The tournament area in itself (Bernwaldhallen) was excellent for this kind of competition, yet the organising could have been better. First the Counter-strike tournament was delayed by an hour or so due to "server problems", unfortunately I did not manage to find anyone who could actually explain the problem in more detail. Delays happens on every major tournament though.

The major upset in the Counter-strike tournament was that Adrenaline did not manage to even qualify from the group games. Fortunately, Adrenaline ended up sitting right next to me when they had lost their game, so I listened to their discussion as to why they ended up at such a disappointing place. They seemed to agree that GoodFella was the one to blame, since he did not listen to what the rest of the players had to say. I did not notice him playing that bad when I watched the games, yet it could have been a factor. Adrenaline did say that they will have to rebuild a lot of their way of playing from scratch. The commentators for the Counter-strike tournament (Spawn and Amadeus I believe) were fairly good. The problem was that the players were sitting in the same room as the spectators, so the players could hear what the commentators said. This was pointed out several times by the players yet nothing happened. When it was time for the one game in Starcraft to be played on the big screen, the players actually paused the game and told the commentator to stop commentating, and they didn't unpause till he did, rightly so.

The Starcraft tournament also had plenty of delays, this time the official reason was "technical problems". Yet I managed to overhear the discussion between the Starcraft admin, Mazor, and some of the WCG Crew. The real reason was that that Mazor had "forgot" to bring Starcraft CDs to the event. So the players ended up searching google for cracks so they games could finally be played. Needless to say, the WCG Crew directed some very harsh words towards Mazor regarding that incident. One interesting note is that almost half of the spectators at the event seemed to follow Starcraft instead of Counter-strike. Yet Starcraft could only be watched on a small screen out in the lobby, a part from one of the Semi-finals which could be watched on the big screen (when CS was over). Due to the delays the finals were yet again played on the small screen, since the crew started packing. As for the results, the main upset was Kimthan being out of the tournament so early.

Unfortunately, the coverage for Unreal Tournament was non-existant. Not one single game was possible to watch for the spectators. More on that part of the tournament here by Zulg

Despite the problems and the focus on CS, this was a good event. They even did a few extra exhibition shows to please the spectators, such as Matrix Kung-fu and Counter-strike Kung-fu. I had a photographer with me, Supersonix, who took a few pictures, they will be uploaded as soon as possible so you can see Counter-strike Kung-fu for yourself :)


UPDATE
Adrenaline wanted me to give out a link in which vesslan elucidates the issue at hand, here