WCG Canadian Nationals in Montreal! Epic Writeup!

[Phr34k]

So I went to the WCG Canadian Nationals this past week in Montreal. Here is my perspective of everything that happened, minus tourney match details… cause I’m lame and forget pretty much every specific song and all those fun things. <_<

I'd like to congratulate everyone that took part in the tournament, and especially to H2O Mithin for taking the Gold, PMS lilirock for taking Silver and PMS jaimeclaude for taking Bronze. You all make our clan proud

Friday
After a night of not sleeping, I left my house for the Greyhound Station at 7am. Bus leaves at 8:30, and I arrive in Toronto at about 10:45am. I took the subway to Yorkdale mall to meet up with Mithin. We start driving, frantically looking for the DIPSET CD.. which he left at home -_- No biggie. We decide to just listen to the radio, which happened to be playing a large quantity of Rock Band songs.

We stopped for some McDonalds at about 2:30pm in some random town. Head back out right away and actually manage to get to the hotel without any problems. Check in at 5pm, park around the side and bring everything up to the hotel room.

First order of business… get the 360 hooked up to the TV. I pull the tray out and the first thing I notice is a very large metal round clip protecting the Coaxial cable…… I’m fiddling around for a few minutes and then decided to try using a screwdriver to loosen it. It would barely fit inside, but after about 15 minutes I managed to get the coax cable off and then hooked up to my encoding box. Golden. We get the 360 hooked up and play a bit of Rock Band guitar/bass. After about 10 songs we switch to GH3 and play some Pro Face Off to practice for the tourney.

I decided to take a nap while we waited for lilirock to call when she got to her hotel downtown. The plan was to hang out at her hotel and set my uber kit up there and leave it for the weekend. I was apparently waking up really fast during random songs that Mithin was playing… chatting with him… and I would pass back out before the song finished.

Manon (lilirock) finally calls at about 8:30pm saying that they are waiting for the system at the hotel to go back up so they can check in. So Mithin plays more customs while I nap more. Manon calls at a bit past 9 saying they got their room.

We packed up and head out to the other hotel. We take the 40 West, get on the exit for the 15 South… construction. The on-ramp is closed. So we’re driving along the road that’s up above the 15 for a while. It’s dark and raining, very bad mix. I’m frantically trying to read the street signs to see if we missed the exit we needed from the 15. We finally find the next on ramp, thankfully long before we had to take the turnoff. Finally finding the turnoff for the 720 West, we merge onto a very scary looking construction site… what should be 2 lanes is now 1, with large cones on both sides barely leaving enough room. We then merge onto the 720 fully and its I swear the thinnest lanes EVER. Again, rain… very dark… all French signage. All that makes for a very scary first experience XD We find our turnoff and it says to “Take the left fork and keep left”. Easy enough, we thought. So we take the left fork and keep left. Well, keeping left meant we had to turn left. So we turn, and discover that we didn’t want to turn. So we’re driving West alongside the 720, moving away from where we wanted to be. We have no map or really any clue where we’re going at this point. All I was trying to find was a way to turn around. We continue along this road and end up back on the 720 somehow O_o… going the wrong direction. I tell Mithin to take the next turnoff so we could turnaround and try again. BAD. IDEA. We turned onto another highway going south…. What the hell. We’re still driving south after a few minutes and we aren’t seeing ANY turnoffs.

I finally see a sign for a place called the “Technoparc”. I thought “Well hey, it sounds neat, maybe we can turn around there.” So we go to the Technoparc. Pulling in all we can see is two giant buildings which look almost something like where they would shoot a movie. We’re driving around this parking lot trying to find the exit… there’s no exits. The only way in to this place was a one way from the highway @_@; We drive back and forth for about 5 minutes until I tell Mithin to drive to the back of the parking lot. Keep in mind it’s still extremely dark and pouring rain. I see a tiny back industrial road that is one way back towards the highway. We take it, go under a random bridge, and see a sign for Centerville, aka downtown. Woo! But it’s one way, going the other way… or so Mithin thought. I tell him to turn left anyways, cause I could see the 2-way traffic sign. We get back on the random highway, find the 720, get back to the crazy fork turnoff and stay SORTA left. We went straight and found the road that the hotel was on. We turn left, and having no clue where this hotel is, we miss it.

We’re driving along for about 10 minutes when I realize that we indeed missed the hotel. So we call Manon asking if there was something we should be looking for. Apparently they missed it the first time too. We turn around, and then turn around again back where we first got on the road. We see the hotel, go behind the building and find parking. YAY! WE FINALLY MADE IT TO THE HOTEL! It should be noted that it took us over an hour and a half to drive a 15 minute distance <_<

We head up to the hotel room and meet Manon, Andre, Francois and Andrea. They apparently forgot their video cables for their 360, so we pull ours out. Well, apparently their TV disables the other video inputs, so out comes the Coaxial Encoder box again. I start putting my uber kit together while everyone else is passing guitars around. We all forgot to bring a regular 360 controller so we couldn’t do any vocals -_- My pedal decided to be a pain in the ass so I had to spend about 25 minutes fixing it before any of us could do any drumming. We played until about 2am or so and decided that Mithin and I should head back to get some sleep, seeing as we had to be back at this hotel for 9am to register. Manon had a live TV interview at 9am at a local news station, so she wouldn’t be here when we got here in the morning.

We head out back towards the hotel, grabbing a map on the way out, finding the 720 with ease, and then the 15, and then the 40. We see our hotel on the other side, as expected. What we didn’t expect was this giant divider wall preventing us from getting over there…… So we’re driving along hoping to see an overpass or something to get to the other side. Nothing of the sorts. We’re really confused at this point. After about 5 minutes we decide to take some random turnoff and find a way to the other side of the 40. We finally make it back to the hotel at about 3am.

Saturday
We requested a wakeup call for 7am, so when they called… we answered… we fell asleep again for another 45 minutes. Finally waking up, I shower, Mithin showers, we leave at 8:30. Actually knowing where the hell to go this time, we stopped for gas along the construction highway 15 and arrive at the hotel for 8:50 (seriously, it should have taken 20 minutes, not an hour and a half). We waited in the lobby for 45 minutes or so for the registration to start. Finally get registered, get handed a WCG shirt, some random candy, a gamer pass, and a really badass Samsung MP3 player, model YP-S2QG (I’ve been using it a LOT, very happy with it). We decide to head upstairs to see if Manon was back, and what do you know, they walk into the hotel as we enter the elevator.

Manon and Andre still needed to register, so Mithin and I play some GH3 to warm up. First song… Operation Ground and Pound Expert (lawl). Worst. Warmup song. Ever. We’re all playing for a while and decide to head out at about 10:45am for “Le Metro”, aka the subway system. We weren’t exactly sure where it was, at least I didn’t. Someone did cause we found it just fine.

We’re waiting in line to buy tickets for the subway for the weekend when a random guy in front of Mithin and myself was asking why we were all carrying around our plastic guitars. He starts to go off asking if we were the kind of people that thought that we were rockstars cause we play a plastic guitar. I responded in kind saying that we were an acoustic mariachi band doing a plastic instrument tour. We get down to the Yellow subway line and take it one stop under the river to the island with La Ronde (Six Flags). We then take the free shuttle bus to the front gate and talk with the staff there to get us in using our gamer passes (woo free 3 day pass to La Ronde!). We finally get in and wander around for a bit before finding the pavilion for the WCG.

First impression of the event setup was @__________@ Giant stages everywhere; everything was lit with LEDs around the scaffolding and computers. We wander around inside for a bit before we met up with Francois (guy running the 360 stage). Apparently we have until about 5:30 before we do out seeding. Mithin and Manon were playing some GH3 on stage for fun when Rachel (jaimeclaude/MakeshiftPants) walks up asking if Manon was lilirock. We all decide to grab some pizza and wander around the park for a while. We stopped by the giant ferris wheel and chat for a while. We all see this giant yellow coaster off in the distance and decide to go ride it. It’s about 1:30pm at this point.


Halfway around the park, we see a random rockband stage setup. We ask what it’s about, there’s a tourney happening. We didnt want to enter cause it was mainly little kids playing, but we told the people running it why we were there, and that we all play the game professionally. So we put on a show with Mithin drumming, lilirock on guitar, Andre on bass and myself singing. We played Ballroom Blitz PS2 setup had a little bit of visual lag so we didn’t do that well, but we had a giant crowd.

We thank them and continue on our way to the giant coaster. Finally find it at about 2pm and go wait in line. Lots of random chatting… waiting… an hour goes by when Francois and his girlfriend, Andrea, decide to wander around elsewhere… wait was too long for them. We continue to wait for another hour and a half before we get on the ride. Most. Intense Coaster. EVER. Tons of crazy corkscrews, loops, a mist pit (@_@) and intense G-forces for everyone. Finally finish the ride at about 4:30 and head back to the pavilion to get ready for our seeding.

When we get there we find out there’s a side GH3 tourney, we all enter it. Played The Seeker and Rock and Roll All Nite on hard. Combined scores for top 3 make it to the finals. We all play our songs and then head to the 360 stage for seeding. We have to play Lay Down and The Metal on hard.

Finish up at about 7pm, get told to be back at 9pm for the side GH3 tourney finals so we left to go grab some more food.

While eating we’re talking about random Japanese shows. I start talking about Human Tetris, get all hyper and start speaking too fast for Manon/Andre to understand me. They keep trying to tell me this, but I just keep going. Finally I finish and start laughing when I realized I was going too fast. Mithin explains it again slower for them. A few more minutes go by when we start to hear the most random announcer voice EVER. “ohadfg tendaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!!!! BOING BOING!” We laugh for a good 5 minutes every time we hear him yell something. Finally decide to see what the hell it was. We walk over and watch a diving trampoline show. Extremely epic. One guy was doing an acrobatics thing with a wall (painted like a city skyline with a few buildings) with a few holes in it. He’s doing some weird skateboarding flip moves, backflips, crazy spinning moves… finishes by doing a double backflip into one of the holes. Absolutely incredible.

It’s about 8:30, so we decide to head back to the pavilion for the side tourney finals. I look over and see a hat shop… I’m intrigued. We all go try on random giant fuzzy hats… I decide to buy a smaller blue one and then everyone decides to buy a hat. I got my blue one, Mithin got a yellow Tweety bird tophat, lilirock got a brown/blue Scooby-doo hat, jaimeclaude got a hot pink superman logo hat, and Andre got a black top hat with bugs bunny ears. We walk back to the pavilion and get greeted by Francois (360 stage/photography guy). He goes completely crazy because we’re all wearing giant fuzzy hats… sends us over to do a huge photoshoot for 20 minutes. Lots of really funny rockstar poses with the controllers.

We find out that Mithin, lilirock and jaimeclaude were top 3 for the side tourney, and were to play on the 360 stage to finish off the first day. They bump it up to expert. Everyone is to play Welcome to the Jungle. They crank the setup, turn the light show on… very epic show. Very energetic, large crowd, about 70 people watching. Mithin wins a 360, $100 gift cert for mytego.com, and a mytego WCG LP faceplate sticker.. lilirock and jaimeclaude get a $100 cert for mytego.com as well as the faceplate sticker. Everyone else in the tourney got a $13 cert for mytego.com.

Finish up at about 11pm and head back to the metro station. Walk the wrong direction from there for a block (large, but really cool area). Lot’s of weird looks from our hats (that we were still wearing). Amazing night life in Montreal. Dozens of bars/clubs on every block, covering every fashion and type of person you could imagine. Trees along the road were covered in very light blue lights, absolutely beautiful. Find a map and start going in the correct direction. Get back to the hotel at 12:30am and play Rock Band until 2:30am.

We head down to the car to drive jaimeclaude back to her dorm. Apparently the parking lot was a paid one… cause we had a parking ticket. Whoops. I have Rachel point out where her dorm is on the map and we head off. If you ever go to Montreal… BRING A GPS. Damn near every street is one way, it was a nightmare. We finally find the place, and then get even more confused from the one way streets to get back to the 720 highway.

Attempt number 2 of finding our hotel late at night from the 40. We forgot which area we took the first night, get confused again… find a random tunnel in some industrial area. Tunnel reaches highway 13 so we take that North for a few minutes… turn off onto another random highway… find another highway… somehow get back on the 40…. See our hotel again on the other side (30 minute random circle detour FTL). Decide to take the Hickmore turnoff… find an underpass to the other side of the 40, take a random side street, magically appear at our hotel. Victory! It’s now 3:30am Fail! Get inside, chat for 30 min about all that happened that day, cause seriously holy shit so much stuff. Shower and go to bed.

Sunday
Wake up at 8:30. Mithin showers while I read the paper. We leave at about 9:30, stop for food, McDs breakfast FTW! Get to the hotel at 10am. Play a bit of GH3 again and then head out for the metro at 10:45.

Arrive at La Ronde for 11:45am. Get to the pavilion, find out that GH3 starts at about 2pm. Watch random matches in other games, mainly CS1.6 and PGR4.
We leave to grab some food… mmmm poutine.

I convince jaimeclaude to join PMS , and then a half hour she beats me in an incredibly epic match with a very intense Raining Blood run. Mithin beats lilirock, jaimeclaude beats me, Andre lost to Jimmy. Get told that the next round of stuff is at about 7pm.
Watch more random matchups. Most of the day was spent watching matches. Stuff starts to run a bit late, so around 7:45pm we all get called to the 360 stage. There was a problem with the seeding. Mithin seeded last when he should have seeded 1st, due to a score typo. Jimmy was having no part of the resolutions that we were coming up with. After 2 hours of arguing we finally decided to have the 4 remaining, plus lilirock play ttfaf on hard and redo the seeding from there. Worked out nicely, the one guy that shouldn’t have made it was removed, and lili was back in. Mithin beat Jimmy and lilirock beat jaimeclaude in the most epic 5 song match EVER. Seriously intense shit, expect a video.
We hang around for an hour or so with Francois and Dimitri (guy helping with the 360 stage). Chat with Stephan Richard (WCG Canada Executive Director) for a bit, awesome guy. Get told to be back for noon for the 3rd place match.
We leave after the park closed, meaning we had to walk to the metro station (about 25 min). Get back to the hotel at about 12:30am, played Rock Band (with vocals, jaimeclaude brought a controller) until about 5am. At one point I was attempting to play guitar and drum at the same time. Go go Silver! I managed to pass both charts. I was holding 2 sticks in my right hand, fretting with my left, hitting the pedal with my left foor, and strumming with my right. Oh god did it ever end in epic failure.

We drive Rachel home, and manage to get back to the hotel without a single problem. Mithin is talking my ear off while I’m trying to fall asleep. Lots of “Man I don’t know what I’m gonna pick against Manon!”. I eventually tell him “Dude…. Don’t want to be rude but shut the hell up. It’s 6:30 in the morning!” XD… We laughed for a few minutes and pass out.

Monday
Wake up at 10am, shower, head to the other hotel. Get there at 10:45am. Go upstairs and chat with Manon and Andre for a few minutes, decide to go grab some breakfast downstairs in the lobby with Francois. Get down there… nothing left. Chat for a few minutes with them as they finish and then head upstairs.

We leave at 11:15 am for the metro… stop to get some money out. Arrive at La Ronde right at noon. Rachel wasn’t there yet, and she arrived literally as her warmup time began. She won her match after a couple of extremely close matches, one song by 200 points :O She out pathed Jimmy in the end and won 3-1. The finals were at 4:30.
We went and grabbed some food and then watched the PGR4 finals. Shortly after that, the CS1.6 finals began. Extremely epic matchup ending in a huge upset.

We setup for the GH3 finals, had some weird problems with some random person playing with a guide button connected to the 360. We switched 360s, reconnected the controllers, and Mithin/lilirock warmed up. 2nd song, lilirocks red fret started acting up badly. Mithin paused and we switched out her controller with Jimmy’s. They restart the song. Mithin ends up winning 3-1.

Closing ceremonies started shortly after. Medal presentations, sponsor speeches and thanks. Prize draws. Manon and Andre had to leave for home shortly after, so we said our goodbyes. We hang around for a few hours with the WCG staff eventually deciding to go on the Goliath… which is about 25 seconds long. We wait in line for about 30 minutes. Get on the ride. I barely get the seat to click shut… apparently it didn’t shut well enough cause all of a sudden one of the female staff was, what looked like humping my seat, trying to get it to click a few more times. Then one of the bigger male staff members walk over and start peoples elbowing my damn seat… which is crushing my nuts pretty hardcore XD. We finally start the ride. It’s the most intense coaster I’ve ever been on. The first drop goes almost straight down, with 7 more hills, a giant loop, and a very fast corkscrew. Finish the ride and hang out for a while longer around the pavilion.

We decide to go out to a bar for some food. So we drive with Dimitri back to the hotel, wonderfully getting lost but finding the Technoparc (!!) AGAIN, so I directed us to the hotel from there, from past experiences. We swap out vehicles and meet up with Alex (CS1.6/Halo commentator) and head to Les 3 Brasseurs. Very nice bar/restaurant in the downtown core. We all get some food and try the local beer (brewed at the bar). Lots of random stories. We decide to go play Rock Band at Dimiti’s work, which is a game/lan center about an hour outside of Montreal, on the way home for Mithin and I. We get there at about 2am, setup and play until about 6am.

We say our goodbyes to Rachel, as Alex was going to drive her back to Montreal. Mithin and I follow Dimitri to his place, a nice little goat farm about 15 minutes away from the game store. We pass out about 6:30am.

Tuesday
Waking up at about 9:30am, we thank Dimitri and head on our way back to Toronto. We stopped for some food at about 11:30am. Arrive back at Yorkdale Mall at about 3. I say bye to Mithin and take the subway to the greyhound station. Next bus is at 4:30pm, so I wait around for an hour for it. Sleep the entire way home on the bus.
_________________

Rhythm Authors LLC
Director of Development
www.rhythmauthors.com

[Phr34k]

So I went to the WCG Canadian Nationals this past week in Montreal. Here is my perspective of everything that happened, minus tourney match details… cause I’m lame and forget pretty much every specific song and all those fun things. <_<

I'd like to congratulate everyone that took part in the tournament, and especially to H2O Mithin for taking the Gold, PMS lilirock for taking Silver and PMS jaimeclaude for taking Bronze. You all make our clan proud

Friday
After a night of not sleeping, I left my house for the Greyhound Station at 7am. Bus leaves at 8:30, and I arrive in Toronto at about 10:45am. I took the subway to Yorkdale mall to meet up with Mithin. We start driving, frantically looking for the DIPSET CD.. which he left at home -_- No biggie. We decide to just listen to the radio, which happened to be playing a large quantity of Rock Band songs.

We stopped for some McDonalds at about 2:30pm in some random town. Head back out right away and actually manage to get to the hotel without any problems. Check in at 5pm, park around the side and bring everything up to the hotel room.

First order of business… get the 360 hooked up to the TV. I pull the tray out and the first thing I notice is a very large metal round clip protecting the Coaxial cable…… I’m fiddling around for a few minutes and then decided to try using a screwdriver to loosen it. It would barely fit inside, but after about 15 minutes I managed to get the coax cable off and then hooked up to my encoding box. Golden. We get the 360 hooked up and play a bit of Rock Band guitar/bass. After about 10 songs we switch to GH3 and play some Pro Face Off to practice for the tourney.

I decided to take a nap while we waited for lilirock to call when she got to her hotel downtown. The plan was to hang out at her hotel and set my uber kit up there and leave it for the weekend. I was apparently waking up really fast during random songs that Mithin was playing… chatting with him… and I would pass back out before the song finished.

Manon (lilirock) finally calls at about 8:30pm saying that they are waiting for the system at the hotel to go back up so they can check in. So Mithin plays more customs while I nap more. Manon calls at a bit past 9 saying they got their room.

We packed up and head out to the other hotel. We take the 40 West, get on the exit for the 15 South… construction. The on-ramp is closed. So we’re driving along the road that’s up above the 15 for a while. It’s dark and raining, very bad mix. I’m frantically trying to read the street signs to see if we missed the exit we needed from the 15. We finally find the next on ramp, thankfully long before we had to take the turnoff. Finally finding the turnoff for the 720 West, we merge onto a very scary looking construction site… what should be 2 lanes is now 1, with large cones on both sides barely leaving enough room. We then merge onto the 720 fully and its I swear the thinnest lanes EVER. Again, rain… very dark… all French signage. All that makes for a very scary first experience XD We find our turnoff and it says to “Take the left fork and keep left”. Easy enough, we thought. So we take the left fork and keep left. Well, keeping left meant we had to turn left. So we turn, and discover that we didn’t want to turn. So we’re driving West alongside the 720, moving away from where we wanted to be. We have no map or really any clue where we’re going at this point. All I was trying to find was a way to turn around. We continue along this road and end up back on the 720 somehow O_o… going the wrong direction. I tell Mithin to take the next turnoff so we could turnaround and try again. BAD. IDEA. We turned onto another highway going south…. What the hell. We’re still driving south after a few minutes and we aren’t seeing ANY turnoffs.

I finally see a sign for a place called the “Technoparc”. I thought “Well hey, it sounds neat, maybe we can turn around there.” So we go to the Technoparc. Pulling in all we can see is two giant buildings which look almost something like where they would shoot a movie. We’re driving around this parking lot trying to find the exit… there’s no exits. The only way in to this place was a one way from the highway @_@; We drive back and forth for about 5 minutes until I tell Mithin to drive to the back of the parking lot. Keep in mind it’s still extremely dark and pouring rain. I see a tiny back industrial road that is one way back towards the highway. We take it, go under a random bridge, and see a sign for Centerville, aka downtown. Woo! But it’s one way, going the other way… or so Mithin thought. I tell him to turn left anyways, cause I could see the 2-way traffic sign. We get back on the random highway, find the 720, get back to the crazy fork turnoff and stay SORTA left. We went straight and found the road that the hotel was on. We turn left, and having no clue where this hotel is, we miss it.

We’re driving along for about 10 minutes when I realize that we indeed missed the hotel. So we call Manon asking if there was something we should be looking for. Apparently they missed it the first time too. We turn around, and then turn around again back where we first got on the road. We see the hotel, go behind the building and find parking. YAY! WE FINALLY MADE IT TO THE HOTEL! It should be noted that it took us over an hour and a half to drive a 15 minute distance <_<

We head up to the hotel room and meet Manon, Andre, Francois and Andrea. They apparently forgot their video cables for their 360, so we pull ours out. Well, apparently their TV disables the other video inputs, so out comes the Coaxial Encoder box again. I start putting my uber kit together while everyone else is passing guitars around. We all forgot to bring a regular 360 controller so we couldn’t do any vocals -_- My pedal decided to be a pain in the ass so I had to spend about 25 minutes fixing it before any of us could do any drumming. We played until about 2am or so and decided that Mithin and I should head back to get some sleep, seeing as we had to be back at this hotel for 9am to register. Manon had a live TV interview at 9am at a local news station, so she wouldn’t be here when we got here in the morning.

We head out back towards the hotel, grabbing a map on the way out, finding the 720 with ease, and then the 15, and then the 40. We see our hotel on the other side, as expected. What we didn’t expect was this giant divider wall preventing us from getting over there…… So we’re driving along hoping to see an overpass or something to get to the other side. Nothing of the sorts. We’re really confused at this point. After about 5 minutes we decide to take some random turnoff and find a way to the other side of the 40. We finally make it back to the hotel at about 3am.

Saturday
We requested a wakeup call for 7am, so when they called… we answered… we fell asleep again for another 45 minutes. Finally waking up, I shower, Mithin showers, we leave at 8:30. Actually knowing where the hell to go this time, we stopped for gas along the construction highway 15 and arrive at the hotel for 8:50 (seriously, it should have taken 20 minutes, not an hour and a half). We waited in the lobby for 45 minutes or so for the registration to start. Finally get registered, get handed a WCG shirt, some random candy, a gamer pass, and a really badass Samsung MP3 player, model YP-S2QG (I’ve been using it a LOT, very happy with it). We decide to head upstairs to see if Manon was back, and what do you know, they walk into the hotel as we enter the elevator.

Manon and Andre still needed to register, so Mithin and I play some GH3 to warm up. First song… Operation Ground and Pound Expert (lawl). Worst. Warmup song. Ever. We’re all playing for a while and decide to head out at about 10:45am for “Le Metro”, aka the subway system. We weren’t exactly sure where it was, at least I didn’t. Someone did cause we found it just fine.

We’re waiting in line to buy tickets for the subway for the weekend when a random guy in front of Mithin and myself was asking why we were all carrying around our plastic guitars. He starts to go off asking if we were the kind of people that thought that we were rockstars cause we play a plastic guitar. I responded in kind saying that we were an acoustic mariachi band doing a plastic instrument tour. We get down to the Yellow subway line and take it one stop under the river to the island with La Ronde (Six Flags). We then take the free shuttle bus to the front gate and talk with the staff there to get us in using our gamer passes (woo free 3 day pass to La Ronde!). We finally get in and wander around for a bit before finding the pavilion for the WCG.

First impression of the event setup was @__________@ Giant stages everywhere; everything was lit with LEDs around the scaffolding and computers. We wander around inside for a bit before we met up with Francois (guy running the 360 stage). Apparently we have until about 5:30 before we do out seeding. Mithin and Manon were playing some GH3 on stage for fun when Rachel (jaimeclaude/MakeshiftPants) walks up asking if Manon was lilirock. We all decide to grab some pizza and wander around the park for a while. We stopped by the giant ferris wheel and chat for a while. We all see this giant yellow coaster off in the distance and decide to go ride it. It’s about 1:30pm at this point.


Halfway around the park, we see a random rockband stage setup. We ask what it’s about, there’s a tourney happening. We didnt want to enter cause it was mainly little kids playing, but we told the people running it why we were there, and that we all play the game professionally. So we put on a show with Mithin drumming, lilirock on guitar, Andre on bass and myself singing. We played Ballroom Blitz PS2 setup had a little bit of visual lag so we didn’t do that well, but we had a giant crowd.

We thank them and continue on our way to the giant coaster. Finally find it at about 2pm and go wait in line. Lots of random chatting… waiting… an hour goes by when Francois and his girlfriend, Andrea, decide to wander around elsewhere… wait was too long for them. We continue to wait for another hour and a half before we get on the ride. Most. Intense Coaster. EVER. Tons of crazy corkscrews, loops, a mist pit (@_@) and intense G-forces for everyone. Finally finish the ride at about 4:30 and head back to the pavilion to get ready for our seeding.

When we get there we find out there’s a side GH3 tourney, we all enter it. Played The Seeker and Rock and Roll All Nite on hard. Combined scores for top 3 make it to the finals. We all play our songs and then head to the 360 stage for seeding. We have to play Lay Down and The Metal on hard.

Finish up at about 7pm, get told to be back at 9pm for the side GH3 tourney finals so we left to go grab some more food.

While eating we’re talking about random Japanese shows. I start talking about Human Tetris, get all hyper and start speaking too fast for Manon/Andre to understand me. They keep trying to tell me this, but I just keep going. Finally I finish and start laughing when I realized I was going too fast. Mithin explains it again slower for them. A few more minutes go by when we start to hear the most random announcer voice EVER. “ohadfg tendaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!!!! BOING BOING!” We laugh for a good 5 minutes every time we hear him yell something. Finally decide to see what the hell it was. We walk over and watch a diving trampoline show. Extremely epic. One guy was doing an acrobatics thing with a wall (painted like a city skyline with a few buildings) with a few holes in it. He’s doing some weird skateboarding flip moves, backflips, crazy spinning moves… finishes by doing a double backflip into one of the holes. Absolutely incredible.

It’s about 8:30, so we decide to head back to the pavilion for the side tourney finals. I look over and see a hat shop… I’m intrigued. We all go try on random giant fuzzy hats… I decide to buy a smaller blue one and then everyone decides to buy a hat. I got my blue one, Mithin got a yellow Tweety bird tophat, lilirock got a brown/blue Scooby-doo hat, jaimeclaude got a hot pink superman logo hat, and Andre got a black top hat with bugs bunny ears. We walk back to the pavilion and get greeted by Francois (360 stage/photography guy). He goes completely crazy because we’re all wearing giant fuzzy hats… sends us over to do a huge photoshoot for 20 minutes. Lots of really funny rockstar poses with the controllers.

We find out that Mithin, lilirock and jaimeclaude were top 3 for the side tourney, and were to play on the 360 stage to finish off the first day. They bump it up to expert. Everyone is to play Welcome to the Jungle. They crank the setup, turn the light show on… very epic show. Very energetic, large crowd, about 70 people watching. Mithin wins a 360, $100 gift cert for mytego.com, and a mytego WCG LP faceplate sticker.. lilirock and jaimeclaude get a $100 cert for mytego.com as well as the faceplate sticker. Everyone else in the tourney got a $13 cert for mytego.com.

Finish up at about 11pm and head back to the metro station. Walk the wrong direction from there for a block (large, but really cool area). Lot’s of weird looks from our hats (that we were still wearing). Amazing night life in Montreal. Dozens of bars/clubs on every block, covering every fashion and type of person you could imagine. Trees along the road were covered in very light blue lights, absolutely beautiful. Find a map and start going in the correct direction. Get back to the hotel at 12:30am and play Rock Band until 2:30am.

We head down to the car to drive jaimeclaude back to her dorm. Apparently the parking lot was a paid one… cause we had a parking ticket. Whoops. I have Rachel point out where her dorm is on the map and we head off. If you ever go to Montreal… BRING A GPS. Damn near every street is one way, it was a nightmare. We finally find the place, and then get even more confused from the one way streets to get back to the 720 highway.

Attempt number 2 of finding our hotel late at night from the 40. We forgot which area we took the first night, get confused again… find a random tunnel in some industrial area. Tunnel reaches highway 13 so we take that North for a few minutes… turn off onto another random highway… find another highway… somehow get back on the 40…. See our hotel again on the other side (30 minute random circle detour FTL). Decide to take the Hickmore turnoff… find an underpass to the other side of the 40, take a random side street, magically appear at our hotel. Victory! It’s now 3:30am Fail! Get inside, chat for 30 min about all that happened that day, cause seriously holy shit so much stuff. Shower and go to bed.

Sunday
Wake up at 8:30. Mithin showers while I read the paper. We leave at about 9:30, stop for food, McDs breakfast FTW! Get to the hotel at 10am. Play a bit of GH3 again and then head out for the metro at 10:45.

Arrive at La Ronde for 11:45am. Get to the pavilion, find out that GH3 starts at about 2pm. Watch random matches in other games, mainly CS1.6 and PGR4.
We leave to grab some food… mmmm poutine.

I convince jaimeclaude to join PMS , and then a half hour she beats me in an incredibly epic match with a very intense Raining Blood run. Mithin beats lilirock, jaimeclaude beats me, Andre lost to Jimmy. Get told that the next round of stuff is at about 7pm.
Watch more random matchups. Most of the day was spent watching matches. Stuff starts to run a bit late, so around 7:45pm we all get called to the 360 stage. There was a problem with the seeding. Mithin seeded last when he should have seeded 1st, due to a score typo. Jimmy was having no part of the resolutions that we were coming up with. After 2 hours of arguing we finally decided to have the 4 remaining, plus lilirock play ttfaf on hard and redo the seeding from there. Worked out nicely, the one guy that shouldn’t have made it was removed, and lili was back in. Mithin beat Jimmy and lilirock beat jaimeclaude in the most epic 5 song match EVER. Seriously intense shit, expect a video.
We hang around for an hour or so with Francois and Dimitri (guy helping with the 360 stage). Chat with Stephan Richard (WCG Canada Executive Director) for a bit, awesome guy. Get told to be back for noon for the 3rd place match.
We leave after the park closed, meaning we had to walk to the metro station (about 25 min). Get back to the hotel at about 12:30am, played Rock Band (with vocals, jaimeclaude brought a controller) until about 5am. At one point I was attempting to play guitar and drum at the same time. Go go Silver! I managed to pass both charts. I was holding 2 sticks in my right hand, fretting with my left, hitting the pedal with my left foor, and strumming with my right. Oh god did it ever end in epic failure.

We drive Rachel home, and manage to get back to the hotel without a single problem. Mithin is talking my ear off while I’m trying to fall asleep. Lots of “Man I don’t know what I’m gonna pick against Manon!”. I eventually tell him “Dude…. Don’t want to be rude but shut the hell up. It’s 6:30 in the morning!” XD… We laughed for a few minutes and pass out.

Monday
Wake up at 10am, shower, head to the other hotel. Get there at 10:45am. Go upstairs and chat with Manon and Andre for a few minutes, decide to go grab some breakfast downstairs in the lobby with Francois. Get down there… nothing left. Chat for a few minutes with them as they finish and then head upstairs.

We leave at 11:15 am for the metro… stop to get some money out. Arrive at La Ronde right at noon. Rachel wasn’t there yet, and she arrived literally as her warmup time began. She won her match after a couple of extremely close matches, one song by 200 points :O She out pathed Jimmy in the end and won 3-1. The finals were at 4:30.
We went and grabbed some food and then watched the PGR4 finals. Shortly after that, the CS1.6 finals began. Extremely epic matchup ending in a huge upset.

We setup for the GH3 finals, had some weird problems with some random person playing with a guide button connected to the 360. We switched 360s, reconnected the controllers, and Mithin/lilirock warmed up. 2nd song, lilirocks red fret started acting up badly. Mithin paused and we switched out her controller with Jimmy’s. They restart the song. Mithin ends up winning 3-1.

Closing ceremonies started shortly after. Medal presentations, sponsor speeches and thanks. Prize draws. Manon and Andre had to leave for home shortly after, so we said our goodbyes. We hang around for a few hours with the WCG staff eventually deciding to go on the Goliath… which is about 25 seconds long. We wait in line for about 30 minutes. Get on the ride. I barely get the seat to click shut… apparently it didn’t shut well enough cause all of a sudden one of the female staff was, what looked like humping my seat, trying to get it to click a few more times. Then one of the bigger male staff members walk over and start peoples elbowing my damn seat… which is crushing my nuts pretty hardcore XD. We finally start the ride. It’s the most intense coaster I’ve ever been on. The first drop goes almost straight down, with 7 more hills, a giant loop, and a very fast corkscrew. Finish the ride and hang out for a while longer around the pavilion.

We decide to go out to a bar for some food. So we drive with Dimitri back to the hotel, wonderfully getting lost but finding the Technoparc (!!) AGAIN, so I directed us to the hotel from there, from past experiences. We swap out vehicles and meet up with Alex (CS1.6/Halo commentator) and head to Les 3 Brasseurs. Very nice bar/restaurant in the downtown core. We all get some food and try the local beer (brewed at the bar). Lots of random stories. We decide to go play Rock Band at Dimiti’s work, which is a game/lan center about an hour outside of Montreal, on the way home for Mithin and I. We get there at about 2am, setup and play until about 6am.

We say our goodbyes to Rachel, as Alex was going to drive her back to Montreal. Mithin and I follow Dimitri to his place, a nice little goat farm about 15 minutes away from the game store. We pass out about 6:30am.

Tuesday
Waking up at about 9:30am, we thank Dimitri and head on our way back to Toronto. We stopped for some food at about 11:30am. Arrive back at Yorkdale Mall at about 3. I say bye to Mithin and take the subway to the greyhound station. Next bus is at 4:30pm, so I wait around for an hour for it. Sleep the entire way home on the bus.
_________________

Rhythm Authors LLC
Director of Development
www.rhythmauthors.com

[toymachine]

moral of the story: take the god damn Metro

XD
_________________

[toymachine]

moral of the story: take the god damn Metro

XD
_________________

[Mushy2008]

[Mushy2008]

[NYVideoGameFreak]

That is Some Post that might be a contender for longest post but very well worth it seems like you kids had fun and If anyone remembers drunken Vox by Phr34k I wonder how sober Vox sounds. Congrats to you guys and i also had to sig

[NYVideoGameFreak]

That is Some Post that might be a contender for longest post but very well worth it seems like you kids had fun and If anyone remembers drunken Vox by Phr34k I wonder how sober Vox sounds. Congrats to you guys and i also had to sig

[lilirock]

[lilirock]

[AdamTL7]

[AdamTL7]

[linkoftime123]

Dang and I thought when I got lost in Detroit was bad .

It looks like you had a lot of fun though. And why do you get a silly hat, I want a silly hat .
_________________

I'm Platinum artist and I like it's shinyness ^_^.
I has Bladder of Steel.
I've GS Creep with the strat! Proof that the strat isn't total fail.

[linkoftime123]

Dang and I thought when I got lost in Detroit was bad .

It looks like you had a lot of fun though. And why do you get a silly hat, I want a silly hat .
_________________

I'm Platinum artist and I like it's shinyness ^_^.
I has Bladder of Steel.
I've GS Creep with the strat! Proof that the strat isn't total fail.

[Mithin]

So much I want to say...

For now all I can muster is...




DIP SET !
_________________

Author - www.rockgamerstudios.com

[Mithin]

So much I want to say...

For now all I can muster is...




DIP SET !
_________________

Author - www.rockgamerstudios.com

[GregoryZero]

Epic story. Lot's of quote-ables to be had.
_________________

[GregoryZero]

Epic story. Lot's of quote-ables to be had.
_________________

[cdylan13]

Holy shit, that is about as epic as it gets ladies and gentlemen XD

[cdylan13]

Holy shit, that is about as epic as it gets ladies and gentlemen XD

[brad16752]

Wow that looks like fun. You guys were 45 minutes away from where I live....


WHERE WAS I

Oh well, maybe next time.

[brad16752]

Wow that looks like fun. You guys were 45 minutes away from where I live....


WHERE WAS I

Oh well, maybe next time.

[discgolferpro]

Man, it sounds like you had a great time. Wish I was there!
_________________

DiscGolferPro
Soon to be an author! (maybe, hopefully... watch this space...)
http://www.amazonwarriorbook.com

[discgolferpro]

Man, it sounds like you had a great time. Wish I was there!
_________________

DiscGolferPro
Soon to be an author! (maybe, hopefully... watch this space...)
http://www.amazonwarriorbook.com

[christiano27]

It took a long time to read all that but it was pretty awesome.

Apologies to lili for not leaving a message of support before she went, I haven't really been active around here for the past few weeks...

It all goes to show the power of SH!
_________________

christiano27's GH accs. thread

[christiano27]

It took a long time to read all that but it was pretty awesome.

Apologies to lili for not leaving a message of support before she went, I haven't really been active around here for the past few weeks...

It all goes to show the power of SH!
_________________

christiano27's GH accs. thread

[Pachooca]

yeah, nice story!
Glad to see some french-canadian on the podium!
Congratz to Mithin for the victory!

Nice to see that you made fun in our city, despite the facts that a hell lot of our roads are "construction-center"... :p
_________________

Too old to display

[Pachooca]

yeah, nice story!
Glad to see some french-canadian on the podium!
Congratz to Mithin for the victory!

Nice to see that you made fun in our city, despite the facts that a hell lot of our roads are "construction-center"... :p
_________________

Too old to display

[tidus]

Wow, I'm seriously jealous of this. You folks really had an awesome time.

Well, as far as I can see, is Rachel is from PMS too? Holy wow if I'm not seeing things. I can't wait to see the other pics, then I'll think about my own "quote rampage". There's so many things to say, and so little time (lolbedtime).

But, mega congrats to you all! You RRRRAAAAWWWWWWK!
_________________

sentimentalgeek wrote:

But yeah, lol @ the fact that you can say "she" in this thread and not be sure which person is being talked about. Now we know whose milkshake brings all the girls to the yard.

<3 this.

| 57 RB1 on-disk FC's, plus 4 RB Vox FGFC's. No way I don't feel accomplished! =)

[tidus]

Wow, I'm seriously jealous of this. You folks really had an awesome time.

Well, as far as I can see, is Rachel is from PMS too? Holy wow if I'm not seeing things. I can't wait to see the other pics, then I'll think about my own "quote rampage". There's so many things to say, and so little time (lolbedtime).

But, mega congrats to you all! You RRRRAAAAWWWWWWK!
_________________

sentimentalgeek wrote:

But yeah, lol @ the fact that you can say "she" in this thread and not be sure which person is being talked about. Now we know whose milkshake brings all the girls to the yard.

<3 this.

| 57 RB1 on-disk FC's, plus 4 RB Vox FGFC's. No way I don't feel accomplished! =)