With the second group stage for UT2004 being finished yesterday, and the bronze final already having been played, there remained only one match in my and TheRogue's game of main interest. We were determined not to miss the final between winz and Falcon, and set our alarms to 8.30 again, in time to make it to the event, check up on the day's events and reserve ourselves some good front(ish) row seats.

Unfortunately, with the final being played out at 11.00 CET, a lot of people failed to show up, and the stage area was only about half filled. Even some of the UT players failed to show up after what we later learned was something of an event-filled night. More on that later. The final turned into something of a formality in the first map, as winz crushed his opponent convincingly on Rankin with a 16-2 score, thanks to dominating aim and several headshots.

Ironic, Falcon's pick, looked to be more of a tight match as the Austrian took the first frag and set winz running for a good 3-4 minutes in the start. From a situation of complete and utter maplock, the tables turned when Falcon was faked out at the lifts and winz popped back down, landing a full-on flak ball. Falcon only had seconds to wonder what had happened as the young French player attacked viciously, hitting 2 more full primaries and finishing the job with some flak ball splash damage. Falcon fell behind by 3 frags as winz took the chance and scored a set of respawn frags.

The game took a turn when Falcon managed to sneak into control after a few minutes of hanging on by his fingernails, and with a double-stack situation he took on winz head-to-head to pull in closer. With minutes between each frag, winz looked like he might lose the game, but the aAa duo started exchanging frags to raise the score to a 7-5 situation in favour of winz. With less than a minute left, Falcon scored a crucial, crucial frag, leaving him with 20 seconds left to chase down winz and force an overtime. He headed straight to the 50 armour, the most common spawn point on the map, but winz got lucky, spawning in the upper corridors instead, where he waited the last seconds, shield gun in hand, to take the game and the €6000 that accompanied it.

The winner of the day was one that no one of our ESR experts had predicted, but the aAa wonderchild showed the world exactly what he was capable of with an immaculate run through the tournament. However, with the UT2004 community losing ground everyday in the major tournaments in the e-sports world, and occupying a very low-key position in this ESWC, winz will likely not be able to prove that he is not just a one-hit wonder. With such a well-run tournament, thanks in large part to the punctual and cooperative players, one must wonder if other tournament organizers will consider the game. The full placings for the game can be found on the front page, but the top four were winz, Falcon, Lauke and devilmc respectively.

After the final, we headed down to the press room, where there was a very noticeable lack of computers. After an interview with the players, which TheRogue and I tried to record (but failed miserably at - I blame the shitty audio quality on cassettes), the CS second group stage was drawn nearly completely randomly. Teams from the same group couldn't play each other, but one has to question why ESWC didn't seed group winners and 2nd placers. The result was some very lopsided groups, with one group containing a red-hot mouz, coL, NiP and constant surprisers x6tence, while another contained 2 Russian teams and 2 Danish teams, the level of which proved to be rather low. The draw surely screwed up many people's top 4 predictions, as 3 of the strongest teams in the tournament were forced to play against each other.

From CS, and after posting some coverage, I moved on to watch some Quake 3, the only other interesting action game that was being played. We saw toxic come from behind and beat everyone's favourite Russian Cooller with 2 maps to 1 (cooller quote of the day: "ztn is map where need some brain"). After that, fox raped St_Germain, and then we were off to lunch. After coming back, I chilled at the iTG stand while TheRogue went and exhausted himself trying to get UT2004 demos to work, then watched the Lauke vs. Falcon game at normal speed (even Ironic...). Over at the iTG stand, Carmac was interviewing the UT top 3 players, and forcing everyone to say "I love the GGL." Apparently, the GGL will release an official ESWC movie, where the content will consist entirely of video clips of everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) saying "I love the GGL" in various poses, places and positions (like on top of Carmac's shoulder, as winz did).

The UNOFFICIAL GGL video will consist of some amazingly great footage shot by zulg, who apparently won't come back to gaming even if a UT game gets picked for the World Tour. =( The funniest so far is a scene where Lauke tests out his potential as a petty thief if his whole pro-gaming dream doesn't pay as well as it should. To leave some suspense, let's just say the face of the employee who first witnessed the theft caused the whole UT crew to burst out into hysterical laughter.

In the hours that followed, most players started leaving, and TheRogue left to astz's hotel, where they played poker for most of the evening. The people that stayed were mainly Quakers, who stayed to follow the two matches that remained, Socrates vs. Jibo and fox vs. Cooller, both of which would solve who advanced from their group. The latter ended up stretching out as fox contested the dm13 game because of a bug in the early minutes where a full-on rocket failed to register on Cooller. Did it affect the outcome, maybe, but fox should have asked for a restart straight away, not kept it as a potential ace up his sleeve. On the decider, dm6, fox was forced to submit to Cooller's shaft, which made it impossible for the Swede to come into a shaft battle without having double the Russian's health. In the other match, Socrates ended up beating Jibo convincingly on hub (Jibo quote of the day: "birthdays all night long") to advance with fellow Team USA player czm.

After the Q3, only CS was having a stage match between wNv and mouz, but with the auditorium packed to the brim with at least 1500 spectators, and mouz steamrolling the Chinese players, I decided to pack up and leave. No one I knew remained, so my goodbyes were short, and I returned to my room where I wrote this on TheRogue's borrowed laptop. On Friday, Q3 will basically be played to the end, perhaps with the final on Saturday (I'm not altogether sure), but otherwise, there will only be CS and WarCraft, neither of which interest me to any great extent. Officially, that is. Inofficially, there will be the UT2004 2on2 event, which should be lots of fun, especially if TheRogue and I participate - I've always wanted to see a 2on2 end with scores in the 3 digits for one team.

If the tournament ends early, I'll try to get some tourism done, as I've yet to venture outside the Carrousel du Louvre properly, and since this is my first and last visit to Paris in a while, I should try to see some of the sights of the city. Hopefully, I won't be forced to go it alone, as that's somewhat of a drag. If tourism fails, I'll try to catch a game of poker or something with the UT players, but as of now, I haven't got much planned. Tomorrow I'll be posting more, until then au revoir.