The first day of matches is finally over here in Roskilde, Denmark as things have already heated up despite the tournament still being only in group play. Throughout the day, teams and spectators alike saw a number of mixed results, upsets, and enough drama to last the entire event. The venue itself is without a doubt one of the coolest setups with desks aligned in an ‘X’ shape and the giant 1st place trophy taunting you in the center of the table. QuadV broadcasts from atop a balcony overlooking the entire venue where they call all the shots while spectators have a small designated area within the arena behind the players. While there are certainly flaws with the venue, overall the matches and the atmosphere has been spectacular as the best teams in world collide once more.
Storylines
Format change - Although the A-tournament was open to 32 teams, only 24 registered teams actually showed for the event, leaving the organizers in a bind on the best way to structure the event. Fortunately, they found a suitable workaround that lets each team play at least 5 matches as opposed to the original 4 and allows the top competition to shine.
XLbet - For some reason XLBet is huge at this event with seemingly everyone putting their lose change on their tournament favorites as well as match predictions. It’s a shame something like this cannot exist for the North American scene
TEX Computers - The tournament computers at the eXperience are nothing short of amazing. With the best video cards, processors and ram available, the players are really able to push CoD4 to the limit without worrying about any kind of graphic or performance problems. To top it all off, in between every round of matches all the computers are reformatted back to the original tournament settings to ensure no driver problems from a previous player on the computer.
Spectator area - Despite the number of good matches that took place this first day of competition, spectators were not too keen to catch the action live. With very very limited spectator seating and no commentary from QuadV similar to AEF, players wishing to spectate matches would have to be locked inside the hot arena for the duration of the matches being played just to see their favorite team compete.
Photo ID badges - Another unique aspect to the eXperience is the use of photo ID badges. Players register and the front desk where their photo is taken to be made into an individual player specific badge.
Tournament schedule - The tournament admins at TEX run, by far, the most strict tournament schedule I’ve seen. It forces teams to arrive early for matches and be ready to setup and play within a designated time. This cuts out delays and allows online viewers to keep up with the tournament on schedule. The only delay of the day was a 45 minute break to allow the tournament admins and organizers to get drinks and food. They later fixed the huge time gap by cutting the time between each match, finishing on schedule for the day.
The undefeated - Only three teams remain completely undefeated at the end of first day: Pandemic, Fnatic and LowLandLions. This poses an interesting question as to why the results thus far are so different from AEF where both Fnatic and LowLandLions seemed to under-perform. Although the tournament is far from over, going undefeated in one day certainly keeps one’s spirits high.
Pandemic defeats EG - When the groups were releasted Wednesday evening and the community saw Pandemic and EG in the same group a great game was expected. Despite Pandemic winning AEF, they never played their North American rivals so this would be the first time the two met on foreign soil. The match was decided to be played on Crash, a map EG had previously beaten Pandemic 13-4 in TGL weeks earlier. Despite that result, Pandemic came into the match with a clear mind after starting off 0-3 against EG. The Americans didn’t panic and managed to reel in 3 rounds of their own and kept the score close, finishing the first half on offense all tied up 6-6. While defense is normally considered the easier side, Pandemic kept their heads down and crosshairs locked as they slowly but surely inched out a small lead to finally win the match 13-10.
EG ties Copenhagen eSports - Immediately following their match against Pandemic, EG faced Copenhagen eSports on Crash for their next group stage match. Although many people predicted EG to win the match easily considering they narrowly lost Pandemic 30 minutes ago, the local Denmark team gave EG quite a fight, managing to bring the match to a draw.
MYM brings eSuba to a draw - In another shocking match result, British favorites MYM tied eSuba, who despite bootcamping before the event, under-preformed and managed to lose against the Italian team Impact.
MYM SoClon injured - While playing football outside with h2k, SoClon from MYM had the accidentally kicked toward his face where his contact lense cut his eye. SoClon had to go to the hospital and was fine, but MYM had to reschedule their remaining matches that night to the second day as SoClon had to wear an eye patch.
Dignitas struggles through their group - Despite finishing third at AEF, Dignitas has been struggling in their group with a narrow 13-11 victory over Reason gaming, a loss to LowLandLions, and an extremely disappointing draw to h2k after being up 10-2 in the half on Strike.
Roskilde Ravens - Host team Roskilde Ravens have been performing well considering their disappointing finish at AEF. With their only loss thus far coming from eSuba in group play, they look to take on a tough MYM crew Friday.
TEX Coverage -The eXperience has without a doubt, some of the best in-house coverage with a ton of video interviews before and after big matches. It’s great to see an event actually produce their own content instead of leaving it all up to the rest of the media.
Day 2 Anticipation - If day one was any indication of how exciting the eXperience is going to be, day two should be twice that. With teams fighting to stay within the top three in each group to advance straight into the upper bracket of the double elimination playoffs, you are going to see some intense matches in day 2.
Steven plays CoD4 - Tek-9 owner and CEO of Gamevibes, the company that organized AEF, decided to lend his expert CoD4 skills to Zetta and will be playing against Pandemic today in their group stage match. To complicate things further for Pandemic, it has been reported that Steven is using Morg’s (MYM CoD4 manager) mouse.
Hot or Not
Tournament admins keeping the event running on schedule.
Day one matches
The unique venue setup inside the arena
Fnatic, LowLandLions and Pandemic
TEX tournament computers
20 minute walk between the hotel and venue
Boiling temperature inside the arena
Dignitas
No air-conditioning….anywhere
The three hour wait between matches
