[Co Springs] Altitude Gaming League Heatwave LAN

The Lowdown:

Colorado Springs, CO - The HEATWAVE LAN, hosted by Altitude Gaming League, will be held on August 18th, 2012 at the Freedom Financial Services Expo Center. This is the second event Altitude Gaming League is hosting. We are five guys who wanted to create a bad ass gaming event for everyone to enjoy.

The doors open at 11am and close at 2am the next morning. Official tournaments start at 1pm. Come cool off from the summer heat, play some video games, and compete to win fantastic prizes! Price of admission is $20 at the door, with free pizza and all the soda you can drink. For more information please visit our website at http://www.altitudegamingleague.com

The SC2 Tournament:

The tournament starts at 1pm. Cut off time will be when round 2 starts. After that we cannot allow anyone to participate if you are late.

The Starcraft 2 tournament will be single elimination brackets with bonus rounds. Map pool will be GSL pool from June 2012 as per requests from multiple players. If you're curious to what maps these are, please check our website or this helpful link: (Wiki)

GSL Maps

Format is best of three until finals. Finals will run as a best of five. Participants will decide on maps by vetoing maps they don't want to play until only one map remains. Loser picks next map. We cannot run double elimination since we only have one day to play.

To make up for this single elimination format we will be running this tournament with bonus rounds. You can only play in bonus rounds if you have been eliminated. This will be for fun for extra prizes brought by the admins. Rules will be established for these rounds during the LAN. Just know that they will be crazy rules, similar to funday mondays.

Prizes include $300 prepaid visa for first, $100 prepaid visa for second and multiple small prizes for bonus rounds.

Additional Info:

We have a network large enough to support 300 players. We have all ethernet cables, power strips, food, drinks, and chairs provided. If you absolutely need wireless, we also support it (though filesharing will be limited). Our network has gigabit backbone with 100mbit up and down to the internet. Quality of Service has been enabled and tested to work flawlessly, say goodbye to any lag. Pizza will be served after noon and at dinner time, drinks are also provided free. This is a bring your own PC and Xbox LAN.

Other tournaments will be hosted as well. Counter Strike Source, League of Legends, and Halo Reach will all be played along with Sc2. You cannot sign up for more than one tournament since tournaments will be run simultaneously.

This event is for all ages. It’s an all-night event of epic frags, good music, and good fun. Come join us if you think you have game, win some great prizes, or even just to hang out. LIVE TO FRAG, FRAG TO WIN.

Edit1: Updated map pool. This can change if majority wishes during the lan.

Please post in this thread if you are coming or wish to come! Any questions are welcome as feedback is appreciated.

Last edit: 2012-07-24 13:29:36

jaynemesis United Kingdom. July 23 2012 08:29. Posts 22

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:| That's cheaper than just 1 Pizza here in the UK, I'd attend that if I lived within a 400 mile radius! xD. Free Pizza! Do i need to bring a PC or can I come just for the Pizza? :D.

Viperskwa United States. July 23 2012 09:11. Posts 105

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The guys at AGL are awesome! Ask them maybe they can send you something! also I know they will be streaming the entire LAN from the site as well!

oOOoOphidian United States. July 23 2012 09:26. Posts 1235

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Once again this isn't an acceptable map pool or tournament format for SC2.

http://www.twitch.tv/ooooophidian

Viperskwa United States. July 23 2012 09:55. Posts 105

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This is not a very high end tournament, hence why the prize pool is not that high and the format is the way it is. We don't have enough time in the day to have 32 players or more play in a double elimination bracket and bonus rounds. Since we suspect most of our turn out will be from lower leagues and low masters, keeping it simple has been better for everyone. Many people in the past lans had trouble following the GSL/MLG map pool or had never played those maps before.

Entry fee is not for this tournament, its for the entire lan. Everyone is welcome to play in any tournament they wish, including counter strike, league of legends, and halo reach. I had trouble deciding on whether or not to put this in the SC2 Tourneys forum or the TL Community forum since this is more of a general LAN for people in Colorado.

oOOoOphidian United States. July 23 2012 10:17. Posts 1235

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Well, I don't mean to get into an argument, but it's silly to say that people are confused by GSL/MLG maps (the most popular tournaments) which use more common ladder and community maps, while this event's map pool includes completely unused maps like Dual Sight which have been phased out in events and were never on ladder. It's like someone took NASL season 1's map pool and just ran with it.

Like I said in PM, I get that an event like this can't easily manage huge brackets and that this isn't purely an SC2 tournament, but the point was that charging for an event that is subpar compared to Playhem free online events is what is driving away people who would otherwise be interested.

I guess it's hard to keep everyone happy, but it's very easy to just copy the most recent map pool from popular events and have a double elimination event with no bonus portion to improve the event a lot.

http://www.twitch.tv/ooooophidian

mizU United States. July 23 2012 10:59. Posts 9976

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I wish I could make this. :[

if happy ever afters did exist <3 @watamizu_

Lumi United States. July 24 2012 02:27. Posts 1021

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One thing I'll say about current ladder map pool is that that system itself relies on a permanent 3 vetoes which are shaping it to everyone's personal preferences. And the vetoes are often mimicked by whole races. Injecting that pool into a tournament without t he same vetoing could effectively remove what little counterbalance was there in the first place. I completely understand t he want to cater to people not being savvy with some maps, but, I do think it's pretty reasonably to think that most players who are unfamiliar with the standard maps of the biggest tournaments are probably not the most savvy guys and thus won't be making it very far into the tournament anyhow. And they probably all know that about themselves and wouldn't even think to bitch about the map.

Maybe they would, though. But then you take that and compare it to the people who are paying to enter and compete, who are the most concerned about something like the map pool, and thus who stand to be the most displeased by it.. you're potentially alienating all of your top level serious business gamers on this front. I bet I could get some more high masters players to join up with me in offering you guys some coaching hours that you could giveaway as partial compensation to the more casual players who might not like playing on a few maps that they are unfamiliar with. I really don't think many of them would mind, especially to anywhere near the degree that your 'pros' would. But there's a gesture to compensate from us - let me know if you want to take me up on it and I'll give you a figure on how many hours / sessions we'd be willing to donate. I'm a high masters Z with lots of coaching experience (usually paid) with players of all levels, races, personalities ect, and I'd love to contribute this to your tournament. Hell, I'd even work with you guys on your streaming and commentating (am experienced) as well. But these are just spontaneous ideas/offerings, so, let me move on

It's a business decision and it's all yours to make, but I'll chip my name in as a +1 to wanting to use tournament maps as opposed to ladder sans the check that even ladder comes with. It looks to me like a matter of potentially appeasing quantity vs the quality given to a select demographic. But I think that for SC2, with this costing $20 and having to bring your own computer (for likely a 40+ minimum for anyone coming from Denver, and worse for Boulder - where we really do have a lot of good players and fans alike) you're going to get a closer ratio of 'hardcore' players to casuals than might be the case for a free to attend event with a more centralized location. And then there's that prize pool which might narrow the ratio even further.

That all said - this is a pretty big LAN where SC is but one of the games, and I just want to thank you guys for running this event in Colorado

If you want any help that day and or the day before setting things up or anything really, shoot me a PM, I'd be happy to help work with this.

Last edit: 2012-07-24 03:14:35

KT_Violet 1988 - 2012 | n.Die_aSam 1992 - 2012

Viperskwa United States. July 24 2012 15:41. Posts 105

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Lumi, Thanks for the great insight. We are by the gamer for the gamer, so any input is always appreciated. Being the new kid on the block for tournaments we realize that we wont be able to please everyone however what we are trying to do is get dialogue rolling on our forums about how people would like to see our LAN tournaments run. We want to keep it professional yet let the under dogs get a chance at glory. As we grow we will eventually have novice and pro brackets that will go into our 3 and 4 day LAN events. Do not hesitate to do a knowledge drop on our forums as well. What we don't want is to become the corporate dictated LAN where the gamer/players have no say in the matter. As of now we just go off of what we read because we get zero feed back in our forums =(. Come talk with us at the LAN too we are always looking for people to give us input nd will always stay approachable. We want AGL to be the gamer LAN not the Corporate LAN, and its gamers like you who show up and tell us what we need to improve on that really makes the LAN. As for your give aways for time I think we can arrange something. Email our marketing director from the site as he handles prizes/give aways and is always hunting.

The hard part is the business decision. We as the owners actually make no profit at these LANs (yet) so we try to keep it at a manageable figure/break even. The basis at this time is the more that show up the bigger we can grow the prize money at the next event. For anyone who was at the last LAN knows the prize pool has doubled, and we hope to only keep adding more money into it. We understand the $20 for the LAN + gas can be the go or not go factor but we hope our gamers understand that we are trying are hardest to get this company into the top tier for LANs and is why its $20 for everything. Everyone has to start somewhere, and the great thing is persons such as yourself who are willing to steer us in the right direction.

Ophidian don't take this wrong, but $20 for entry into the LAN, play in any or all the tournaments with $2800 dollars in prize money, pizza lunch and dinner, free drinks, Coolermaster gear give away, etc. if you don't show up just because " this isn't an acceptable map pool or tournament format for SC2" then you must be crazy

again I mean no disrespect but if you think our events are "subpar" then feel free not to show up

. Hey I just met you and this is crazy come play SC2 at our Heatwave LAN, Maybe?
P.S. You catch more flies with constructive criticism then smug underhanded comments

.

Lumi thanks again!

BinaryBeast July 27 2012 14:05. Posts 22

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Good luck with your event! We're happy to help if you run into any problems using BinaryBeast

http://binarybeast.com/

NEXUS6 United States. July 27 2012 14:48. Posts 406

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it is cool to see an event happening in my area

CVBaqq Taiwan. July 31 2012 09:14. Posts 14

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oh wow, I'm going to this. How many people went last year?

wandakiwi United States. August 02 2012 13:47. Posts 22

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This has always been a super fun event... just look at the event pictures from last time!

The video for the event is pretty spiffy as well: YouTube

I heard there's going to be a booth babe! ...Oh wait. That's me.

Carpe diem! Seize the day. Make your lives extraordinary

Lumi United States. August 02 2012 14:16. Posts 1021

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I'm gonna dual purpose bump this thread. For the publicity of this event, and also as an excuse to grab you Colorado players and get you to join our Colorado SC2 facebook group - we're 250 members strong now and we regularly host LANs, Barcrafts and keep each other informed about anything else that's sc and local. We're always trying to build a better SC community here and events like AGL are another way that that is taking form. I think this is the best prize pool by far that we've had in CO for SC2, let alone the other games they're supporting. My hat is off to them for that. And our facebook group is how I originally found out about this event, and this post.

The fb group link is here:

http://www.facebook.com/groups/138450386178391/

And we also hang out in the channel CSC2 on bnet. If you haven't already, go into your options under the battle.net section and check the "auto-join channels" box so that you don't have to manually find us everytime you log on. Hope to see you guys there.

Last edit: 2012-08-02 14:16:44

KT_Violet 1988 - 2012 | n.Die_aSam 1992 - 2012

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