Gamepad Interactive: The Grand Launch

It was a pandemonium. It was cramped, but it was definitely fun.

M.A.T. Online's first big event, The Grand Launch, was held in SM North EDSA Annex, Cyberzone. Our call time was 8:00AM but I kinda overslept and arrived at around 9:30AM, and I have a perfectly good reason why I'm late! The night before, we stayed up until 5:00AM at the mall. We needed to make sure everything was okay, the net connection, the computers, stage shows, tournaments and everything else that happened in the event. Stonefree and Chicosci, check! Hosts Sam YG and Mia Bayuga, check! I was lucky to have three hours of sleep, most of us only had one, some didn't get any. xD

So, GM Gores was the first to arrive there since we didn't ask her to help during the ingress. Being a girl and all and her home area is not the kind of place you would wanna walk through alone at night, we decided that she should go home early and just get to the mall as early as possible. 10 of the computers were still missing monitor cables, -_-" we thought it would be replaced before the mall opens but it didn't. Too bad, more players would have been able to test out the game if it weren't for the missing monitor cables.

10:00AM, the mall opened, we were hoping that a lot of players would come but we didn't expect them to arrive that early! There were already like, 50 players lined up as early as 10:05AM! The bomb match tournament was filled up as early as 10:15AM and players were asking if they could still join. We had a talk about this during one of our meetings and we decided that if more players were to come, we would accommodate 16 teams instead of eight, so we did. Sniper match got full next and there were four kiddies team who joined. Unfortunately, the all girl tournament got dissolved because there were only two teams willing to join.

Sniper match started after Stonefree rocked the stage, it was around 12:30PM. Sorry if I can't remember the teams who joined but I do remember the first and second place winners. Check-in-joy got second place and was awarded five t-shirts! Cubao Sharpshooterz won and got P2,500 cash and five t-shirts. They were young but they were really good players! Next match was the bomb match tournament, we didn't get to finish it due to lack of time and conflict and schedules. Apologies to all who were inconvenienced :( details will be posted in the forums. Next was the north vs south championship between Complex Gaming and LAQS. This was the main event of the night and most of the people went around the teams to watch the epic battle between the north and the south. Both teams were good, they had a really solid team work, and they keep communications between them tight. Everyone knows what everyone is doing, it was really exciting to watch. I got to learn a few tricks on how to aim, where to aim and some good spots to defend thanks to them. It was a best of three bomb match and LAQS went home with P10,000 and five t-shirts!

We also did raffles and congrats to the luckiest kid of the event, the winner of the XBOX 360 with Halo: Reach! Everyone wanted that XBOX 360, even the employees of Gamepad Interactive wanted it, too bad we can't join the raffle. Well, congrats to Patrick! Hope you put that into good use and don't forget your studies or maybe if you could just give it to me... Just kidding.

The event ended at around 9:00PM, it was a huge success and gamers are happy and all the staff are happy even though we're too tired to celebrate. xD It was our first event and we would like to apologize for anyone we have disappointed. Don't worry, we know our mistakes and the strong points that we made during the event. Next event we will avoid those mistakes and improve on our strong points so that all of the gamers get what they deserve, the best.

Special thanks to AppleBerry for the company, without her, the event wouldn't be as much fun as it is.