EPTTowards the end of the beta, I fiddled around with Ustream, wanting to try casting out just for fun with my friends. The quality I got with Ustream was terrible, so I was pointed to Flash Media Encoder. It was too complicated for me at the time, so I switched to Livestream, which had an easy program (Procaster) for streaming.
I streamed a few times, trying to post on Twitter and my Facebook (no longer exists) to get people to watch, but at most I had two viewers. My friends suggested I try using TeamLiquid to get people to watch, so I made a thread about streaming, and the community was very friendly, despite what I heard from my friends who said "they ban new people all the time" and "the mods are so strict". They told me to PM Sonuvbob, and about a week later, I was a listed stream.
I started casting KOTH games with my friend LAVA being almost always undefeated. I would commentate him playing against players from the stream. Notable other KOTH Kings were Fumbles and SetzeR. Thanks to being listed on TeamLiquid, I got a whopping twenty five to thirty viewers, and that was huge to me. I remember thinking, "People actually want to listen to this". I had a lot of work to do, though, to get better at casting. Some of my VODs are still up on my Livestream. I was pretty bad back then.
After the quick excitement of people actually watching me cast, I decided to try to host an event on TeamLiquid. I posted a thread asking if anyone would be interested in a tournament, and people started PMing me. Afterwards, I made the first thread for the Open Wolf Cup.
After the cup, beta phase one ended. During the first few days of downtime, I prepared to cast replays, gathering as many as I could find. When I started casting replays, people really caught on and liked it. It was during this time that I started to really enjoy casting, and more specifically, helping people improve their play. I started asking people to send me replays so I could critique them, and that was a lot of fun for me, and I got the idea that I was really helping people out, and I made a lot of friends with my little group that would come watch my casts. Since it was so small, I'd be able to have personal conversations with each and every person who sent in their replays during my casts. Again, my viewers never went high, but I really enjoyed what I was doing.
After phase two started up, I began running weekly cups when I could get prize money to do so, and some big names started joining. The more of those that I did, the more into it I got. I wasn't ever able to find a sponsor, but thanks to donations, I was able to keep the prize pool at $50, and recently there hasn't been any sort of delay in tournaments because of lack of funding. I really thank the community for helping me out, especially Ipp, Tim Inman (aka adequate), Fisher, and silverfox. More information is on Liquipedia (
Open Wolf Cup)Now I get PMs from people who run tournaments asking me to cast their finals or their entire tournament, and it makes me happy that I can help the community doing something I love to do while getting small tournaments the coverage they deserve. I'm busier than ever before because I have so much work to do for this community, and it's a really good feeling. Not a feeling of being important, but a feeling of belonging.
About five months ago when I began playing StarCraft II, rusty from Brood War, I never thought it'd lead me to one of the best communities I've ever found or been a part of. I want to thank TeamLiquid.net for helping me have a ton of fun, and for allowing me to do what I love every day. In the future, I hope to continue hosting tournaments, covering as many tournaments as possible, and trying to help organise community meetups in Atlanta. I might continue to do writeups, if I get better at that, not only for my tournaments, but for others as well. I also plan on hosting an invitational tournament, but that's going to take more planning and I'm not going to say much more about it right now. Again, I just want to thank the creators and moderators of TeamLiquid, and all of the community who comes here.
This is my five hundredth post. I hope to make thousands of more in the weeks to come.
Thanks everyone,
Wolf
