International contestants

Despite the entire travel experience, or in spite of, we arrived in Xian to a hotly anticipated tournament. With almost 100 top players from around the world, the Chinese gaming audience was incredibly excited, and showed up in force to support their teams, and also to watch the rest of the action. Jonathan “Fatal1ty” Wendel was also on hand, partly to play in a Painkiller showdown match with Chinese gaming champ Rocketboy. Rocketboy had beaten Fatality on a number of occasions over the past year, most notably at the Great Wall last year where he also won $125,000. Apparently after this win ABIT signed Rocketboy to a lucrative endorsement contract in China, with Rocketboy-endorsed motherboards (same as Fatal1ty motherboards in the rest of the world) soon following. However, the expected showdown between two of the best gamers in the world never materialized. As it stood, in the two matches they played, Fatal1ty handily won both matches 40-10, 40-8, which is one of the reasons why the real match never materialized. It wouldn’t have looked too good to have the local champ beaten on his home turf, but it sure would have been fun to watch for the rest of us.

The Victorious Russians

This year’s players from North America were without a doubt some of the top players to be found anywhere. Mathew Anderson of South Carolina, with his trademark 80’s keyboard with phat speakers and his lucky parachute pants was back to defend his ACON4 title from last year, while Team Complexity arrived ready to take on the rest of the world. Alas, it was not to be either of their tournaments and they were knocked out early on. In the end, the final match was between the Russians Vitrus.pro and Bizounours from France. Vitrus.pro walked away with the title after a hard fought match that saw them defeat the French side 16-13. Vitrus.pro really deserved this one, having gone undefeated in the entire final and becoming the favorites early on. On the Warcraft III tournament, the final match came down to home favorite WE.Sky against WE.Remind from Korea in another hard-fought battle that saw WE.Sky claim the title and the Chinese fans erupt into frenzy. Last year’s runner up, SK.apm70 from Russia took third place.