TOP. 3. CONTROL. The famous self proclamation of micro mastery, Huk has now backed that up with a mountain of evidence, a mountain of slain opponents. It has been quite the week for Starcraft. I can always tell that it's been such a week when I'm perpetually tired from having stayed up, trying to accommodate 3 different time zones of Starcraft.
Over in KST, FXOpen made their GSTL debut vs StarTale. If' you've been watching their "big brother style" stream you will know they've got a good practice regimen going, learning a lot from both the Korean ladder and practice partners from some of the major Korean teams. FXO put up a pretty good showing especially considering they've only been there a short time, having to deal with still having to rank up some of their new accounts (some of which had been stuck on some of the lower leagues due to the placement system and promotions). I look forward to their next matches and hopefully some interesting "sup son?" celebrations.
Here in PST/EST Ascend and I did some casting from the TTesport Challenge, now in its championship bracket stage, as well as our weeky Top 200 Koth. There were also a lot of good games to tune in to from WCG New York, EG MC series, NASL Open, and some exciting developments related to the God Queen CombatEx (which should result in exciting future games... more info to come?).
However obviously the biggest news recently came from over in Europe from two of my favorite events to watch: DreamHack and HomeStoryCup. Both are known for their AMAZING production and exciting games, as well as their fantastic gamer atmosphere. The live elements of both really add to the viewer experience. This installation of DeamHack unfortunately didn't have as many player cam shots but the game play was out of this world. Huk vs July and Huk vs Moon were, in all honesty, some of the most enjoyable games I have ever witnessed. Huk played near perfectly vs the two Korean Zerg, powerhouses to bring us some truly high level games full of aggression, excitement, suspense, and skill. Huk's run was amazing to behold, something that is simply rare considering both the amount of balance (and imbalance? pvz?) at this current stage of the game. I am quite happy that a 'foreigner' has been able to reach this tier of skill, seemingly unattainable for all but the most gosu of Koreans. His hard work training closely with oGsMC and the rest of the players in KR has really started to pay off and become visible. After crushing Dreamhack, Huk went on to blast through the bracket of HomeStory ending in an exclamation point PvP game vs Dignitas's Naniwa. If you missed some of those games from either DH or HSC I definitely suggest checking out the VOD's. The commentary from both was great, especially from HSC where a lot of the players tried their hands at casting and brought some amazing insight and personality.
All in all a great week for being a Starcraft lover. I will leave you now with the Game 5 Vod from HSC3 Finals with MC helping cast.
We drove in, checked in at the guard station where they scanned our ID's and made sure we were on the visitor list and then parked in the ultra convenient visitor parking, just feet away from the iconic WoW orc statue. We snapped a few pictures of the statue and then walked into reception where a pretty receptionist had us sign in/ agree to an NDA. Right as you walk in you can tell its blizzard. There's a huge blizzard logo on the wall back lit with vibrant blue light... it felt like the first time I plopped in my Warcraft II cd and the Blizzard logo and lighting popped up on the screen to start the install. To our right was a hyper realistic, life size model of Nova, complete with real hair and a sick looking ghost rifle.
To the left was a blizzard museum essentially, a look at the history of blizzard, the various games, and the many award they've received for both excellent game design and for being one of the best places to work at (which we would soon see was completely justified). Right next to the artwork and figurines in the museum was the theater room, with 20 or so rows of some really comfortable chairs and a nice big screen for the projector. John explained that it gets completely packed when they do company Starcraft tournaments but that it is also used by many of the Campus's various clubs (yes blizzard is a campus and man they have some cool clubs). 
Throughout the campus there were tons of statues/figurines of various blizzard characters. The employees were also really friendly and we saw a lot of gamer/starcraft/warcraft t-shirts on people we passed by. We were shown the blizzard campus gym and got a glimpse of their outdoor volleyball court.
