G4S Claude VonStroke
@MK_ClaudeVS on twitter
I'll preface this by saying I've always had an interest in attending an MLG event. The halo franchise is one of my all time favorite gaming franchises, mainly 1-3 and while I was never good enough to be an MLG pro, I was always fascinated by the guys who were and wondered what it would be like to attend one of the MLG events.
In 2012 MLG brings MK9 to it's tournament season. I couldn't have been more excited. Back then I was a scrub at MK9 had only been playing a couple months but none the less I still wanted to go experience MLG. So the VSM and WNBA guys packed in a 15 passenger van and headed out to Columbus, Ohio. That van ride was one of the most fun experiences i've ever had in the FGC. I remember listening to KTP in the van with everyone and Curbo (before anyone knew he was offline) was talking so much shit on KTP and it was getting everyone hyped up to play him. (We know how that went!) Then we played the 16bit call out of Swift Tom hanks multiple times while he was in the van and everyone went nuts. Here is a clip from the van...
Anyway, we get to the venue and I remember walking in with CD jr and we passed perfect legend. At the time there was a big rivalry between PL and CD jr and this tournament was going to be the culmination of that. CD jr says to pl "Hey fraud" and it was on! We couldn't wait until they faced off in tournament. More on that later...
The venue itself was GODLIKE. I mean Halo Reach was there along with Starcraft and other games. Each game had it's own stage with audience and TON of casual stations. I think MK9 alone had over 30 stations.
Here is a clip of what i'm talking about...
And a clip of an entire walk around of MLG Raleigh which had a similar setup. Some guest appearances in this one!
We had so many stations and we could ALL play casuals while the tournament wasn't running. Then we had our own stage with about 100 chairs. The commentators were behind the curtain I believe and it was really like a professional production, something you would see on ESPN or something. EACH station had it's own headphone amp where both players could use headphones. It ran 100% on time with no issues. I went to 3 MLG's that year including Dallas.
The prize pool was 32K. That's right 32k! I think our van came home with close to 30k out of that! Not me of course haha.
Here is a clip of what it was like being there...
I remember feeling like.. THIS is what a tournament should be like. It was by far the best experience I had a tournament and surpassed EVO in every way except location.
Then we had the ARENA, where our best players faced off in money match exhibitions and a small tournament. I was fortunate enough to be able to go to one and it was amazing. MLG really treated the MK9 scene like gold imo.
When they announced injustice, I thought it was cool because the newer people would be able to experience what we did, what it SHOULD be like. I was pretty stunned at the low turnout for MLG considering the great history they had with the MK9 scene but maybe there is just too much of a disconnect between the two scenes I don't know. Anyway a few of us had a party to drink and watch MLG. Then we all know what happened.
One thing that struck me right away was the commentators were on the floor crammed with everything else along with stream station. Right away I was like.. what's this? No stage? It looks like a regular FGC event. Then audio equipment kept cutting out when the commentators were hype. Like typical poverty equipment. As the event went on I was shocked at how unprofessional the whole thing was. Personally I don't mind commercials I understand they are necessary but another 20 Minutes of Dub step AFTER running the same commercial 5 times in between every single match? It was like a challenge just to actually watch the stream. It looked like from the beginning they didn't give two shits about Injustice.
Now we have some tweets from Adam and personally I hope MLG comes back and is able to give the injustice community what we had with MK9. They really were the best run tournaments with the biggest prize pots. I hope this community is able to give them another chance after this debacle and I understand the people who paid to go are probably really angry. If they do decide to bring injustice back, hopefully we can get better numbers, hell I'll even try to show up to it and fraud someone out of a win. (LBSH i'll go 0-2 anyway) And maybe in the future MKX can be a staple game at MLG, that would be amazing.
In 2012 MLG brings MK9 to it's tournament season. I couldn't have been more excited. Back then I was a scrub at MK9 had only been playing a couple months but none the less I still wanted to go experience MLG. So the VSM and WNBA guys packed in a 15 passenger van and headed out to Columbus, Ohio. That van ride was one of the most fun experiences i've ever had in the FGC. I remember listening to KTP in the van with everyone and Curbo (before anyone knew he was offline) was talking so much shit on KTP and it was getting everyone hyped up to play him. (We know how that went!) Then we played the 16bit call out of Swift Tom hanks multiple times while he was in the van and everyone went nuts. Here is a clip from the van...
Anyway, we get to the venue and I remember walking in with CD jr and we passed perfect legend. At the time there was a big rivalry between PL and CD jr and this tournament was going to be the culmination of that. CD jr says to pl "Hey fraud" and it was on! We couldn't wait until they faced off in tournament. More on that later...
The venue itself was GODLIKE. I mean Halo Reach was there along with Starcraft and other games. Each game had it's own stage with audience and TON of casual stations. I think MK9 alone had over 30 stations.
Here is a clip of what i'm talking about...
And a clip of an entire walk around of MLG Raleigh which had a similar setup. Some guest appearances in this one!
We had so many stations and we could ALL play casuals while the tournament wasn't running. Then we had our own stage with about 100 chairs. The commentators were behind the curtain I believe and it was really like a professional production, something you would see on ESPN or something. EACH station had it's own headphone amp where both players could use headphones. It ran 100% on time with no issues. I went to 3 MLG's that year including Dallas.
The prize pool was 32K. That's right 32k! I think our van came home with close to 30k out of that! Not me of course haha.
Here is a clip of what it was like being there...
I remember feeling like.. THIS is what a tournament should be like. It was by far the best experience I had a tournament and surpassed EVO in every way except location.
Then we had the ARENA, where our best players faced off in money match exhibitions and a small tournament. I was fortunate enough to be able to go to one and it was amazing. MLG really treated the MK9 scene like gold imo.
When they announced injustice, I thought it was cool because the newer people would be able to experience what we did, what it SHOULD be like. I was pretty stunned at the low turnout for MLG considering the great history they had with the MK9 scene but maybe there is just too much of a disconnect between the two scenes I don't know. Anyway a few of us had a party to drink and watch MLG. Then we all know what happened.
One thing that struck me right away was the commentators were on the floor crammed with everything else along with stream station. Right away I was like.. what's this? No stage? It looks like a regular FGC event. Then audio equipment kept cutting out when the commentators were hype. Like typical poverty equipment. As the event went on I was shocked at how unprofessional the whole thing was. Personally I don't mind commercials I understand they are necessary but another 20 Minutes of Dub step AFTER running the same commercial 5 times in between every single match? It was like a challenge just to actually watch the stream. It looked like from the beginning they didn't give two shits about Injustice.
Now we have some tweets from Adam and personally I hope MLG comes back and is able to give the injustice community what we had with MK9. They really were the best run tournaments with the biggest prize pots. I hope this community is able to give them another chance after this debacle and I understand the people who paid to go are probably really angry. If they do decide to bring injustice back, hopefully we can get better numbers, hell I'll even try to show up to it and fraud someone out of a win. (LBSH i'll go 0-2 anyway) And maybe in the future MKX can be a staple game at MLG, that would be amazing.
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