EPTTo start I'm currently a student at ASU, working towards a major in business. Not a whole lot of super cool interesting information, so I won't bore with line after line of useless details. As far as my plans with school, right now i'm just going to school and doing the work nothing out of the ordinary, though soon (as of writing this entry) I plan on using school to allow me an extended trip to Korea, where like most gamer's who are there will attempt to make the GSL.
That's the plan, but enough about that... As far as video games are concerned, Starcraft 2 is the first RTS i've really ever played seriously. I'm sure most everyone has played Age of Empires at some point in time (and if not, well you clearly were missing out). Outside of RTS games i've played like most anything from WoW, to Halo, to CoD, to Super Smash Bros, to Golden Eye, etc. the list goes on and on and on. Nothing special nothing out of the ordinary. As far as on a competitive level though SC2 would be the first i've ever attempted to play competitively.
So then the question now is... how has that gone. Well SO FAR, not nearly as well as one would have hoped, but doing much better is really not to be expected yet I suppose. I have participated in (at the time of this post) about 5 or so online tournaments, and 1 LAN event (and yes I know, SC2 doesn't have LAN). All of which I generally have not made it much farther then the second round. Lack of skill? I don't so much think so as I think (from watching the replays) that it is my unfamiliarity with playing in tournaments. Some of the things i've done for example... Overreacting... Pushing out at bad times.... Letting macro slip... etc. Again, the list goes on, and on, and on.
However I do my best to not let past performance get me down, nor do I really allow my past performance to enlarge my ego. I do what I can to remember play each game as anew, whether the other player is pro or bronze. So now that i've given a bit of an insight to my tournament experience and past video game experience/obsessions, I guess I will touch a bit on the Starcraft side of things specifically.
To start Starcraft (release night) I chose Terran as my main race, and ended up sticking with it for the better portion of a week. I skipped practice league, and landed myself in Bronze, and in the beginning really only sticking to team games for the most part, just not feeling comfortable with the 1v1 side of things.
After that initial week of feeling out the game a little, understanding that clicking everything with the mouse wasn't going to work, and BC's weren't the one and only thing to do, I switched my main race from Terran to Random, and played for several weeks if not a few months as Random, in team games as well as 1v1 ladder. By the end of the time period I was amid the Silver level players! I was happy, hell who wouldn't be having never really played an RTS before.
From there i'll sum things up a tad faster due to the fact most if not all reading this will have become bored. I switched my main race back to Terran, just because all of my friends seemed to be playing the other 2 races. From there I worked my way up through Plat, and into Diamond where i'm currently sitting.
Where in Diamond is currently around 1800-1900 points, 9th in my division (a much less competitive division) and working my way up from day to day. Aside from just playing I do stream my games, and when I don't feel like playing and browsing the forums I tend to cast a few games, and provide the best commentary I can.
So what is the goal though... What is it I want to accomplish... In all reality I want to eventually be successful in the Starcraft scene. Today I can tell you that means winning tournaments, doing well in large tournaments with big prize pools, but months from now it may mean something else. I enjoy helping those who need it and am always willing to give people tips and pointers who need them, that is when i'm not in the middle of ladder matches or tournament practice. =P
So with the blog we will track to progress or how my goals within Starcraft go and record them for others to read about and enjoy. I encourage anyone who reads them to take what they can from them, and hopefully by the end of it all there's an interesting, fun, crazy story to tell if nothing else. So enjoy what is to come, I appologize for the length of this first entry, and remember... If you need help or just wanna say "hey I like the stream" don't be afraid to!
-radenB
