Concede or not concede?
So i've decided to give you my thoughts about the concede vote in DotA2.
We can start out with history, realising that DotA1 didnt have the option to concede. But when i think about the inhouses played, or actually i should say the inhouses i played, because i didnt play all of them. Most of them had
something they called a FF function. You went out to IRC and you submited the results eventhough the game wasnt really completely over.
When it comes to HoN as i've been playing the last year there is a concede function, so i pretty much know whats good and whats not good with it.
I can see a game where concedevote is not an option, IF we can controll all the people going AFK and all the people actually just leaving the game. I guess leaving the game wont be possible. But going afk, or simply just not care for the game since you dont belive in it is there. And i've tried to moderate these things outta leagueperspective, and i gotta say its really hard. But it could work.
Questions is tho, does it matter? If a player, or 2-3 players have given up the game, do they still have anything to do in the game? Some people tend to give up early, they change their mind as the gameprocess changes, however some people never change their mind. They decide that the game is over and their play will follow.
Maelk mean that you learn more from these rough games and i completely agree. There are 10-20% games that you will miss because you didnt try it all the way - however i belive you will miss these games also without the concede function. Simply because your teammates doesnt try enough so you wont really get the feeling for the game anyway - hence no practice.
If a concedefunction were to be implented it would be necessary to make this function extremely hard to abuse. For example it cant be used until a special time has passed, it cant be used more then a certain number of times per team or per person, it should also perhaps be enough with a certain number of votes. or that everyone agree.
I did play HoN the last year, and i know that my word might be HoNinated because of that. But when i sat here thinking about it what really drove me over to the concedefunction is the inhouseleagues who created "fake-ff-buttons" instead. Where you were allowed to write FF for example to end a game earlier. Also stupid rules came up in e.g. #dotainvite and #dotapickup where "prolonging" games where bannable offense. Meaning you had to finish the game fast if you were winning so the enemys didnt have to wait so long for next game. These are rule made up because the lack of an ingamefunction.
As it is now, in the tornaments, people tend to say GG before the throne has fallen too. And i belive even the blogmakers teams does this at occation. And thats also a valid argument for why the concedebutton should be there, simply since you can make the game record stats eventhough you wanna leave the game and go next.
Especially in public games where there are leavers. I mean, you can punish leavers. But someone leaving one game is hard to punish. If that happens to you, and the game already look kinda bad. A concedefunction would say tons of time (as if time was important) and also make you able to go next game faster.
So, in the end im gonna say "Dont concede before its over, but please let it be possible to concede when it is"
Thanks for your time //Drayich
Help me out with my Facebook page!
and press "Like" ofcourse :-)
DotA vs HoN
I'm gonna start with saying my english is far from superiour, especially when i write. However im not interested in solving it, its still good enough in my opinion. Just bare with me.
The Discussion DotA vs HoN
Let me remind you. DotA1 players about the time when DotA started to be competetive. Do you remember how we struggeled versus the WC3 players or BW players who constantly told us that this game was horrible, and that we had no skill when we played it?
Let me remind you HoN players that HoN is made out of DotA. If there was no DotA it probably wouldnt be any HoN.
This is the biggest chance ever found in time for the MOBA players, viewers, and fans. Finally we have made this scene big enough to really become competetive, to become proffesional and to become real. We have not only DOTA to thank for this. Probably this wouldnt really have happened unless HON was there.
Im not gonna compare the games more then that, when it comes down to what we have today im greatful for both of the games. And i would appriciate if you didnt make it a competition between the games. I mean some fun comments about a typical "Honteam" beating a typical "DotAteam" is always fun, but let it be there.
Most DotA players do remember how hard it was to even get the DotA started somewhat professional, atleast in Europe. We fought hard battles. HoN also fought hard battles in this matter. And now, i guess 4-5 years later we are finally approaching what we all have been looking for.
REAL PROFESSIONAL HON and DOTA1-2 TEAMS - and tons of them.
Lets hope the scenes will get united.
Lets hope we get hundreds of topteams in both scenes.
These things is what should motivate us to hold together as one big scene.
Since people have asked im reposting my youtubevideos here. Enjoy!
First off. The tribute to Maelk!
Second off, the tribute to Babyknight
And the TsoG tribute movie/song last but not least.
My Daughter!
I basicly tried to make some videofootage of my soon to be 2 years old girl. She refused to cooperate in anyway, so
i said "This was a fiasko wasnt it, can you tell the camera "Fiasko"". Look at her response :-)
The Singapore Adventure!
We met up with Tom and Tim (I know its hilarious) at Arlanda. RUS_AGENT and Xoy for you who know them better using those names. Started to find out how to get out the tickets and stuff, was wierd, but whenever your at a airport just look for a nice smileying girl and youll get help. We did the same.
Food and then travel started. RUS was our travel noob, well XOY wasnt much better, but he had traveled alot before just never really been awake and taken part of the actual travel. RUS was more of a 4 y old kid who was clicking all the buttons, and feeling superamused by the fact that he could click and then someone showed up with a drink :-)
In Frankfurt we met up with Black. He was there before hes team and we hang out abit. Completely changed my opinion about this guy, who i knew from dota as just another somewhat whiny player. But, i definently had to reverse that opinion as it was clear that hes just an awesome guy.
Mr Black!
Anyways, Frankfurt germany a couple of hours. Getting on the flight. The snowstorm made us have to wait abit longer since they had to clean the wings of the plane with some wierd shit and then we started.
It was a doubledeckerplane, ive never been on a bigger plane to be honest. The actual flightexperience wasnt much different with a Boeing 747 but it was definently cool that it had 2 floors.
The flight from Frankfurt to singapore takes 12 hours. So you gotta find yourself a way to sleep. Worked out somewhat good, hard to not be pumped before sucha trip, and hard to be sleeping when ur pumped. But after some hours its easier. We sat next to the German team. Making some jokes on the way.
Before landing in Singapore we had some nice airbump-bang-experience. Almost made me shit my pants, but clearly its not that uncommon that that happens at occations, so i wasnt so stressed out.
So when you come from -16 celcius and Singapore is like +25 Celcius (Not more, cause it was rainy the first day) your body says "Thanks man". It was so nice temperatures, and i just love the heat. Weahter turned better, and we enjoyed the first day at a IT-cafe to get some warmup/practice games. We didnt use our equipment here, but it was fun just testing out the enemys. The replays from this event is up already, its really not much to look into. My biggest consern was giving away too much, so we played for example Gauntlet/Behemoth/Voodo lane. Basicly just played and eat noodles.
Day 2 was the drawings. All team gathered up at a place in the hotel, had some wierdtasting soup and some other better dishes together and made the drawings. Im guessing you could call the drawingresults bad. But in the end it was an honest drawing and i do support the hole drawing process. Basicly OK and EG first drawed to be in the same group. And then i also took a piece of paper and turned up in the very same group. Then in the end ICE and PMS-girls had a rock paper scissor about whos going where, since they both were late into this competition that would be most fair. PMS won that and they picked to play in the "asian group".
I hoped alot that we would play against EG first. Because i was thinking that the first game always have the most nerves, and in that way its better to play versus a team which we perhaps could afford loosing against. But our draw was ICE. This team ive watched some, but they had 2 standins meaning i had not much of a pickadvantage on them. They used that in a nice way. We got a good draft, a good start too. But in the end we were too nervous to really play our game as we needed. The need of pushing out sidelanes and putting pressure on them was there, but i dont know. We didnt do it. And ICE came out on top.
Second game was versus EG. EG who already pretty much dominated OK before. We decided to not give away anything for free. Again we got a solid draw. And a really good start. XOY played an awesome Dev. I got fairly ok farm, same for hyddae. The game was overall good. We performed better then OK, and i think we had the upperhand pretty long into the game. But EG managed to pull off 2 great teamfights, and Puppet didnt decide to die any of these. Meaning he got really pumped. A loss, but a good loss imo. THen the last game versus OK we decided we are not leaving this competition as last. And we didnt. OK first tried, but after a while it was clear that they had given up.
I wouldve wished that we got to the semifinal, but there was an upside with not doing it to. Since now we could completely relax and focus on watching the games and meeting people. That was really nice. The event was just lovely. Meeting the people was definently the biggest part of the joyment. but also just hanging around, watching the games live, listening to tobi and breaky live, meeting fans, yes. I met random people who knew who i was and wanted to take pictures. I never before experienced that in my gamingcareer, perhaps 1 or 2 times in total. But in Singapore there were tons of people who knew me before i even introduced myself. That was pretty wierd in one way, pretty cool in one way and hilarious in a third way.
I told breaky to look as sexy as he possible could. Heres what he did
Heres the gamingplace. In the background u see the stage.
Bottomleft of the stage is the position of the casters.
Bottomleft of the picture is the position of a horse.
Bottonright of the picture is AKKE. (Someone said hes the most good looking gamer ever, but
after seeing the standin that ICE used im pretty sure hes a good 2nd)
We hang around in the gamingarea off and on during that day. We took alot of pictures, and we got to
meet the kid that DYA gave a wish day too. It was a young and beautiful kid who had a serious illness, a type of cancer that pretty much would lead him to die way too young. He recieved 8000 sing from DYA so he would be able to go to hongkong and disneyworld. We met him, and gave him a Dalahästshirt, and he got to be showned around in the area. He enjoyed gaming. But mostly CS i think :-).
Food was like the theme of this trip, at one point we found a place where u could get butterdipped bread who then was fried and then got additional butter on top of it. Serious heartcondition in breadform. We had that for lunch one day simply cause we didnt have energy to find anything else. It was okey atleast :-) The best thing with Singapore compared to Shanghai was the breakfast tho. This was much more international, and the drinks were COLD not HOT. So that was definently appriciated. And the coffie was fairly close to real swedish coffie, but then again, there is no coffie like my own, so i guess there is no point of even comparing.
_______________________________
I just realise, during 6 months of this year. Ive been to the Swedish Dreamhack, and winning that tornament led us to both Shanghai and Singapore. I met the other teams, they are amazing, but i also met alot of people who really put pride and joy into gaming. The Digital Youth Awards people, who not really just are people behind desks or behind e-mail adresses, but real people who enjoys this. People with respect for gamers, for other people. People that have humor, people that are for real.
I got to meet different cultures. Alot of different cultures. Ive becomed a better player after these series of events, but mostly a better person. I got to overcome the flightfears, and i got to overcome the travelfears. I got the chance to go 2 times to Asia, and everwhere where i have been over there i have recieved the same amount of respect as my very own family provides me with.
I have to take my hat off for these people, and i really hope that these events will continue to happen. Because Digital Youth Award took gaming and all its joy and made it 3 times more meaningfull. They put in some of the missing pieces to make gaming a proper thing.
Some days its hard to be proud of gaming. But after the DYA events i will never again hesitate when i tell people,
that i am
a true gamer.
Frank and Scott
So i send my regards to Digital Youth Awards. And i also would like to thank all the people that we met over there. Just brilliant, im not gonna start namedropping simply since i dont wanna compare anyone to the other, you all mean the same amount!
Thanks also to Q-pad and Kaspersky who are our mainsponsors.
Thanks to Ts-Gaming, and make sure to check out their new cool page at http://www.ts-gaming.se/
Special thanks to Mattias Lies who made our tributesong, listen to it again and again at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNYW_oc_Iso
Thanks to all the fans that followed us, be prepared for a new TsoG era after this. We met up with some people and perhaps if everything go well we are gonna be an interenational team after this event, and we are aiming to become stronger, more powerful and have even more fun in the future!
Also a special thanks to my wife, who i always loved, but im realising after this that perhaps my love isnt even close to enough when it comes down to her approval and cheering for me and my gaming.
//PapaDrayich, who today almost is abit touched by everything.
Here comes some more randompictures from the travel and event...
Youtubetime!
This song is made by Mattias Lies for us in Ts-Gaming.
I really hope you enjoy it!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNYW_oc_Iso
NEED YOU
Would you like to help us out?
Are you a good moviemaker?
Please contact me or my teammates. You find us in #honcast @ Quakenet. Either that or contact us ingame. Would be greatly appriciated!
TsoG vs PYRO
Situation: Gosugamers comes out with a gamingschedule for the weekend. I look at it and i figure out that i need a sitter for two times, one at saturday evening and one at sunday morning.
My wife beeing outta town makes me vunerable for this, but i solve it.
Before any game TsoG always plays a warmup game, this is something we really need to make it work as a team. So i as the captain has decided that this must always happen. So i figure, the first game starts 1900, ill get the sitter for 1730, then i can play the game and put the kids to sleep after aswell.
Solved.
Around lunch saturday i overhear that PYRO wanna change the time of the match, i get a phonecall from Away. Im telling him its impossible due to my situation and we hang up. I get back to the computer and i have friendrequests on skype and people trying to reach me via the game and stuff. Im telling PYRO that we are unable to play earlier then 1900 and that we cannot play earlier then 22.00 either. The reason is stated above, between 1900 and 2200 i need to play 1 game, then wash and get my kids to sleep, then get back to be ready to play again at 22.00.
Putting the kids to sleep can take 5 minutes, it can also take 65minutes, depending on what kinda day it is.
So i tell PYRO its not workable, we dont wanna reschedual and we cannot reschedual. We are also unable to play the game sunday morning since i got the sitter for that time too already solved, and sunday evening we got the game versus druidz and we need to get that to work.
So what were the solutions?
- Screw the warmupgame, play versus PYRO here instead.
- Screw the kids nighttime, just hope they fall asleep without me beeing there.
- Go up 7 in the morning on sunday and play the game versus PYRO, hoping my kids sleeps before the
nanny picks them up at 9. (They woke up 08.00!)
- Refuse the reschedual
Basicly, i took the conclution that there is no way we can play this game another time, and that PYRO needs to get their team together. Regardless of the reasons behind 1 person having an emergency. Anyways, it comes down to that PYRO doesnt even have 4 players, they have 3. And this beeing a saturday night i understand people have other things to do - hell we do too. But i said no, and we played versus PYRO and won.
This is the reason that they didnt get to change the date.
Now, thats only one of the reasons. The biggest reason that we shouldnt let people just mess around with the schedual is cause its so not professional. I really hope tornaments like gosugamers, esl, whatever, just make sure to force more times. Its hard to schedual something that will work out for 10 people, especially if these 10 people all have a say. Heck just force tornaments, decide the dates earlier and then you can sign up if your able to play, and if your not you shouldnt sign up basicly.
Is this only about us as players? No its not, Its also about casters, its about people who are without even having a payment waiting around to cast games, people that are interested in teh result sitting and waiting. FANS, the people that are waiting to see their favourite team play, i mean, its not just about me and my kids when rescheduling games. And im serious. Someone said it would be more professional to screw the warmupgame and play versus PYRO instead.
You really think that the more organisated team outta 2 should be the one that has to make changes to make it work? I really dont. We need that game to be competetive, thats why we have it there. We dont have it there to just mess up, or to i dont know what reasons you think.
Simply. I had completely full "moral" reasons to not reschedual the game. And even without those reasons i dont think PYRO deservs to get the game rescedual afterall. Im not gonna point fingers on anyone in that team, but i can just tel you that the level of language and flame that i recieved for saying no to the reschedual was horrible.
That aside, why on earth should we change our night just because the other teams are bad att organisating their team? Seriously, why should i even be questioned for not wanting to play the game at another time then we decided?
Why should i not be allowed to make my dinner at 1600 as i promised my kids, then eat it slowly and then show up for the warmupgame?
Why shouldnt i be allowed to use my ability to organisate and have time for both my reallife AND my gaminglife?
Why shouldnt i just be allowed to say no to a reschedual without even having a valid argument for it.
There are no reasons. And i truly hope that tornaments and leagueadmins reads this and force people to get their shit together or get out. Unless you want this to just be a kids playground.
Playgrounds are fun, dont get me wrong but.
Lets keep it competive too.
Honcast ranking!
This is completely true. We still fighting really hard (not internally, just as a team) to find our best movement and teamplay.
An easy way of doing this would take a decision to play a different style of HoN, but i still wanna keep our gamestyle and hopefully we are released from this, and can relax in our way of playing.
There is a few things that always happens in a team, and you cannot do anything about it but hope its working out in the end.
- Players not able to play during periods of their time. Reallife also has its part, this has happened some of the games.
- Players skills not peaking for matches. Skills changes all teh time, and if your skill isnt at topnotch for some games, that can effect.
- Teams selfesteem. Are you more afraid of loosing then you want to win?
Right now im not worried, but we might loose some more games, or we WILL loose some more games, thats part of getting better. However we should loose less games in the way we did versus DM. Thats just a game that really shows how offguard we can get still, not superb ;(
Drayich
Need YOU!
:)
Dont forget!
This is an all swedish tournament that inferno-online is running. Check it out. There is 2 qualifying sundays left. Teams needs to be all swedish, there are some money involved in the end and actually with LANfinals both in Stockholm and at Dreamhack summer 2011.
Make sure to check it out, and also spread it among your swedish friends!
STEPPING UP TIME
I've said it before. We need to step up in order to make the game more serious, its not about taking away the joy, its just about making the game look more organisated. In that way we create organisations interests in taking part, its half the thing. You think sponsors only are interested in results? Then your wrong, sponsors wanna be seen in positive ways, where their names are connected to things that are making them look good. Not the opposite. One part of that is teams with high manners, leaders with peopleskills, teams accepting interviews, teams helping out casters, newswriters etc. But the other part is the organisation of teams, where alot of teams still fails.
If you think you are a competetive team, then for example having your teammates phonenumber shouldnt be something new. Hell, whatif you need to tell your teammates something and your net is down. Its not a big deal either, make sure that you have everyones phonenumber and ability to reach them even outside the computer.
You should be able to create a schedual for your upcoming games, either with calling your teammates, or with your teammates telling you what days they are playable. In that way the problems with rescheduling should be lowered, still in honcast league, esl league, alot of leagues im recieving messages about "We cant play, our last player hasnt been online all day"
I mean are you serious? Im not saying the teams names, cause its not interesting. Almost every team works like this.
If you go back to the argument, "hey chill its just a game" then your not a part of the competetive scene, and you dont deserve to have a sponsorship nor a highclassy team. This is also a part of beeing competetive. A part of growing up.
Rescheduling games can happen, problems can occur, but this should be really seldome. Perhaps once every second month something comes up that makes you unable to compete in that very game. You should have the relationship needed with your family/friends that they understand that some time every week you are busy playing your game. - And as i said before, you should be proud of it.
When it comes to organisations, again its not about someone special, its about everyone. Its definently time to step up when it comes to acceptance towards teams that are failing in their organisation. Some teams motivates their ability to be organisated with simply wanting to be so. Other teams need rulemotivation. So stop allowing reschedule. Forcing dates is not a bad idea, you can setup before even starting the tournament what days that you have to play, and what times. If you cant compete then your out. Otherwise you can set up a timeframe with a defaultdate. If teams agree they can play this games in the next 7 days. If they cannot agree the game should be played THIS DAY AT THIS TIME. The team that doesnt show up? Its their problem, so they recieve a defaultloss. If they keep doing this? Kick them out, they are not a competetive team. They are prolly good, but if they are unable to participate they have no place in that league. Have other - less competetive teams perhaps - standby. Give them a chance. Why shouldnt they get the chance? They are ready to play. The "Better" team isnt.
Also, get people into the tournament and leagues, people that know what they are doing. People that arent afraid of taking decisions or commiting to something for a while. The tournament itself can NEVER BE THE PROBLEM. It has be solved in that way. If you made a tournament where teams falls out, then already before the teams do fall out make sure to have a standin-team-list. This list should consist teams that are able to setup their team and play on a short notice - again a way of helping wellorganisated teams out.
So why dont we just let this be, have fun, its a game for crying out .. Because first off the way the organisations around Heroes Of Newerth games works now it doesnt motivate people to get their organisation together. Thats a problem, because this leads in the longrun to not enough competetive teams. Most of the teams that have these problems ends up splitting up or failing in some way, noone takes it serious enough.
Sponsors, again sponsors. Every team out their lacking sponsors should really want this to happen, also the teams that already have sponsors. Sponsors wants their name to shine in serious ways. You really think its serious when someone 1 hour before a match states that they cant play? Its a joke. I wouldnt wanna sponsor anything that has that level. And as we see, the sponsors are still fairly outta this game.
The third part is simply to let the serious teams into the scene. Skill and teamplay and high teamspirit should help you out winning games. It should be the biggest part of beeing a competive team, but one of the factors should also be the ability to organisate and to compete in a mature way and level. Perhaps their are some teams that are just slightly worse then any of the topteams. They dont get a chance while the topteams act stupid, sells the game out as something unserious, and this halftopteam struggles. Give them a chance. And kick the unserious topteam out of the league that they are failing to participate in. Simple as that.
And the final reason is to make this game seen more serious out there. Its really frustrating participating in a gamingcommunity that flames, that votes concede the moment someone gets firstblooded, that calls out that someone is a "fucking goatdick" because they forgot to buy wards, its one thing. But when the topteams, the frontside of this game, when they are acting asif organisating isnt important. Then its almost as bad. If not worse.
PapaDrayich
For everyone out there
my online IRC name is [TsoG]PapaDrayich or [TsoG]Drayich
if you are unsure its me, always check /whois
Thanks
Back home, the story about China
The trip started out Thursday and ended Tuesday. My english will sometimes be funny, but im betting you will understand it. Im always looking to improve my languages, my swedish too, but as for this story youll have to live with my current skills.
Thursday/Friday: So i think everyone is really nervous. Jarek, Hyddae, Away and Awesome all drives from their town to mine. Im still not sure what i packed, always before any trip i hesitate into the last second with doing my packing and the same thing was for this one. It ends up with my wife doing the packing while im focusing on beeing as nervous as i possible can be. I was definently successfull.
So we drive to Arlanda. Its a 200km drive from here. About 350 for the other guys. Arriving at the airport and i realise that eventho i traveled 1 time before im currently travling with pretty much guys who have the same experience like me. As we are suppose to stay with the car to put in the creditcard for the parking Away fails to do so and hes forced to step out and put in the card. The nervosity is soon completely changed into insane laughter. And it stays that way.
We check-in, got some Chinese money, buying some possible reading for the airplane and manage to both understand what gate we are supposed to be at and get our luggage in the right place. Awesome!
We have our meal in some pastashop at Arlanda. This is nothing we understand beforehand but that meal is gonna turn out to be the most expensive thing in this trip. By far. We eat, enter the plane and the trip takes off.
The plane takes like 8hours to Peking, and when we arrive here we realise that the Swedish airport is supersmall. This airport is HUGE, we are almost lost but with some luck (and ofcourse mapawareness) we manage to get to the right terminal for the next flight that leads to Shanghai. We are starting to get a little bit dizy tho. Nothing is written in real letters and people seem to wanna touch us and see our passport wherever we go.
The flight takes off and soon we are to land in shanghai. At one point during the last flight im thinking "Wounder if we would manage to solve anything around here if our friends arent meeting us in the airport" and my next thought is something like "They will show up, but if they wouldnt we prolly would manage"
They showed up ofcourse. But thinking about it afterwards im pretty sure we wouldnt have solved shanghai solo. Not even as a team. So im happy they came =)
So we come to Shanghai. They are all there. Tom (The guy that helped us beforehand with visas and stuff), Frank (The guy we met at Dreamhack after winning that event), Scott (A workfriend to Frank, running the DYA project with him), Sisi (One off Franks friends i belive, a lovely lady with good knowledge in English and Chinese to help us out , Cammy (The Editor, a girl whos been around the gamingscene for some time, with wings on her back) and the mediateam. Yeah. About that. There is 2 people employed ONLY to take pictures and film EVERYTHING that we are doing. This is just so wierd.
So we walk up through the airport. Cammys asking if we are ready for the heat. And im like "lol sure, wazzup". As the airportdoors opens up and the heat of shanghai strikes us right in the face. Its around 40 degrees. There is no wind. Holy crap. Were gonna die.
Ill refer to these guys as "The team" from now on. Sometimes some of them are missing, but mostly they are all there. So the team has rented a bus. A pretty big one. With aircondition. And alot of water. I sit down, so does my team. It feels like we have entered a completely different word.
Traffic is about whos honking first. Unless you have a bike. Then its about whos got the biggest load. Some people have like 8 times the size of their bike with stuff with them. The collition between wellfair and poor people is obvious. You can see really nice new cars here, and people on bikes that almost fell apart. In the same street. Honking at eachother.
So Tom tells us about the schedual for the nextcoming days. And i tell you its packed. We have like 20minutes before the first activity starts. We get to go to the hotel first. To like dump our bags. We live in the "not-so-2010-part" of Shanghai. So its not just nice cars and fancy people. Its normal people. Im worried that the hotel shouldnt keep any standard. But as we enter our rooms we find out we were wrong. Its really really nice. And at the same time as we are enjoying luxury in the hotel we can also be a part of the "real china". I really like that fact. We meet up with Shanghai team and China team and Tobi. In the beginning its like old people say. "Every asian person looks the same" but it doesnt take more then a few minutes before i realise that they are wrong. We sit down at a pub and talk more about the schedule as we drink some refreshing drinks. It feels really awsome.
The day ends up with some cultural food. We are eating at a really local place, its not in the touristparts of Shanghai. Having all kinds of meals, porkhoof, duckskin etc, it doesnt sound so delicious but it really is pretty good food. After we fought the wars with sticks versus the food, one of the persons in the crew tells me hes gonna solve a fork for me, im happy for that. The only problem is that there are no forks in the complete building, thats how deep into the culture of china we are. So i ended up having to learn to eat with sticks.
Ricewine makes it pretty easy to sleep btw!
Saturday
So this is the only day consisting any type of gaming. We are traveling in to the Swedish Pavilion at the World Expo in shanghai. This place is huge. Im telling you, ive never seen so much people. Someone said 400.000 people visits the world expo every day. The lines were like LONG and people had to wait about 5-6hours to even get in there. Not we though. Our cool nametags with some kinda information on made us able to just straight walk pass every person in the line and go inside. Awesome! I can tell you i wouldve dodged that world expo, atleast this time of the year if i had to stay in line for so long. It was just too damn hot!
They had solved it with outdoor aircondition. It was fans blowing airconditioned winds into the lines of people, but also in the roof there was fans blowing water on us. Not even conforting, just enough to keep you alive.
We visited the swedish pavilion where we learned nothing i guess, i mean it wasnt superinteresting since we know the most. Like what we do with garbage and how we changed the envioroment of lakes and stuff. This is nothing new for me atleast, but it was cool to realise that this is something new for other cultures. And the way that the swedish pavilion had presented all of this was definently impressive.
Downstairs at the pavilion there was like a windowed cage with 10 computers in, this is where we played the games versus the singapor and chinese team. There was no competition and the games were played on Japanese servers. We had some fun, but both games were considered losses. The other teams looked strong to be perfectly hounest. Its gonna be really amazing to play for real versus them at the dreamhack event in the end of november. Looking forward to that!
So we played to 30mins concede games pretty much, i might give you the gameID. The games were played with other accounts, secret!!! 
After that we had some lunch at the pavillion, and then we went off doing some more heatwork at the singapore pavilion. This was pretty cool too. The only problem was that it wasnt airconditioned. They really had put down some amazing work at this place and there was a video showing what their leaders idea of enviroment was. I enjoyed the stay at the singaporian pavilion too, eventhogh the heat was really really rough on us.
After this we went home and in the evening it was time for the real Chinese Karaoke. Lovely. There might have been some duet here between me and Tobi but i really dont think there is any video of that. If there is i might need to kill anyone sharing it with the world. Because someone, im not sure who, decided to go with SPICE GIRLS. And seriosly. You can just imagine how that ended.
We got pretty drunk and had LOADS of fun atleast. On the bus home Tobi actually phoned my wife and made a special shoutcast for her about my performances as a man in Shanghai. Ill try to upload the soundclip of that, it was just so much fun!
I can tell you it was easy to fall asleep that night. Sake means "Fuck sleepingpills" in chinese, i think(?)
The next morning the sleepingpill still worked for some of us!! 
Sunday
We visited Korean pavilion and Italian pavilion this day. Was nice both places had aircondition so we could survive the rough heat that i think was even worse this day. Interesting places again, with so nice people showing us around and giving us the possibility to enjoy the event. We had some real fun today too, im not sure how the jokes went, and im pretty sure that even if i did tell you guys how the jokes went on you wouldnt appriciate em, so im not gonna try. But laughter was definently a big part of this day, aswell as the others.
I enjoyed the movie that the Korean pavilion had done, and the italian pavilion was obviously about cars shoes and dresses. Nothing that wasnt interesting tho, even if i do think i my wife wouldve appriciated it somewhat more then i did.
In the evening we had dinner at the hotel. And this is when im starting to get suspicious. First off we got COLD drinks. I dont know if you know it but Chinese people only drink hot stuff since its suppose to be better for their bodys. But for this dinner we had real cold beer. And i think someone from the staff told someone in the staff at the hotel to get me drunk. Cuz whenever my glass was emptied there was a cute Chinese girl refilling it for me.
I dont know who to blame though. Hey, lets just blame Tobi.
Later that night we played some poker and discussed the future of gaming, it was pretty interesting and eventhough i didnt win it was fun playing some cards, was long since i did that actually. I think that was the latest night that we had during the trip, but thank god for the swedish "RESORB" that kept us alive eventough we consumed both 1 and 2 glasses of SAKE.
Anyways the dinner was the last event we had as a full group since two of the DYA people had to leave for some jobs that night.
Seeing this every day makes you feel a little bit wierd to be hounest =)
Monday
Farewell day. As Jonas explained. This day is about moving around to places, getting photoed and hugging people. Thats pretty much what we did. We said bb to the Shanghai team, to the PMS girls, we were hanging around the airport. Getting on that MAGLEV train, eventhought its suppose to be like able to go 400-500km/h it wasnt faster then 300. But the way it leaned over the road made me be scared enough to enjoy it atleast.
We took farewell of all the teams, and in the evening it was time for us to say farewell too. We left Shanghai about 1900 Shanghaitime. And the long long trip home. FIlled with noodles and emotions.
Some people said this was a short trip, and in one way it was (only a few days) but the way that we got to meet people. To enjoy the culture of China. To talk to the gamers of Singapore and China and even female gamers. To get to know Frank, Tom, Scott, Siss, Tobi. To have the chance to sing real karaoke.
This was one of the best moments in my life. Atleast outside myself. (My marriage and my kids not counted)
So id like to say thank you to everyone on this trip. And i really mean everyone. The professionalism and joy that was given to us during this trip is beyond. I take my Swedish hat off. Forever
If you want the real nasty details, then you have to come ask us in private. This story is for everyone tho!
http://www.digitalyouthaward.net/
http://www.dreamhack.se/
some video
http://swedenexpo.cn/en/news/detail/article/video-heroes-of-newerth-china-vs-sweden/
Shanghai
Its so damn warm here. I swear to god. I think its like 42degrees or something and we are really struggeling right now. But its lovely.
The amount of gaming was much less then we expected. We basicly just had a lunch at the swedish expo where we played 1 game versus the singapor team and 1 game versus the chinese team. It was just fun games, but we lost both of them. We played with devouer and with Flint Eastwood. So we just had some fun.
Weve done the karaoke one night, holy crap i never expected myself to be in China doing karaoke ever, its like a dream come true. Really fun. Weve seen so much things and enjoyed so much wierd food. The other night we had porkfoot, which basicly was even tasty.
Since the low amount of blogging on this trip, im gonna write a story about it all once i get home. Its impossible to get anything proper outta my boiling brains now anyway.
But i can tell you one thing. Im so fucking happy that i let these nirdguys convince me into going to dreamhack this summer. So fucking happy.
