Hello, friends. We are now in Hangzhou, China. This is the venue-city of the World E-sport Championship, aka WEC.
I will make a small tour around the venue. It was announced that the venue was Yellow Dragon stadium.
Here it is, behind my back. However, unfortunately, WEC won’t be held there. Instead it will be held here.
I do not know the reason for such changes, as we weren’t informed about it.
This place might have been planned as a venue from the very beginning, and we just misunderstood the organizers.
However, the tournament has started and I will go there to show you the venue and the tournament.
First, I’d like to tell you about the venue. It is located in the center of Hangzhou. See the surroundings.
See? It is not a fog. It is smog. We will pass the security. There is a registration desk, but surprisingly there are almost no people here.
We are admitted. First of all I will show you the scene and the hall. Here it is. There are few people here. Few here…
Dota match has just finished. Newbee won its first game (2:0). There were more people during the match. However…
It is strange, since China is a Motherland of the current TI champions. However there are few people attending the venue.
You see it. Let’s move on.
This is the place were the tournament production is located.
This is press area. The journalists don’t seem to be active. They are bored, since the Internet here is not very entertaining;
Google, YouTube and others are blocked here by the Chinese government. This causes boredom.
You can’t see it now, but the first Dota match was held on this scene.
Astonishingly, all the players had earbuds while playing. This meant they could hear the casters commenting the game and the sounds of the game.
I don’t know how it could happen. There is substantial experience in organizing such tournaments.
So it’s unclear why they provided earbuds to the players. If you see player over there he is in headphones.
Still it is unclear if he wears helicopter headphones, which block the outer sounds. We’ll see other games.
We talked with the organizers about the problem of earbuds. They told us there are 4 groups of people responsible for the organization.
So it is most likely that they hired unqualified staff to prepare the stage and equipment for the tournament.
We’ll go to the backyards of the stadium. Na’Vi game is about to start. There are two rooms with all the players.
Apart from the stage the official games are conducted here. There are players of both Hearthstone, Starcraft and Dota.
That was organizers’ room. Frankly speaking this tournament is pretty much alike an event in Sport palace.
Remember this girl. I’ll tell you a story about her later.
This is the first room. All Na’Vi players are here and are preparing to play. They are picking. Let’s watch it.
Ok. Here’s a story about this girl. She is an extreme fan of Dendi. She is staying all the time near him.
She came up to him in the morning at breakfast. She said she wanted and she would sit at his table. Dendi is a bit frightened now.
It seems funny, but it begins to look like an addiction as in Hollywood horror movies with people going crazy.
The image fits well with the Chinese. They are nice and naive. It is a completely different mentality.
They have different notion about players’ personal space and an extent to which it can be encroached.
Look at the interesting mouth pad. That’s a small spoiler. These pads haven’t been announced yet.
Let’s see the picks. Here is Na’Vi’s new captain – Artem Barshak.
[Dendi]: Oleg, nowhere to escape! SOS… [off camera]: She’s right behind you, Dania.
Here is the process of picks. It is very interesting. The captain asks for the opinion of his teammates. They discuss the picks.
Ok. I’m gonna finish the tour around the venue and then return to the beginning of the game. These are HearthStone players.
The second room is over there.
Here it is. The organizers, the referees. I do not know how things are organized here. We are more interested in Dota.
Frankly speaking, that’s it. There’s nothing more to see here. Except for maybe backstage. I go back to capture the game.