All I can say is, the girls are moving at a slow pace. Blame it on the fact that I can't play here at work as often as I wanted. I'm trying to cope up with this by going to work early so I'd still have an hour or two to play before official work starts.
Anyway, the reason for this sudden update in this blog is to recount the recent Granado Espada PvP Tournament Finals last June 16 at the Toycon event in Megamall. 16 best GE players (with 2 of the lot in Singapore to personally attend the Zouk Raid Party) represented the country in this first-ever tournament. I personally met the 14 players from NCR, Central Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, and I have to say that they were really quite something. Two of these players are my personal friends, namely the Stormgeist and Crowe family. To identify them from the massive crowd in the venue, they wore awesome GE Team Philippines jackets.
I was quite surprised to learn that during the semi-finals, Team Philippines had to compete with each other to get a spot in the finals. Like, WTF?! I shared the players' sentiments of disbelief on this. I even heard them conversing about strategies and all that other stuff, thinking that they were to play as one team against Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam. Each team had only one chance to advance to the next round. The first ones to emerge victorious were Crowe and Stormgeist, oGTO and DeathAngel, Street and Arcleaumont and Tresspassing and wattz. Then from this batch, Street and Arcleaumont and Stormgeist and Crowe were pitted against each other with the former team finally winning the much coveted spot.*
Here are just some of my observations during the competition proper:
- The lag was just horrible. It took the system more than 3 seconds to respond to the players' commands. Most of the teams had to bear the brunt of this problem as they were knocked off the race. I personally saw the frustration of Stormgeist and Crowe as they just took the beating from Street and Arcleaumont without much struggle.
- The veteran stances and armors/costumes had us all drooling uncontrollably as we watched the players try these out in a practice match. Since they only had the 5 classes plus Emilia the Sage to familiarize, seeing those maxed out stances at work was like waving chocolate under my nose. I want my girls to have those stances! Hopefully it wouldn't take me too long to have them attain the appropriate level. *crosses fingers*
- Seeing the pros at work made me realize that I'm basically a n00b when it comes to game controls. I really need to brush up on that.
I was also tasked to talk to the crowd in the GE segment of Toycon, so I wore my Elementalist Robe of Fire yet again. Funny that I didn't feel the butterflies when I went onstage...and that was a good thing I guess.
Meanwhile, after Street and Arcleaumont were proclaimed as the official team to battle against the other SEA GE gamers, we got the shock of our lives when we heard the news of Ino and Overseer's (the one team that when to Singapore) defeat in the tourney, leaving Street and Arcleaumont as the lone PH team.
And then afterward, we learned that the Singapore Team was also knocked off the race.
You can just imagine the tension come the finals, and we saw that very same pressure reflected on the team. The tension was even heightened all the more when we all had to wait for Vietnam and Malaysia to arrive on the PvP room.
When the moment of truth finally arrived, we were all cheering for the lone PH team as they came face to face with the Vietnames team. But alas, they were defeated in the first and second round. The opposing team apparently had a lot of pots, and we had to contend with the lag on top of everything. I saw the frustration on Street and Arcleaumont as they tried to take a hit on the opponents, only to find their HPs replenished.
But what the heck,
I can still feel the adrenaline rush after the tournament was finished and I'm very thrilled to have witnessed the first PvP tourney. It was also nice to have met fellow GE gamer/blogger NineMoons and Mena. I hope we have more events like these, and perhaps a grand EB for all GE gamers. Hopefully by then, I'd have my Idge costume ready (it's kinda lame to be using the same costume thrice in a row already XD).
This is definitely one of the reasons why I love this game. I hope one day I can pit my own girls in a heated PvP match, but I still have to train and familiarize myself with the game's intricacies before I jump from one task to another. Nevertheless, this experience made me want to strive harder, and I definitely will.
Long live Granado Espada!
*source: NineMoons Family
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