Prologue: In this series of blogs, I am trying to change from your average lurker, to somebody who contributes by making solid, contributing posts/blogs. In this blog I will talk about SC2 and what it meant for the TL.net community during the beta. If you missed my last blog, check it out HERE.

StarCraft 2 was announced, and details slowly started coming out of the Blizzard Offices. Many changes had a lot of us thinking if SC2 would have the same impact on the Progaming scene that BW had. TL.Net (mostly the hardcore BW players/fans) was in a uproar about MBS, Auto-mine, and general AI/interface changes. Many people saying that it may draw in more players, but it would Never take off in Korea or with a lot of the foreigner pro players.

Beta finally came out and a lot of us got to see the Game played for the First time on Team Liquid's wonderful stream section. We had some Solid players streaming on here from day 1 of the beta. A lot of us got to see First hand people figuring out the Game. I think the First stream I watched was Chill, building nothing but Hydra's and winning Game after Game after Game, explaining he would not do anything else until he loses, well he lost. Now time for mass muta's.

Then we had tournaments like the HDH, me personally I had Never heard of HDStarCraft or HuskyStarcraft until this tournament happened. Bringing in alot of the top players, and being the First tournament with a sizable prize pool, The viewers, and sub-sequentially their youtube subscriptions SKYROCKETED. With this tournament, we saw that yes. BW players could transition well to SC2, WhiteRa was widely considered a dominant force during the beta, like he was in the foreigner scene in BW. IdrA, an obvious choice to do well in SC2, has been doing just that, extremely well.

But then we have guys like HuK, QXC, TLO. They all came out of nowhere to be superstars. More proof you don't need the APM of a 14 year old Korean Kid to do well at his game. Hey, maybe Auto-mine and MBS gives you time to focus more on strategy, macro, and micro, things that we've seen evolve quite a bit.

More and more people who were interested in e-sports and not just broodwar began to show up. PainUser was a top player from the beta, who gathered alot of viewers, had nothing to do with RTS at all (like QXC) when he hit the scene, He came from a game called Natural Selection, which was a half-life mod.

More and more C&C, Supreme Commander, and War3 players were jumping ship, Hell, even Halo and CS players started to take notice, e-sports was growing, and SC2 was making it grow, and HOLY SHIT WE ARE ONLY IN THE BETA.

Still.. questions remained, will SC2 hit big in Korea? Will it be on national TV like BroodWar and Sudden Attack? Will we see any big name progamers make the transition?

We saw a little preview of the future with Day9's King of the Beta tournament, alot of us we're excited to see what Korean's like IntoTheRainBOw and TesteR could do.

Next time on my blog I will discuss SC2's launch, SC2 in Korea, and GSL's impact on e-sports.

If these seem like some sort of History lesson, it will switch gears, once I hit present day in this retrospective I will make this blog more about the community and how I'm making it a goal to make it better.