everything about this regionals, the organisation and the communication between ESL and ourselves was diabolical
Quote from email:
“Shuttle service
On the day of your arrival we will pick you up at the airport or train station and bring you to the hotel. On Sunday we will bring you to gamescom and take you back at the end of the day. On Monday we will bring you back to the airport or train station - you don’t need to worry about transportation in Cologne! To find our driver please look for a “ESL”-sign at the airport.”
So arriving at germany the weather was around 32Degrees celsius.. i thought it would be ok as I assumed they would have air conditioning and water etc. “shuttle service” Daniel picked us up and took up to the hotels, when we got there we wanted to go see gamescom al though we werent playing that day so we phoned both drivers and they basically told us to fuck off and that they couldnt be bothered to take us al though they were being paid 800 EU each for driving around for those 3 days by blizzard. we then decided to walk to the train and to the gamescom in the unbearable heat. When we got to gamescom we were told to go round a different entrance or some shit, we still couldnt get in and the people organizing it said they would meet us and after 1-2 hours still no sign of them so ended up paying 7 euros to get in. no food, water or anything and no word from ESL.
The hotel was also terrible, no air conditioning which miraculously came on at 00:00 and turned off at 00:30 midnight so forced to open windows which seemed as if we were sleeping in the middle of a cross road or something getting a total of ~2 hours sleep throughout the whole time in germany. note: Starcraft 2 players got to stay in the hilton hotel which shows how much blizzard and esl care
on the day the teams had to play we ended up having to wear headphones, then a sound proof headset along with another headset for mic, this caused us to barely be able to hear our healer and having to readjust the mic to basically be down my throat every 10 seconds ruined the gameplay more, seems a bit shit cramming all the games into one day and the rules should have been double elim round robin because some people had really unfair brackets as some comps were clearly inferior to others like double sham vs rmp etc. this could have been possible over a span of 2 days and would have made it alot more fair when everyone faces everyone
esl are also terrible because they made us pay for the mini bar in the hotel and also when flying over we had to pay 50 euros to have a suitcase with our flight because they gave us the economy tickets without bags
so basically there was no communication, or orginisation, the only good thing was that there was 12 pcs on the main stage so people didnt have to switch pcs or whatever.
tl;dr - would have been 100x better if there was air con (afaik only skoez got air con and i got it for 30 mins randomly) and if they actually came to the hotel to GIVE us the passes to get into gamescom without having to do 50 laps round the entrances to get in.
EDIT: also the maids and hotel kept spam calling us on the morning before our flight at 12:50, we eventually picked the phone up after they called us a total of 10 or so times and knocking on our door for 20 mins. ended up telling them to fuck off and that we’re not getting a taxi to the air port at 07:50am when our flight is at 12:50pm. ended up pulling the phone out as it seems like 99% of germans don’t understand english unless they’re WoW players lol
p.s. i wonder if barb is still waiting at the airport for his connecting flight
