Winbar, Murray-Mint and Saboo from team epic.LAN bring you more coverage of the world's biggest Digital Festival, Dreamhack Winter 2009. OVER 9,000 people are here enjoying a hardcore weekend of all things digital, combined with a real festival atmosphere.

Well after a very rough night on Wednesday in the hotel bar where Ique and Emore (organisers of the Dreamhack Game) decided to join us and select some Schnapps (when I say select some Schnapps, they conveniently switched to speaking in Swedish to the barmaid, to which we think they said "find something that will **** up these English guys' livers). Somehow our "nightcap" round between Winbar (epic) and Wizzo (MPUK) managed to exceed £100.

Anyway, after a very rough night of sleep with Murray-Mint and Cheez's pneumatic drill impressions, we awoke to the awesomeness that is the Scandic Elmia breakfast buffet, which had the very thankful effect of soaking up the previous night's alchomahol.

By the time we'd consumed a suitable quantity of continental breakfast it was time to finally check-in to the event! A (very) short stumble from the hotel, we entered the event and very quickly noticed some major improvements since the behind the scenes change of management for Dreamhack. Everything from checking in to arriving at the seat was very slick, and the movement of the main entrance to even closer to the hotel entrance was much appreciated.

The DreamExpo was double the size of previous years and the stage has moved to the other side of Hall D (the "fun" hall) where it has also doubled in size and epicness. The new main stage is amazing and something that would dwarf many major music events of this scale. The only annoyance for us is that we'd picked seats before the stage move was known about, so we have our backs to it.

For those Dreamhack noobs, the main event has constant music playing with lighting, laser shows, smoke machines and even live performances. Dreamhack calls itself a Digital Festival rather than a LAN party and it really does pick up that Festival atmosphere.

If people don't want to game then as well as the huge Expo (more on that tomorrow) there is the revamped Kreativ section which boasts a number of mini competitions which include music, graphic design, programming and a contest to write the most useless utility (we're currently trying to persuade Murray-Mint to code a piece of software to check if your PC is turned on and submit it to the contest).

So a few games of L4D2 later and it's time for the Dreamhack opening ceremony. Thousands of people crowd the stage as though there was some sort of A-List artist about to perform as the room is filled with smoke. This is time for the massive countdown to the start of the event which is shortly followed by an extremely loud and colourful laser show!

After the countdown the music is non-stop, mixed in with actual live stage performances from bands, the YouTube Super Mario drumming guy and many more events. (And you guys think the occasional playing of Gummi Bear is bad).

We did briefly leave the venue for some real food at what should have been the Swedish buffet, but recession had hit hard, so we had to settle for the normal menu + Merlot, all is good!

Now we're back in the hall and raving to another live music event, this time by Swedish Death Metal band Scar Symmetry.

More from us tomorrow!