On the 31st I got up bright and early to meet my teammate Exo for the Monster Hunter Wilds Taiwan Championship! I'll be honest - the organizers were not very well-organized and we received information bit by bit rather than all at once. We didn't even know we had to check-in between 8-10AM until a few days before the event.
In addition, they doxxed our emails to the whole email list by using CC instead of BCC when sending out the initial notification. This also led to multiple people responding to the incorrect person when confirming their participation.
I did call the organizers to express displeasure at the doxxing, and they sent an email claiming there'd been a "problem with BCC" which sounds like a lie to me, to be honest. If the email system was down, they would not have been able to send the email in the first place. If regular emailing was available but BCC was not, they should have sent each email individually rather than doxxing everybody's emails (and legal names, if they had their real name on their profile. Fortunately I used my creator email so mine only said "Sparklewolfie")
Despite that fiasco, the day of the event went pretty smoothly. We checked it around 9:30 and got a pass to go to 5F to queue for our group number.
Since our group didn't need to be there until afternoon, we went to see the main Taipei Game Show place first with our friends!
We looked around the Indie Games area first, though I did snap a photo of the Bugcat Capoo booth too!
Capoo also had a merch shop! It's largely the same as the merch shop in Ximending so we didn't really need to browse it.
Also there was randomly an indomie booth? I guess it's a cheap and delicious noodle that is popular with gamers, after all!
Most of the bigger booths were mobile games, so I didn't recognize them! The Nintendo booth didn't have much that I was interested in either, and the Capcom booth was really promoting their other games that I don't play (such as Resident Evil).
I guess I actually mostly took video this time, and I don't know how to embed those! So there aren't that many photos.
No idea what this game is, but the cabbage hair bird is cute!
The indie games often had little stickers, postcards, etc. you could get by following their socials or playing their demo!
There was a Couch Detective game I wanted to try, but somebody else was playing when I passed so I didn't get a chance.
No idea what this is either, but the characters are cute!
Back at TGS Exo and I didn't get too much time to browse around before we had to go back to the Championship room to wait our turn. It was about a half-hour wait. They had nice art and design pieces hanging on the walls so we had stuff to look at while waiting.
The livestream (Capcom Asia Youtube) was also playing on a projector, and we saw a team get a time of 2'10" live! They were in the group before ours. Very practiced and professional! Turns out one of them is a YouTuber and several of his fans were there to watch. His partner was a much younger university student, and they met online through YouTube and decided to join this championship! They made the top six😻
I love endemic life
While waiting, I saw a lady in the group after ours with the Mizutsune armor hoodie!!! But I was too shy to ask her for a photo 😿 I wanted that hoodie but it was too expensive. Happy to see it in person 😻
The staff did ask Exo and I if we wanted to play at the "streamer table" so we'd be on the livestream and get an interview afterward, but we declined. I was definitely far too scared!!
We were given 3 minutes to adjust settings, 1 minute to practice, and 8 minutes to compete. I was unable to figure out what settings to change as I don't recall what settings I changed on my own game, and during the 1 minute practice I realized that I was encountering a problem where I couldn't even enter the Arena properly. My chocobo would just run at the ledge without jumping down???
Then during the real run, the same thing happened again, I tried jumping, but simple dismounted, so I had a very slow start. Then I kept missing the first monster, Lala Barina, so it was not a good run at all! The second monster, Yian Kut-ku, went all right I think. We ended up with an official time of 4'09"19 which is still A rank, but not anywhere near top six.
Just as well because the finals is speedrunning a Gore Magala, plus Exo had work the next day so even if by some miracle we'd made top six, we would have had to drop out 😹
Once we got back to TGS, I met up with Xerenite and we walked around to look at the booths. We actually play quite different games on stream! She was really into this Elden Ring statue:
I didn't get as many photos of official cosplayers as I would have liked. The crowds were too dense!! This Fatal Frame coser was cute though~ She did a fake chase-and-attack at us!
Capcom booth also had this awesome statue for Monster Hunter Stories 3! I don't play the Stories series, but some of the baby monsters look so adorable!
Hoyo had rather big exhibits for their games too. I can't keep track of which game is which, to be honest. I think this one is Zenless Zone Zero?
Xerenite and I got asked for photos by some photographers while we were waiting to regroup with everybody else. At first I was very suspicious as it was a group of three, but they had legit Instagram accounts and really seemed to know what they were doing. Apparently, they do event photography! It was much nicer than the random with the DSLR who straight up came up to me at the start of the event (I was talking to my friends and we were standing in a semi-circle), very clearly took a photo of me, and then walked off ?????? Like... didn't ask for a photo, didn't say anything afterwards if he was looking for candid photos (usually candid photographers will come up after to show you the photo and ask if it's ok or should be deleted), and was extremely obvious about it??
One of the photographers from the group also brought a photo printer so he was able to print out photos for Xerenite and me on the spot! I guess digital printers still have advantage over the Printoss machine I got as they print bright, clear photos easily. Mine is often too dark or out of focus or something as it's a photo of my camera screen, and requires a flat surface to place it on when taking the photo.
We stayed until the event ended, and then walked around the Lalaport department store next door until it was time to go to our dinner reservation!
It was an Arabic(?) buffet! I LOVED the veggies but I think they were rather rich in cream or other fats. My intestines didn't like that as much. But I think as a rare treat it's ok!! The saffron ice cream is also amazing.
It was a very long, exhausting, and fun day! I'm just happy I got my participation prizes from the Champion ship! There's an exclusive sports towel, a little pouch with Wilds monster icons (I'm putting my Posca pens in it), and an in-game code for an exclusive Poogie charm!
Have you ever joined a video game challenge in real life? This was my first time, and while some things could definitely have been improved, it was still a good experience overall.
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