Yesterday was undeniably the worst Gwent tournament VIEWING experience I have ever had. It was boring as hell and very hard to sit through. The games were, as always, very interesting, but watching 1 hours of game play and 5 hours of couple-of-people-simply-talking is simply bad. No offense to casters. They did fantastic job, hiding their annoyance and putting a smiling face and talk with same excitement. They should probably get double or triple the amount they initially negotiated. CDPR could have shown previous games from previous tournaments, at least that could have been fun. But simply putting the casters and the audience to such a hard time was very very bad.
I watched for 6.5 hours and slept since it was 2 AM for me. I was hoping and waiting for some leeks and it was supposed to be after Tailbot's game. I wanted to wait and see, but I was too sleepy when the game just became 1-1. Thank God I didn't wait. All we got was a single card art? That was all the leeks CDPR planned for day 1? CDPR should have given more respect to the viewers and gave some more leeks. I didn't care about the drops. All I cared was watching the games and looking forward to the leeks, but I must say I am thoroughly disappointed.
In the last open I believe the first day was an 8 hour long stream, with many 3-2 games and draws too. I saw the entire stream and never was bored a second. The discussions were short and sweet and the stream was mostly games. The truth is, there is no one to blame for the technical issues, since this is the first time CDPR is doing something like that. But they should have at least anticipated the issues and planned for "what is we are going to wait for hours between games? what should be the fillers? what are the leeks we should give to keep the viewers happy". Instead they went "just let the casters tell their personal stories or anything to fill the time and we will show one card art".
As much as I wanted to love and get excited about the tournament, I was left with a bad taste in my mouth due to poor contingency planning from CDPR. I am not even sure if I will get myself to watch the tournament today. I will definitely start watching, but if today is also full of shallow talks, less games, more technical issues and no leeks, I will probably turn off after an hour or so.