Traveling to Europe to play video games

In the North American ET community, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important players: ipod the panzer and jonjon the engineer. This is their story.

The decision

The initial announcement back in December was well-received and seemed very promising from the start. Although I didn't know much about teamoxid, it was exciting to see that an ET organization was involved and that the LAN was already confirmed regardless of how many teams signed up. I had no interest whatsoever in attending but was looking forward to watching some good games and playing in a slightly more active ET scene.

Sebhes sent me a message on Whatsapp about a month after the LAN was announced. He asked if I was interested in coming and offered me a spot on xD Trickjump with my old mates Shaman & Sherclock. I said I wasn't planning to attend. Not too long after that, Artstar messaged me. He said he was most likely going and that it would be his first LAN. I mentioned my conversation with Sebhes and he encouraged me to come as well, but I told him I was just not interested.

The Sunday Night Knockout ODCs started in February. ipod & I were participating in every edition, and we got to talking about the LAN. I said that people had been asking me to come, he said the same, and we joked a bit about going. We kept talking about it for the next few weeks or so, and soon enough the conversation shifted from "Wouldn't it be hilarious if we actually went to LAN?" to "We should really consider going to this LAN". Eventually, both of us decided we were going to try to make it happen.

Forming the squad

Despite not having fully committed to attending yet, we both paid the early bird entrance fee (gotta break even, amirite?). I wanted to talk to Sebhes again and see if the two of us could join xD Trickjump, but ipod insisted we try to form a team of our own. And I must admit that he did an incredible job finding players. He messaged me at work one day that both Tites & eujen had expressed interest in playing with us, and anim was sort of considering it as well. I made our first recruitment post on Crossfire, pretty excited that everything seemed to be working out rather quickly.

Then, anim "stabbed" us. PlAyer had offered to pay his entry fee if he would join his team instead. I was pretty annoyed at both of them, since anim didn't even know about the LAN until ipod started messaging him, and PlAyer only knew about him maybe going because of a comment I made in the thread on CF. But then it turned out anim couldn't come anyway, so no big deal.

We continued playing in the ODCs and finally asked our good friend kARMA to join us for LAN. He said no to 3on3 (had already told Aquila he'd play with him, allegedly) but ended up joining our 6on6 team. So, we were once again in the same position with only a rifler missing. We asked everyone from koop to 7ele to Axcess. About two months before LAN, we were getting pretty desperate. I posted a journal and a bunch of people commented "avi", including mEnace. I PM'd him asking if he was serious, and he said yes. At last we had a full lineup!

Also, Tites joined me & ipod for 3on3 since he no longer had a third for his team thanks to juicy being caught cheating like the ultra-nerd that he is.

Practice, practice, practice

From that point on, we started practicing. It went pretty bad at first... because me and ipod worked during the week, we could only play on Saturdays & Sundays, and we were always missing a player or two. We got owned pretty hard in the seeding tournament by k1ngs and Elysium, even though neither team played with their full lineup.

Eventually, things began to go a bit more smoothly. We made some tactics and started doing okay versus decent teams. Our last practice took place on the Sunday before LAN and was pretty motivating - we won four maps against Get Face then took another four maps from Paronix.

We didn't play 3on3 much at all besides the seeding tournament, which, just like 6on6, didn't go super well. Two of our four games were played without our full lineup, and we lost to some teams that we didn't really expect to lose to, at least not 0-4. But oh well, it seemed like most 3on3 teams didn't really practice anyway.

Thursday

On Wednesday, I flew to JFK airport in New York to meet up with ipod. Our flight to Dusseldorf departed at 11:30 on Wednesday night and lasted about 7 hours & 30 minutes. I tried sleeping on the plane but only managed to get like 4 hours of sleep. ipod did okay though.

Because of the time difference, we arrived in DUS around 1 PM on Thursday. We took a taxi to the IBIS hotel, where we met the Poles and Williams, Kimi, couchor, & verunA. For some reason there were no staff in the hotel, even though it said online that check-in started at 14:00. We got the codes to our rooms from some machine near the main entrance and chilled at the hotel for a few hours until the venue opened at 6 PM. eujen asked on Whatsapp which rooms we were in then came up to meet us. He thought I was ipod, gg.

We all three walked down to the venue together once it was open. I rolled ipod in a game of table football then met a bunch of people. The first person I recognized at the venue was kApot because, well, you know. Since the showmatch wasn't scheduled to start until 9 PM, me & ipod went to get some food with kApot & mEnace, as well as certified LAN winners Jay, GiZmO, iNsAne, and outlAw. We had pizza. For some reason there were like 8 pizza places around the venue.

Anyway, we hung out for a while then went back to the venue. I helped ipod set up for the showmatch a bit then hopped on the couch with FimS and Rayzed to do some shoutcasting. It was fun. ipod had some nice plays and a 3-man nade, but his team ended up losing 0-4 to eujen & co. We chilled at the venue for a bit after the match then went back to the hotel.

Friday

So, like everyone else is saying the hotel was rather sub-par, to say the least. I mean maybe it's not that unusual in Europe, but in America I've never stayed at a hotel room which has the toilet in a closet that is barely wider than the toilet itself. The bed was pretty much an air mattress raised about a foot off the floor, and I'm definitely glad I brought a small fan because it was pretty warm in the room every night.

We had breakfast at the hotel, which consisted of bread, some questionable-looking meats and cheeses, and yogurt. Again, maybe that is normal in EU, but here even hotels with free breakfast have a bigger selection.

Anyway, me & ipod met Tites at breakfast, who had taken an 8-hour train ride overnight. We walked down to the venue and started setting up for the 3on3 groupstage. The three of us were down in the basement, which we found out later was most definitely the optimal gaming area. Setup went pretty flawless for all three of us, minus having to reinstall Teamspeak. Met kARMA a few minutes before the games began.

We did well in the groupstage, finished in 3rd place. Our group was a bit easier than group A. Lost 0-4 to Teamoxid & kurwittu, but won 4-0 vs bSTURZ, xD Trickjump, SMASHED, & Gut Lack. Made it to the playoffs.

We expected Gut Lack to be our toughest opponent (besides the top 2 teams), but it was actually xD Trickjump. I had a few clutch doc secures on adler which negated some pretty solid attacks from them, and ipod saved us on frost by reviving Tites in the door to the transmitter, blocking the doc runner. Close game!

Ava, crumbs, and kApot of mAlibu were definitely the biggest surprise of the 3on3 groupstage for me, winning 4-0 vs b2k and 3-1 vs 3amigos. They came very close to advancing to the playoffs.

The rest of the day was the 6on6 group A groupstage games, so we didn't play again until Saturday. I had originally committed to casting the rest of the day, but the couch was full when I went to check it out, which was fine with me since I didn't really feel like it anyway. Watched some of the games from various players' POVs, mostly the super chill guys & girl of CatiNaHat and our online prac partner Get Face.

Talked with Artstar and some other guys after the games were finished, didn't really view any of the streams. Eventually went back to IBIS with Tites around 1 AM.

Saturday

Saturday was our first day playing 6on6. I had told everyone to be at the venue by 9:15 at the latest, since setup started at 9 with the first game starting at 10. kARMA showed up around 10:05. stray told us we had to start by 10:15 whether we were ready or not, so we started and paused immediately while kARMA finished setting up. Our opponent was xD Trickjump, and they didn't seem too thrilled about the pause. We could tell because they were sitting at the table directly across from us.

We were upstairs this time and pretty flustered from the delays. I also noticed in the middle of the match that I had no directional sound whatsoever, which meant I had no idea where any sounds were coming from in-game. It turned out to be some useless program called Sound Blaster which me & Tites quickly uninstalled after our first game. Another issue I ran into was my mouse wheel. For some reason no matter which settings I used the wheel would scroll way further than it usually did. I'd go to switch from my smg to my pliers and pull out a dynamite instead! Pretty frustrating.

Unlike 3on3, our 6on6 group was kinda tough. We won our first game vs xD Trickjump 4-0. The second match was versus k1ngs / EDiT, which we had to win to make it to the playoffs. We did not. We lost 0-4. After that we lost 0-4 to TheMoneyTeam, although we set a 7-minute time on bremen which was pretty cool. Then we lost 2-4 to Teamoxid, won frostbite! Everyone was cheering and applauding afterwards, feltgoodman. We finished up with 4-0 wins against both randomZ and Paronix.

Although most of us were pretty bummed about not making it to the playoffs, we were all happy that we had won a map against the Germans. Personally I didn't really mind ending in 4th place in our group, figured the consolation tournament was going to be pretty easy for us and we would be playing the same number of matches anyway. Would have been nice to finish the tournament in 5th/6th though.

Next was the 3on3 playoffs. Our first round opponent was Fraggers, PlAyer's team with lio & mAus. Since it was single elimination we had to win in order to stay alive, and we actually felt pretty confident that we could do it, or at least put up a good fight. We decided to pick deliv as our map because we knew mAus wouldn't be too comfortable on it since he plays 6on6 almost exclusively.

We fullheld them on supply then won with 1:13 left on the clock. Our attack on deliv was okay, capped the flag and built the controls pretty quickly but took way too long with the gold crates and ended up setting a time of 6:58. Then on defense we managed to hold them at flag most of the round, losing and recapping the flag a few times. We were pretty proud of ourselves, and I think we surprised a lot of people with our 4-0 win.

Our round 2 game was versus teamoxid. We got rolled pretty hard (fullheld twice, gg) but didn't really care since we knew we were guaranteed one more match regardless of the outcome.

After that it was time for the 6on6 playoffs, which meant for us it was time to get something to eat! I don't remember what we had, probably pizza because as I said it's like the official food of Krefeld. Hung out for a while at the venue but didn't watch too much of the playoffs, kinda wish I had though since apparently there were some good games. Went back to the hotel around the same time as the night before.

Sunday

Setup for the 6on6 consolation tournament started at 9 on Sunday, but we didn't have to be there until an hour later since our team had a bye in the first round. I made sure to remind everyone the night before as well as that morning to be at the venue on time for setup.

When me, Tites, & eujen arrived around 10 AM, pretty much the only people there were those playing in the consolation tournament. We found ourselves a table in the main area which had 5 PCs and 2 chairs. And evidently everybody had stayed up quite late the night before, so chosen was the only admin there, and he was playing with his team downstairs. I managed to find some chairs as well as another PC, but its monitor cable was missing, so we weren't really off to a good start.

Eventually some more admins started showing up, and we got everything sorted. Our first opponent was Paronix after their 4-0 win versus teamoxid silver. We chose supply since usually it's our best map, but we got absolutely destroyed on it. Some of us didn't play so well, and the setup issues & lack of warmup probably affected things too, but regardless Paronix had a very strong attack and set an 8-minute time. We then got held at flag for several minutes, had some communication problems, and just felt pretty disoriented in general.

They picked frostbite, and I don't know about the rest of my team but I was pretty worried. Both crumbs and homiee are RtCW players and were no doubt very comfortable on the map, while for us (and probably most other teams) it was our least played map in the maplist. Somehow we set 3:58 and held onto it, bringing the game to a decider.

We won the cointoss and eliminated radar right away, knowing it was a favorite of theirs. They got rid of adlernest, which meant it was between goldrush & bremen. We chose goldrush because we felt better about our defense there as opposed to bremen, and it turned out to be the right choice. We held Paronix at the tank for almost 9 minutes, ending the round with a fullhold, then set a time of 10:19 in round 2. It was a pretty stressful game and probably should've been the final of the consolation tournament, but oh well.

Our final 6on6 match was against xD Trickjump in the consolation final. We were pretty confident and secured the 4-0 win without too much trouble, ending the tournament in 7th place overall.

Now that the consolation tournament was finished, we got ready for our last 3on3 game. It was pretty cool to be playing for 3rd place and having a (very small) chance at winning some prizemoney. We got rolled 4-0 though. Still, finishing in 4th place was definitely unexpected considering we hardly played 3on3 at all before the LAN and there were some pretty decent teams in the tournament.

After the 3on3 final I went to get some more pizza with ipod & kARMA. Then we went back to the venue, and I was surprised at how many people had already left or were getting ready to leave. I guess I expected more interest in the finals, especially since the legendary TosspoT was going to be casting.

Anyway, I sat in the cinema and watched all 3 matches with about 10-20 other people. TosspoT was phenomenal, and the grand final was without a doubt the most exciting game I've ever seen live. We were all rooting for Elysium and couldn't believe it when they won adlernest. What a game, with all 6 maps in the maplist being played and nearly 600 viewers. I did vote for XyLoS as MVP, even though they lost. He played very well, single-handedly shutting down attacks left and right. That shot from Jere on frostbite though!

I didn't stick around for too long after the final due to a headache. Congratulated the Dutch guys & said goodbye to everyone since we were leaving in the morning. ipod had already gone back to the hotel a few hours earlier to take a nap; he did come back to the venue later on but I was already asleep at that point.

The next morning we had some breakfast and left. It took an hour longer to get back to the states, and for me it was pretty miserable. Somehow ipod managed to sleep through almost the entire flight like a boss.

Wrapping up

The LAN was an incredible experience from start to finish. Meeting so many players I've played with & against over the years was super cool, and ET with <10 ping is awesome. It's also very surreal to just hang out with people and have casual conversation about a 14-year old computer game. Before this LAN I had never met anyone in real life who even knew what Enemy Territory was.

Huge thanks to the organizers and shoutout to everyone I got a chance to meet. See you at the next one? :o)