EPTI've been a lurker on this forum for several years now and I've finally decided to register and participate! Hopefully I'll be able to contribute something back to the community here after taking this site for granted for too long. So I'm going to quickly introduce myself and then recall my adventures in Starcraft and TL.
Incoming massive post...
My name's Tyler... I'm 21... and not very good at posting on forums at all. Just to get to this part has already taken too much time. I'm entering my 4th year at the University of Toronto and I study biochemistry, quite a lot of it. My entire life revolves around academia. Even this summer I'm working full time in a lab, taking summer school, and working part time as a tutor. However, even amongst all the papers and chemicals, there has always been time for SC (and other fun things).
I can remember my first time hearing about Starcraft. It was back in grade 4 and I remember some guys talking about the game. Photon cannons must have been awesome back then since I recall one of the guys always boasting how awesome they were. I haven't played the game yet, let alone even know what it looked like. Despite this, the game would always resurface every now and again in conversation with some people. I guess this is what you get when you have a terrible computer that cannot play any games.
It wouldn't be for another two years until I finally got around to playing the game.
My humble beginnings didn't start on the PC. In fact, my first time playing Starcraft was on the N64. Yup... I started on Starcraft 64 when a family friend rented the game and I happened to be over at his house. The game was awesome! I can remember my first games that we played. It was often on Triumvirate where we'd play 2v1 against the computer. Good thing it was an island map so all I had to do was surround my island with missile turrets and mass (ie. make around 10) BCs out of one starport... because making more than one production building was unheard of. Expanding was also unheard of. We'd only muster the resources to get workers off the island when we were mined out. Now that I think about it, I've come an extremely long way since those days.
My next step was downloading the demo for the PC. At this point, I finally had something that could run the game. Discovering the mouse & keyboard compared to the N64 controller was really an interesting experience. I had fun with the demo, but I was still a horrible newbie. I remember the 3rd mission where you had to defeat the zerg and one of the objectives was to keep Edmund Duke alive. So of course I made a bunker with marines and a few missile turrets around his tank in siege mode just to play it safe. I really didn't know anything haha.
But thanks to the demo, it was only a matter of time until I mustered up enough money and bought the battle chest. Probably one of the best investments I ever made.
Now I had all of battle.net open to myself and a few friends who still played. I convinced the friend who introduced me to the game to also get the PC version since it was the coolest thing back in grade 7. My experience was fairly typical of some kid who didn't understand anything about competitive Starcraft. It was either UMS maps or backstabbing in comp stomps on fastest. In hindsight, bsing was an awesome experience. Starcraft became a social experiment in those backstabbing fests. More often than not, it would be me and a friend and we'd try to win in 5v3, 6v2, and 7v1 comp stomps via bsing. Trying to convince people that some innocent kid was the backstabber and slowly weed out the competition (until we could take them on) made the game a ton of fun. It even got to the point where I'd have a tag on my name that said bser or something. My friend was always ftass since fatass was probably taken. Needless to say, it made the whole experience even more hilarious.
We'd keep this up for a while, but it would always fade away for some reason or another. Maybe a new game came out or we decided to go outside when the weather was nice. However, Starcraft always kept popping back up over time in my life.
It wasn't until late high school when I first encountered a korean game on youtube. My interest in Starcraft, namely the competitive scene, flew through the roof.
My first steps into the korean scene was thanks to the guys at SC2GG after a quick search on youtube. Their english commentaries made it possible for me to understand the basic principles of competitive SC. Hearing terms like 12 Hatch or 1 Gate Tech were completely foreign to me, but I eventually caught on after watching enough of their commentaries (especially the double and triples). It was definitely those guys who cemented my interest in the korean scene.
However, it would only be a matter of time before I found teamliquid.net...
When I first visited this site, probably to find more VODs, I was completely overwhelmed. I remember wandering into the tourneys section and being completely lost. Sure I could identify players and OSL/MSL/PL... but the level of detail in the LR and R&S (sadly, it took me a very long time to figure what R&S stood for) threads completely blew me away. Also started to read into the Final Edits and other articles around the site. It felt like a discovered the best source for all my SC needs... turns out I was correct. =)
Now I discovered that games were streamed live! This was incredible. However, this meant no english commentaries for myself. From VODs, I did have a decent understanding of how the game flowed and why some things happened. Good thing LR threads were there to save me when I didn't know what was going on and who was at an advantage. So now I'd spend my nights watching proleague 3 times a week (the earlier times) with one window streaming from daum sports and the other fixed on the LR thread. Amazingly, I was able to understand the game completely over time. I eventually didn't require the LR thread to follow the game. I went from someone who didn't know anything without english commentaries to someone who could follow the games in korean.
Lots of time passed, getting my SC fix when I had the time. This site always had tons to offer. Then one day, people started streaming from their own computers. I believe it was wonkman who first used mogulus to stream korean games (forgive me if I'm wrong). And it was only a matter of time before others jumped on board with mogulus/livestream. At this point, there was always SC for me to observe. Watching the FP perspective of players live was incredible. Its amazing what the TL community did with the resources it had available. There are always games being streamed, tournaments broadcast live, and specialty shows like the Day[9] Daily. Of course, the generosity of the community wasn't limited to just SC. I've lost count of how many times TL saved the day for a wide variety of people here.
Just about wrapping up here. I've started to play in the SC2 beta recently over a pre-order key. I honestly didn't think my laptop could handle it at all... but surprise surprise... I can play the game on medium settings. I'm not very good right now with 1150 - 1200 points (and probably D+ at best on ICCup for BW), but hopefully I'll improve. In order to give back to this community, I do hope I'll be able to stream games at some point (my computer definitely cannot handle both at once - but I should be investing in a new one in the coming months).
Finally, a big thank you to all the mods, streamers, and the community here at TL. You've provided me with great entertainment for years now. I look forward to participating and hopefully giving something back for all this time of just lurking. =)
![[image loading]](http://i1008.photobucket.com/albums/af207/jodogohoo1/100507_232456.jpg)
