The StarCraft Invitational Tournament is the heart of BlizzCon for me. It is the main reason I go and it is the event that gets me the most excited. I LOVE being able to watch the players from right behind them and seeing their screens move and seeing the hotkey and mouse click action in person. I LOVE being able to see how the players are in person and getting a little glimpse of how they think when I interview them or hear others interview them. I LOVE the atmosphere, being up close to the action and being able to cheer with the rest of the crowd, “MA JAE YOON FIGHTING!!!” The support of the crowd and being able to be part of that is one of the best feelings I get from going to this event. I made sure I was there on time and up front with the rest of the StarCraft crowd whenever they had a stage match.

It is unfortunate that I can’t get to watch every match. I tried doing this for many many events and it just ends up making me confused. I think I did well this year to just focus on knowing what happened on the stage match and getting the results for the other games immediately after.

These were my predictions as I posted in my StarCraft Preview on MYM:
forGG > Xellos
Yellow > Idra
JangBi > Nada
Savior > Cloud

Having done my research on every player, I was scared that these new players were so good that they would stomp on the old favorites. Most of my predictions came true except for the Yellow vs Idra match which surprised me a lot. I admit I don’t know much about Idra. I heard he is a great player. I did know that he recently lost to G5 and Nony at the WCG US Finals. I also can’t help but fall into the large population of people that think Koreans auto win against foreigners (although I often times hope against it). I do think it is great that Idra represented foreigners well and beat Yellow but I do admit that I have looked up to Yellow for such a long time that I was sad for him to lose so soon. Tournaments aren’t the greatest at telling people who is better than who considering there is an aspect of luck involved but the fact that Idra 2-0ed Yellow tells me that he is doing something right.

The match on stage was Nada vs JangBi. It was more like an ‘impending doom’ match to me. I wanted Nada to win but I knew JangBi was strong and hard to beat. I also know that Nada has lost to JangBi multiple times before so it wasn’t a big surprise when JangBi defeated him.

The second round games went as I predicted. I know forGG is also a very strong player nowadays but I had faith in Savior. Sure he is slumping but he is still doing pretty well and he pulled through for his fans when he managed to defeat forGG. I wish this was a stage match. This was probably a very good match to watch – top old school vs top new school player.

Third round solidified Savior’s dominance as he 2-0ed JangBi. He pretty much made sure the new school players had no chance by kicking them out of the upper brackets. I was a bit surprised that forGG didn’t do better in this tournament but he did go against the best old schoolers. Nada proved to everyone that he wasn’t going down without a fight with his wins in Rounds 3, 4 and 5. He sought revenge against JangBi and fed off of the support of the fans and made his way to the finals. I was inspired after having interviewed him right before his match against JangBi. I knew he had the fire in him and I couldn’t help but cheer him on.

The finals was amazing. It was so great to watch our favorites battle each other again on the BlizzCon stage. I was still rooting for Savior all the way but I was glad that Nada made it to the finals as well. I felt a lot of zerg pride as Savior dominated. I half wanted the matches to go on to the next best of 3 but I also wanted Savior to secure his win. I was very much elated when he won. His interview was great too. It was awesome that he prepared a speech in English. It just shows that he does think of us and he loves the support of his foreign fans as well.

The language barrier sucks. I don’t like just standing there right next to them, wondering what’s going on in their minds or wanting to congratulate them and not being able to communicate that with them. All I could do is look at them and maybe smile or bow. I did say congratulations and good luck a few times, hoping that they understood enough english to get it through to them.

I personally hate interviews. I apologize to every site I have worked for but I know and the rest of the world knows that I am just not very natural in front of the camera. I do feel like interviews are important enough that I will get over my dislike of them in order to do them. I only hate interviews because I get very nervous and I know I stumble over my words a lot when I am not prepared. I do love how it is a great way to very quickly cover an event, explain situations, give the world a better view of the people we look up to, and get answers that so many are curious about. I have a personal goal of being more comfortable in front of the camera as time goes by. I know I am naturally introverted and shy but I know that around gamers, I can get over that. On one on one situations, I can carry a normal conversation with people and once I get into that mode, I love learning about what they have to say and what they are all about. Gamers are interesting to me and thus, I believe that if I just pretend the camera isn’t there and I get over nerves, I can carry a normal interview. I do believe that I am getting better over time though and I’m getting a better handle on the task.

I did four interviews at this event – Savior, Nada, JangBi and Idra. I think I came up with pretty good questions and I genuinely wanted to know a lot about them through these questions. I wish I had time to come up with more but I didn’t want to take up too much of their time. I was ridiculously nervous with my first interview but I did calm down a lot over time so that by the time I got to JangBi, I was the most comfortable. I love getting a glimpse of each player’s personality whenever I interview them. Although Savior was my favorite player among them, I enjoyed interviewing Nada the most. He just seemed so much more full of fire, willing to work hard to win, finding importance in the support of the fans and asking that they continue to cheer him on. He is one of the greatest StarCraft players ever and I have a lot of respect for him. As always, after I interview a player, I feel more of a connection with them and I end up rooting for them more. I have interviewed four Korean Progamers so far (three this year and Nal_Ra last year) and I look up to and respect them all.

Interviewing Idra threw me off though. I got so used to that lag time to look at my questions and having that time to think while the translator took his time translating that I screwed up big time interviewing Idra. I didn’t have time to think so I couldn’t even ask the questions normally. I kept stumbling over my words and adding in a lot of umss and uhhs. By the end of the interview though I ran out of questions but I ended up getting into a normal conversation with him. People told me that this was what I needed. I shouldn’t rely on my questions (what I call my “build order”) so much because the interview goes a lot better if I just let the conversation flow. It ends up seeming a lot more natural. I figured that next time I do rounds of interviews, I will just have categories to talk about and have more faith in my conversation abilities. I don’t know if Crow will post up that Idra interview as I messed that one up so much. I do hope to have more opportunities in the future to do interviews so that I could get used to it. There is so much value to the things people say that I do believe it is important to capture these things on film.

I also want to say THANK YOU SO MUCH to LosingID8 (from TL). I tried to recruit Cypressman to help translate interviews but he was too busy with yg. Jonas and I tried two random translators. The first one did an okay job but the answers translated in English seemed so short compared to the amount of Korean that was being said. The second one was just horrible. I had to repeat myself a gazillion times and his English was AWFUL. I’m so glad LosingID8 came to save the day. I hope to put in a good word for him so that Blizzard could use him as an official translator at their events. I hope to see more of him in Korean interviews. Please support him as a translator! He does a great job (at least this is also what I hear from Koreans who understand the interview).

BlizzCon is ridiculously busy for me. I have a tendency to get easily distracted so I can barely keep my attention on one person. There are so many people to meet and talk to that I end up spreading myself out too thinly sometimes. I wish I could spend more time with the teamliquidians but I was often too preoccupied. I am grateful for being able to develop friendships through BlizzCon and other StarCraft events though.

At BlizzCon last year, I was able to make friends with lilsusie and XaI)CyRiC as they supported me through my interviews and overcoming fangirl-ism. I was also proud of being able to play a big part in getting Manifesto to cast with Tasteless for the on-stage matches. I believe I also finally met LordofAscension this year. The BlizzCon before that, Cypressman helped me out a lot by introducing me and getting me pictures and signatures with the progamers.

This year, I spent a lot of time with Qyx <3, collegeBored (as always.. he started me with teamliquid), Froz and Sara.

Press: I got to talk to Plexa a lot at the Press Room. It was great learning about his thoughts on StarCraft II. I got some of it on video but he filled up my memory. He went on to talk about a lot of MSL and OSL games he had watched. He definitely has a lot of enthusiasm about the game, especially when it comes to following the professional leagues. I, of course, spent a lot of time with The.Crow too as he was there to take the interviews and post them up. I admire his quick video editing and dedication to posting news up quickly. I am also grateful for his help in calming me down during interviews. He also took a lot of great pictures with quality that my camera will never reach. Xeris looks so damn different it took me a while to realize who he was. Dang.

RTS Stage/Progamer Area: I loved how people from teamliquid were so easy to spot since most of them were wearing Teamliquid tshirts =D. Thanks for your support, guys! The first guy I recognized there was incontrol. He was right next to Machine. They were pretty easy to spot. I was so happy to see Day[9] in the audience. I hadn’t seen him in a while and it was great hanging out with him in the crowd and also at BJs. It was good to see Tasteless and Artosis doing their thing on stage. I am glad Blizzard got them to do the casting. I kept poking Panorama for updates on games I didn’t watch. He is so easy to spot with his crazy hair. I got to see Cyric again, briefly. It was nice seeing him again. I saw Cypressman here and there. I saw the old Gameriot guys – Slasher and JP. I was with LosingID8 also during my interviews as I mentioned earlier. Last Romantic – Go Bears!I also saw Virii there. He didn’t recognize me. I was all like.. dude, you interviewed me -_-;; =p. I got to talk to LordofAscension for a bit while waiting to get into the BlizzCon fansite mixer thing that I ended up giving up on. I got to meet Peanut briefly (but I kept getting interrupted — sorry bout that).

TL Meetup: I was thankful for semioldguy’s organization of the TL meetup at BJs. Also to Brian who took me to my hotel. I remember Kingkosi in the car but I couldn’t remember the other guy’s name -_-a. Their self-made versions of the pony shirts were hilarious. I wish I took pictures of that. It was great seeing Trident again. I haven’t seen him since I pwned him in WCG 04 qualifiers ;p. I recognized CharlieMurphy. Got to meet Sp1ralArch1tect. I have a video of everyone at the TL meetup. Check it out below! (scroll down)