Dreamhack is a very cool event. Dreamhack was very crowded and I got to see many of my friends from Scandinavia. The BYOC area was a grand show of extravagant systems ever. It was like driving down the strip in Las Vegas and taking in all the neon and glitz. When the lights finally went down this area became enchanting.
It looked like Hollywood on steroids. I never knew that there were so many LED colors and so many combinations. I wished that I had a good time-released camera to capture these incredible images in the dark for our readers. It’s truly amazing how technological and creative gamers have become. Mods rule!

For those of you who couldn’t make it to Jönköping for Dreamhack, here where my impressions. The city is small, but not too small, and set on Sweden’s largest lake, Lake Vänern, which is more like an inland sea. The weather was quite comfortable and we didn’t get much rain. The last two days were sunny and quite lovely, and on Sunday when the event was over many of us made it to the beach (no sand – just grass). The gaming facility, called Elmia exhibition center, was located in a large sports complex. It was quite large and comfortable for the over 6,500 players in attendance. The event ran 24 hours around the clock and players could take a break and sleep in a separate hall area. Not luxurious, but convenient and certainly priced right.

The security of the event and entire area was quite impressive. I believe that everyone felt quite safe and that their valued possessions (systems and gear) would not be ripped off. I did not hear of any theft and I must assume that this was much better than most other similar type of facilities.

The pro events were quite competitive and entertaining. Since the CPL Painkiller world tour event was situated directly adjacent to the Razer booth we were conveniently exposed to nearly all of the action. PK is amazingly fast action game. Having played a ton of Quake 2 in my time and having watched many Quake 3 and UT events over the last 4 years, there is nothing that can compare to PK in flat out speed. The matches for the most part were competitive and in the end Vo0 demonstrated why he is the best in the world by defeating my old friend Fatal1ty in the finals.

At the Razer booth we demonstrated the new Plasma mouse and across the hall G-TEK, one of our Scandinavian distributors, sold out all of the Razer mice
before the event was half over. They underestimated the demand for our products and couldn’t supply the demand.

Obviously Razer underestimated the demand for the Plasma product world-wide. If you recall from my previous blog, Plasma was intended to be a limited edition - a small celebration for selling one-half million Diamondback mice in the first 6 months and we only manufactured 50,000 for the world. For those who were fortunate enough to get Plasma hold on to yours as it will be a collector’s item in a few years. For the rest of you, there are still a few in some of the retail shops, but you are going to have to hunt and search to find one. Smart guys are already selling theirs for a profit on eBay. Oh well …

The good news is that there are still Diamondback Salamander (some call this red LED mouse Magna) and Chameleon mice. Both case colors are very popular (I saw one on about every third system in the BYOC area) and the performance is virtually the same as the infrared sensor Plasma mouse.

All-in-all it was a wonderful trip to one of my favorite countries and we plan to make this a regular stop for Razer in years to come. The event was well run and we were happy to be a small part of the fun. I even found time to visit my good friend Andreas and his lovely friend Hanna in Stockholm on my way back to the states. My personal thanks to all our friends and fans for your hospitality and for welcoming Razer to this great event. Sweden rocks!