This was my first time attending The International, but I've watched several online in the past, and I've attended the ESL One New York in 2015, so I had some expectations about the tournament and its surroundings.
The tournament format for the three-day week-end felt a little lopsided, with 4 series played on Friday and Saturday, but only 2 on Sunday. Series were constantly behind schedule, and on Saturday the schedule was only salvaged thanks to the incredibly quick performance of one of the team in the last series which concluded faster than expected.
On Sunday, the schedule allowed for a 5-game series Grand Finals, but it ended up being only 3 relatively short games. This isn't the organizer's fault, of course, but it felt like the side show had been reduced to a minimum. A quick cosplay contest, three short films played back to back, and that was it. No show match (all-stars, OpenAI, with members of the public...) and the activities in the concourse were also few and far between. Not that there was much time to enjoy them anyway with series succeeding at breakneck speed.
All of this wouldn't have been too bad if it hadn't been for the extraordinary high ticket price for this event, about 2-3 times the price of earlier years. Not a good impression for my first time.