EPTI remember seeing this game when I was much younger, in the year 2000 or so, as my cousin played it. The only memories I remember from it were the archon and dark archon, which i called the blue and red ghosts, and battlecruisers, which i called huge ships. Every time I went to my cousin’s place, he would let me play through the campaign, or let me watch him playing on bnet. It wasn’t until 2005 that I actually got the game for myself. When I started playing, I did what any n00b 12 year old would do: play the campaign with like 7 cheats on. I didn’t start playing on bnet until I finished the campaign for both SC and BW.
Then finally I went online when my cousin wanted to play on bnet. I was pretty excited and all because this was my first time playing multiplayer online. Not having chosen a race to play online, I initially started out with terran. I played as terran for the first few 2v1 compstomps i did with my cousin. But the more I played, the more protoss started to intrigue me, with its super-technological stuff and the wide variety of things they had, most notably: cannons, carriers, dark templar, dragoons. Eventually, I just switched to protoss all together. My cousin, thinking that I did it because I looked up to him, partly the reason too, was a little annoyed at my sudden change, so he told me not to change races again until I “master” the race.
“Master the race?” I thought. I had no idea what he meant by that, so after just randomly playing compstomps, I finally decided on what goal i needed to achieve in order to “master” the race: 100 wins on bnet using only protoss. And so my epic journey began. It really wasn’t easy, with how often comp stomps turned into bs-fests. So around roughly 60 wins, my parents intervened and felt the following:
1. I was getting addicted (not true, i played like, 2 days a week)
2. My computer was gonna get hacked fom playing with people i don’t know (srsly wtf?)
3. I am endangering my family, but mostly myself, by playing with people I don’t know (also wtf)
So thus ended my starcrafting for the time being. Eventually, I was allowed to play the game again in 7th grade, but by that time I moved onto gamecube and PS2 and I rarely touched starcraft, except for when my cousin wanted to play, but even when I played, my parents were freaking paranoid about me playing with strangers. =_=
So now on to highschool! When I first started freshman year, I met 2 people in my own homeroom who play the game too, and they eventually became two of my starcraft buddies. Soon enough, I found more people in my grade who played starcraft, but they were also fastest players much like myself, except they were better (their mechanics and everything were significantly better than mine, but they were still crappy in comparison to any competitive player). I then met synapse, who I saw playing starcraft on a low-money map during history class one day, and found out that he played low-money and my initial reaction was “=0” Eventually, the first and second semesters passed by and I saw more people who played low money, and 1 more person who played fastest and cannon rushed computers: Supernovamaniac =P (at the time, I knew him as the guy who was good at DDR and Guitar Hero). 1 was a sophomore who had some 300 apm, which surprised me because I never saw such fast apm before. The other was a senior, who was apparently very good, but I never saw him play at all. =\
So third semester starts of my freshman year and I meet the guy who got me into low money: leunal (yes, THE leunal who was the first person to face and beat the royal stove). I was playing a game of BGH on one of the schol’s computers, when he came up to me and told me, “You suck.” When it came to Starcraft at the time, I got offended easily, so i challenged leunal to a match. We played on BGH, and he absolutely steamrolled me. After that, he started making me play low-money, teaching me stuff like build order and macro. I still got steamrolled in extremely 1-sided games, but the important thing was i started learning. Eventually, I met synapse again, and we played a couple of matches. They began with me losing badly, but then they became long draw-out suckfests that lasted whole periods. One day, I managed to actually beat him (but he still refuses to admit it) and I was surprised. But then I got cocky, and the next time we played, it turned into another drawn-out suckfest. (leunal had a great laugh watching us both suck TT). That was my first pseudo-rivalry.
So the summer arrived, and I stopped playing BW entirely, cause i got into the .hack series and FFX, so that ate up my whole summer. Sophomore year arrived, and I was shittier than ever ( my apm literally dropped from 120 back to 60), and synapse managed to stay in shape, and actually got better too. Needless to say, I got roflpwned every time. This is when my second rivalry started, with one of my friends in homeroom(nataka, for reference’s sake). It started as a PvP rivalry, but he then switched races to Zerg so it became a PvZ rivalry. Another thing that happened during the beginning of sophomore year was a 1-sided rivalry between me and one of my other friends who played Terran (bangbangjens, but he’s not on TL, this is just for reference’s sake). By 1-sided, I mean that he thought he was better than me, but I would own him on a regular basis, but he got better as time went on.
Fast forwarding 1-2 months, leunal held a small tournament for the people that played starcraft in my grade. I got as far as the semi-finals before i got ripped by synapse (at the time, PvT was my worst matchup). At this point, I suggested to Jens that we should have a 3rd place match, because I assumed that he would lose to nataka. Nataka actually lost, and I faced him in the 3rd place match, thus heightening our rivalry to new heights. I lost because i forfetied (i was just so not confident in my own ability after the 3rd set).
Well After all those said shenanigans, my social circle (which included the likes of pTen and animostas) would play over hamachi once every 1-2 weeks. This was the the trend for the next couple of months. Eventualy, the parties became fewer as the workload in school heightened. Every now and then, I would play with Jens, who now was equal to my skill level and also became my new rival. Together we made a pact to reach C- on iccup before the end of the summer, but that story comes later.
So towards the end of sophomore year, one of the clubs hled a video game tourney, and starcraft was one of the games that was listed. I played in it, beat 2 people, only to lose to synapse, and again to leunal.
So during the middle of the year, I played against Supernovamaniac a couple of times, but there was a large skill gap between us, so I would usually win most of the games. Jens also played him, and usually the same result too. The thing was, however, snm would kept trying to get better, by playing on iccup, and sometimes ask me questions about stuff or have me critique his replays (*sigh i miss those days =\).
So over the summer, I didn’t ladder on iccup that much, partly because I was afraid and partly because I couldn’t really host games. since I was noob and all, I joined combat-ex’s clan (yeah I know, I regret it now >.<), and probly got a little worse because of it. I quit after watching the chill v combat-ex show match because i then realized how badly he sucked. So anyways, summer ended, I probly played like 2 games on ladder at most. In this time, supernovamaniac got significantly better, and was just under my skill level, beating the likes of Jens. However, at the end of the summer, Jens also quit starcraft, making me a sad sad kid.
So now Junior Year! Whoo hell load of work! I did play a lot of starcraft nonetheless. So remember that video game tourney that happened end of sophomore year? well the same club held another one early during Junior year, and i felt that I had a shot at winning (partially because leunal and synapse weren’t participating). So with totally random luck, I get paired against supernovamaniac in the first round and I lose 1-2 (T_T). So began our rivalry.
As junior year went along, We both got better, but Supernovamaniac got better at a faster rate than I did because he went on iccup, and I didn’t. So now our rivalry has reached the point where its 1-sided in favor of him. (blahhhhh. i should’ve played iccup moar =\). The year ended, and the head to head was something like me 5: 20 him.
So yeah summer came and I decided to play more, but I really didn’t. I joined clan nAn, but my try-out was utter crap (i can’t believe how bad my PvZ is. when did it get this bad? >.<). I played in 2 clanwars, and lost both of them because I got paired against someone significantly better than I am. I did improve slightly, but I am still utter crap. The only matchup I’m confident in is PvT, and even that’s around D+ level at best.
So here I am, it is the end of summer and although I have made significant gains since the beginning of my low-money play of starcraft, it still doesn’t feel like much. I’ve never really asked for much help on TL for improving, but now that it’s senior year, I’m definitely gonna give it my best shot to improve in starcraft so I have a strong foundation if I want to join the CSL team of whatever college I go to.
I don’t have any replays to offer, like snm has, so this blog is just going to be a wall of text, unless snm wants to offer any replays that I should post. =P
but yeah, whoo! 1k posts on TL! at least i accomplished that goal before my break is over. ^^;
edit: yeahhh! i'm a corsair now! skirch skirch! ^^
edit2: so i found some relatively recent replays between me and snm so here you go:
http://repdepot.net/replay.php?id=37896
i won this game =)
http://repdepot.net/replay.php?id=37897
snm won this game =(
and they were decent (as in D rank not D-) lvl players cuz the seniors who were there when they were freshmen were "godly" at the game, i heard the term 300apm terran used before i understood what apm was lololololol
