Introduction Day 1
When I first got back from Taipei I started reading through all the different forums and couldn't believe all the misinformation flying around. Rather than try to respond to all the different posts on all the different forums I thought it would be a good idea to put together a trip "diary" and provide some concrete information (at least from my own point of view).
First off I wanted to thank everyone at Anet and NCSoft for making the trip possible. I especially wanted to thank all the Anet people that treated us like royalty. I know I'll probably miss some names but I wanted to say thank you to Gaile, Tyler, Tommy, Alex, Izzy, Jeff, Mike and Mike and Pat plus the rest of the Anet staff. The trip greatly exceeded our expectations and was definitely an experience we'll remember for the rest of our lives.
iQ sent 9 guys total to Taipei with most of us flying out of different airports from across the country. Most of us met up at LAX in Los Angeles and met for the first time. Ensign and Eonwe were both on separate flights to Taipei but most of Te and iQ took the same flight from LAX to Taipei.
- Sarus -- Washington D.C.
- Scaphism -- Washington D.C.
- Ensign -- San Francisco
- Augie -- Wisconsin
- Eonwe (Hello Apollo, pp) -- New Jersey
- Zrave -- Brazil
- Pally -- California
- Ring King -- Iowa
- Rayne -- Iowa
The Plane Ride and Airport
The plane ride was mostly uneventful with the food being horrible as expected. I have a picture here just to gross people out.
It appears to be an omelet with a piece of sausage topped with some mystery red stuff. I ate the fruit. Apparently Pally enjoyed it though. Around lunchtime the flight attendant came by and asked if we wanted fish noodles or cold rice. We sort of did a double take since neither of those sounds even edible. After a little questioning we determined she was actually saying "pork rice" and not cold rice. We assumed of course she meant pork fried rice. Unfortunately, it turned out to be "rice with mystery meat on top".
We arrived in Taipei around 6 am and proceeded to the baggage claim where we were happy to learn that only 3 out of the 7 of us had our luggage missing. After reporting the missing luggage and being assured that they would send it to the hotel we made our way to the arrivals area where we met some of the Anet staff for the first time.
Being the showboat that he is Izzy decided to dazzle us with cartwheels while we waited for the bus to take us to the hotel.
The Hotel
We got to stay at the Grand Hyatt Taipei which is apparently the nicest hotel in Taiwan (as told to us by one of our cab drivers). I definitely would not argue with him on the point as the hotel was amazing. After checking into our rooms we ate some breakfast at the hotel restaurant and headed over to the game show taking place at the Taipei Convention Center right around the corner.
The Game Show
At around 10:30 am they had the opening ceremony which started off with girls dancing around in tennis outfits as part of the publicity for "SMASH STAR!!". Smash star is a tennis game with super moves much like Dragonball Z or something along those lines. Apparently Eonwe tried the game out and got destroyed by some little Taiwanese kid. The tennis dance number was pretty cute. It was the first dance routine we saw so we weren't yet numb to them. The dance routine was followed up by a line up of the NCSoft booth girls.
The NCSoft girls and tennis girls were follow up by some Lineage II cosplay! Personally, I thought these 3 girls were the hottest ones at the show but I'm sure everyone had their favorites. I'm a big fan of the girl in the blue outfit with the wand. If anyone from Anet is reading this and has her number/email please send me a PM. In addition, I would need someone to volunteer Korean language lessons so I could talk to her.
After the cosplay girls left the stage the president (or I think he was the president) of NCSoft gave a short talk in Korean which was translated into Chinese which was not translated into anything I could understand. My best guess is that his speech had something to do with how hot the cosplay girls were. The president of NCSoft was followed up by ... more cosplay!! This time it was Guildwars based cosplay with our favorite the ele and necro. The ele and necro were followed by a short speech by Jeff and Mike who are 2 of the 3 founders of Arena Net. It was pretty funny because they were handed these swords and weren't quite sure what to do with them so they started to duel on stage. The MC had to run over and tell them they were just supposed to just hold them in the air and look silly. Mike and Pat got back at us by making us pose and do a battle cry on stage while a film crew recorded it for future embarassment.
My second favorite girl at the show was definitely the MC ... well maybe the bunny girls were number two. I'll let you pick your own favorite. The bunny girls were part of another company's booth. The company actually had computer stations with red leather love seats. At each love seat there was a booth babe who would sit there and teach one lucky guy how to play the game. The bunny girls were there to escort the guys to their respective love seat. It sort of reminded me of a strip club except instead of lap dances you got video game instruction. What you can't see in the picture are about the 300 other guys standing behind me trying to get a picture of the bunny girls as well. Luckily I'm a big obnoxious American so I was able to get their attention and sneak in a good picture.
We spent most of the day at the game show and hotel eating food and eating more food. It pretty much seemed like every time we had nothing to do we were being offered to be fed. Later in the afternoon they had a performance by TANK who was supposedly a pop star but I wasn't convinced. He recorded a single for guild wars which he performed live. He then played some of the arena net staff (left to right: Gaile, Izzy, Tyler, Mike) in a 4v4 team arena match. Unfortunately, TANK seemed to be playing a tank (suprise, suprise) and got rolled.
After the match was over I noticed quite the commotion from the booth across from the NCSoft stage. When I turned around to see what the hell was going on I saw Pally up on stage yapping away into a mic with a giant crowd gathering to see what the white guy was talking about. The MC of the booth was all excited to have Pally up there drawing a crowd until Pally started yelling about Anet and pointing to the Guild Wars booth. She cut him short and kicked Pally off the stage after saying to the crowd, in English, "we must silence him". Seeing Pally get humiliated and kicked off stage prompted Scaph to of course, run up on to the stage as well. His excuse was "she looked at me."
After wandering around the NCSoft booth a bit, Scaph and I stopped in front of one of the Guild Wars stations. Almost immediately a booth girl came up and said "Hi" in English and then attempted to teach us how to play guild wars. We humored her for a bit and then Scaph attempted to explain we were actually quite good at the game already. She tried to speak in English the entire time which was really sweet. She ended up being the only booth girl that I actually said hello to each morning.
Taipei 101
After spending most of the day and afternoon at the game show we went on a tour of Taipei 101. Taipei 101 is the worlds tallest building. We headed over at night and went up to the observation deck. This is where I took some pictures with Evil. In the picture below from left to right are Bloodlight Eyes, Last of Master, Sarus and Dan Jang. I noticed some odd conspiracy threads where someone pointed out I was in a picture with both Evil and iQ *gasp*. Just to clarify I'm not in EviL. They said I wasn't Korean enough.
Dinner and Battle Planning
Following the tour of Taipei 101 we went to eat dinner at a Japanese restaurant called Wasabi. It was a high end buffet style restaurant that was actually quite good. A couple people were fooled by the "mashed potatoes" that were really potato salad. They'd come back to the table all excited that they found mashed potatoes only to take a bite and be like "Hey! these potatoes are cold!". Zrave was the first victim. By the time dinner was over we were starting to feel the effects of the jet lag and headed back to the hotel. We all went up to one of our rooms to discuss strategies for the match on Saturday. Unfortunately, we didn't come up with much since we had yet to see EviL and Val play. The brainstorming session turned into a comedy session with Zrave resorting to physical humor in the form of crazy arm gestures to refer to different skills.
Of course the first person to fall asleep during the brainstorming session was Pally. In the fine tradition of messing with people who fall asleep while you're still awake we decided to create a 3 part montage of Pally. If that doesn't turn you on then I don't know what does.
Moment of Zen
After the meeting everyone pretty much headed off to sleep. All in all the first day in Taipei was a blast. The girls were hot, the food was good, and the bed was comfy. I end this chapter with a few moments of zen.
~Sarus
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