2014 League of Legends World Championship

I'm back!

We finally have a wired internet connection in our apartment after being here for almost 3 months. Even though we live in a rural part of Japan, we have fiber optic internet (called hikari) that gives us a pretty snappy connection.

The internet was actually set up last weekend, but the day after the installation we left for South Korea to see the 2014 League of Legends World Championship.

It was a weekend of a lot of firsts. It was my first e-sports event as well as my first time traveling outside of North America and Japan. We were only there for a mere 48 hours but all in all it was a great experience and I'm looking forward to visiting Korea again soon.

Day 1 -- Saturday, October 18

The day of our flight we slept through our 5:00 am alarms and ended up having to catch the (very expensive) express train to the airport. The upside of sleeping through the alarm meant that we didn't have to take the stupidly early highway bus or wait for a layover.

We made our flight with no issue and were in Korea by the mid-afternoon!

Incheon International Airport

Train station in the airport

     

Streets of Seoul

More Seoul, near Hongik University Sta.

Our hostel - Twin Mini Rabbit Hostel

We had to stop and ask for directions on the way to find our hostel. We eventually made it to where we needed to go thanks to a friendly group of street performers in front of Hongik University Station and a few unsecured WiFi networks. After a short rest and shower we took a walk toward the Hongdae area!

So good! So cheap!

We were too tired to stay out all night, so we decided to check out Bau House. It's really popular with tourists and there are a bajillion blogs about it online, but it's definitely something you have to go and experience at least once.

 

Despite the fact that there were 20+ doggies running around at any given time, I was really impressed with the overall cleanliness of the place. If there were dogs causing a problem (rough play, bad behavior with the customers) they would take them to a different room to kennel them. Unfortunately, after about 40 minutes my allergies started killing me, so we called it quits.

Menu of dogs!

   

 

...and then we walked back home! Seoul is a beautiful and modern city. We ended up walking the equivalent of three subway stops (~40 minutes) and were able to see a lot of cool stuff.

Day 2 -- Sunday, October 19

The next morning I woke up to a stream of KakaoTalk notifications on my phone. We weren't planning on leaving for the World Cup Stadium until noon, but other attendees from /r/LeagueofLegends were saying that lines were already getting long.  

Complementary breakfast bar at our hostel

On the bus!

At the entrance of the stadium

When we finally got there the lines were quite long with queues of over an hour for most booths. There were booths by Korean Air, NVIDIA, Logitech, and Coca-Cola that were handing out free stuff.

The line for the merchandise booth was at least a 2 hour wait, so we waited to get inside the stadium to make our purchases. There was another booth called "Jinx's Tattoo Shop" where people could choose from a variety of temporary tattoos... unfortunately we didn't make it to that one! There was a huge stage for cosplayers, live art of the Summoner's Cup, and a display of fan-made art. I'm sure there were so many other things, but our time was limited. 

The World Cup Stadium

First look at the crowd

Ticket booth with English speaking staff 

The ticket booths were set up really efficiently and had extra support for people who didn't speak Korea. Here we got our tickets and headsets that were broadcasting the game in other languages for only ~$10 USD. 

We only had time to wait in one line, so we chose the Coca-Cola booth which was giving out limited edition cups (only 5,000 available) with Shyvana on them. They were also giving out cans of Coca-Cola with limited edition art. There were also two SK Telecom players signing merch, but we decided to move on and find out how to get into the stadium.

Crowds really started to grow around lunchtime...

We got a little lost on our way to finding the main gate and ended up spotting this guy carrying a quad-rotor helicopter. They used this to film all of the overhead shots of the stadium during the online broadcast of the game. 

Fans waiting to get in

Doors were supposed to be at noon (with the game starting at 15:00) but they were running almost 30 minutes late. Platinum ticket holders had their own queue while Diamond, Gold and Silver waited all together. Had they made different entry times for the different ticket types, I think it would have gone much more smoothly...

Interior of the stadium

My poro!

The late entry time also delayed the start of the games. They seriously underestimated the time required to get 40,000 fans going through ticket checks, security and bag check, then handing out cloaks and snack bags. Being there so early meant that we got to see the stadium fill up, which was quite interesting -- note the difference in the crowd between the pictures above and below.

The "swag bags" provided to all ticket holders upon entry were really awesome.  Every person who came got the following:

• World Championship cloak
• light-up League of Legends bracelet
• "I hate/love Teemo" reversible bracelet
• snack bag with water, saltine crackers, chocolate cakes, and some type of peanut candy
• Riot Points (redeemable only on Korean server)
• Championship skins code
• more Coca-Cola cups 
• inflatable clapper sticks

We also caught a squishy Poro, Gragas barrel and Teemo mushroom before the games started. 

Then the Opening Ceremony started...

Character select for Game 1

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Making friends with the Korean fans in the row behind us

Did I mention there was really cheap beer there too?

It was quite hard to see who was who from our seats in the Gold section, but the games were exciting nonetheless. I was REALLY impressed with the quality of the headsets we purchased because the timing was just about perfect and it helped us follow along with what was happening in game In the end, things pretty much went as expected -- Samsung White crushed StarHorn Royal Club mercilessly, winning 3 out of 4 games.

End of Game 4

Samsung White are the victors!

When all was said and done, Imagine Dragons came on and played an encore performance while SSW laid claim to the Summoner's Cup. The games went by so quickly and I didn't want to leave the stadium...! :(

League of Legends is constantly criticized as having the worst community, but I think that really applies to the online aspect. Everyone was incredibly friendly and there was a shared positive energy going through the crowd. It was encouraging to see so many people from different countries gathered in one place. I'm already looking forward to next year!