EPTMy name's Josh, if you couldn't tell, and I've been gaming since I was 3 years old. My older sister had a Nintendo that my dad let me play occasionally. I remember when I was 4 or 5, I would play Final Fantasy until I killed Garland, and thought that that was the entire game. For those who don't know, killing Garland takes all of 15 minutes, and is actually the prelude to the game itself. Growing up I played all kinds of games with my sister and the neighborhood kids, and I thought myself to be pretty good compared to them, so naturally I stuck with games. Baseball didn't work out so well, though I was pretty pro at bunting in little league if I do say so myself.
Fast forward to 2000, when I played some Brood War with some other kids at my new high school. I wasn't anything special, but I was in a clan. All my 2's partner and I would do is host island maps and hydra drop people over and over again. I thought it was hilarious at the time, but that and bunker defense, protect the queen, and some other random UMS games were really all I did with SC.
I played Unreal Tournament competitively under the names Farside[DiS], {+EIG+}EleMental, and {HiT}Linus... I was ranked #1 in the world in CTF on Epic's official website for 1 week in February 2002. =P My clan went undefeated on two separate ladders (OGL and IGL, for those of you who actually played UT Classic) before the game kind of fell apart and everyone lost interest.
From then on I was a Blizzard-only kind of guy. I played Diablo 2 for far too long, beta tested Lord of Destruction, hung out with a bunch of folks from LurkerLounge.com for a long, long time. Basically until WarCraft III came out. I never did much with WarCraft III, but I did manage to get top 10 in 2v2 on Azeroth after the Frozen Throne expansion.
Fast forward again to World of Warcraft. I played in the open beta and love, love, loved it. My gnome rogue was such a baller at level 15, I could kill boars insanely fast. I stuck with WoW on and off until last November, basically just playing through expansion content as quickly as possible to try to assert myself as a 'somebody' on my server. If anyone ever played on Executus, you may remember me as Nucleus or Proton from over there.
Ok, so enough about the history. Now for the present, StarCraft 2!
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Like I said earlier, I got a key from BlizzCon from a guild mate of mine in World of WarCraft. On day one of the beta I decided I wanted to try to get into the community in a big way, as I had the most fun in online games when I was with a big group, like LurkerLounge.com from Diablo II. I registered at TeamLiquid but from a bit of lurking, I knew that I had better learn a lot about the game and some Brood War history if I was going to last at all.
I started my YouTube page right away and started putting unit descriptions and things on it, hoping to draw some curious eyes who had not gotten into the beta yet. When the news broke that there was a /dance command in the game, I was one of the first people to get a video on YouTube, so that helped out a lot. After that, the invite-a-friend keys helped me get up to around 1,500 subscribers for an open giveaway I held.
Now I'm sitting at about 2,500 subscribers and nearly a million views, and I want to thank EVERYONE who has even just watched one of my videos for reassuring me that it has not all been a waste.
Anyway, after playing with my scrub friends and doing a bunch of random 2v2 games, I decided I wanted to get a better look at how the pros played. I basically lived in the livestreams of FinalFlight, orb, LzGaMeR, and others for the first month of the beta. After making videos for all of them, they trusted me enough to let me mod their chats. =P
One day I decided to be bold and bugged the Hell out of Rise to let me co-cast a Triple Strike Tournament with him, and for some reason he agreed! This was my first taste of live casting, and I loved it. I worked for a year at 98X in Charleston, South Carolina, and another year for WUSC at my college in Columbia. Talking live to people is something I am familiar with, and combining it with playing video games is just a great feeling for me. After that, I casted over the Chinese stream of StarsWar Reborn with TheGunRun, HuK, and NonY and thought to myself, man this is easy. Just hanging out with commentators and pro players is no sweat.
After casting that Chinese stream I sent out messages to iCCup TV and GLHF.tv, as well as to Rise to see if I could get any air time with any of them. iCCup was really the only team to respond, and they gave me a chance! I casted a majority of the ITC's with Tesla, Raelcun, and Ryan throughout phase 1, and a lot of weekend events we were able to sneak into such as the Craft Cup semis and finals, Gosucoaching.com showmatches and tournaments, and triple strike cups on Sundays. Now I'm just a casting machine, and I love it. Unfortunately, I do not have the bandwidth needed to provide a clear, lag-free stream, so doing independent streams is basically a no-go for now. It's fine though, because having a co-caster with good knowledge about the game (Raelcun specifically) helps me along and provides some good contrast and discussion during games. =)
So, there you have it. I'm JoshSuth, or AskJoshy on YouTube and I commentate for iCCup TV. Now you know. =) I also did that Like A 'Toss video that didn't win Blizzard's dumb contest.
Big thanks to the following for making my beta phase 1 really, really fun:
The moderators and admins of SC2Armory.com (stebo, Timmay, Gearv0sh, TheMapleKind)
WeGame.com for their easy-to-use game recording software
FinalFlight and the people who played on his stream (Gibybo, Resolve, RoboFerret, Nokarot specifically)
iCCup TV staff (Diamond, Raelcun, Joseki, Alou, Lokgar, Ryan)
orb, Shiver, Storr, and to a lesser extent Zlasher and Sadistx for all the 3v3 and 4v4 fun
orb again for helping me edit the Like A 'Toss video and being a very entertaining, very cool dude in general
Rise for letting me co-cast with him when he had no idea who I was
TheGunRun and Martijn for being very cool guys as well
All of the members of the gaming teams I've been following and participating in games with over phase 1: Root, EG, vT, inflow, funtastic, Fnatic, and more
The gosucoaching.com guys for having a great service and being some very funny dudes
TeamLiquid.net for providing me endless hours of reading material
All my YouTube subscribers and viewers, love you
and most recently PsYStarcraft! The two of us are going to be teaming up so-to-speak in the near future and possibly doing some dual commentaries, so check out his YouTube page as well!
Thanks so much for reading!
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