As promised, these are the photos I took at the IEM Finals. Some are out of focus, others have crappy colors, but I hope you will enjoy them.

Russia's Quake maestro Anton "Cooller" Singov talks in a video interview following his semi-final victory at the IEM IV World Championship. In that series Cooller managed to defeat Maciej "av3k" Krzykowski for the first time in a playoff series, with the Pole being a player who has been the thorn in his side eliminating him at each of the last two major events.

Cooller talks about his dodging as well as addresses the recent controversy over restarts in his IEM IV European Final match-up with av3k which prompted the younger player to speak out in a recent interview. This time though Cooller is of the conclusion that he was the lucky one in coming through the semi-finals.

The interview can be watched on SK Gaming.

After defeating Anton "Cooller" Singov in the IEM IV World Championship final Shane "rapha" Hendrixson gave a video interview talking about the thrilling four map series.

rapha goes over the close and crucial moments which saw both he and Cooller in positions to win all of the maps played. He also discusses his elation and satisfaction with winning a major title in such a storybook fashion: from two maps down against cypher to beating a Quake 3 legend in the final.

The interview can be viewed on SK Gaming.

I am just arrived home after the event, tired and happy. Our train took more than six hours to bring us home, and this gave me the time to think of the last days, the people I met, the games I watched. So here I am, writing what probably will take some hours to complete.

The place

For those who don’t know, Cebit is a big information technology expo, held every year in Hannover. There are tons of things to see, although most of them are attractive only if you fit the particular business. Most of the visitors are people sent from their companies to do social networking, advertisement or create business opportunities.

The Intel Extreme Master Area was slightly different in terms of content, demography, and look; less business oriented, more attractive to youth, with a disco-like inspired atmosphere. The space was organized with a big main stadium with seats right in the center. In front of that, there was a smaller tournament area, shaped at U, which visitor could circumnavigate and watch the players from behind their shoulders. Other stands with gaming areas and shows were spread on the left and right, with tightly clothed girls advertising Alienware, Intel or whatever brand they were working for, and with loud and brainless “what is in the box?” games where crowds of people would fight for a bad looking t-shirt or a key holder. Overall, the impact was a mix of crowdedness, noise and flashy lights.

The tournament

As you know the tournament started with some problems. The Lan server was unusable due to a 50 ping, which apparently was due to one of the last QL updates messing up with it. The decision was to play online, but the network was under DDoS attack, which made the lagometer a packetloss fest. The players were nervous as they did not want to play in those conditions, the referees were nervous as the tournament was already behind scheduling, and ESR was probably about to explode, fortunately saved by the heroic host going down once again.

Things went smoother later on, thanks to a couple of cycles of new firewalls vs. new attacks where the former managed to win. Anyhow, at that time the scheduling for the first day was spoiled and the mood was not really restored, though it seemed that the rough road was behind. Stermy’s case, however, is worth an explanation.

When I first arrived on Wednesday, Stermy was definitely upset. He had played and lost against Avek the first match and had the feeling the game was totally weird to play. Most at that time believed it was a matter of DDoS attacks and temporary network problems, but later on, when the firewalls were up and Stermy played his first map against Cooller, the Italian rose up totally pissed off and said he didn’t want to play anymore in those conditions. This was the beginning of a friction with the referees that lasted until the end of the group stage.

The technical problem was somehow unexplainable; after the firewalls everybody did not have any problem, everybody but Stermy. Moreover what he described seemed to pop up randomly, and the referees seemed unable to replicate it. Many different PC were tested unsuccessfully. Stermy would play any new configuration just to find out that the problem persisted. The debate became warmer while the time was passing and Stermy refused to play. The referees wanted the tournament to go on, and had no idea how to fix what they could not understand. On the other hand Stermy saw that problem as a big disadvantage which already cost him a match and a map, and since re-matching was not an option he wanted to make sure to play only when all technical problems were fixed.

On Thursday, Stermy was still struggling to get his configuration working. I tried to help him, and we recorded this video ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-utBkzCg7r0 ), which shows the random fps drops he had. These would happen with a variable frequency, sometimes every ten seconds, sometimes only once every 3 minutes. He tried to change account, reload cfg, use other players’ cfg, switch again PC. Nothing really solved the problem.

The situation did not change until Thursday evening, when everybody had played most of his matches except Stermy. The referee approached him saying that there was no more time and he had to play. Stermy tried his last card by quickly setting up his stuff to play on a Windows 7 machine. This one improved the situation as the problem seemed to happen seldom. However, no mousefix was available. Long story short, Stermy played the remainder of Cooller’s match as well as the one against Rapha, losing both of them, and being dropped out of the playoff. He was totally frustrated, and the only consolation for him were friendly chats with Strenx and Spartie, the first one who had just lost all but one of his matches in group B, and the second one who probably channelled his frustration for not playing the finals by molesting a Calipt voodoo puppet hidden in his pockets. The only smile I saw in the Italian player’s face was when a blond young girl, apparently a reporter, approached him for an interview, and the two exchanged phone numbers setting up what Spartie would swear was a date.

The group stage ended with the long awaited match Cooller vs Rapha. This was late in the evening, when everybody but the players and the staff were forced out. I improvised myself as Stermy’s translator (lol?) to not being kicked as well. The atmosphere became really special. Most of the inner space of the building was dark and silent, and a group of about thirty people was tightly assembled around the tournament area, lightened by the bluish light of the screens. The two contenders were coincidently placed one in front of the others, at the corner of the area, where the stage fence created a small auditorium. Somehow, a group of Russians had managed to sneak in, forming a compact front of Cooller’s supporters. I was sitting on Rapha’s side with Fox on the left and Avek’s Manager on the right. The match was totally thrilling. Everybody was captured by the action, whose pace was set by the very close fights, the colourful shouts of Cooller (that Avek’s manager was kindly translating for me), and Rapha’s answer, soaked with determination and will to win. The match, the crowd, the atmosphere… this is something I won’t forget soon.

Friday was arguably the less interesting day. There were fewer matches to watch, and the area seemed even more crowded and noisy. Everything went quite quickly. Fox seemed not to care too much. He has always been quiet, connecting every now and then to his PC at home via VNC, to chat on irc or read ESR. He would then switch to QL without much of practice and play his match with Avek (which style-wise was probably a bad match-up for him) just to get back to his previous activities without showing much of a difference.
Rapha vs. Dahang was also weird. Dahang appeared nervous and shaking, while Rapha was simply mentally on spot, and overall there was not real pathos among the spectators.
From a spectator point of view, both matched seemed more like practice games, with the consequences of the loss privately handled by the poor guys, but where nobody else really seemed to care. Two matches that came and went like nothing, letting me wondering what happened to the special moments of the night before.

Saturday was a different story. The event started earlier in the morning, and the matchups were really interesting. Both semi-finals were played on stage, with a growing crowd of spectators loudly cheering for the beloved contenders. I found myself in the middle of the ESR guys (thanks Anarky), with Carmac and the US players right behind us. Avek vs. Cooller was so freaking amazing. Our side of the audience was Cooller oriented (I realized Carmac was there because of unexpected hand clapping), and I enjoyed the strong emotions the games gifted us. The only little pity is that it didn’t go to a fifth map, which would have been gorgeous. Needless to say, Rapha vs. Cypher wasn’t a lesser show. I guess a lot of people were cheering for Rapha to get the so long waited finals, so having him getting back from a two nil to victory was really the best we could hope for. I have to say that seeing Rapha live was quite impressive. His mental game seemed so strong. He was capable of making the right choices no matter what situation, punishing for anything the opponent did wrong. And at the same time he was very polite and professional, being an example in how to take winnings and losses. His in-game style may not be the most popular to spectate, but overall the way he behaved both in and out the game should be of lesson for many.

After the semi-finals, there was a bit of scheduling confusion. Due to some delay the decision was to show directly the final, but the ten minutes break became longer and longer. Another issue was the people walking right in front of the stage. This was due to the building being so crowded that the people interesting in crossing to the other building would pick that route as the fastest. The screens invited people to come and sit in front of the stage, but people interpreted that as an invitation to go there and stand, preventing the first rows of seated people from seeing the screen. Somehow things got better. At the time I thought it was a combination of the long break before the final that made the standing people either sit or go away. I also appreciated the intervention of Becks, which rose from his seat fully armed to go disperse a bunch of non transparent emo kids disturbing our sight. Anyways what happened was that people sat down (Edit: Thanks Chance!) and the final started.

I won’t comment too much as there isn’t much else to say except it was an exciting set, which could have easily gone the other way, or at least to a fifth map. Cooller took the loss extremely well, though I guess that having a number of kids with the press shirt and a camera 50cm away pointed to his face was a powerful rage-killer. I am not sad that Rapha won. He totally deserved it. Cooller did show amazing play either, proving once again how cool his style is. Awesome final indeed.

The people

During these four days I had the chance to meet with a lot of people. I won’t comment on all of them, but there are particular characters, or groups, that deserve some words.

The Party Pros: Spartie, Strenx and Stermy! Spartie was possibly the pro I knew less about, and ended up being quite a character! I can’t say why, but I think he is the funniest guy I met there; maybe because of his look, or his smile, or his party mood attitude. We did not talk too much, but he was just casting a happy aura wherever he was. My girlfriend and I ended up spending a bit of time with him, Stermy, Strenx, and the winning CS teams (fnatic and na’vi) to a Bier-hall place where they did eat. The overall mood was quite energised; people would start dancing on the chairs, singing etc. Strenx and I were close enough to chat briefly. He was keeping a low profile which showed a much better character than what he usually look with quake. Stermy was finally on a good mood, so we could chat about the years in Los Angeles, where he used to pretend to be a UCLA student to sneak in to the university structures and the students’ parties. It was a good couple of hours, which added a bit of depth to my understanding of the three guys.

Chance won the “friendliest award”! While during the event most of the pros were just answering possible questions interacting for a brief time before getting back to their business, he seemed really interested in the people around. I made the longest conversation with him, and he really turned out like a nice friendly guy. I asked him about his new guide and gave him a bit of feedback, so I hope to read more on that in the future. His help with the standing crowd was priceless. He definitely has two new fans here.

Unexpected character: Cooller’s brother! When we arrived on Wednesday there was this tall Russian guy moving around Cooller’s location. He was wearing a shiny suit, a dark expression in his face, talking with rough gun bursts of English that would freeze your spinal bones no matter how kindly he was trying to be. Somehow he and my girlfriend broke the ice (he initially thought she and I were brother’s too) and he turned out to be a really nice guy, which was there to support his brother as best as possible, fighting for him when needed. Right before the finals we went to the food booth. Somehow one of the two girls serving there was slower than the other, and Cooller and his brother picked that line. The brother was so pissed that when his turn arrived, he became even darker and colder. The poor creature tried her best, but there was no redemption possible. I felt I met a new hero representing Russia there!

Avek’s manager. I met him the first day and saw he was close to both Avek and Cypher. We ended up having interesting discussions, about Avek, about ESReality, and Quake Live in general. One thing which was nice to hear is that he had recently chatted with ESL about QL as a choice for them, and apparently they said that it was doing very well, that supporting the game fitted the business model, and that they were happy to continue with it. If confirmed, these are good news for everybody, I guess.

ESR guys. I won’t name them because I would forget somebody. It was nice to give a face to the nickname, and I am sorry we could not interact more. I guess that the combo of being scattered all over Hannover, of my girlfriend sickness, and of the cold did not help in getting the proper evening meet up we all wanted, but I’m happy I could meet with you guys during the event. A hand clap to all who where there!

Highlights

These are small highlights of the event that somehow got stuck in my head.

- Cooller vs. Rapha in the group stage
- Cooller’s brother
- Nukm ESReality t-shirt
- The brief chat with 2GD during the first day where I was thinking "wtf, how tall is he?!?" just to realize that the inside of the tournament stage was almost one foot above ground.
- Chance smile when taking a map to Cooller in the group stage match. Cooller was gone in enrage, completely red, with thick veins visible on his neck, punching the table and shouting who knows what in Russian. Chance saw his reaction, and turned away to hide a reserved funny laugh, which suggested he was quite happy to be out of range of the Russian wrath.
- Toxic return? On Friday I was spectating Cypher (who did not have to play that day as he was first in group B) playing Toxjq (the swe toxic). It was just a practice match over a bunch of maps, but he looked really really solid. Stay tuned with this, because it could be very interesting.

Conclusions

This was a great experience. I don’t know how people felt from home (still have to read a thousand messages), but being there and see all that happened was really something. I wish to thank Carmac for making this happen, Rondrian and Xou for not kicking me out when they should have, 2GD for being the gentleman he is and for his casting, the ESR guys for being there and cheering for Cooller, and of course my girfriend for bringing me there. Best Christmas present ever!

Edit: photo gallery here: http://www.esreality.com/?a=post&id=1849222

Alright, the finals are over, VODs are up, comments are still beeing made and we're all looking forward to the next major LAN event.

I was at the venue on friday and saturday. So I booked a room in Hannover to make sure to watch all the playoffs matches live on stage.

The disappointment was huge, while sitting in the front row for about an hour and watching CS to hold on to a good seat when the playoffs are starting and eventually finding out NONE of the promised matches are beeing played on the stage. So me and my friend walked over to the area where all the pros were playing to find out the ifs and whys. Chance told me the mood (of the players) wasn't the best either and after someone asked Carmac what's up he couldn't seem to give straight answers either. I assume he wasn't happy hisself, so probably some organizers must have screwed up the schedule or Intel called and told Carmac the CS.Female tourney attracts more viewers than unshaved Quake players. But who knows...

So on friday we (some ESRers and random n00bs) were watching the Quake matches from behind the players' backs, which wasn't too bad either, since we could talk to them directly. To my surprise Chance turned out to be quite the nice guy :) He talked to us just as if we're one of his team mates. Thumbs up for this guy!!! [+]

The last relegation matches were over quite quickly and eventually Carmac promised us that EVERY SINGLE MATCH of tomorrow would be shown on the main stage. After that promise me and nBk went off the venue into the next bar to kill the time until tomorrow...

-----------------------------

On saturday we (becks, nBk, kan1, TronicGgG, Anarki320, memento mori, his girlfriend (whose name I forgot) and some others maybe???) were at the stage ON time to secure the first row :)

I brought a big notebook and a highlighter and made signs like these:

becks told 2GD about our little "ESReality meet" sign and you can see us at this VOD at around 05:00 (http://tv.esl.eu/de/vod/22009) (there's a picture as well: http://www.esl-world.net/masters/season4/hann.../50858950/ and here: http://www.esl-world.net/masters/season4/hann.../50860080/) (later on I made it on screen while holding up my favourite sign: http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/3444/coollerbabies.png ^^)

During the av3k vs Cooller match the hall became more and more crowded. And by the second semi final match (Cypher vs rapha) there was no more seat empty and the people began to sit down in front of the stage. But only a few of them. Most of them were standing.

With the Grand Final coming up the entire hall was about to explode every second. The problem was, that between the seats and the big stage there was a huge hallway separating these two from each other. That lead into us (and a dozen more rows behind us as well) not beeing able to see the big screens anymore. We got really annoyed and told everyone in front of us to bugger off. That didn't help much, as one can imagine (Keep in mind that there were thousands and thousands of people...). We told 2GD a few times to tell them via the stream to have a seat, but I guess most of them didn't really get what Jay tried to tell them, because of lack of english knowlege :(

But then there was a man. A little man, who ran like a maniac through the masses for quite some time to tell EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM to have a seat (please). To everyone's surprise after less than 60 seconds ALL OF THEM were sitting down and the mood changed quickly to a "there's something huge gonna happen very soon, so be quiet, sit down and enjoy"-feeling.

That man was no less than Chance Lacina! Thank you very, very much for that, Chance! You do have your very own fanclub now!

The final was awesome. I was cheering for Cooller, but applauded for every good frag (of course). I haven't been to alot of LAN events, but this saturday final matches and Joe & Jay AND the huge crowd was just an awesome feeling. It felt so intense when everyone was "wowing" when Cooller made the last frags on dm13. It gave me goose bumps when rapha held up the trophy, surrounded by a thunderstorm of flashing cameras. Yeah, it was pretty cool, if you don't mention the fucked up friday, some technical problems, lame noobs running around in front of the seats during matches and these shitty tech talks (yeah, I know it's the sponsor 'n shit).

Thanks Carmac for bringing us Quake.
Thanks Chance for beeing a nice guy and rescuing the final!
Thanks neok for charging my phone.
Thanks becks for the Beck's ;)
Thanks id-software for the game.

/e: and of course, thanks to the tournament admins (especially xou and rondrian) ;)
/e2: thanks 2GD for the shirt :D

The World Championship Finals were played at the CeBIT 2010 in Hannover. The Quakelive tournament is now over!

Final rankings

Quake Live ($20,000)
1st. Shane "SK-rapha" Hendrixson - $10,000
2nd. Anton "mouz.Cooller" Singov - $4,000
3rd. Maciej "srs/rzr/av3k" Krzykowski - $1,600
4th. Alexey "srs/rzr/cypher" Yanushevsky - $800
5/6th. mouz.fox / EG|DaHanG - $600
7-12th. stermy, strenx, Jibo, dkt, griffin, chance - $400

Following his relegation match against fox at the IEM IV World Championship Maciej "av3k" Krzykowski gave an interview to SK Gaming. As well as talking about his dominant performance against the Swede av3k addressed the controversy regarding Cooller's restarts at DreamHack and the IEM European Finals, his own at the latter event and also his comments about ESR users getting their cell phones and shoes taken by Polish youths which caused so much uproar. av3k explains his side of the stories and how he feels about Cooller and those ESR users.

The video interview can be watched on SK Gaming.

The Intel Extreme Masters IV will see its very last event, the World Championship Finals, played at the CeBIT 2010 in Hannover. The Quakelive tournament will start at 04:30 CST, 3 March 2010 with the first Group A matches. A few group matches and all playoff matches will be casted on ESL TV by 2GD and Joe. Additional streams will be available from ESL TV and ESL Radio during the Group Stage and relegation matches.

Here is a statement from Carmac about this first day of the Quakelive tournament: There is also a statement about the DDoS Attacks on the ESL website.

Kevin "strenx" Baeza is a 19 year old student from France. Many Quake fans got their first impressions of strenx in the infamous interview after his match with Anton "Cooller" Singov.

Today he’ll be heading off to Germany to compete in the Intel Extreme Masters World finals at CeBit. But before leaving, he had a lot of things he wanted to get off his chest about a lot of things.


He also talks about Cooller's disrespect for him, why he hates DaHanG and what he thinks about people who make excuses.

Check helloliefje.com to read the full interview.

Twenty thousand dollars. Thirty-six matches. Twelve players. Four days. That's what the Intel Extreme Masters World Championship will be in a nutshell.

The final event of the six-months-long season - you better have some spray left in you because in many ways the event will be better than anything we have produced this season. The venue for the event will be an enormous trade show hall with a grand stage and the faces of Cypher, DaHanG and Jibo on the walls. Never before has a Quake Live player played at such a grand stage.

There will be a prize pot with $20,000 and a very large and heavy trophy. There will be three streams to make sure you can watch the matches you want to. There will be four days of action with the final on Saturday. Most importantly, there will five players whose victory in the World Championship will not raise any eyebrows. We do not know who will win. Could we ask for more?

Naturally, we could, but considering a not infinite budget and the fact that Quake Live finds itself in the same space with a World of Warcraft and Counter-Strike 1.6 World Championship as well. Because of scheduling and the tournament structure, we will be playing all group play rounds concurrently, so five rounds of three matches at the same time.

This is why we have got three streams: the games that won't make it to the stage will be provided by the ESL TV B (no commentary) and ESL Radio streams. All the stage matches will be shown on ESL TV A stream, showing what should be ESL TV's best production ever (fingers crossed). The stage looks very sexy and having a camera crane will make it look even sexier.

You will still be able to watch any game you want to (bar three) but not every single game. (I hope we won't have difficulties in other games that will force schedule changes on us.) You can find the full match schedule on the Intel Extreme Masters website.

Take time off work, skip school and send your girlfriend away for four days... The event starts on Tuesday for WoW and CS and Wednesday for Quake Live with Group A. Group B follows on Thursday. The winners of each group will go directly into the semi final while the second and third places will be in the two quarterfinals. The two quarterfinals will be played on Friday.

Set your alarm clocks for 9:50 CET on Saturday. The first semi final is at 10:00 CET and Quake Live reigns on the Intel Extreme Masters stage until the final at 13:40 CET. This means no sex on Friday night.

Traditionally, closing off with questions:

1) Will all of the "big three" make out of Group A. ?
2) WIll we see any three-way-ties?
3) Is Cypher a guaranteed winner of Group B?
4) Who will produce the largest amounts of controversy?
5) Will ESReality die?
6) Who do you hope to win the event?
7) Who do you hope not to win the event?
8) Who do you honestly think will win it?
9) Whose eyes are those in the picture above?

The season for Quake Live started off in Dubai with a great event. We will do everything in our power to make the World Championship greater!


P.S. Please take a minute of your time and do some FaceBook / Twitter spamming. Tell your friends about the event, give them the URL where they can watch it. Intel loves Quake Live. Give them more reasons to support it for Season V.

Update 2: The ESL announced that Cyrus "proZaC" Malekani won't be able to attend the World Championship Finals and will be replaced by Brian "coL|dkt" Flander in Group B.

Update: The schedule of the competition is now available.

The conclusion of the Intel Extreme Masters IV will start in less than 2 weeks during the CeBIT in Hannover with the World Championship Finals. Yesterday, the ESL staff announced the tournament format and the prize money details for Counter-Strike, World of Warcraft and Quakelive.


Links: Game format information, Prize Purse

In a serie of interviews for the ESL Extreme Masters IV World Championship Finals, Fnatic.com now interviews ESL's Product Manager Michal "Carmac" Blicharz.

Carmac is a well known figure in the scene, as he has done much for it and has a wide knowledge of eSports. The reporter and Carmac talk a little bit about the impending IEM IV World Championships, his work behind the scenes, WoW as an E-Sport, Quake Live and its inception into the Extreme Masters, and more!

You can find the interview on fnatic.com.

4Seasons Gaming has managed to interview ESL IEM World Championship qualifier, EG's Chance "Chance" Lacina. The North American is famous throughout the world for writing the Quake Bible, and I'm sure a lot of people will be ecstatic to hear that Chance is planning on writing another guide.


Read the full interview on 4seasonsgaming.com.

With the Extreme Masters World Finals just around the corner as part of our run-up coverage to the event we had a chance to talk to the American Quake Live superstar; Tim "DaHanG" Fogarty.

DaHanG qualified for the World Finals in a stunning fashion with the highlight being his defeat of another American juggernaut on the Quake Live scene, rapha. We asked DaHanG about his practice schedule, how the distance he has to travel affects him at European events and how it felt to beat a player like rapha in the qualifiers and plenty more for your reading pleasure.

The Intel Extreme Masters Asian Championship is over and all that's left of it are Jibo's face is all over the Quake Live website, VODs of the matches and videos.

Three galleries from the event can be found right here. Moreover, This news item has got all the VODs rounded up. The most interesting matches are directly linked here:

proZaC vs. uNleashed
Jibo vs. uNleashed
proZaC vs. Jibo

We have interviewed proZaC and uNleashed at the event - those can be found right here. Most importantly, we have shot a booth babe video with the p1mp - you won't regret watching:


photo: ESL