u r da bomb!

March 26, 2016, 11:04 PM PDT by Parkzer • League of Legends

This post is over 10 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.

I found this screenshot from exactly two months ago, of a game of League of Legends Simon, Ed, and I were playing:

(Click to enlarge)

Yes, that is Simon randomly saying “my support … u r da bomb!”

Simon’s outburst of randomness was so confusing to Ed that he proceeded to forget to lock in his pick, and we got kicked out of champion select back into our lobby.

For his age, Simon is probably the most unexpectedly joyful and youthful person I know.

Path of Exile’s Currency Stash Tabs are the best thing ever

March 23, 2016, 11:18 PM PDT by Parkzer • Path of Exile

Path of Exile is a great game. It doesn’t really seem like a game that would pull me in, because the setting feels a little old (and I tend not to like games where I feel like I’m traveling back in time). But, for some reason, after giving Path of Exile another try a few years ago, it pulled me in.

I’m not sure if it’s the somewhat intriguing storyline, the straightforward gameplay, or the relatively higher level of “casual” difficulty that caught my attention, but since actually starting to really play it, I’ve always gone back to continue playing it after every large gameplay update.

Although this isn’t exactly a “large gameplay update,” Grinding Gear Games released a new update that was big enough for me to want to come back to the game and play even more, even though I had already recently played quite a bit as a result of the Ascendancy expansion and the release of Labyrinths.

Path of Exile now has a new microtransaction for Currency Stash Tabs.

One of the more annoying things about the game, in my opinion, is how there is no universal currency, and instead, you have currency-like items that only stack to 40 in your inventory and stash. I very much enjoy hoarding, but it’s difficult to do that if you can only have 40 of one item for each slot (and eventually, you’re going to run out of space pretty quickly).

However, I never really got into trading and merchanting, and I very rarely buy items from NPC stores, so it wasn’t really that big of a deal for me. I accepted that it was a bartering economy, and I just played as if nothing was different than games with other types of economies.

With the release of Currency Stash Tabs, Grinding Gear Games provided the players with a very convenient way to improve their quality of life when playing the game, and made a very compelling feature from which they should probably be making a ton of money to fund their development.

This is so compelling that even I proceeded to get an Aspirant Supporter pack from their shop, then use the 450 points that come with the package to get myself a Currency Stash Tab. While I was at it, I also used some more of my points to upgrade my current stash tabs to premium stash tabs.

(Click to enlarge)

A long time ago, I used to be very stingy when it came to gaming, and I would only play games that had no cost to me, apart from my time (and with that being said, microtransactions were completely out of the picture). After getting more involved in the gaming and online entertainment industry, I’m more inclined to support developers who make games and products that are really good … and this was an example of a really good product.

As you can see, I’ve gone ahead and organized my stash by moving all my currency into the new respective tab, then sorting the rest of my newly-named and color-coded tabs.

My personality type really likes seeing things neat and organized, and even the process of turning something from a mess into an organized masterpiece makes me excited. To me, sorting all my in-game belongings was probably more fun than actually playing the game.

Photos from ESL HotS Global Championship, Spring ’16 Circuit, NA Regional

March 10, 2016, 11:03 PM PST by Parkzer • Heroes of the Storm, Photo Album, Tempo

I’ve already posted quite a bit about the event that I attended with Tempo Storm, but there’s one more post left – I just got the links to the professionally-captured photos from the tournament. I decided to embed and share some of the ones involving the team and me.

On the first day of the tournament, we had some catastrophic computer problems. Two of our computers just wouldn’t boot, one blue screened, one was in a start-up loop, and one had critical system files missing and corrupted.

These problems caused the stream to be delayed by literally over 50 minutes. This is a snapshot of the ESL operators and administrators trying to help us get everything working again.

This is Zixz getting very excited and yelling at some unknown thing on his computer screen. Zixz is the support, and out of the five players, he’s probably the one who’s always the most excited and hyped.

Our first set was against Panda Global, and this photo was snapped shortly after defeating them in a best-of-three. Pictured brightly smiling in the center is Srey, the shotcaller and tank; to his right is Goku, the bruiser.

Another set in which we played was against Team Naventic. This was one of our more difficult sets, because Team Naventic was seen as one of the favorites to win, coming into the tournament.

Although I generally always have a somewhat cold and emotionless expression on my face (when I’m not intentionally trying to be funny or friendly), I look particularly concerned in this photo in anticipation for how the set might turn out.

The player in white is Kaeyoh; he is the captain and carry of the team. Hidden behind his monitor, to Kaeyoh’s left, is So1dier, the flex player.

Shortly before making it out of group stage, we had to play against King of Blades Alpha in our group decider match. We were less worried about this set, so I look slightly less concerned.

Here’s the famous bunny ears shot, from a different angle. I already posted a screencap from the broadcast of this scene on my blog and on my Twitter – our team was laughing here because there were literally four cameras on Zixz at the same time. Here’s another angle of the shot … now all I need to do is find the remaining two angles.

And finally, this was the last set we played, against Cloud9, and the set responsible for knocking us out of the tournament. I already knew that this was going to be a tough set, so you can see the onset of my concerned face coming right back.

All these photos are taken by Carlton Beener, and were uploaded to ESL’s Flickr account. If you want to view the other teams in the rest of the photos, you can check out the album at:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/eslphotos/albums/72157665121680530

Aftermath of the ESL HotS Global Championship Spring ’16 NA Regional

February 29, 2016, 11:25 PM PST by Parkzer • Heroes of the Storm, Tempo

The tournament comes to a close, and although we didn’t win the trip to Korea for the global championship final, it was still a decent experience.

Unfortunately, phone use was banned on stage and heavily restricted backstage, so it was difficult to get a lot of photos. We had a live feed of what was going on for both teams, so a lot of extra precautions were taken to ensure that cheating was not a possibility.

Luckily, I was able to see myself on the stream, so I grabbed a screenshot from there. This is me putting bunny ears on Zixz while cracking up with the team, because there were literally four cameras on Zixz at this particular moment.

Most of my fame came from doing general comedy a long time ago, and I’m not really too heavily involved in the Heroes of the Storm esports scene, so a lot of people didn’t recognize me when I appeared on the ESL broadcast.

Of course, the immediate reaction to that was to call me TrumpSC, a well-known HearthStone streamer who is also Asian, and has a similar hairstyle as I do.

Apparently, ESL thought it was hilarious that Twitch chat was spamming “TRUMP? TRUMP?? TRUMP???” so they kept on zooming in on my face and showing me in the broadcast at random times when I was on stage, for no particular reason. So, the VODs have a lot of me just standing there, doing nothing, and listening to the team talk while we were in picks-and-bans.

Yesterday was my flight back to Chicago. I snapped a photo when I was at the airport:

On the flight from ORD to LAX, I stayed awake for most of it and was on social media on my phone for literally about two-thirds of the time. On the flight back from LAX to ORD, I pretty much got knocked-out tired right away, and slept for a majority of the flight.

When I got back to Chicago, my buddy Josh, who dropped me off at the airport, was ready to pick me up.

After I got off the plane and left the airport, I somehow magically made it to the drop-off area instead of the pick-up area. If you’re not familiar, the drop-off area is usually a lot more peaceful than the pick-up area. Realistically, there are about 10 cars at the drop-off area at any given time, while in the pick-up area, it’s pretty much a constant flow of clogged traffic.

I thought I was doing Josh a favor by going to the drop-off area, so he wouldn’t have to struggle through the river of vehicles. Apparently, that didn’t matter, because Josh had already taken the road to the pick-up area, and he couldn’t figure out how to get to the second level of the airport, in the drop-off area.

So, after a nice struggle, I finally managed to make it down to the pick-up area, and watched about a thousand cars go by before finally finding Josh and getting in.

The strangest thing is that I got on the airplane in 80°F weather, but when I got off, I was in nice and freezing cold Chicago, where it was hailing and sleeting at the same time.

…

I’ll have all the highlight reels of Tempo Storm’s games cut, rendered, and uploaded to Tempo Storm’s YouTube channel soon, so keep an eye out for those if you’re interested in seeing how Tempo Storm did, but wasn’t able to watch the full games live.

Preparing for the ESL HotS Global Championship Spring ’16 NA Regional

February 26, 2016, 11:22 PM PST by Parkzer • Heroes of the Storm, Tempo

After a rough day of traveling on Wednesday, we spent today and yesterday preparing for the ESL Heroes of the Storm Global Championship, Spring 2016 Circuit, NA Regional.

Yesterday started with waking up nice and early to get on the shuttle to go to the ESL Studio in Burbank, CA.

Tempo Storm was the first team to get their photos taken for media.

Usually, they take a ton of photos and videos for promotional content, but for some reason, they didn’t spend that much time with every team for this tournament. So, it was a lot faster and easier than we had anticipated.

Back at the studio, we claimed our computers and set up in the practice room. We managed to get the back corner to lessen the possibility of other people walking by and seeing our screens and scouting our strategies and team compositions that we were practicing.

Unfortunately, because everyone was just thrown into the same room together, the privacy thing didn’t really work out too well. Eventually, everyone just walked around wherever they wanted, and chatted with other players in random places.

All that was yesterday. Today, we had stage rehearsal.

The Asian guy you see in the red hoodie is Will Cho, better known as Chobra. He’s a pretty big figure in the esports industry, and he’s the director for this tournament.

Apart from that, all the other time we had was spent either practicing in the computer room, or chatting privately in a hotel room about drafting strategy. I was with the team all day during the morning and afternoon, but after the evening rolled around and the studio closed, I went my separate way for the rest of the night so I could get some work done in peace.

The tournament starts tomorrow, so be sure to tune in to the ESL Twitch stream and watch Tempo Storm play!

Do League of Legends placement matches even matter?

February 15, 2016, 11:49 PM PST by Parkzer • League of Legends

I’ve heard of people who used to be Bronze IV last season who went 8-2 in placement matches and ended up … in Bronze V.

On the other hand, I have a secondary account that I use to duo queue with friends, which was in low silver last season. I purposely lost all my placement matches and went 0-10, but for whatever ridiculous reason, it placed me in Bronze II.

(Click to enlarge)

Do placement matches even matter?

How am I going to live the Bronze V dream life if the game won’t even let me drop that low, even if I go 0-10?