Traveling to Los Angeles, California

by   •   Tempo
 

This post is over 10 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.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.
 

If you haven’t noticed already from the blog post I put up at the end of last week, I am traveling to Los Angeles, California for the ESL Heroes of the Storm Global Championship, Spring 2016 Circuit, North Amer­i­can Regional.

My morning started with my martial artist and stuntman buddy Josh driving me to the airport.

The drive to the airport didn’t take as long as I had anticipated, and I had calculated way too much time to accommodate for the rain, and I ended up getting to the airport about two and a half hours early.

After about an hour of waiting, I heard the fantastic news that my flight was delayed.

While I was waiting, I walked over to a nearby McDonald’s to get some breakfast (which was technically lunch because it was in the afternoon, but it was the first time I had eaten, so it was breakfast for me).

After buying the food, I realized how much more expensive McDonald’s is at the airport than anywhere else, with prices around 30% higher. I immediately regretted my decision, not only because of the cost, but because I proceeded to smell partially-digested hamburger every time I burped, and it kept on coaxing me to vomit on the plane.

While eating my Quarter Pounder, I overheard some great conversations, such as “Oooh just thinking about flying out of here makes me want to eat some carrots.”

After a second delay, the plane finally arrived.

Of course, humans are slow, so we had to wait another 20 minutes after the plane arrived for all the pre­vious passengers to get off the plane.

At the time I was originally supposed to land in Los Angeles, I was finally on the plane with three hours left to go.

Here’s a photo of some ice crystals that formed on the window not long before landing. It was something around -30°C outside at that altitude.

After hours upon hours of traveling, I had to wait and travel even more to get to my hotel. Apparently, there were no flights today that went from O’Hare to Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, so I had to go to LAX and take a shuttle to Marriott Hotel in Burbank, CA (near the ESL studios).

This is the photo I took while waiting at the airport for my shuttle. It felt a little strange going from rainy, cold weather in Chicago, to a pretty cool airplane, to burning hot and humid outside in sunny Los Angeles. I kept my jacket on though, because my mind was too busy being confused that it didn’t really send a signal to my arms to take off my jacket.

After riding on the shuttle for over an hour in the dreaded Los Angeles traffic, I finally made it to my hotel. I was the last member of Tempo Storm to make it to California, so I went around chatting with the players and getting to know them a bit better, seeing as this was the first time I would be working with them in person.

As the day came to an end, Kaeyoh, So1dier, Mel, and I went to Target to do some shopping. Mel bought a 24-pack of water for her team, then proceeded to pick up this bottle and say “… and this one’s for me.”

I’m pretty exhausted from the traveling, but hopefully I’ll be able to sleep it off, because we’ve got an early day ahead of us tomorrow.

 

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Do League of Legends placement matches even matter?

by   •   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’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?

 

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Hey look it’s Coco

by   •   Dogs
 

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.
 

Coco the Yorkshire Terrier

 

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To make up for all those 4v5s, I got to play a 5v0

by   •   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.
 

A lot of League of Legends players will complain about how the troll or AFK is always on their team.

If you’re not already aware, that’s a psychological phenomenon where you’re more inclined to remember some­thing bad happening to you, than happening to some­one else. If you lose a game when your team has someone AFK, it’s the AFK’s fault; if you win a game when the enemy has someone AFK, it’s because you’re skilled.

If you actually think really hard about it, as long as you’re not the one going AFK, it’s more likely for an AFK player to be on the enemy team than your team, because there are four public slots open on your team for an AFK player to potentially fill, while the enemy team has five open slots.

Apparently, the game was making up for all the 4v5s that I was having during ranked a few years ago (which was a contributing factor in the culmination of me quitting taking League of Legends seriously) … by giving me a 5v0.

(Click to enlarge)

Yes, that is correct. Literally all five members of the enemy team were AFK. The enemy Shaco came back about half a minute before we ended the game, but he obviously couldn’t do anything while he was level 1.

Laughing at the absurdity that had just happened, we queued up again. In the next game, I guess the en­emy team might as well have just all been AFK, because apparently, matchmaking doesn’t work too well.

(Click to enlarge)

Quinn OP.

Particularly OP against AP Ezreals who are gold league in ranked.

 

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Taking advantage of HotS Training Mode AFK XP Farming

by   •   Heroes of the Storm
 

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 used to play Heroes of the Storm pretty obsessively a handful of months ago, but I’ve recently toned down my playing.

Yes, one of my jobs (specifically, the one with Tempo Storm) involves me directing and producing content related to Heroes of the Storm. But, that can be done without playing as much as I used to, because I still keep up with game updates (and my writers are keeping me knowledgeable by submitting articles to me, for me to review and edit).

Because of this, I apparently hadn’t posted any screenshots of achievements for a pretty long time – since reaching Level 10 with Nova, to be exact. While I was going through my old screenshots and backing up and archiving them, I decided to post a few of them on my blog, like the old days.

Back in mid-October, I finally got around to playing Hero League again after the soft reset and required 20 placement matches. I don’t remember anymore what my win/loss ratio was during my placement matches, but I ended up placing decently high (I think in the single digits), and the climb back up to Rank 1 was a breeze.

Heroes of the Storm - Rank 1

Since then, I also leveled three heroes to Level 10: Kael’thas, Valla, and Nazeebo.

Heroes of the Storm - Level 10 Kael'thas

Heroes of the Storm - Level 10 Valla

Heroes of the Storm - Level 10 Nazeebo

The funny thing about the last two Level 10s are that I didn’t actually play real games to gain experience for those heroes from Level 9 to Level 10, but instead, used Training mode to turn them gold.

This was a result of the huge smurf leveling craze after the refer-a-friend system was released. Apparently, people found out that they could enter Training mode and go AFK to gain free experience and level up their accounts so they could “earn” the Vulture on their main account.

I personally don’t have an interest in gaming the referral system to rush a mount, because I’m confident that, over time, I’m going to genuinely refer at least four real new players to the game. However, I didn’t want to miss out on this finding.

I loaded into many Training mode games with Valla and Nazeebo to farm experience and get them to Level 10. Apparently, in Training mode, you don’t get kicked out of the game for being AFK, so I left the game running in the background to harvest my rewards while getting some work done.

 

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