are currently simply too good, out of all the teams LGD.int faced, Alliance was the team they felt were just better in every way. After the games versus them, they just scratched their heads going "what just happened."
After that, the lobby was turning silent and people were going back to their hotels. Draskyl is still delayed due to flight issues and I didn't see Ayesee around. That sort of marked the end of the visit at Benaroya Hall and we proceeded to go hunt down some food. The doors open at 11am tomorrow and the first game starting one hour later, we will be back to provide with fresh content by then. Content such as photos and videos introducing the venue. Later in the day we will also shoot a few interviews and upload them for you folks to take part in. Until then you can find more photos as well as other exclusive content over at our coverage page. Also head over there to check out the VODs from the group stage and check in again tomorrow.
