vVv Gaming's Forum : Blog #4 Korea – What’s Going On! – Must Read (Day 1 & 2) - vVv Gaming's Forum

7/28/10

I want to start out with huge thanks to WOGL CEO “Stephen Tucker” and Hyundai for allowing me to travel to Korea to represent the United States in the Global FIFA Online 2 Event. This experience was definitely unique… (This blog will be in depth so take 5 minutes out of your day)

It was hard to make expectations for an event that gave me very little information about rules, the game, travel, hotel, etc…. The only emails I received was itinerary (1 week before event) and a follow up email when I asked which hotel I would be staying in during my trip “There will be someone waiting for you in the airport” was the response. I was unable to practice “FIFA Online 2” because it’s only accessible in Asia and has been there most popular sports title since 2006. This made it impossible for me to train the game so I just went in with positive thoughts and to make the most of an opportunity to see Korea.

Thursday 3:00pm – Landing in Korea
The flight was not bad; I slept the majority of the time… When landing I took some photos around the airport and looked for an Asian with a sign. I bumped into our guide “KiKi” and she quickly informed me that we would not be leaving the airport for another 3-4 hours because other competitors had not arrived yet. So I was stuck waiting; thankfully after a little while I saw some familiar faces and asked the other FIFA competitors how long they had been in the airport? The Romanian and some of the Asians had been waiting since 6am this morning – This made me quite skeptical – It doesn’t make any sense for them to wait 10-15 hours in addition to their flight.

6:00pm
Everyone arrives, and we move outside to a large bus in which we will be traveling to the hotel etc… After a little more than an hour we reach the hotel (Located about 50 miles outside of Seoul in a small city) – We are allowed an hour to get ready before it’s time for dinner – Our dinner is located in this small place about 15min from the hotel – Surprisingly our choices were either hamburgers or pizza (Not so Korean lol) – We tried to go out that night to see the town but after experiencing a serious storm that plan quickly went down the drain….

Friday 6:30am – 10:30pm Wake Up Call + Drive
Unfortunately due to some poor planning from the organizers rather than fly to Busan, Korea they chose to take the players in the bus. (Busan = 2nd largest city in Korea & tournament location) – We also added a road trip to the Hyundai Steel Factory where we were shown some quick videos and given a tour of the facilities. We didn’t reach our destination of Busan until 10:30pm where the organizers then gave us a player packet with info and said we would have until 2am to practice “FIFA Online 2” at a gaming café. – (FIFA Online 2 = #1 FIFA game in the Asia & has been used in competitions since the launch in 2006)

I paid close attention in the gaming café in hopes of picking up tactics and maybe tips on gameplay from the other competitors. We drew random brackets and then were escorted back to the hotel where my night ended around 3am…