The good

The Tournament Format

The best of three format that was used at Epic.FOURTEEN was perfect for the tournament size. The brackets didn’t last too long, we got to see some great matches, and people at the event got plenty of games to play. As well as this the grand final was in a best of five with a one map advantage for the team who came through the upper bracket which is really how all CS:GO finals should be played. It gave the team who came from the lower bracket a realistic chance to win and the team who came from the upper bracket an advantage without being too bias.

The Stream

With host BanKs alongside seasoned casters Kyanite and Hoss the stream went smoothly with some great casting from all the team. What would have been good is a production person controlling the stream when the game was not live, some of the transitions from the casters to the idle screen were a little awkward but understandable. A thing to improve for next time would be to have a little more information on the idle screen and even if games are going to be delayed make the stream live and just have an idle screen there giving the viewers information, I think this may have been an issue because of the internet issues the event had and not the production team.

Admin Response

Despite there being multiple delays on the internet and such the response from admins was relatively good. The internet wasn’t down for too long, considering they were promised that it wouldn’t go down or be an issue on BTs side. As well as this the issue was conveyed on Twitter well by the admin crew.

The Turnout

Considering the turnout of the last Epic.LAN this event was much better, with the event as a whole being sold out and the tournament having a good number of teams. As well as the number of teams the calibur of teams was also impressive, with teams like Obscene, Infused, Perilous and TLR bringing the best the UK can offer. Just a reminder you can get your Epic.FIFTEEN tickets now if you go over to the Epic.LAN website you can get them for cheap for a limited time only.

Catering

It’s nice to get proper knives, forks and plates. But the lack of variety in the catering wasn’t great. Now, I know it’s LAN and no one really wants to eat healthily but the option of fruit needs to be there. Other than the lack of variety the food was well priced and not complete garbage.

The bad

BT

The only issue the whole event had was a big one unfortunately. BT, despite saying they will not throttle or disconnect the internet connection at EpicLAN, did just that. They throttled, disconnected and made the internet at the event unusable for most of the first day. However, the admins did fix this issue quite quickly and without much delay. The worst thing about this was the communication on the stream. Granted, the internet was down so it was hard to put up a stream, but a change of the title to something like ‘We’re experiencing technical issues – Estimated resume time: 14:30″.

Social Media

I feel not enough was done on social media for this event, I think I only saw the hashtag EpicLAN once on the LoL stream and nowhere else. This hashtag should have been on every stream. You should have the option to tweet that you have bought your EpicLAN ticket straight from the website and the hashtag should be advertised at the event. Then the organic growth of this UK event would speed up. More people will be talking about it, the hashtag will be recognised and might even trend in the UK on the weekend it was held. But at the moment, visibility of the event on social isn’t great.

Server Configurations

On the Friday of LAN there were incredible delays, partly due to the internet but also because of the incorrect server configurations. The min max settings caused your settings to be changed to 10 which could cause poor reg and in some cases lag.

Ventilation Settings

Granted, it was a small LAN hall which will get ridiculously hot due to all the computers in there. But the controlling of the air conditioning was sporadic. It would go from so cold you had to wear two jumpers to hot enough for shorts.

Exhibition Stands

By midday Saturday all the exhibition stands were gone, they had left early after no one had really engaged them as they were, in my opinion, placed poorly. No one will stand and look at a exhibitioners products if they are in the way of people walking in and out of the event. Yes, the stands were set up right next to the event entrance. Another factor to this was that it was cold where these stands were, people didn’t want to spend longer than the 2 minutes it took to walk in to the LAN hall to stop and look at products.

The ugly

Cheating Accusations

Weber, playing for Obscene eSports at the event was accused of cheating not once, but twice over the course of the weekend. The video where the accusations are made is here:

Here is the first accusation video.

Personally, this video doesn’t show that weber is cheating in any way.

As you can see weber gets a luck shot while spraying with the silenced m4 while blind, you don’t see the bullet flare or hear the bullets because of the silenced m4.

The official call by the admins was to investigate weber for rate-hacking. The admins took a look at weber and his teams PCs and found nothing. Even the players who uploaded the videos above said after this investigation that weber did not do anything to gain an advantage.

Obviously weber wasn’t cheating, the fact that the Epic LAN admins allowed an admin who disliked weber to investigate this was idiotic.

After further investigations, what was first thought is incorrect. The admin who was given the task of investigating weber and his teams computers for any cheats didn’t have a vendetta against the players prior to the investigation.

Gumpster, head of eSports at Epic.LAN, released this official statement: “We treat all accusations of a serious nature, and at the time of the second wave of allegations surfaced during the final on Sunday, we had limited time to properly do the leg work to prove or disprove on whether weber is cheating, therefore a decision was made by myself & Jon Winkle (epic.LAN MD) to delay payment of prize money by a week whilst we looked into the allegations deeper. Jack & ViciousHorizion are a part of this process and Jack doesn’t have a vendetta nor a hate campaign against weber at all.”

In terms of withholding prize money the EpicLAN team can’t be expected to hand out prize money on the last day of the event.

Check out webers account of the issue here: http://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/2wwx4t/fmesports_weber_accused_of_cheating_at_epiclan_14/

The Mess

In the rows of seats there was a considerable amount of general mess. Plates with half eaten food on them, bottles every where, even sleeping bags and obvious trip hazards. There were enough bins placed around the LAN but I feel there could have been a cleaning crew of some sorts.