EPT
So before I begin on my somewhat longwinded journey, I would like to preemptively take the time to answer two questions that may be in your minds:
So, yeah, we get it: 2000 posts. Why are you making this blog?
▲ So I originally was going to use this post to make a live report thread for tonight’s OSL Ro16 matches. However, Jalstar beat me to the punch so I’m going to content myself with this ^.^
Uh, why so zergling?
▲ I haven’t been a member for that long, though I believe I’ve been fairly active in contributing to this site (as well as sometimes spamming it a bit… >.>)
With that being said, let’s move on to the main story!
So I joined TL at the tail end of December, whilst enjoying my winter break at home. Previous to joining, like most members, I had been a bit of a lurker for some time. I’d frequent strategy threads here and there, watch a VOD of Boxer once in a while (since he was the only progamer I knew at the time), and every now and then at a few blogs. While teamliquid was a very nice site though, I refrained from joining for more than a year, knowing that I would end up spending way too much time on the site.
However, as time passed I felt an urge, a need, to register myself an account on the best Starcraft site I had found. Having perused other sites such as sc2gg and gosugamers, I would consistently find myself coming back to teamliquid whenever I needed any query about Starcraft answered. And so on the 29th of December, 2009, I created my teamliquid account with the same screen name I had been using ever since I first joined Battle.net as a fourth grader. Yes, the name derives from a Pokemon move. Don’t hate, ‘kay?
For the first couple weeks, I flittered around my new forum home, sampling everything. I watched my first streamed Proleague match late one night between Hwaseung OZ and MBCGame HERO, and enjoying it, stayed up all the way until 4:30 a.m. the next day to watch KT Rolster and SK Telecom T1 battle it out. I got a kick out of the Draw Your Way Across the Cliff thread and many other enjoyable ones. I toyed with the TLPD, looking up statistics for progamers, watching VOD matches. I went through Liquipedia excitedly, learning build orders, reading up on strategy. I began watching streams, such as Oystein’s and Chill’s, when there was no progaming going on. On the nights that I stayed up (which were often) for progamer matches, I would do live reporting, excitedly watching and commentating on siege tanks blow things up and Donglings tear through photon cannons (sorry Kal
). I remember watching the MSL grand finals between Flash and Jaedong, especially the part when the infamous power outage happened—I made such a commotion then that I thought I would wake my next door neighbors up. Unfortunately for me I had a debate tournament the next day. Arguing on no sleep might not be a good idea… oops >.>I found the TL Mafia forum, and started playing in Incognito’s TL Mafia XVI. For those of you that don’t know about this somewhat hidden subsection of teamliquid, I urge you to go check it out! Mafia is definitely amazing, and I’ve spent hundreds of hours since that game reading old games, watching ongoing games, and even hosting/co-hosting a few of my own.
At the start of February, wanting to contribute more to teamliquid, I began making live report threads. After my initial one, documenting Sea’s triumph in the 2010 survivor tournament, I began making a lot of the Winner’s League threads. My post count soared, due predominantly to live reporting but also because of mafia.
And then, in the middle of February, the SC2 bomb was dropped upon us. I was there, mouth agape with excitement, when the news announcing the arrival of the SC2 Beta was posted. Since then, I’ve watched countless streams of Starcraft 2, read the strategy, and watched the SC2 Liquipedia go up.
And now, as I sit here over spring break finishing this post, I’m watching Chill’s SC2 stream. Open on my computer are Youtube links with old matches, such as Jaedong versus fantasy in the 2009 Bacchus OSL. I listened to Day[9]’s #92 match commentary tonight. I’m reading the threads for two mafia games that I’m watching, and figuring out what to do in this current one that I’m playing. I frequent teamliquid.net more than any other site now, even more than tetrisfriends.com (I’m a huge tetris kid), and now when I start typing “te” into my searchbar, TL appears before TF.
But most importantly, I’m watching teamliquid.net grow. With the advent of SC2, more and more members have been joining this esteemed site, and now, do I fully realize why, the reason that I’m damn proud of being a member here.
To wind this up (hope it wasn’t too much of a hassle for those of you that read all of this
), I’d like to give some thanks:-Thanks to ]343[, my roommate, who introduced me to teamliquid.net and who still constantly and incredulously asks me just why I have so many posts already.
-Thanks to the Mafia people, especially Incognito, BloodyC0bbler, and Qatol (among others!), for helping me learn about and come to love the game of mafia.
-Thanks to the streamers—Mystlord, Roffles, konadora, and all the others that escape my memory right now—who allow me to watch my beloved progamer matches at all hours of the day or night, as well as all other streamers (BW and SC2) who let all of us watch and learn from them.
-Thanks to the translators—l10f, Lyriene, and others—who allow me to see, read, and understand more about the world of the professional Starcraft scene.
-Thanks to the live report thread makers, for keeping up and documenting all those matches that I personally cannot stay up to see.
-Thanks to nevake and Jon747, from where I watch a LOT of my VODs.
-Major thanks to the moderators and staff, for doing their jobs in keeping this place the best damn site ever.
-And lastly, and most importantly, thanks to you, a teamliquid member like myself, who has taken the time to read all of this.
And so, for the “tl;dr”ers out there: Long live Team Liquid!
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