wG EU has been willing to play and self fund our way to an NA lan since the inception of the team. We would probably still run a fundraiser to reduce costs but would attend the event no matter what. I've kind of wanted to post about this for a while but have put it off so that our team doesn't get blacklisted from future events, but I really don't care anymore.
Just to give some background for people that don't know, Toemas, Domo and I have been playing in the top of EU since 2019 and were suppose to attend BTS together until the event got nuked, of course covid happened and that took about 2 years out of the timeline. But still you get an idea of how long we have wanted to play an NA event.
Skipping forward to wG EU being formed in 2022 April / June, our entire goal was to put some time in together (so we aren't bad) and then play an NA LAN to see how we do and for the general experience of the event. So our plan was to play the ETF2L season before i69 and i69 as preparation. Of course, FROYO ended up attending i69 which was a great experience for us to play vs an NA team and made the LAN a lot more hype since intercontinental competition is the peak of TF2. We didn't play the most inspiring TF2 at that event but we only had 3 months to prepare with half of the team never playing with each other before, so in general we were quite happy to push FROYO considering we were a very new team. I actually think the way we played might have put off TO from inviting us to future events.
After i69 we were very excited to keep putting work in and getting better hoping for the chance to play an NA event in the near future, there were talks of early 2023. One of the best things about being sponsored by Witness was that he was from NA and was able to communicate for us to come to NA and help us get there. In January I booked a trip to Asia with some friends for September 2023 (thinking there is no way it will take 9 months for an NA event to come up). In early 2023 we realise this rumoured event wasn't going to happen until much later. So we spoke to Witness saying tell them, we will come to any event in the future self funded, we just cant make September because I'm away. Bare in mind, this was communicated around March 2023, so plenty of time to prepare and arrange an event where we can attend.
Anyway the TO decides to arrange to event for September 2023 knowing that would stop us from coming, even though they had around 6 months warning of this. We were told the TO was busy in October, and that in November and December are completely off limits since all of America is on holiday, and a TF2 event is impossible for those months. This was super frustrating for us since we love playing LAN's and want to attend as many as possible (we played all EU LAN's possible since forming). This is pretty much the reason we aren't playing TF2 at the moment, since it doesn't feel possible to attend an intercontinental event, even when we have a sponsor who is from NA and helps run those LAN's cant get us there.
There are other NA LAN's but these are RGL, and of course we can't play at these since it's RGL playoffs. We thought about the idea of playing RGL and scheduling matches early, but its just not realistic.
My honest opinion is that a player shouldn't be the TO of a LAN. There are just so many conflicts of interest and it really puts a cloud on the competitive integrity of the event. Does this happen in any other scene? even grassroots esports? After taking some time to think about this situation, I think maybe the reason the TO didn't want us at the event is because of playstyle is boring and I guess that makes a bad product for the viewing of the LAN. I feel like we created some exciting games at RCADIA and POLAND though. I really don't think its a competition thing, I know that most top NA teams think wG EU is around the 3rd-4th-5th-6th place mark in NA.
Maybe this is a very self centered take on the situation, I'm not sure how it looks from the outside. But it just feels crazy how insanely hard it has been to attend an NA LAN when we can fully fund our trip, since August 2022. I have always loved the intercontinental LAN's I have played in previously (i63, i65, i69) and I just really think it's a shame the community doesn't get to see these events. i52 and i55 were literally the reason I started playing this game, and I'm pretty sure those events get the largest viewership and could attract some newer players.
But yeah its just frustrating to see people post on the forum about how its too expensive and no one is willing to go, when that clearly isn't the case for us.