Liefje was selected to compete in the Alienware Backpacking challenge. She will travel all over Europe and write blogs about it. The challenge has started some days ago at ESWC. There are already a lot of nice content up in Liefje’s blog, such as video interviews and photos from ESWC. Head over to her blog to check it out: http://livia.alienwarechallenge.com/

About Alienware Backpacking challenge (text from AlienWare challenge website)

The Alienware Backpacking Challenge sees four gamers enjoy the opportunity of a lifetime, travelling all over the continent, blogging their way over mountains and seas, crossing borders and time zones, trying to prove just how talented they are.

The competition will kick off at the Electronic Sports World Cup, this year held in Disneyland Paris, on June 30th, and conclude at GamesCom, an event held annually in Cologne, on August 20th.

Last weeks I’ve been MIA. My computer bluescreened without reason and refused to start again. Ever since I haven’t been online much at all. Today I picked up a new motherboard and hopefully I will get my computer up and running again in a few days. Cya then!

Many of you, hardcore gamers, will probably think this is a stupid title for a blog entry, since we are all gamers,and we all know how it is to play a lot! But I’m writing it for a different reason. Let’s reformulate the question: “What it is like to REALLY play all day long?”

Probably not many people out there knows that I’m living in Germany again. It was a while ago since I moved to Bremen, had my own story over there and finally (around three years ago), I decided to go back to Spain. Before my move to Bremen, I was radio moderator but the day I was back I felt like doing something different and so I’ve been working in different places. One of my favourite jobs was at schools. Never thought I would like teaching that much. I enjoyed every minute with the kids and at the end they’ve teached me a lot more. They were my energy, my day by day, my reason to move. Actually it was a way of rediscovering life. I know it sounds crazy but it did provoque a change on me in a very positive way. My main goal was to become a better professional, do courses, study another degree, etc. But you never know what will destiny bring next…

I’ve never seen myself growing in a traditional way. That means… I’m not the kind of girl that goes to school, then to university, then starts a relation, gets a work, then gets married, gets a better work, have babies and that’s it forever. I think life is too short to just follow the path everyone follows. That’s absolutly boring and there’s surelly much more to discover in that very short time we all have. So, because of that, I’m always ready for new challenges, always learning new things, enjoying different places and discovering new feelings…

It was April this year and I decided to use my 10 days of vacation somewhere else. Yea I know, teaching is nice but can also burn you down hehe I so needed a break from the classes so I bought a flight to Germany. I was supposed to go for a bootcamp but at the end the whole thing got cancelled and I just met a friend. I’ve never been in Frankfurt before so I was sure it was going to be fun. I really had a good time but two days before flying back to Spain, I had a talk with an old friend. He was a top Quake player in Spain years ago and suddenly he was there, talking to me again. We didn’t speak for the last 5 years at least, but I knew he was living and working in Germany. After our short talk, he told me he was actually working in Frankfurt and I told him we could maybe meet. At the same time he told me that where he was working, they were looking for a native Spanish employee and that I could apply. My first answer was like “are you kidding?” but after a while he told me that why not? why not giving it a try? I could just do the interview and the language test and then I could think about it. Of course I didn’t expect taking that serious but I thought it was a cool idea to have an interview in Germany for such a big company like Nintendo.

… TO BE CONTINUED …

Last week I had the pleasure to try commentating for the first time, where I went into the ESL TV studios to “help” commentate some ESL Quake Live community thing. It was a lot of fun and I was glad to try shoutcasting for the first time.

The event was where Alpha team ESL would take on any members of the community in different gametypes. The team was:
James “2gd” Harding
Mikael “PURRI” Tarvainen
Michael “Carmac” Blicharz
Joe “Joe” Miller

So it was a mix of skill levels and I guess just a fun night for everyone. If you want to watch the VOD, you can do so here: http://tv.esl.eu/de/vod/view/21539

Enjoy!

Right now Liefje is attending GamesCon and the Intel Extreme Masters Pro/Am Challenge in Cologne. A lot of top players are attending the tournament and if you want to see what the Quake tournament area looks like you can watch the video below made by rakaka. The video is in Swedish though, but there are not  much talking done anyway. And be sure not to miss the best parts in the video. At 1.25 and at 2.50 you will see Liefje playing! I have no idea what that Captain Blood hat is doing on her monitor, you’ll have to ask her about that.

This summer ClanBase has hosted QuakeLive 1v1 tournament. Now it’s coming to an end and I’ve managed to take the 3rd place in league 4. To see my opponents and results you can head over to my profile at ClanBase.

This week I will most likely spend my time playing another game than QuakeLive. Liefje is playing Nintendo DS and when I visited her last month I tried hers. I liked it and now I’ve ordered one for myself. It should get here any day now.

Friday I played an ESL 1v1 game in the EU ladder and after winning I’m now number seven in the ladder.

My plan for this weekend was to play a lot of QuakeLive, but after the ESL game something else came between: Tower defense! I often don’t like strategy games that much, but every now and then I play tower defense shockwave games. This time I got hooked on GemCraft.

When completing a level you unlock more levels on a map. If you get a lot of scores on a level you will get glowing frame and that might unlock hidden levels. So not only do you want to finish all levels,  you also want to get glowing frames. You will also level up and get points to place on different abilities to improve your skill.

Do you have any other favorite tower defense shockwave games, please let me know.

Also, the GIGABYTE gaming girl contest is going on until the end of July, so there is still time to vote. Read more about it in the post below.

I’m in a Swedish competition called GIGABYTE gaming girl. Whoever wins will be like an ambassador and also win nice hardware prizes. Community votes decides who will win. If you want to support me you can head over to http://event.gigabyte.se/gaminggirl/vote.php and click “ROSTA” under my pic. Then you fill in your name, email, phone and where you heard about the competition. They need your details, since some of the voters will get hardware prizes too.

I’m playing in the ClanBase 1v1 cup and I managed to finish first in my group. Today I played the first game in the playoffs. I had to face fabe and I was a bit nervous since I’ve played him in a previous tournamnet and lost. Today we had really even games. We had to play three maps and it went to overtime on all three maps. I must confess I was a bit shakey after the third map was over. It could have gone either way and it is always frustrating losing by just one frag… But this day was my day and I won, now I’m at least top 8. You can download the demos from these intense games here: trito vs fabe CB playoff

And here are some screenshots:

As we wrote earlier we have 4 wins and 1 loss in our group in ESL CA Cup. Now the rest of the teams have played their games and it turns out two of the other teams also have 4 wins and 1 loss. We are three teams with the same score now, but we are coming 3rd because of the round difference. You can see the final ranking of our group below. Even if we didn’t pass the group I am happy with the individual match results. It is not too bad to only lose one game in total. GL to all the teams in the playoffs and I hope to see you in the next cup. We will be back!!!