Reloading from DH 2016

Well Hawt Damn!

I'm in recovery from the hype train of Dreamhack in Montreal. I'm still feeling con crud... I write a lot so expect this to be long! Don't say you weren't warned.

I arrived at 8:45pm in Montreal in all its Frenchness. Yes, frenchness. In case you don't know, I grew up bilingual in English/French, but I lost French to Spanish. We were only required to take grade 9 French and then it was our choice to continue. Well, I hated it. Now I only passively understand French but can't speak it because of Spanish. Anyways, as the bus was pulling in, I received a text from OhFYou (that's his twitch name..) saying that he was in a black car out front. Not creepy at all... So run with an idea for a second. Here is this small female Starcraft nerd who mods willingly walking up to a black car saying, "Oh Fuck you?" Can you imagine if it wasn't him in the car?! I'd get the response "Oh fuck you too lady!" Thank god we are in Canada for this event...

Apparently his hotel was a whopping two blocks from the venue. Now, I've been to a few hotels in my life. I've been to Vegas and to Europe. I've also been in our crappy Motel 6's and Travelodges. This hotel was nothing like any of those. Since Montreal is the arts capital of Canada, this hotel certainly reflects the truth. It was quite nice actually. If you want to see it here is the link: http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/yulmd-renaissance-montreal-downtown-hotel/

We sat down for ten minutes before awesomest Esei messaged him saying that she was exhausted and wanted to go home. That meant I had to leave because her place was where I'd be staying for the night. On a side note, her place is really nice... I had no idea what I was walking into until we stepped in. So because I couldn't sleep for a few hours, I swiped one of the very few English books on her shelf and read the whole thing. Yep. It was 200 pages that I read in about two or three hours.

Day 2 of the event and Day 1 for me was fantastic. The hype train is real! There was a food court in the place, an indie games area, 3 stages for competitions (CS:GO, RL, SC2, and Overwatch?), and the LAN area. I caught up with peeps like Temp0, poizon, desrow, halcyon, semper, zombie grub, elementalsc, steadfast, and many others... And all of that makes no sense unless you follow Starcraft 2. All told, I missed a tonne of games because I ended up shilling for Guild Wars 2 with an Indie Dev. That guy, by the way, was awesome to talk to. The next indie game that I really loved was this interesting puzzle ball game. And because it was a puzzle game, I defeated the challenge map easily. The people who were successful received a free candy. I'm a puzzle nerd and therefore I got the candy XD BWAHAHAHA! When I find all the stuff for the games I looked at, I'll let you know.

I ran off back to Starcraft to watch Scarlett destroying newbs in competitive play. It was glorious. If you haven't seen the crowd cheering for Scarlett when she won that game, check out the Dreamhack footage. They were great games! (Now I know how Kerry feels when he came back from Dreamhack summer... synonyms people! SYNONYMS!)

OFU and I went off to see an awesome streamer who was competing in Overwatch. Her nick is Obezianka and she is the fantastic monkey queen. Just watch her stream, you'll understand ;) As we walked up to her, I beamed a large smile and said, "I'm Jagtress" which promptly lead to her standing up and giving me an epic hug! She's as awesome in person as she is on stream. Trust me. Next time we'll do food and get pictures! (There will be another Montreal trip. Don't you worry lady!)

At the end of day, all of us went to the Meltdown for drinks and for Temp0's mighty birthday!!!! I accidentally photo bombed the guy. Whoops!! I was just watching Rotti and his #passion for Starcraft. The guy was drinking and still crushing people on ladder. Because why not? I also got to talk with him and Missmagitek for a bit. They are both lovely people. Don't be afraid to say hi to them in person, they won't bite! I promise!

My fangirling over games extended further because I met Kim Phan (Blizzard Entertainment) briefly, two Community Starcraft leaders who also work for Blizzard, Bill from IBM, and other notable people. The manager of Meltdown Montreal was awesome, he and I had a long chat the first night. The second night, he bought us drinks! Anyways, all of them were fantastic. Most of these people don't know me but that's alright. I was honoured to meet them. I can be humble!

The most epic thing for me actually had little to do with the people I talked to or the event itself. It was all exciting, don't get me wrong, but honestly it felt like I had just run into old friends – like we never lost touch. We sat with Pokebunny and Snute at the competition, which by the way isn't as terrifying as you would think. Most of the pro players and casters are usually quite nice when you approach them. When you've been to events before, its just a bunch of people hanging out, playing video games, and having a good time.

What really made the event for me was something some of you might consider to be very little. That said, the icing on the cake for me was Sarah and Kwame delivering the things they've had in their possession for a couple years. Those would be autographs! One is of Rotterdam08 and the other is of Totalbiscuit from Blizzcon last year. Let me explain: I've been a huge fan of TB for a number of years, ever since his “BluePlz” WoW Radio days. I've never met him in person, but I watch his podcast every week, follow his tweets, and watch his YouTube channel. Why? Because he's a huge gamer and he doesn't worry about what people think of him. He takes the crap and dishes it back. Getting that autograph was a result of trying to get the first one. Let's roll back a couple years and I'll explain. I was trying to get Rotti's signature from IEM Toronto through Temp0, but a few things happened. Temp0 forgot the Season 1 card of Rotti, and then Rotti wasn't able to make it back into North America due to Visa complication. So while I was there at IEM Toronto, I didn't even get to meet him. The next year, I missed the event. Sadly Temp0 forgot to get the autograph again. This lead to Sarah offering to get it for me, absolving Temp0 of his 'duties' (It wasn't a duty. This was an offer he made to me.) Later that year I found out that Temp0 was going to Blizzcon. I had heard TB talk about going there when watching the podcast a couple weeks prior. So, I asked if it was possible to get TB's autograph instead of Rotti's (also since Sarah was already getting it). Temp0 said he'd try to do that because he felt bad for missing Rotti's. My going to Dreamhack was for Starcraft, friendship, and those autographs that people had for 2 years!!! Needless to say, I'm getting them framed XD They'll go nicely with my other autographs that hang on my wall next to me when I'm streaming.

Day 3 (Day 2 for me) was exciting. It was the finals! Since I had already looked at everything at the event, my boney butt sat on the bleachers while intently watching the games. They were top notch! That one massive baneling hit was just disgusting... Poor Terran (har har). Anyways, a lot of people were vying to get into the twitch party that evening. I am relatively humble in that I wanted to go, but decided to wait until the right time. I've been working on getting more into esports for a while now, so the twitch party is a bit of a foregone conclusion in the future. See, there comes a time when you moderate chats for long enough that you want to get involved on a larger scale. This is where I'm at when it comes to esports. Currently, I moderate 40 channels on twitch and it's important to know that moderating is not a paid position. Though, I don't do it because of potential pay, I do it because I care about the streamers. I do it because I detest the idea of a 'normal job'. I do it to get into a place the requires me to have my own job, not to be someone's lackey. Dreamhack gave me the connections to get further in esports and as a result, I am now putting things in motion. I've worked hard for this kind of opportunity to be involved in video gaming. I've also spent a lot of time editing my first novel. Those are the things I'm focused on, gaming and writing. When I 'make it' in esports, you will know that this event was the catalyst for it all :D Feel special guys! You're seeing me at the ground floor!

On Monday, the day after the finals, I had brunch with a new friend who moderates a couple subreddits. She's fantastic. We had a blast. Because of Dreamhack, her and I are now best friends and I'm extremely happy to have met her. She was even kind enough to stay with me at Greyhound. We talked about literally everything until I had to catch my bus.

In the end, I'm so excited for what will happen next!

Anyways, I love you guys. You're all amazing. Keep your head up, keep being persistent, and opportunities will appear where you least expect them.

Until next time!

Jagtress.

#Esports #DreamhackMontreal #Starcraft2 #MeltdownMontreal