PGA Lan, some little thoughts :)

Hey to all you out there,

after sleeping for like 24 hours now ( we came back yesterday @ about 7 in the morning ) I wanted to write a few words down here.

-> The Lan itself :

Personally I enjoyed the Location at the Lan even more then the enviroment @ quakecon. The Spectator-Area was just awsome with 3 big screens to watch the games, a "radio-table", a screen where you saw the guys commentating simultaniously to the game beeing played and so on. Another really nice thing was that every player had his own PC for the whole tournament, that was just great, cause you didnt have to set up your game for every match again.
They even had their very own pizza-service, and damn they were good ^^ - Also, compared to the polish Lan-girls the models you saw at quakecon just would make you yawn. Over all, the Location and the Organisation would get a 9 out of 10 - the only real bad point was the lack of any english Information @ all, god bless there were Doc Noone and Lab, these 3 in particular, that took care of our team a bit - thx guys :)

-> Poznan, the town :

Just one word - awsome. The town is full of live, shopping malls, big places, restaurants, clubs, a nice "old town"/city center. The prizes are really low for west- european visitors when it comes to food and drinks, thats why we were out eating instead of ordering pizza ;)
The polish girls are also very friendly - if you don't know where to go to dance and celebrate in the evening - just ask them, they will take you to some nice places *hehe* ;)
Also you can go nearly everywhere by bus or "tram" - if you are in a hurry you can take a cab, its not too expensive though.
Over all the town gets a 7 out of 10 - cause the ppl barely speak english, the polish fast-food is horrible and cause in some dark corners you can feel pretty unsafe ;)

-> The players :

I have to say the polish players at the Lan were pretty cool. We had Problems to get into the Lan - Area, but thx to the polish ET guys we finally were guided through the 400 spectators who waited in front of the entrance.
As always it was really nice to meet other players eventhough we didnt have so much time to talk to the other teams cause the program was pretty tight and ppl were really focused most of the time - and wasted afterwards :)

-> The matches :

As most of you know our team isn't really satisfied with becoming 3rd at this great event. But I got to admit that the 2 polish Teams "Netrunners" and "FF" were playing really great. They were on a run and there is nothing left to say then - "guys, you deserved it". They also had a great attitude by passing by after the game and do some shakehands, friendly guys over all.
When it comes to our team I gotta say we never found our game and what we were playing was just not good enough - still, next time we will be even better prepared, we really are looking forward to the next LAN-tournament where we probably will attend again and there is no other goeal for us then coming into the final ;)

-> The ceremony :

Thats something i wanted to point out too cause it was just nicely done. I don't know who of you guys still remember "Mit0s", he played in FF when RTCW was at its top. He kind of organised a big part of the event and was guiding ppl through the ceremony. Compared to other LAN's I saw so far this one was really professional, there were a lot of pictures beeing taken with the 3 top teams, they even had medals and a "cup" ( for the winning team ). Nice words for every Team on the stage were found and it felt like you did something great when you were on stage at the end. Again, Qcon was really worse then this when it comes to the ceremony.

After all it was a great expierience, eventhough we didnt perform @ our best. The Team had a lot of fun, especially when we were out on saturday night. "Teamspirit" at its best I would say :PPP
The trip back was horrible btw - our tickets were booked wrong by the austrian train-company, we had to pay the trip back a second time, didnt have places to sit in the beginning and so on - so my next mission is to get some money back, will be hard.

So these were a few impressions from my point of view. Many greets to all the ppl we met there ( including mashed and his dad :) )and guys, if you got some spare time - visiting poznan is worth a trip, believe me ;)

p.s. : A big thx goes out to zeropoint-management ( www.zpgaming.net ) who helped us getting there - Apax and Burner <3. Maybe there will be a little Traveling-report on our HP at the end of this week ;)

edit : zp! lineup at pga : butchji, darky, hatred, potter, rapture - and the worst manager ever because he was never there - foonr ;)