Joakim Akterhall

Time for Epicenter!

May 6, 2016May 6, 2016 Akke

Epicenter starts in a couple of days so we are flying to Moscow tomorrow. We are arriving a bit earlier before the tournament starts to get used to the place and get some good practice. I’m really looking forward to this event because it seems like it’s gonna be very well handled – everything I’ve heard about the tournament has been good so far and it seems like they are aiming to keep the standard to a Major (hopefully not Shanghai-major standard hehe..) to be able to have one in the future. Will be interesting to see if they live up to my expectations!

As you can see on top bar under the header image there is a new page called “Bubble Pop Heroes”. It’s a mobile game that I’ve worked on together with some friends the past year from time to time whenever I’ve had time over. I decided to try to finish it after the Shanghai Major when we had a short break from practice so I got a lot done back then and after some more minor changes it was ready to be released earlier this week! I’ve been doing the programming and most of the design of the game and then my friends have helped out with the rest of the design, graphics, music and sound effects. It’s available for iPhone and Android – you can download it here!

Me and Bummi met up with EGM for lunch today and after that we went out to chill in the sun. The weather has been perfect the past few days in Sweden – warm enough to enjoy sunbathing but not too warm so you start sweating when you are outside. Hope the weather stays the same until I’m back in Sweden again..! 😀

We got a new scratching tree for Shiva and Midas today! As you can see in the picture below they both wanted to help us to put it together :).

Time to go to bed to get a good nights sleep before we travel tomorrow. Leaving quite early!

Cheers,
Akke

Dota2, General

Summary of the past week

April 30, 2016 Akke

Just got home from the cinema! Went to see The Jungle Book together with Bummi, Loda, EGM, Kelly and our friend Isaac. Really liked it, was one of the better movies we’ve seen lately so if you haven’t seen it yet and like movies like that you should go and watch it!

Was very happy when I found out we got invited to the Manila Major a couple of days ago. I’ve had some troubles sleeping when I knew the invites were about to come out, waking up in the middle of the night just to check my phone to see if the invites were announced.. 😀 I like (not biased at all here hehe) that they chose to invite 12 teams rather than keeping the old system with 8 invites since it was hard to say who should be invited over the other. Even though teams that has qualified through the qualifier has placed higher than many invited teams in the past I think it’s good that you are rewarded for competing in tournaments outside of the majors and that you get rewarded for being able to perform over a longer period of time instead of just playing good during one qualifier. I would really like to see a point system of some kind and for example after every major the points are reduced by half (making it easier for other teams to catch up to the next major). Winning a tournament should give you a lot more points than the other placements, like 100/30/15 points for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place. I think most players would agree with me that winning a tournament is so much harder than just placing decent in many since you have to perform throughout the whole tournament compared to just being able to win a game here and there.

Really looking forward to meet all the fans in Manila!

I really liked Valve’s decision to change the rules for the invites because it shows that they are willing to do what they think is fair and good for the current state of the teams and how the scene looks right now. I understand that they don’t want to go public with how the invites are handled and that having a point system could be bad in some ways because it basically remove Valve’s ability to adapt to how the state of the scene is. Personally I still favor a point system since it’s very clear how it works and when you know the rules you can’t really complain about it since all the cards are on the table. As it is right now we don’t really know what the best way to get invited to a major and TI is (which basically is every teams goal) and I guess that is what bothers some.

The Kickstarter for Animus Home is ending in two days (one of my friends are one of the guys behind it). Some of you might have seen my tweet that I did some time ago but for you who didn’t see it I got one of the early bird packs that they have available! They also released a new video a couple of days ago that got me hyped to get the product. They showed how you could have a funny quiz at home by just having their product and 3 smart lamps! I can see myself challenging my friends with some nerdy Dota-questions at home… ^^

Watching Bummi play some Dark Souls 3 right now while writing the blog post. We are both quite close to the end of the game, have had a lot of fun (mixed with anger and frustration while dying on bosses) playing so I’m very pleased with the game! Looking forward to finish it so I can start to watch some speedruns and see them killing the bosses in a couple of seconds that took me hours.. 😀

Cheers,
Akke

General

Dark Souls 3 & ESL Manila

April 20, 2016April 20, 2016 Akke

Last week just before we left for Starladder Dark Souls 3 was released in Sweden. I only had time to try it an hour since we were preparing for Starladder but I’ve played some more now after we got home and killed 4 bosses so far, really enjoy it! When I played Dark Souls 2 I choose to be a Mage (I always want to be a Mage if I can :D) so I thought I’d try something new this time. Have been playing as a Knight now and it’s more fun and challenging to play close-combat than to just run away and spam spells even though I liked that as well x).

Watching Bummi play right now. She is a bit further than me but really fun to watch and give each other tips on where to find things (even though Bummi seems to find almost everything but I’m too eager to get to the next bonfire so I miss a lot of items) and help each other out.

We are taking a couple of days break before we start to practice again so I’ve just been playing some pubs to keep up. My three favorite heroes in pubs are Phoenix, Oracle and Enchantress right now! 🙂

ESL Manila is starting soon, really looking forward to see the teams there play and especially Secret with their new roster. Quite hard to say who the favorite is, I think it’s very even between most teams there. But time will tell I guess :).

Cheers,
Akke