ACON5: Warriors and Warcraft

This year’s edition of ACON4 carried on the proud tradition of last year’s tournament: a global gaming tournament open to all players, regardless of skill level from 16 countries, wherever there is a solid market for ABIT products. Held in historic Xian, Shaanxi (not to be confused with neighbouring Shanxi province), China, ACON5 took place on June 4th and 5th and saw 96 gamers from 16 countries compete for fame, cash and the opportunity to represent their countries. At the same time, they got a chance to see another country and learn a bit about it’s culture, plus makes some new friends and compete against old rivals.

Last year’s tournament was a huge success for ABIT, boosting motherboard sales in China and launching ABIT as a major player in the growing Chinese motherboard market. Beyond that, it brought ABIT a lot of good will amongst gamers around the world, who appreciated the chance to compete at a free tournament and hopefully win a trip to China. ACON4 was actually modest in scope compared to ACON5: whereas ACON4 was strictly a Warcraft III tournament, automatically limiting the players to one per country, for ACON5 ABIT thought they had to do something much bigger to create more buzz in the gaming community. Hence the idea of a CS and Warcraft III competition, again open to all players. All the extra players meant extra busses, bigger restaurants, bigger hotels and more staff to handle what was basically 100 teenage boys on their first transcontinental journey without their parents.

Jonathan 'Fatal1ty' Wendel uses his time wisely

A really long layover....

Part of the reason for holding ACON5 in China, right after Computex is so ABIT could fly the attending media there without too much extra hassle involved. Indeed, in a perfect world, it should take only a few ours to fly from Taipei to Xian. However, the situation between China and Taiwan is anything but perfect: the two countries have remained in a state of war since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949, when the losing KMT side, all 2+ million of them, fled the mainland and Mao Ze Dong’s Communists for Taiwan and continued what had been known on the mainland as the Republic of China. Along the way, they managed to take all of China’s gold reserves and National Palace treasures (the National Palace Museum in Taipei has the most extensive collection of Chinese art in the world) and from this turbulent history you can get a sense of the lingering bitterness between China and Taiwan.