EPTThe Beginning
I was born and raised in Korea. In fact, I remember being in elementary school, and watching the first starcraft tournaments on the now defunct iTV. I even remember that it was channel 4
. My house did not have cable, but when I visited my aunt's house, I would watch GaMBC late into the night (which of course later became MBC game). I played Terran at first, but then I was mesmerized by Kang Do Kyung, aka HOTForever, and switched to Zerg. Later on, I became Protoss, and play it to this day.When I show up at a star craft event nowadays, everyone sees me and says "aww there's a korean, hes gonna win this tourney", but the truth is, while my love for star craft started at the very beginning and continued on, I did not play all throughout the 12 years. When I was 11, my mother and I moved to Canada, then to the US, where I am now. It was quite impossible to play any games when your parents were investing so much just to get be a better education. My mother has always been against gaming, and she remained that way until I went off to college.
Of course, being the sneaky kid that I was, I always found ways to play games. And because I never had a good computer, the most logical choice of game to play was Starcraft. I would literally spend hours playing UMS when my mom was at work. Since she was a nurse, and she worked evening shifts, I could play all I want without parental supervision. My mom went to ridiculous lengths to make sure I did not play games when she was gone, but I always found ways to get around it.
My mom always thought gaming was just something I did that was a waste of time, and that something I have to grow out of. And she was very strict about it. However, one event changed all of that.
The Binghamton Starcraft Team
Pardon me for saying this, but I'm a pretty smart person. I never study very hard, but I always pull off decent grades, and I am very good at math and science. I got a great score on the SAT's, I got 5's on most of my AP exams, and while my GPA was shaky, I was sure that I would get into an Ivy League school.
Then of course, I only got accepted to one University.
In retrospect, this was the best choice I could have made. I would not have been able to afford other schools, and I think I have a better chance at getting into a good grad school by being here. However, I was pretty pissed about it at the time.
Now, at the end of freshman year, my friend Wil comes to me and asks me if I wanted to help found a starcraft club in Binghamton. He didn't need to ask twice. We got signatures, we wrote the constitution, I became the VP, and we were chartered by the student association. We were official, and we competed in the Season 2 of the CSL.
There was 5 people in the BST in the beginning. It was more like a small gathering of friends who came to game and just have fun. We would bring flash drives loaded with starcraft to computer labs, and play there. While our record was terrible, we have so much fun. We as a team only scored 1 win, and I only got 1 win as well. But it was a great experience.
The team grew the next season. We made it to the playoffs, but was knocked out by Duke the first round, but it was still ok. We were making progress.
It was around this time when my mom warmed up to the idea of gaming. She realized that it wasn't a complete waste of time, and that I enjoyed it. She began to see it as a legitimate hobby, and even offered me to buy a computer for SC2, which she later did.
Starcraft 2
I am no longer on the eboard of the BST, but when I was, the biggest concern I had was what to do when SC2 comes out. We knew we could not play it in the labs like we did with SC1. If we could get the permission to install it, we could have ran in on those computers, but after a very detailed email sent to the head of the IT department was responded with an equally detailed email stating why it wasn't possible, we ran out of options. I loved, LOVED the way that people came together physically to play the game side by side. To watch others play and cheer them on. But we had to resort to online meetings.
Now, while I was never good at SC1, I found that I am ok at SC2. While my slow hands failed me in SC1, in SC2, I had more time to think and plan out thing instead of putting probes to mine mineral patches every few seconds. Naturally I started competing in tournaments as soon as I felt ready. I have, to date, lost more than I have won, but I still love competitions.
Team Liquid
I stumbled upon team liquid when I started getting involved with CSL. I was a lurker for a long time, but with the start of beta for sc2, I became a pretty active poster. When I visited korea last summer, I even met up with TL'ers for MSL finals and subsequent meet ups. I slept on Susie nuna's couch several nights because the subway stops at nights, and I live a bit away from heart of Seoul. I actually remember one night(I think it was the night when Konadora was in town) we all went to a PCbang after drinking, and played 4vs4 where losers had to pay the whole bill. I got knocked out early, while taking someone else out in the process. For the remainder of the game, I was coaching Susie nuna on finer points of massing up dragoons and carriers, and she eventually won the game for us
. I found it so incredibly wonderful that even though I never met any of these people in my life, the simple fact that we all frequented this thing called Team Liquid connected us, and could meet up and chill out like a group of old friends. Something about being in Korea as a member of a foreigner scene made that stronger I think.Bragging
If anyone asks me, I will proudly tell them I was the creator of the PvT Chargelot-Voidray build(which became pretty unviable after many of the beta patches, and most importantly, the recent VR change), PvT 3DT rush build, and the 1gate 2robo build against Protoss and Terran. I'm sure other people have used these before me, but until someone can prove it, I will continue to believe this because its such a cool thing to be able to say that I created a build. And everyone needs a boost to their ego once in a while
.Looking Forward
So that is the gist of it. For all who has never seen me before, its nice to meet you. I love TL, and I plan to stick around for a long time, this time not as a lurker
. Maybe I won't recreate the Konadora Miracle, but I promise you will see more of me. Here's to my 500th, and to the prospect of many more to come.Cheers
