Written by Nostra

The battle begin

Day 1

Where should I begin? This is on the edge of insanity! No event is near The Gathering in Norway that´s for sure. As on oldschool LAN addict with a record way above 100 I can´t compare it to anything in the world. Most of the guys around the globe will say "- What about Dreamhack?" and yes I can agree that there are some simularities like 5000+ people in an enormous arena but there it ends in my opinion.

The Gathering really live up to the name "Party!" and you see everything from a regular guy to your worst nightmare but everyone has one thing in common, COMPUTERS. This is not really an event for gamers and you´ll get the explanation with some pictures below. This is definitly the most noisy event in the world but I love it. Never have I seen so much entusiastic people putting so much effort building there own spot.

EVERYTHING is allowed here and that´s a funny part of The Gathering but of course for some guys it´s disturbing like hell but those people you actually don´t find here.

A few minutes ago I took a sightseeing around the arena and it´s just pure insanity. People have more or less brought their own, their neighbours and probably even their friends and parents speakers here. And guess what everyone is playing with maximum volume and nobody cares because the guy behind has even bigger speakers.

This is the first day on this monstruous event and we´ll don´t see much games at all today and the sign-up procedure for Counter-Strike is 22:30 CET. Sad to mention is that LUq is sick and staying in bed at the hotel but seems like he´ll arrive today.

Stay Tuned for more crazy stuff from the Gathering!

Day 2

Those of you who read my blog from yesterday saw that I´m very impressed by the event The Gathering 2008. But now it´s finally time for the games to begin and this is more or less a total chaos. The Gathering must be one of few in the world that play a tournament with more than 100 teams without having a schedule. 10:00 CET it was time for a team captain meeting to describe all the rules for the tournament though they only spoke in Norwegian that ment that we had nothing to do there even though everyone here knows that MYM.cs is here. But who cares when the rules are available in english on the website.

Wednesday 11:00 We´re supposed to play now but there´s noone answering our messages and when I´m reaching the game crew they say we just have to wait for a message on irc. Sure we can do that and we all understand there´s always some problems before the first game. But when the clock in 12:00 CET nothing is happening and let the waiting begin. When the time is 16:00 it´s finally time for our first game and the players join the server. After 10 minutes an admin arrives at our booth saying that we should not play that game and wait another hour.

Blind game, have you ever heard about that in Counter-Strike? While we´re waiting for our first game we do a show on the big stage and playing 2 vs 2 blind game. TaZ and Neo are playing with scarf over the head and are totally blind while LUq and kuben are telling them what to do, how to aim and plant/defuse the bomb. I have never had so much fun watching a Counter-Strike game and after a lot of problems and 30 minutes of laughing we win the game against two Norwegian guys with 6-4.

Time is now 20:00 CET and we´re heading to the city for a meal and after that it´s time for the Hotel. Hopefully the tournament will run smoother tomorrow.

Day 3

After three hour delay it´s time for the first game today!

The game just ended and we won comfortable with 16-2 but now it´s time for the good teams. We´ll now meet our old fellows prb and noLA with their team called cbteam. As I´ve mentioned before there´s no schedule at all in this tournament so it´s hard to say when we´re going to play but a wild guess is around 16:00 CET. So if you´re online connect to the HLTV for some real action from Norway!

MYM.cs ready for the winner bracket final after beating noLA and co with a total score of 16-8. Next match will be around 17:15 on the main stage at The Gathering and they are now preparing for the game. It´s unsure if there´ll be HLTV and I´ve to come back on that. The opponents now is the nr 1 ranked team in Norway called Simplicity

MYM in Grande Finale!

After beating Norways best team, Simpliciy with 16-4 on the main stage MYM.cs is ready for the grand final which take place 16:30 CET tomorrow. MYM.cs haven´t had any problems at all during the way to the final and it looks very good for the last game tomorrow. Now we´re packing our stuff and will leave The Gathering for today. See you all tomorrow and hope you enjoyed the games!

Day 4 - Grande Finale!

 MYM.cs vs  Gamewire
Time: 16:00 CET
Stream: Game-TV 

The tournament is finally over with a comfortable victory for MYM that only had to win one map for the gold medal. The map was de_inferno and MYM started out as terrorists after losing the knife round. In half-time the score was 11-4 and MYM only need 5 rounds which they took pretty easily and the final score was 16-4. Congratulations to the guys! Over and out from Papa Nostra

Quote from TaZ:

"Hello there, so here we are after The Gathering. Let me share some thoughts about the event! First of all it was biggest lan we've attended, lots of people, great atmosphere, in short NIIIICE! I also really liked the way the tournemnt was done, everything went smooth, the stage was awsome, same goes for the public! Thanks for the support guys! See you soon!"

Check out our gallery from The Gathering 2008, Norway!

The Gathering - Part 1
The Gathering - Part 2
The Gathering - Part 3
The Gathering - Part 4