Would rather stick my mushroom tip inside a blender

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/...1318992465

Wait, so you're saying there WERE tickets?

I actually asked people selling the CS:GO IEM tickets (ebilet.pl) and they emailed me back saying the QC event is at the IEM Expo (separate building, no tickets for the Expo itself, it's just open for anyone) and they don't know any further details, but they aren't selling any tickets.

Therefore I just assumed it will be some auditorium open for anyone who stumbles upon it while walking around the expo (which itself, again, is free).

For me it will be the best chance to see any Quake tournament in person since Prague (http://esreality.com/post/2480802/prague-tdm-lan-groups-schedule/ - wow, it's been 7 years now :/), so I was totally planning to go!

Tell me more about the ticket situation, what do you know?

My info is from Liquipedia, Reddit etc., that the QPL Stage 2 finals are held at IEM Katowice. And on every website that has info for the IEM there's a big "BUY TICKETS" banner. So I assumed the QPL is part of the event, and you need tickets for it.

The website doesn't seem very transparent, and I am not surprised that someone tells me something completely opposite to what I was able to figure out.

I suppose your info is better than mine. But there's some email addresses on the IEM site that I will write to to confirm. Maybe someone can actually ask some of the QC players? They should know more?

Let's keep this thread up to date, shall we?

Yeah, those are tickets for the actual IEM, CS:GO and SC2 in the huge arena (Spodek, eng. Saucer).

Often in the past we've seen Quake tournament's final match being played on the "big stage", but I definitely doubt that in this instance (I imagine this being more like DH, everything was played in the Quake room last time, right?).

The only question remains, where in the Expo building is the room for spectating, what's the schedule and are there backstage passes to get selfies with rapha ;)

Keep me posted if you learn anything!

This is what I got back :/

Thank you for showing interest in our event. We're looking forward to see in with us in Katowice :)

The Intel Extreme Masters Katowice 2020 is for CS GO and Starcraft for now, we don't have any information right now about the Quake Champions Pro League.

I would suggest you keep an eye on our website for future updates and also you can subscribe to our monthly newsletter to be up to date with everything regarding our event

https://www.intelextrememasters.com/season-14/katowice/

If you have further questions please don't hesitate to ask me.

This post was made on the 5th of February on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/QuakeChampions/comme...quake_pro/

So your info seems confirmed. Great news!

Tournament only goes for two days. So I guess I will arrive on Saturday, and then the main question will be if Cooller advances to the next day - because then, I'd have to figure out how to bunk in my car lol.

Okay. This says the expo is free: https://fsl.giants-software.com/?page=news&article=97

*𝓃𝓊𝓏𝓏𝓁𝑒𝓈 𝓎𝑜𝓊*(。O⁄ ⁄ω⁄ ⁄ O。)

when is that? I had great fun watching season 1 finals in twitch (cooller helped a lot) and looking forward for the season 2 finals too

Feb 28 - Mar 1

If I'm there and Cooller wins again, I will https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLnWf1sQkjY

I'll probably go and have a look, it's just about 2 hours from here.
Anyone else going hit me up.

Katowice is 2 hours from Belgium by what? Energy-matter transport?

Will you be going for the QC tournament too?

I know it's hard to believe, but there are airports in Poland, there's even one in Katowice! ;)

I'll rather believe the Star Trek explanation, thank you :)

I moved.
QC tournament is probably the only thing I'd go to (the day of the finals). And just get a taste of what these events are like nowadays. Last one I did was ESWC 2004 :)

Haven't been to a LAN since early to mid 2000s either.

Seems the QPL finals will be in a separate area from the big (CS, Starcraft,...) tournaments, so you won't be getting the whole experience.

I would not book anything until there are details for audience. There might not be any real comfortable viewing area and you don't want to be standing up for 8 hours.

If you guys are interested I can find out. Didn't even know there was Quake there, hah!

Why am I getting told off for you lot being racist?

Oh my. Major flashback. Last time I read from you was sometime early 2000s.
Good to know you're still around Roy. Thanks for keeping ESR up and running all these years!

While we're at it.. maybe you don't even remember.. but sorry for being such an immature prick back then.. lol.

On-topic: even though we've found out some things so far, like the QPL finals being free to watch, any further detail would be much appreciated!

If you can use your Zero4 connection to gather info, basically all we need to know is:

- days and times they plan on playing (Liquipedia says Friday-Sunday, others say Saturday-Sunday, no word on schedule) [1]

- what kind of viewing area will there be, how to get there and get good seats if there even are seats ;)

- how to get backstage, I want to get some autographs!

And hey, last time I checked, it was the IEM being racist towards us, remember the Thorin scandal? They're lucky we can forget anything as long as they host Quake, plus we have short memory anyways ;)

[1] Hotels in Katowice are literally 4x more expensive that weekend than most other times, so I'm thinking maybe it's not worth getting there on Friday and leaving Monday, esp. if finals are about to be played at like 15:00 or something.

We live in times where if you are not black transexual furry you are racist.
Esreality where gaming meats gg hitlers

Who is snitching?

I'm considering going for 1 day as it's close but not sure yet because I lost a little bit of interest in following actively the Quake scene.

Same here. I wouldn't even think about not going if it was Q3/QL.

OK, https://liquipedia.net/quake/Quake_Pro_League...e_2/Finals started showing actual schedule!

It used to say 4 relegation matches will start at 9:00 (repeat of Lucca), but now it's DE with all challengers playing vs bottom two of each QPL region (Spart1e-cnz, bukster-Xron; sib-whaz, ZenAku-GNik), but it's in the same round as the rest of the bottom 12 of the full season ranking.

So for now, the schedule (from what is there, LB isn't fully populated etc.):
- Saturday 10:00-14:30 - WB round 1 (2 matches at the same)
- Saturday 15:00-21:00 - WB round 2 (1 match at the time from now on), LB round 1 (probably not streamed)
- Sunday 10:00-13:00 - WB round 3
- Sunday 13:00-15:00 - WB round 4
- Sunday 15:30 - WB final (looks like bo5 from now on), LB semi, LB final
- Sunday 19:45 - grand final

Initially they've announced it's 28th-1st, then it would make more sense to run DE and provide more games. But since it was changed to just 2 days, we can at least get some angry fans on ESR complaining about Cooller's amazing comeback through 4 stages of LB, none of which was streamed. I approve.


Now to the other controversial decision!

In Lucca, which was SE, relegation winners went on to fight in the first round (round of 20, in which 16 played, the other 4 were seeded in the quarterfinals). Here it's DE with first round being bottom 12 + 4 challengers, and top 8 are seeded in round 2.

I wonder what happens to the challengers in a situation when both players finish in the same round in DE - direct result decides? Some points? What if the not-relegation-match winner actually gets eliminated faster? He still won against the challenger/league bottom feeder.

Not that it matters much, shit game and all, but in the long standing id Software tradition of fucking up tournament formats, what tasty ESR drama can we still make from this? Can't wait!

In other news:

- Intel won't open their booth at the expo, nor will they send representatives to the IEM stage (and it was newsworthy enough that I heard it on the radio on the way to work)

- Hotels are already 30%-50% cheaper than they were just 3-4 days ago.

- Chinese CS:GO Team (allegedly) presented lab results proving they don't have COVID-19.

- All teams are under medical care, being periodically monitored for fever (morons, when they start having fever, they've already passed the virus to a 100 others, this is pure security theater to calm down the public).

- Vengeur is Italian.

- Shitty paper face masks (which don't prevent contracting the disease) are basically out of stock in Poland for weeks. FFP3 masks (which should work) up 3x in price.

- But have I mentioned hotels get cheaper day by day? Or that suddenly 1 bed rooms became available after being all booked up for months? Clearly people are canceling so that I can go, and not out of fear of something! :)

"- Vengeur is Italian."

Citation needed. If this info turns out to be incorrect I'm holding you personally responsible.


Anyway, thanks for the update. So how much is a 1 room hotel right now?

Use trivago.com/booking.com/maps.google.com? :) (Enter Spodek, move some sliders and you're set)

I only look at hotels because I'm scared of airbnbs 100x more than an infection. I want some extravagant stuff like a parking spot or non-smoking rooms. So I'm already looking at "expensive" places ;)

Oh, and I'm looking in actual Katowice because I don't think it will be possible to park at the venue with all the people there, so I'll see if there's Lime [1] in that city, otherwise a taxi, whatever. The closer I sleep, the easier it is to get back there after we go to the bar in the evening (of course DE bracket destroys our chances to lure any players there, except, obviously, Spart1e).

So just look for yourself with your own requirements!

For me hotels that usually cost €35 a night, costed €150 for this very weekend, but are now down to €70-100, and dropping! If you're fine with something further away/airbnb/hostel/etc., then you shouldn't even ask for price - you can afford it by definition :)


[1] Still legal in Poland to drive an electric scooter while drunk. You're legally a pedestrian. Was supposed to change but the legislation stalls, I'm in luck for this event. Unless it rains, like it has been this week so far ;)

I see. 70-100€ is definitely more than I want to spend. If I drive up there it will be ~50€ for fuel, 15€ for Czech highway sticker.. parking luckily is free.. and that's about all the experience is worth to me.
Below 50€ hotel maybe would be acceptable, so that I could watch both days.. definitely not more than that.

If you don't need luxuries, there are much cheaper places, that's why I urged you to see for yourself :)

Yeah, as a spoiled Central European I'm not so comfortable with booking that cheap in a foreign country. The 70€, which is normally 35€, already sounds a little suspect :)

So anyway, why do you plan on getting drunk there? Just standard procedure? :)

Currently €53 for the night of Saturday/Sunday in an actual hotel close enough, but of course €23 in Sosnowiec, <10 km away (no idea about parking situation at the Expo)

The second question is silly, I'm a Slav.

Not anymore...

https://twitter.com/IEM/status/1233104387893088256

It's all your fault. Fucking foreigners, invading virus-free land by planes, just to see kids play fucking Counter-Strike! Fucking immigrants! Jamerio was soooo right!

Also, if you think canceling an event 12 hours before it starts searches for a word below incompetence - let me assure you, we can do "better"! It's Poland mkay? What did you fucking expect?!

:(((

Seriously, WTF, they let people in via planes, they already let them into the city. So they thought: right! to prevent the virus from spreading... let's just give them 3 days of free time in a shit city in shit weather (it snowed today but it's not even below 0, absolute perfect temperature!). I'm sure if we let them go around the city, use trams, buses, touch screens and whatnot, at 4°C, that's sooooo much better than gathering them all in a heated room and sit for 3 days looking at a screen (that would basically be a sick leave, obviously worse than forcing them to spread out).

Since that whole aglomeration is a dump, I imagine everyone who can't cancel their hotels and go back home, if they're smart, they'll go visit actual nice Polish cities. I can think of 3 which they will surely go to, one of which I live in.

So the idea is: instead of making our city the epicenter of COVID-19 in the country, let's force them to spread out. This way, we can make Warsaw, Cracow, Wroc&#322;aw etc. the start of the pandemic, yay!

The problem with this plan is... Poland's readiness out of 10 is how good a Quake is Quake Champions (answer: in the negatives, people are fucking excited for some indie game with walking eggs). Which means the chance of the disease being detected in Warsaw, Cracow, Wroc&#322;aw etc before Katowice. is still 0.

Politicians.

[Edit: I still see correct spelling when editing, those stupid &#craps are ESR artifacts, maybe one day ESR can into Unicode?]

I honestly think it is for the best, tbqh. But probably a lot of money has already been spent in Katowice which won't be refunded, so it's not so bad for the city.

Yeah, but this is so unprofessional...

If you're so scared of foreigners, stop them at the airports, right? If this morning you thought they're safe, why would you change your mind 180° 6 hours later? Politicians...

So let me just say to that cretin: if you're scared of the virus, test people for it. (As you can imagine, Poland used like 3 tests so far and claims the only positive was inconclusive, because the tests are expensive. Imagine testing 100k people! Hope the virus never shows up or we're fucking dead... Actually, it's inevitable that it will show up, so if I stop posting in 2-3 weeks, you know what happened, even though I never went to IEM Katowice...)

This virus only kills the 2% of weaklings, so never mind, cooller is safe. :P

In Soviet Russia, host infect virus!

A whole load of fear-mongering, typical media.

I hope more retards wake up and stop consuming the bullshit they spew.

Damn. Should have grown some balls and went to Lucca. Triple the distance, but maybe the last chance to visit a Quake tournament (AND see Cooller win).