TI was a semi letdown this year. I attended. Things that improved, Visible week long beer garden, Red Bull Lan Center (even though I never spent much time in there it was fun), the official after party went till 3 am. Things that were a let down. Less talent, less segments, staff at the key arena were downright rude this year with random areas taped off on the grounds, The panel seemed cramped (why not give them chairs and spread it out a little bit) and less stuff to do at the event (no VR experience), and the gift bags were CHEAP compared to ti6. I really hope someone writes a long post on reddit about this, alot of personalities i talked to felt the same but are scared to say anything because this is their bread and butter.
It's funny how you can tell everyone is having fun and being comfortable while also being professional and talking about DotA. Then when you move over to Day 9 everything just dies.
ami miftahul YES, I don't understand the hate PPD gets, he was one of the best talent people this year. I think it was overall great, but could use some improvements. The gameplay was awesome, though most of the upper bracket and final was underwhelming. Some performances were truly fantastic, while the Chinese 2-0s left some things to be desired. I think that Valve is just trying to make TI as good, and official, as possible as it is just realizing that this is going to be a big thing for at least a few more years to come.
We didn't have much fun because Valve thought only analysts and some players are enough to salvage the panel, and poor Day9 had to work with them. I'll admit PPD was a savior, but people like PFlax and Shane were literally keeping it afloat last year.
Nice, shout out to Donnie from Pvgna, the dude who burned everyone by telling them to go back to League if they didn't show up to watch TI. Glad he was there, didn't catch him on the livestream
Bro, where are you? Man, I need your Magical Moments of TI, this is the last one you got, I'm so sad. :(, hope you doing well. I'm revisiting all your magical moments of TI. Hopefully we can get an 8,9,10 XD