Thanks from T90Official

Hey everyone!

Gamescom was an incredible experience for me. I'd like to thank everyone who has been involved in these events leading up to gamescom, everyone who made the trip out to the meetups, everyone who has been a part of the community. Without all of your collective dedication to being a fan of the game, we wouldn't have had this opportunity. In fact, I'd argue the Age franchise would have been left to rot if not for the AoE2 community, and now we have some big changes to come.

Personally, I began creating content two years ago because I loved the game and thought it would be a good time. I genuinely never expected or thought things would have come so far in 2 years. It's truly insane. I never really had a passion or goal to work towards in my life, and now I have found a passion in casting. Thank you for that. I have worked really hard to get where I am today but the community has inspired me to do so. While Age of Empires 2 is the best game ever, it wouldn't be near as good if not for the community. In two years I've gone through a lot of stages. I still remember... September of 2015 ZeroEmpires hosted me and I was soo happy. I was freaking out, I had maybe 10-15 viewers before his 500 viewer host. Fast forward and two years later I'm working with him and other great people in Germany at Gamescom. It went from me being freaked out by a WololoRaid to casting at Gamescom in two years. That's not the type of progression one should ever expect and it happened. It's mind blowing stuff, and I credit the community for it. From the top down everyone is incredible.

I was only in Cologne for a few days but every moment was memorable for me. Thursday night I met the amazing people behind FE, many important people in the MS community, alongside Zero, Killerb, Nili, Shine, Robo, TheViper. It was surreal sitting next to the best player in the world, and all the other casters/admins i have worked with for so long. My personal favorite memory from the night was the conversation with Nili and Shine, two guys who have played together since the early 2000's and reminised on dozens of amazing memories. Friday Nili and I did a stream on Mixer which was really unexpected for me. We sat there for two hours and presented the game to many new faces and did a hell of a job. I was expecting to be nervous but once the cameras were on I was pretty focused and calm. Later on that day was the Cologne Meetup. There we so many people there! It was a blast. Amazing people, amazing conversation, great fun and many laughs. I got to meet people I've only seen in Twitch chats, only talked to on discord etc. It was awesome meeting every one of you.

Gamescom was something else. WE ESPORTS NOW BOYS! Seriously, 6k prizepool, players flown out to the event. All the equipment there dedicated to an AoE2 Cup. Hell yeah! Again, truly something special for our game. There are so many variables going into an event like that. It could have been so easy for a stream to not function properly, for the actual event to go wrong. All in all there were relatively minor issues, and the team handled it. When the stream went live Zak and I looked at each other in relief and after that things continued to go smoothly. Thousands of new faces saw the game during the event, during the stream, during the events in the week leading up to it. I couldn't have been more pleased. Every caster did a great job, the games were incredible from the players. The crowd stayed strong to watch til the very end. I was exhausted and sick but I completely forgot about it because of all these factors. Thank you all.

Special shout outs to the casting crew. For many of us that was the first time casting in such an arena and we did a great job considering. This includes Zak as a host before and after. Shout out to Zak and Robo for being badass admins, the work that is never seen nor appreciated by everyone enjoying the show. Zak's hard work for years in esports gave us this opportunity, Robo flew here from aussie land and didn't miss a beat. Shout out to the players for being good sports. There are plenty of expert gamers in other games that are complete jerks but you four were top class individuals on top of players.

Truthfully I'm overwhelmed with emotion and exhaustion after the entire trip. I'll try to get something out in video form next week if I can. Much love guys! Woo Woo