The Following is a public thank you to The Dr. Pepper Ultimate Gaming House, MLG, SC2, and E-sports in general.
For those of you who are un-aware, I, TheLOLas was the winner of the Dr. Pepper Ultimate Gaming House. I wanted to get out a public thank you to all the people who were involved with this, and to the people who have given me so much. If you would like to see the episodes please go to
www.mlgpro.com/ugh
A start into E-sports
I first started playing starcraft 2 after it had came out. I was an old World Of Warcraft player and I wanted to see what other games Blizzard was capable of making. At first I was an extremely casual player. I did lots of custom games and a few 1v1's. I remember the first "strategy" I had was that if i made flying units I would win. ( Of course this is a very simple thought ) It wasn't until late December when I first started watching Day [9]. I very quickly found out that people were playing Starcraft 2 professionally.
I found the concept of E-sports to be fascinating. I very quickly moved to watch every single GSL vod as well as reading everything I could on TeamLiquid.net . I stayed up late and watched as much Starcraft as I could.
Finding Out About The Dr. Pepper Ultimate Gaming House
I found out about the Dr. Pepper Ultimate Gaming House (Dr. Pepper UGH) on June 16th. I remember that I had a terrible time sleeping that night so I stayed up late and watched people stream. As I was watching the streams my eye came upon a thread that said "Ultimate Gaming House". At first I thought that It was just going to show what the ultimate gaming house would be. As I read the thread and watched the video's I found that I could submit an entry into a national contest to win.
So, that morning, at 4:00 AM, I began planning my video. I cleaned out my room to make sure that it would be presentable to contest judges. I was going to throw out the soda bottles that had littered my bed-room, but instead I decided to use them in my video. When I was finished I wrote a script and found the video camera.
After I had made my video I sent it in and I went to play Starcraft 2. XD
Winning The Dr. Pepper Ultimate Gaming House
I was at a friends house and we were playing X-box. Halo split screen to be exact. We were talking about god knows what when I got a call. The voice on the other line introduced himself as Richard Webb ( Who I later found out was Shibby ) He told me that I was a finalist in the Dr. Pepper UGH and that He was letting me know. I was so excited I was jumping up and down. My friends thought I was fuckin' insane. After explaining to them what had happened they started jumping up and down as well. We were so excited, and of course we only dreamed that I would win. We had no idea that our dreams would come true.
July 22 - It was a Friday. I was playing Starcraft and listening to SOTG. At the end of the episode JP said that he was flying out that weekend to meet the winner of the Dr. Pepper UGH and that that winner was a Starcraft player. I instantly stopped, looked down, and started jumping up and down. I was so excited. I thought that I had won. I was freaking out. After an hour of yelling and screaming and generally going bat shit. I got tired and went to bed.
July 23 - It was a Friday morning. I was so exhausted from the previous night that I had forgotten that I "might" have won. I sat on my bed and started reading a book ( Ayn Rand's Anthem ). My mother had told me that a moving company would be coming that day to move some things in the house so I was waiting for them.
Suddenly the door bell rang, and I got up to go get it. Being a responsible teenager I looked though the front window of the house. I could see an unmarked white van in my driveway, and from my vantage point I could see some guy with a camera (not an over the shoulder camera mind you, It looked like a point and shoot. I later found out that It was a GoPro) For some reason I didn't find this strange and I still believed that It was the moving company. I walked to the door, opened it, and got the surprise of a lifetime.
At first I thought I was being arrested. There was a platoon of about 10 to 12 people. I saw cameras, flashing lights, and lot's of smiling faces. I was so freaked out until Shibby stepped in front of me and said, "Congratulations Nick you are the winner of the Dr. Pepper Ultimate Gaming House." I stared at him and could muster nothing less then, "Wow!". I was so excited. Most of what happened for the rest of the day was already filmed and it well known so it would be redundant to go over what all we did. I suggest going to the website mentioned above and watching the videos.
I was so excited meeting everyone. Shibby is a god. Jon is buff. JP is extremely knowledgeable about E-Sports, Myla is a sweetheart, and Lenox is awesome. It was so amazing working with the camera crew, and everyone else. We got to do so many amazing things like going to an amusement park, going to an arcade, and of course playing laser tag. And after all that I won so many awesome things like several Alienware computers, a signed copy of Starcraft 2, and a fucking cool Tv.
I now have such an amazing set-up and it's all thanks to Shibby, MLG, and Dr. Pepper. I wanted to thank you so much. It has been an amazing experience. I have had such an amazing time playing with "The Hatchery". I didn't even know that my favorite part of the winnings hadn't even occurred yet.
Blizzcon
After flying half-way across the country I made it to Anaheim California. The morning of the first day I walked up the the press badge line, said hi and the guy recognized me as the "Dr. Pepper Kid." Little did I know that that was going to be my new nick name. XD . Blizzcon was a blast. I got to see and do so much. I met Dustin Browder after the opening ceremony and I got his autograph. As I was thanking him Mlg_Lee and Clutch walked up to me and introduced themselves. My new companions got me into the back area of Blizzcon and into the players lounge where I got to see all of the players. they even introduced me to people like MMA, MVP, NesTea, Tastosis, and Day [9]. It was so amazing meeting all of my heroes in real life. I was shocked to find out that Day [9], Artosis, and Tasteless knew who I was. We talked a lot about winning UGH.
That is NesTea practicing.
OH MY GOD!!! Day [9] Is like the nicest guy you have ever met. He was so cool. And he even knew who I was.
MVP was so cool. It was difficult breaking the language barrier but I did it.
Sheth was so awesome. We talked about his time in Korea.
Mlg_Lee and Clutch were fun to talk to too. Clutch and I played 1v1 HoTS in the multiplayer area. (I won with Swarm Host, Roach). It was such a great experience. With my press badge I was able to go around and play as many games as I wanted for as long as I wanted. I played through HoTS single player like three times and I beat the new WoW beta zone for the pandas. (Wow is definitely dieing.). I met so many people that It would get boring to tell you about all of them so I will just list them.
Dustin Browder
LiquidRet
IMMVP
John the translator
Kennigit
Destiny
MTWDimaga
Gabe Newell (Yes, I met Gabe Newell from Valve Software!)
Slayers_MMA
Sean Day[9] Plott
Artosis
Tasteless
IMNesTea
White_Ra
Naniwa
And so many more that I can't even begin to explain. It was so awesome. I was there during the GSL October finals. Holy shit was that a large crowd. Some of the guys were saying that there was roughly eleven thousand people watching live. It was crazy.
Those were definitely some of the best matches in GSL finals history. Because of that match I owe MLG_Lee a Dr. Pepper.
On the second day I played 4v4 Diablo 3 with Clutch and we won 4 out of 5 games. It was sweet. We even met Samwise's daughter. I had a great time talking to more people and I even signed an autograph. Later I got to see the Blizzard invitational finals.
I was amazed by the power of the crowd. If anything exciting happened on screen the entire crowd freaked out. It was great. I was screaming and jumping up and down during every game. I loved Blizzcon so much. Anyone who has the opportunity to go should. It is an amazing experience. We ended a final day with a live performance from L90ETC and of course the Foo Fighters.
I was so sad when I left that night, knowing that I wouldn't be back for a while, if ever.
Thank You
As I look at the clock I realize that I have been writing this for a little less then an hour and a half. The whole point of this article was to say thank you to everyone involved in me winning the Dr. Pepper Ultimate Gaming House. I am so eternally grateful to have been able to experience all of this. My new computer runs Battlefield 3 and Witcher 2 on max graphics during everything. I got to meet so many of my heroes at Blizzcon. It is amazing. At this point I think i'm just talking nonsense.
What I really want to say Is thank you to everyone, from Shibby, to Team Liquid. From MLG to Dr. Pepper. Thank you guys so much for choosing me to win. Thank you.
-Nicholas Frichette [ TheLOLas ]