Hey everyone!

Our third WEM adventure has come to an end and we are currently on a KLM flight back to Europe among with other teams such as SK and FX, who both achieved well here in Hangzhou, gratz!

 

Spending time

For us it didn´t work out this time and this event might very well go down as the event we performed worst at for a very long time, finding ourselves eliminated after two straight matches, the first in WB versus FX and then a second defeat in LB to American team EG in a dust2 clash that was decided in the fourth over-time.

In moments like this, getting eliminated prematurely(and having a 12 hours flight for contemplations), you begin to think what went wrong and how to learn from this. First off, I do believe this year´s format was not ideal for us as we are notorious slow-starters, something you can´t afford when you play one best-of-one match per day. In addition to this we did too many mistakes this, too few players pull out their A-game and when you are participating in such a competitive tournament that just isn´t enough.
Since we lost that early we had five long days to kill in Hangzhou, something that can be tricky since the suburb where we resided doesn´t really recall of Las Vegas. Instead there is very limited stuff to do and I can only thank MSI for providing us the best gaming laptop I´ve ever used, the GT660, who made our time much more pleasant as we could play games and watch movies in our hotel rooms.

 

Shanghai

Even if we are very fnatical about gaming, you do get tired from spending too many hours online so me and Harley decided to take a day trip to Shanghai, to meet his friends from Sweden who studies there.
It´s very convenient to travel between the two cities by using the newly built MAGLEV train that reach speeds up to 400km/h, which means you cover the trip to the financial mecca and one of the biggest cities in the world in only 40 minutes.

China does not remind much of the life we live in Europe. It´s very easy to notice that the economical boom, introduced by the former president Deng Xiaoping, does have a prize.
Chinese people can either be ridiculous wealthy, driving nice cars and spending thousands of dollars in fashionable clubs whilst the less privileged people, makes their living from the earth being farmers, a occupation that can require up to 18 hours work, every day of the week.
In other words, a middle-class hasn´t yet establish itself here and this observation is very easy to do by traveling the 160km from Hangzhou to Shanghai. In Shanghai it´s likely you will spot more luxury cars in 24 hours than I would do spending my entire life in my hometown in Sweden. Even how much you, as a foreigner, feel for the poorer people in the most populated nation, you do get amazed about the transition China has gone thru in a few decades and Shanghai is obviously the city that has came furthest with it´s 20 million people and with brand new skyscrapers finished every week.

Upon arrival in Shanghai we decided to find the closest McDonald´s which was a must after over-consuming the not so finger-licking good KFC during the initial days at WEM. However, it appeared everything but easy to find our way to there since the train station staff were unable to give us the directions. If it wasn´t for a friendly Chinese student, who noticed our lingual despair, we would never found the way. Fortunately he was very helpful and we eventually ended up talking politics over a Big Mac before we had to leave for the city where we had an awesome evening planned.
After checking in at our hotel, situated near the famous Nanjing Road, we went to meet up with Harley´s friends, for pizzas and drinks. For some reason my food was lost in translation(that happens a lot over here), so I had to survive from a couple of slices that Harley unwillingly shared with me, thanks!

The next stop was to a home-party which was quite a melting pot of people from all over the world that for different reason(or the lack of one) ended up in Shanghai to try the expat life in Asia, which I hope to discover myself one day.
Unfortunately the night ended abrupt for me and my fellow warrior, and the evening´s promises that we will dance to the dawn and sing karaoke was defeated by our exhaution after a way too long day, so we had to postpone the Karaoke and went back to the hotel shortly after midnight.

The very next morning we went back to the train station to jump on the train back to Hangzhou. During the trip, when looking out the window, it struck me that that by every kilometer we traveled it was like traveling back a year backwards in time in terms of the infrastructure and standard that we got used to during our 24 hours in Shanghai.

 

Back to Hangzhou

When arriving back at our WEM hotel we found our dear teammates in the same position as we left them, in bed using their GT660s. The second map of the grand-final, between SK-WMF, had just started and as you all know the Koreans walked away on top coming from the loser-brackets. Even that I wished my fellow Swedes all success in the final I have to admit that I´m happy that the Korean foxes finally win something after all their hard work.

 

Later on the same day we attended the closing dinner among the rest of the gamers in the WEM, those moments are always cheerful cause it´s really great fun to share a beer with the people you play against, and it allows you to talk over the games in a very relaxed way.
To sum up the 2010´s edition of WEM I have to admit it goes down as the least best year so far due to the trouble we faced adapting to the format and how the stage was set up, which allowed teams to see the live big screen.However, I want to stress the fact that we didn´t do well as a team but I´m sure we got a great lesson here in Hangzhou and there is more tournaments to play so we will just have to move on.

Finally, hope you enjoyed this blog and a shout-out to all our fans that interacted with us during our week in China. 我们爱你们！明年见！

 

Best regards

 

Patrik