My Dreamhack
I ended up writing a pretty long essay. If you get through it all, congratulations and thank you!
For someone who has been involved in starcraft for a decent amount of time, it feels weird that Dreamhack Winter was my first live LAN event. I was at TLHQ for the TSL finals, but that obviously was a completely different experience than Dreamhack. A combination of school, money, work, and MLG's refusal to hold an event in the upper midwest where I go to school had kept me from going to any previous live events. Furthermore, this semester, I've been studying abroad in Oslo, so MLG Providence and IPL Atlantic City—so accessible for a New Yorker—weren't possible. But from the moment I decided to study abroad in Norway, I planned upon attending Dreamhack Winter 2011. Being hired to run TLPro's news content made it a no-brainer, I could provide TL coverage from the event, as well as meet most of the players that I had already gotten to know via skype or MSN.
Tuesday
Dreamhack happened to fall the second weekend right after my semester ended, and so it was even more convenient for me to start a trip across Northern Europe with a weekend detour in Jönköping. With the team and an elite squad of TL writing and graphics staff flying in on Tuesday, I took an early bus that day from Oslo to Göteborg, and then caught a bus from there to Jönköping.
My first encounter with starcraft two happened in the Göteborg bus terminal, where I looked up by chance and spotted three very familiar faces walking towards my gate. It just so happened that HuK, IdrA, and PuMa, had landed from Providence, and were now looking to catch the exact same bus that I was taking. It's surreal to see people you've seen only on streams of far away places simply walking around in physical space, looking substantially jet-lagged. I didn't talk a great deal to the EG guys, only keeping PuMa company outside while HuK and IdrA bought tickets. Everyone, myself included, was quite tired, and we slept most of the way to Jönköping. Once we got to the final bus terminal and everyone was more awake did we talk a bit and I introduce myself. It was a funny way to start a very Liquid` focused weekend on a bus with EG.
When the rest of the TL staff and team arrived, we got food and then headed to a local LAN cafe where Bumblebee (TL manager) had been able to secure a special deal for the group. I happily took a computer and immediately discovered that my history of playing starcraft on a laptop presented a strong barrier to being able to play on a desktop. The advantage of less lag was outweighed by the weird Swedish keyboard, the tiny left shift key, and my general unfamiliarity with having to press down keys very far. So I sucked at starcraft, and started downloading the DotA2 beta on the computers and playing Nature's Prophet in that instead, which resulted in me winning a surprising amount of games, as it seems my MMR has finally been set low enough.
Wednesday
Quite similar to Tuesday, in that we all mostly hung around the LAN cafe playing games. A revolving door of players kept popping in, including EG, Genius and DRG, and FnaticMSI's ToD and NightEnD. One of the recurring themes to my weekend was just how different or similar your perceptions of people from the internet are with the actual reality. Genius, who has always been known as somewhat BM in Korea, was incredibly shy with his lack of English, sitting around for a few hours at the cafe before Bumblebee finally went over and asked if he wanted a computer to play on, even giving Genius his masters league account to play on. (On which Genius somehow played very close to .500, we're not sure whether he's actually only good enough for mid-masters league EU, or whether he was playing silly builds)
I also got to hang out with a lot of the TL staff members and veterans whom I've worked with regularly but never actually met. Waxangel was the exception, I've met him several times before, but I met Lip the Pencilboy (new TL t-shirt designer) grnp, Jac, 7mk, and SirJolt, and SirJolt's friends (Honorary TL staff: UltimateHurl and Oldmanrodgers) for the first time.
TL and the Koreans and EG went out to dinner at a restaurant across the street where there was this long table of old Swedish men who were singing Swedish folk songs throughout the evening. It was really funny, I tried to get the Koreans to sing 'Bubble Pop' as a kind of cultural exchange, but nobody seemed up for it. I kept telling DRG that I wanted him to make the finals and lose to HerO, and I kept telling PuMa "terran imba" and '1/1/1 imba' and he kept laughing at me and telling me 'no!'. Fun times were had.
After we got back to the hotel we remembered that TL still hadn't put out a Dreamhack Preview. While Wax and the rest worked on that into the night on the hotel's spotty internet, I worked on putting out this post about voting TL as Razer Team of the Year. (Something that everyone should do post-DH imo!) Lip was a huge hero on this, creating the graphics at the same time from the hotel while I wrote. I guess this was technically Thursday by this point, but who cares, time is relative.
Thursday
The day of the competition dawned with everyone getting up on very little sleep and heading off to Dreamhack to set up. We all had press passes for the event, which is such a wonderful thing it's hard to describe. The amount of extra access you have, and the complimentary water and cookies make it tremendously worthwhile. Nobody has ever joined TL staff because they're lazy or want to earn money or get perks, but it was really nice to have a quiet and clean area to set up your computer, and some simple amenities. My press pass, coupled with always looking like I knew what I was doing or was allowed to be somewhere worked wonders for the whole event.
I don't think I need to recap too much what went on with the players, because most of that was streamed, but I spent the first day doing big loops of the convention center. I'd go from the press area to the player area, from there to the Dream Arena where Bitter9 was casting, and then from there to the press area again. I'd dump off photos, make a few tweets, catch up on the live report threads and reddit, grab some cookies, and then dive back in again. Sometime during the day, I met a red headed guy with a sick camera and an even sicker camera tripod, that could grip on to stuff like railings. This was Andy who I ran into quite a bit and who produced quite a bit of awesome content himself. He was filming some matches, and live streaming a lot of the mundane action on the floor, which you don't really get normally. Quite cool of him, I think he filmed some of the signings and the players setting up and the rest, which you never get to set up.
Again, it was so interesting to see players in the flesh, because it really made me understand their play much more. For example, Seiplo, one of the biggest surprises of the tournament, was the first of his time slot to come practice every time. He was constantly looking at his games with other people and discussing it. He seemed to be taking the tournament extremely seriously. Similarly, ToD was usually the last person to leave. He was still playing well after being eliminated by Ret. At the LAN cafe, he played longer than anyone else. His dedication was quite noticeable. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there was Elfi, who watches Maru videos before every match instead of practicing. Now, I'm not saying Elfi is bad, but that's just the way it is. He does it to relax, and it's hard to argue with his success. But it means that Elfi is by far the slowest player out there, even more so than GoOdy. He doesn't just not spam at the beginning of the game, he actually takes his hands away from the keyboard or mouse for long periods of time and just stares at the screen. It's really quite incredible. He looked more like a chess player than a starcraft one. Some players made decidedly different impressions. I wrote about a few of them in TL Dreamhack Recap. It feel like it should go without saying that DRG, PuMa, and HuK were also quite impressive live, although Genius continued to not stun me, I didn't watch a ton of his games, but he didn't seem nearly as frenetic and active as his fellow Koreans. There's something for calm, but personally, I love the fastest players. And then there were some players who just seemed tremendously bizarre to me, Happy being the best example. Happy's playing position has him leaning in very close to his computer, hunched over the keyboard. Instead of directing his mouse with his wrist, he uses his whole arm. The whole effect has him looking slightly deranged, shaking the table and making plenty of violent movements with his whole body.
The first day was a good day for HerO, Sheth, and Ret, the latter who was gifted an advance when DaBoO was late and Fenix couldn't attend, although I have no doubt he would've advanced anyway. HerO dispatched his group quite easily, although Seiplo gave him a bit of a challenge, in a preview of things to come. Sheth had a pretty simple time of it as well, beating Fuzer and MoMan with little trouble, but losing to ToD in games that I don't really remember seeing, but might've. Whatever.
However, TLO and HayprO both lost, which kinda sucked. HayprO was especially disappointed by his loss, he was quite confident against Naama, because we knew exactly what Naama's primary TvZ strategy was. Naama controlled his units extremely well however, and HayprO wasn't willing to blind counter it from the start, which led to a 1-1 series. In the third game, Naama went for a mass barracks rallied marine cheese that HayprO didn't see in time, and Naama micro'd too well to stop it. It was a frustrating game, because just one or two slip-ups from terran would've sunk his build, but Naama seemed to be a step ahead of HayprO, anticipating his attacks extremely well, withdrawing at the right times, and just overall executing. Meanwhile, TLO was in HerO's group, which was sad. HerO won the teamkill, and then TLO cleaned up StjarNaN, to set up a decider against Seiplo. This was when nobody really expected much from Seiplo, so TLO was a bit surprised to be met at every angle from the protoss. We had anticipated Seiplo being the main other competitor for the group, but he played better than everyone had thought, and so it was a sad shock to see TLO go out so early. But he rebounded quite quickly, attending the autograph signing that TL did at the end of the first day, with Ret and HerO, which got a pretty substantial line, considering how hastily it had been set-up. Throughout the tournament, 2GD and the people at the Twitch.tv player booth couldn't have been nicer and more accommodating, and I constantly kept seeing 2GD all around advertising upcoming signings, and even sheepily signing some stuff himself. One of the harder working people I spotted at the event, I'm sure not many people know what he was doing, but I think it went extremely appreciated.
Friday
After another late night and early wake-up, we were back at the event. I don't really remember much about the nights, it was largely just some browsing to figure out the schedule for the next day, (we all had a brief moment of pity for EG, who were placed in a very Liquid`-like position with three players in one group) and then sleeping. The bed at the hotel was quite comfortable, and a third bed came out of the wall and hung precariously above the main bed. Pretty weird set-up, but it sure saved space.
On the second day of the event, I figured out a way where I could be most useful; live reporting. That probably would've been most important on the first day, where many games went uncasted, but I think I was still quite useful on the second. I used the TeamLiquidLIVE account, which everyone should really subscribe to. The point of the account is to LR the games for people who can't watch, and to LR games that aren't being cast. I didn't catch everything, but the people who subscribed to TeamLiquidLIVE were better informed about things on the floor than basically anyone else. In the LR thread on TL, and days after, I would see people posting questions or mis-information that I had covered on Twitter. It felt good to be helpful in keeping the ESPORTS coverage machine rolling at record pace, and I hope everyone who followed enjoyed my commentary and updates. Eventually on the third day, I branched out a bit, with pictures, some interviews, and video, which seemed to go over well!
More on the players: A ton of players were also extremely nice. Since I had permission to sit in the player area, perhaps that helped, but I was quite pleasantly surprised with how approachable and positive most of the players I spoke with were. That was another of my takeaways from the tournament, most guys are much nicer than they sometimes come off as. Three special mentions. The first should go to Beastyqt,with whom I had a great talk with while watching the infamous Happy vs ToD game. He and someone who worked for Empire (I presume, not sure who) were sitting behind Happy, when I showed up about halfway through, and I popped into their conversation at one point, and we all started making fun of Happy and ToD. I kept telling Beasty that terran was imbalanced, and he kept responding that protoss was imbalanced, not terran. That game gave us a lot of fodder, as you might imagine, with multiple army trades and tech switches. After finishing his games, Kas came over, and the conversation just got even more hilarious, as he and Beasty kept complaining about chargelots while I countered that ghosts were completely unfair. Beasty told me that TL should have a sad marine or ghost fanclub, and I told him that ghosts and marines never got sad because they could never be killed. I compared them to cockroaches surviving a nuclear bomb, and we went off on that tangent for a bit, all the while of course, Happy and ToD were still turtling away.
The second special mention goes to NightEnD, who was willing to talk after qualifying for the semi-finals, (I know I'm stepping a little out of sequence on the days here) and then just sat down and gave a really neat interview, that I posted on twitter. In fact, if you check the GameLux interview of him around this time, he says basically the exact same things he told me; except if you followed TeamLiquidLIVE, you got the info first! He was a super nice guy to me, and seemed quite confident and happy with his play, which he had every right to be, although he was quite humble overall. He had very honest things to say about Naama, whom he had just beaten, admitting that he thought he'd be quite easy, but then discovered quickly that Naama would actually be his toughest opponent yet. Quite good to talk with.
Final special mention goes to Fuzer, who's just a hilarious person. Bumblebee and I were watching him in the player area as he drew White-Ra in the ladder. Fuzer spent the whole game saying "alright he will use warp prism soon" (close air, shattered temple) and he was right, but it came at a weird angle, and he lost to it anyway. Bumblebee kept saying "But you knew it was coming and you lost to it, that means you're bad!", and Fuzer turned to us and laughed and said "I know! I am so bad!" It was really great to see a player treating his games with so much mirth, even if it doesn't seem to lead to world class results from Fuzer.
Back to day two. Overall a great day for Liquid`, as Sheth beat Stephano in some really great ZvZ's, and then beat ClouD to assure his advancement from the group. The next match against NaNiwa was quite controversial, as Sheth had nothing to play for, and NaNi had everything. Sheth was quite upset about the position he was in, knowing that he should save his strategies because the game was meaningless, but unhappy with that strategy possibly giving the group an unfair result. In the end, Sheth saved strategies and lost 1-2 to NaNiwa, roach/ling all-inning in the final game. He played to win, of course, but it was unfortunate that such a situation was forced. Meanwhile, Ret pummeled his all-terran group, getting revenge for HayprO on Naama, and dispatching ThorZaIN and meRz with surprising ease. Ret had the nastiest cold on the second day, giving him coughing fits during his series against Naama. Bumblebee got cough drops during the interim, and Ret played more comfortably afterwords, but was clearly still bothered. Finally, HerO survived the group of death, defeating the tricky elfi, thanks in part to some advice from HuK "he will four gate, four gate, four gate, four gate, four gate....", giving us a scare by losing to DongRaeGu, but then beating poor Sen to take second place and advance.
That set up three Liquid`s into the final sixteen, which was a great result. Of course, we all had a suspicion that somehow every Liquid` player would be set-up to teamkill each other, but that was out of our hands. The other highlight of the second day came as I got to cast a set at the Razer booth with TLO. He was supposed to cast with KellyMilkies, but unfortunately the times didn't work out, so I agreed to volunteer, and was introduced as "the editor in chief of TeamLiquid.net", which seemed pretty funny to me. Good thing Wax wasn't there. The game was a match between ThorZaIN and a random crowd member. It was sad timing, ThorZaIN had just lost in his group, and clearly would have rather been somewhere else, but he made the best of it, building a fast CC and floating it to the gold on Metalopolis against his T opponent. Unfortunately, his opponent happened to be a pretty decent player on a Swedish/Norwegian semi-pro team BX3, so his 1/1/1 build was pretty much a perfect counter to ThorZaIN's, and he made good enough decisions and had good enough mechanics to not let ThorZaIN take it anyway. Meanwhile the projector behind us failed, which neither TLO or I saw, so we were limited to only one game, some free stuff was given away, (about which the crowd was way too excited about imo, there were Razer themed bags and stuff, but people were literally clawing at the stage and climbing on top of each other in a bid to get them, sorta awkward it seemed to me) and we went back to the games. Then back to the hotel, discovered that HerO was playing Sheth first round, and went to sleep.
And then there was
Saturday
I tell people that my favorite sports moments were when the Arizona Diamondbacks won the World Series in a ridiculously good seventh game in 2001, when the Giants beat the Patriots in the Superbowl with the Tyree helmet catch, and when EffOrt beat Flash in the Korean Air OSL finals. Chalk up Championship Saturday at Dreamhack Winter to that list. The whole day, Bumblebee kept telling everyone that he had won the two previous Dreamhacks (with TL and HuK, and with Mouz and Naama) and that he knew he would win this one too. The question was, who would carry the torch?
Of course, the favorite was HerO. Sheth and Ret were playing spectacularly, but there was just a strong feeling among everyone that this was HerO's tournament at last. All of us are devotees of his stream, where he pulls off the most epic, ridiculous stuff on such a regular basis that I've given up ever doing it justice on TLPro. We all had though that he had MLG Providence, only to get denied at the last minute. But at Dreamhack, there was just that feeling, the loss to DRG nonwithstanding. Having the other Koreans on one side of the bracket was some relief, but we were also super afraid of HuK and Nerchio spoiling the Liquid` party.
So HerO beat Sheth in some ridiculous games (every series they've played has been absurd, really, Sheth is so due for a tournament at this point!), and Ret beat ToD in a series I was worried about. Despite playing maxed vs maxed games all tournament, ToD had a bout of iNcontroL syndrome against Ret; trying to end all his games super early, and just dying to Ret's defense and counter attack instead. Then there were the matches I was convinced would make the whole event a huge disappointment. Ret and Nerchio was a match-up that Ret had lost two weeks earlier in Berlin. Ret had dominated all non-zergs recently, but his exits had usually come in ZvZ. And then there was HerO vs Seiplo, where Seiplo had taken a game in the previous set, and all their games had been close. Seiplo had just beaten Genius and HuK, and seemed to be growing stronger as the event went on. HuK gave HerO some advice about Seiplo, but HerO looked strangely worried about the match, and that was a bad sign in my eyes. Yet as I sat nervously behind Ret, Bumblebee popped around the barrier, after applause from the other side and game me a thumbs up. 1-0. Then Ret took the first game with mass muta to counter Nerchio's mass roach. Then, more applause from the other side, and Bumblebee popped around and gave me a big smile and two thumbs up. A second later, Ret busted down Nerchio's front with more roaches, and we had two Liquid` in the semi-final.
After rushing to the press area to file a TLPro story about it, and consult with Nazgul and Disciple on a possible victory image, I rushed across the street to the Kinnarps Hockey Arena, where Liquid` had secured the bottom bleacher of the press area, tucked in the upper right of the arena, with a sick view.
Next order of business was to abuse my press-pass and get backstage, which I managed and then took a bunch of backstage shots of the group waiting there, including the casters, EG, and Liquid`. The TL staff crew got predictions from everyone, which were posted on the finals live blog, and then we ran back to the press perch to watch the start of the festivities.
A lot has been said about this already, but the treatment the beginning got on stream didn't do as good a job as it could've at capturing the excitement and epicness of the event. The countdown clock, intro video, and the CEO of Dreamhack walking out in the massive marine suit we had seen backstage (and then walking very slowly backstage, leading to cries of "stim!" from the sharper people in the audience) were extremely well done, and everyone got really excited. The host was bad, of course, but at least we knew that the moment he started talking, and learned quickly to tune him out.
I think now everyone on the planet has written on what happened next, so I'll note the important parts. The first semi-final was about what I expected, NightEnD put up a fight, but lost in the end. PuMa was in, and the crowd dispersed to the bathrooms and for food. Meanwhile, DH put up the Street Fighter finals, which I made a snarky tweet about that I now kinda regret. While most people did leave the arena during the event, and while nobody there seemed that into Streetfighter, and while I sure as hell had no idea what was going on, the Street Fighter finalists earned my respect by the end of their match. The Korean winner had a great hat, and both the competitors and the casters had phenominal manner and professionalism. The loser was the first to congratulate the winner, raising his hand like it was a boxing match (I guess it sorta was) and smiling the whole time. They seemed to respect and like each other quite a bit. I remember reading somewhere that the fighting game community is a bit bad mannered, but I saw nothing but good feelings in the final, which I thought some Sc2 players could learn from.
Then HerO and Ret played, and it was another great series, but by that point, HerO-PuMa seemed inevitable. After HerO won 3-1, I deleted the "Ret: Dreamhack Winter 2011 Champion" images we had prepared, and hoped upon hope that I'd get to post the HerO versions. It thought about how the shirts pre-printed for the Superbowl losers all get sent to impoverished kids somewhere in the world, and wondered jokingly if the graphics I had just deleted would have the same fate. Alas.
The Quake finals came next, which I didn't get at all either, and kinda tuned out, although it was nice to see 2GD onstage, it just made me question why he wasn't hosting.
And then, at long last, the final. I knew from the beginning that HerO was going to win. But it was one of those things where everything seemed too perfect. I knew HerO would win, because the story was just too good; joining Liquid` when the team was on a good run, then EG buying PuMa, and buying HuK, and the complete contrast between how Liquid` had operated and how EG had. PuMa being a player whom it was so easy to dislike; his cheesy and abusive play representing everything I hate about Sc2, against HerO who plays protoss like it's still BW. HerO overcoming his expectations at the same tournament that HuK had. HerO winning against his biggest nemesis and good friend.
Yet at the same time, PuMa was PuMa. There was this worry I had the whole finals; I knew that HerO would win, he had to win, but what if he didn't?
The first game was nerve wracking; HerO had a lead and then a really clever flank by PuMa erased it, and I started to get worried and annoyed. How is the game fair when terran can lose most of the battles but win, while just one lost battle means that protoss cannot recover? But of course, HerO showed in the second game that protoss has it's strengths too, catching PuMa in the open on Daybreak with a heavy gateway build and then taking a third base before PuMa could secure his natural. With the series at 1-1, I could breathe again.
Then came games three and four, which were, in my view, two of the most perfect games yet played in Sc2. Having lost the momentum, PuMa predictably turned to his bread and butter 1/1/1, a build that almost singlehandedly ruined PvT for half of the year. Easy and forgiving in the execution, it is hell to defend, and PuMa had beaten HerO with it before, even though HerO had come closer than any protoss to defending his 1/1/1.
But at the finals, HerO predicted the 1/1/1 and destroyed it so thoroughly, it looked ridiculous that this build had defeated so many top players. What the stream didn't catch was HerO's gutsy attack with two stalkers up PuMa's ramp that killed off his three marines before the bunker could complete. PuMa hadn't been paying attention, and that was the end of the game for him. He had to pull scvs to defend his depots, and his multi-task fell apart spectacularly. While HerO controlled two groups of units and his tech and econ with ease, PuMa couldn't seem to make units and repair his buildings at the same time. He seemed stunned, paralyzed, unable to figure out why HerO had stuffed his unbeatable build before it had even gotten off of the ground.
Game four was more of the same; HerO's done that warp-in three gate on Tal'Darim many times, but PuMa simply had no answer for it or HerO's stellar control. The crowd was going insane as HerO's advantage and momentum snowballed, and when PuMa tapped out, it seemed like a revelation; terran could not only be beaten by protoss, it could be beaten decisively, it could be made to look like it had no chance. After the game, HuK went into PuMa's booth for the third time in the series, and we all felt elated. Could HerO win right now?
Of course, it wouldn't be that simple. For all of his supply blocks and imba nonsense, PuMa has an excellent mentality for finals like these. He would not go down easily. Despite seeming to have an edge in the fifth game, HerO could not hold it, and PuMa stopped HerO's snowballing momentum. Then, in the sixth game, PuMa went for a four barracks, pulled scvs cheese, and we sat in stunned silence as the series drew even. What had seemed inevitable just an hour before now seemed to be out of reach. The evil empire was going to win. Liquid` would come up short once again. PuMa, like his race, simply could not be finished off.
For the seventh game, all of the TLstaff went down to the stage to watch. I couldn't. I didn't want to jinx anything, I didn't want to presume, I didn't want to ruin it. That's how you know you're invested in sports, when you believe that meaningless things you do; like leaving the game to grab some chips or not rooting hard enough, can change the result.
You all know what happened in the final game; PuMa lost his army, and HerO double expanded, took the lead, barely won the army trade, took out PuMa's fourth and third, killed his army with storms and then manner nexused his way into PuMa's base. I was tweeting updates on TeamLiquidLIVE the entire time, but when PuMa's bases went down, I knew HerO had won and so I typed in a final message and told the guy next to me "When PuMa types GG, just hit enter". Then I ran for it. Down some absurdly steep stadium steps, across onto the rink, dodging under cameras and between chairs to the side of the stage. Midway there, PuMa left the game, and everyone went absolutely insane, Liquid` rushed the stage, with Bumblebee being the first to break into HerO's booth to congratulate him. The whole team and staff was there moments later, so many people that it took a while for HerO to get out, and all the while there was nonstop clapping and cheering and a huge chant of "HERO HERO HERO". I don't need to say too much, you've all seen it, and I was putting photos and a video up on TeamLiquidLIVE the whole time.
After the final, I ran back to the press area to post up the HerO victory image, because they unplugged the wifi at the hockey arena almost immediately. Then I ran across the street to the hotel, where everyone was crushed into HerO's hotel room, and where we filmed this awesome interview. Markus, the translator was the new addition to the happy Liquid family, and he was fantastic, great guy, immediate bond with HerO. I showed him his reddit appreciation thread, and he didn't understand what it was for at first, but when we explained he looked up and said "Who is this person? I want to give them a big hug!" Then we went up to the party, which was already closing down, and I just sat at a table fiddling with my cut-off Dreamhack arm band and spacing out. Everyone crashed pretty quickly after the party wound down; we got a taxi and left, finished some choice beverages, and went to sleep, then most people left early the next morning, and that was that.
It was a great experience overall, but what made it so special was HerO winning. Ever since I started to work for TL, and ever since I've been a fan of the team, we've had ups and downs. But in the recent months, it's felt like more downs than ups. Going into IPL3 and MLG, I felt like the team was playing the best starcraft in its history, and had the best mental state yet. But those events and that month ended with disappointment. We had a lot of awful luck, and a lot of unfortunate play. I wondered a lot of my expectations going into events were just too high, and that if Liquid` was somehow, despite everyone's efforts, falling behind other teams. Going to Dreamhack, I again wanted to win, and knew that the team could. But the chance that it would just be another tournament where Liquid` did well and then narrowly lost to other good players was still high. It seemed too much to ask for after the past month.
But to end the year on the Dreamhack Winter note was just incredible. Not all of Liquid` will be dominating at any given time, but it reaffirmed the fact that, whatever awful slumps a set players have gotten into, another set will step up and carry the team. It felt at Dreamhack that Liquid` was the biggest team in the game, not just a collection of individual players wearing the same shirts, but a team of players who enjoy each other's company and want to see each other succeed. I'm not saying that's not the case for other teams, but I'm saying it's most definitely the case for Liquid`, and it made me happy to be a part of it.