Major League Gaming in Raleigh, NC

Posted by Lipton on August 28th, 2010 filed in StarCraft News

I am writing this blog from Shanghai, China （上海，中国）just arriving a few days ago.  So I have taken a couple of weeks break from SC2 due to the move.  I am still in the process of building a new computer from Newegg.com.cn because I had to leave my computer behind.  That's right, NewEgg is officially in China!!!!! 



So while I wait for the computer components to come in, I am excited to watch the Major League Gaming SC2 tournament in Raleigh, NC.  It's ironic but I just moved away from the area (too bad we didn't wait a couple of weeks).  So since I can't be there in person, I can watch it live via streaming.  Right now I am watching via the "low res" option because my internet connection is only 512Mb down (should be upgrading my China Telecom connection in a few days to 2Mb unless I can find an ISP that offers higher download speeds).  The $10 MLG charges for the High Quality is probably worth it plus it supports the very professional presentation (as described below).



Major League Gaming is a circuit which a few e-sports games are chosen for a given season.  This year, Halo 3, Super Smash Brothers, Tekken 6, World of Warcraft, and StarCraft 2 are the games included in the circuit.  Players specialize in only 1 game (due to multiple different games are usually played at the same time).  Players accumulate points for each tournament they play if they place in the top 16.  For the Raleigh tournament, the top 8 StarCraft players get prize money with $2000 USD for the winner all the way down to $200 for the 8th place player.  So there is decent incentive to place.  At the end of the season, the player with the most points wins (think Nascar).



This weekend, SC2 is featured in the tournament starting on Friday (August 27th) and ending on Saturday.  The event is being held LIVE down town in Raleigh (if your lucky enough to physically be there) and also online through the MLG web site.  My favorite SC2 casters are all there including HD, Husky, and Day[9] (shown in the screenshots above).  So far, I think the casters have been doing a great job staying focused on SC2 and able to fill airtime between games well. 



In order to watch these great casters and awesome games, MLG's web site requires an Octoshape plugin.  The plugin is only available for Windows and Mac so it looks like us Ubuntu folks are out of the loop.  Right now, I am using the Mac version (see screenshots) because I don't have a desktop machine yet and borrowing a friends laptop (waiting on parts to build a new kick ass Ubuntu machine --- blog in the near future about it). 

I have been thinking about how to install the plugin in Ubuntu, and the answer I came up with is to use IE6 or IE7 in PlayOnLinux.  PlayOnLinux makes it easy to install by having IE in its database (so either click on the Internet tab in find games or do a search for IE).  Once IE is installed, go to the MLG web site and click on the StarCraft 2 tab.  Hopefully your stream will start and you'll be happily watching some SC2 action!

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