LU Live 2011: Quest for Victory!

Posted on November 11th, 2011 by Colocoy

Finally it’s time for one of the most awaited gaming event in the Philippines, Level Up! Live! It was held last November 5, 2011 at the World Trade Center at Pasay City. Unlike its previous 2-day incarnations, this year’s LU! Live was a one-day event. My favorite part of this event is the very very cheap entrance fee — just present an unused 50php Level Up load card and get a passport for the whole event, with a chance to win in the raffle and a door prize of your desired Level Up! game.

As early as 7 am (or probably earlier), you can already see a long line of players outside the venue. At 8, players started to flow inside the main hall. The event started with the National Anthem of the Philippines followed by some interesting choreograph with some circus act performances to give that festival feeling. The president of Playwebs Games, Mr. Ben Colayco, gave a speech that I personally like and then followed a hot introduction number.

One noticeable change in the event is a smaller LU City area, where different guilds of different games puts up some booths to sell some goodies, compared to last year. Despite that, the guilds showed their creativity by dressing up their booths very nicely.

A booth created by a Flyff guild.

A community area was prepared where different community managers of each LU game held fun and exciting activities. Some of these are the Map Craze from Grand Chase, where teams compete to finish a puzzle of Grand Chase’s world map, Pera o Lalaki (Babae) for Rohan Online (similar to Pera o Bayong), and Peco-Peco Poring from Ragnarok Online (similar to Hep Hep Hurray). There are also side event booths for different games like the Grand Chase’ Jousting Booth and Rohan’s Slot machine booth (unfortunately, I didn’t manage to try them out Q.Q).

Grand Chase's Map Craze

LU Live wouldn’t be complete without the tournament finals for Level Up’s games, but for this year there were no tournaments for FlyFF and Crazy Kart. As expected, the gaming equipment and networking were well maintained for this big event. It did fail once during the Grand Chase match, resulting in disconnection before the match fully loaded. Good thing it didn’t happen during the match itself. Three huge screens at the main stage, plus 2 more at the middle of the venue, were installed to ensure that the attendees can have a good view of the matches. I also like the idea of inviting some players as commentators for the matches, though some of them were not prepared to provide color commentary, which gave a lot of dead air. I was also amazed that they managed to keep the tournaments on schedule, I salute the the organizers for that.

Chasers Kira and Michelle as commentators for Grand Chase Digmaan

As with game conventions, they also showed some trailers of the upcoming patches of their games; Ley, the 13th character of Grand Chase; Earthguards, a new race and classes for Perfect World; and Kagero and Oboro, the advancement jobs for the ninja class in Ragnarok Online. And of course, the announcement of Level Up’s new game, “Bounty Hounds”.

Level Up also held some creative competitions and awarded the winners during the event. Some examples of the contests were the fan art contest, the video making contest (which were shown about five times during the event, ugh…), headgear making contest and of course everybody’s favorite, the cosplay competition which were hosted by the DJs of Yes FM.

Even though the event lasted for only a day, Level Up managed to finish the everything on time. Yeah, it WAS very tiring but fun at the same time. In my opinion, the event was a success! However, I think it would be better if the event was held on a Sunday since most of players have school / work during this day. Still, I had a great time and will be expecting a better one for 2012.

OH YEAH!

Finally, there are two things I want to point out:

First, there were so many people raging about the baggage counter, mostly claiming that it took a really long time retrieving their items. To be honest, please be grateful that there is even a baggage counter! Why? Well, the World Trade Center is very known for its very very very very very (I’m not kidding) strict security. The security won’t let you pass if you have pointed objects such as ballpens or pencils, umbrellas, and flammable materials like perfume. From the previous events, the security will just put it on the floor and won’t care who picks it up. I think it would also be better if the Level Up management warned the players about the tight security before the event itself.

Second.. okay for this one you may call me “kill joy”, but I want to voice out my opinion. Level Up Live is a gaming event and I know that one of its events is a cosplay competition. But why the heck would someone suddenly go as Tobi (from Naruto)? And the fun part, not just one Tobi came, but THREE!. And I’m not just pertaining to the Tobi cosplayers but also the other people who cosplayed characters totally unrelated to any Level Up games. I mean… come on guys, LU Live is a gaming event and not your ordinary cosplay competition. Don’t you feel out of place at all? =/