EPTAnother year has come and gone already! ^_^
(btw writing this blog is what inspired my other recent blog entry)
Last year I did something like this, http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=108995 this time I won't really dwell on my backstory or boring stuff like that, I did something almost every month in 2010 so I figured it'd be fun to share some of the memories with everyone in a single massive blog post..... I'm so fortunate to be in the DC area which has such a strong TL community now.
Note: Names are in bold to make the entire thing easier to read and also to allow those who might not want to read the entire thing just read their parts easier.
- January, Princeton MSL finals
This was almost a year ago now but StorrZerg and I drove up to Princeton for MSL viewing that had literally 50+ people. It was amazing, too bad this was the infamous power outage MSL so it ended up being pretty anticlimactic but it was still a great time driving up and playing games with Mike Chen, Gretorp, other Princeton CSL ppl and just hanging out. The smashcraft heroes at Princeton are amazing... hazelynut has not only helped start an amazing thing at Princeton but she connects college nerds everywhere (somehow... never will quite understand how she does it but it happens nevertheless) and it's so great for the community. Princeton feels like the birthplace and hub of the CSL for me because of this. (Xeris has been pretty freakin impressive over at UCSD too though... but unfortunately I'm thousands of miles away and only really ever see Duran when he visits DC) UCSD = CSL hub in the west, Princeton = CSL hub in the east. - Feburary, Beta LAN/bw Dying
DC LAN's kept getting snowed out through December and January so the February lan was like 8 ppl or something tiny. It ended up being great though because it was a week after beta came out so like 6-7 of us went over to StorrZergs house and we had two beta copies (Haemonculus also had a beta key and brought laptop) so we were able to play in house 1v1's! (except it's not really in house cuz sc2 has no lan but w/e...)
Late Feb I get all depressed http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=113272 cuz bw is dying so quickly. So I kinda lose the motivation to play and almost all my friends leave the game for sc2... The only thing left to play broodwar at this point is CSL so I only play just one or two CSL matches a week and pretty much quit playing broodwar. - April, WCG Qualifiers begin
April began a time I didn't think we would see again, the return of broodwar WCG qualifiers for USA. It was a joyous moment when that announcement came, the return of all the players who had abandoned the game so quickly, KawaiiRice, LzGaMeR, Machine, all these guys I had met in the past year and had been asking for advice, playing practice games with, would come back and play broodwar!!!! It was going to be awesome! My first qualifier first round was against Louder, top 2 in USA in 2009 and played in WORLD FINALS in the previous year in China! well everything was awesome till all of the wcg games started being played... When I beat Louder 2-0 in the very first qualifier I realized just how steep the dropoff is for many players who stopped practicing entirely, and how much lower the level of competition was going to be in the year if that first match was any indication.
The pros came back and played in most or some of the qualifiers but most were shells of their former selves, mechanics gone, timings all gone to heck, builds not nearly as crisply executed. It's not a knock on the players or their skill, it's a simple fact of broodwar or any real sport, lack of practice really shows. Many of them had not been practicing broodwar for almost 3 solid months at this point. Also even though WCG was going on it was run very loosely, the past 2-3 years has been fairly loose with all online qualifiers and no clear channel or location to meet up at. There was already a small amount of people interested in playing in the qualifiers, some were confused as to where to go or what to do. This only hurt the following for the qualifiers even more. I made an effort to keep a nicely updated and good looking thread throughout the year in the broodwar tournament section here on TL which helped increase and made following the qualifiers easier. But there was nearly no coverage outside of that and the wcg site was confusing. Guys like LRM)Game who wanted to play in some of the last qualifiers didn't even know where to go to sign up. Pretty bad navigation in general throughout the entire site. The majority of the people following the qualifiers were the dozen or so guys actually practicing and/or playing in them. I was excited for it to be the year of the unknown, guys who had gotten quite good and hadn't switched to sc2 yet like Ranged, Stryker, Semih, all had great chances to qualify. Unfortunately as qualifiers went on and some of these guys qualified it sort of lessened the feel of the years level of competition. Guys like Ranged and Semih were good protoss players, but would they have qualified if the usual pros were active? That question is debatable and after the unknowns kept qualifying (there was a month straight of Ranged/Semih/Joekim/Hawk/Andreyyy/Sterling) wcg just didn't feel the same.
the level of competition was just so much lower in 2010 compared to 2009. It wasn't like this all year but it was for most of the time. During the Beta downtime KawaiiRice in particular worked his way back into some pretty damn good shape in those few weeks. Perhaps one of the best foreign broodwar games of the year happened on Blue Storm when KawaiiRice played against Stryker (a player who hadn't left for sc2 yet), definitely one of the most memorable broodwar games of the year for me. I mean there were bunches of other great series and high level matches but a majority of the usual names or faces were missing. - May, Last Hurrah LAN
A few things happened in May. This new kid named Zlasher starts showing up to DC stuff for TL. He becomes (and currently still is) a regular face of TL nerds in DC, helping at lans, and being somebody who mods/watches tons of streams he knows whats going on around the scene really well. In late May we have a really crazy 2 in 1 LAN in the DC area. 2 tournaments in the same day, Broodwar and SC2 Beta. Gretorp wins the broodwar tournament and the sc2 tournament gets owned by blizzard/bnet. Titled the "Last Hurrah" lan it was the last lan I planned to hold for broodwar. I didn't plan to hold any June lan and July marked the release of SC2... TAD[nnilf] changes this later but at the time this was looking like the last broodwar lan, it was quite a great turnout we had 30 some odd people there and over 20 played in the broodwar tournament (although some played their tournament matches on fastest fighting maxed archons with maxed goliths, yes I'm looking at you floophead and morningmusume LOL)
some pictures from Gretorp:
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Gretorp vs StorrZerg with Orb looking on in May during Last Hurrah LAN![[image loading]](http://www.fnatic.com/filestorage/galleries/304/normal/ScfRbZHB.jpg)
Last Hurrah LAN group
After this lan we discovered it's half price for the late night buffet. Everyone loves the place (more or less) and is constantly saying they want korean bbq all the time days after every lan. So Haemonculus starts a pretty awesome tradition that still happens almost weekly, Saturday night TL dinners! TL in the DC area is so strong we can meet up weekly for dinner at this place and anywhere from 4-20 people show up every week. Our biggest weeks have had 20+ some weeks we have 2 full tables of 8, most weeks average around 6-8. All kinds of TL people have been to these dinners from staff like the loveable Intrigue and a guy who buys a new house every week like EvilTeletubby one of the most well known figures in the community Day9 to oldschool players like Slog4 and everyone who's played in DC LAN's... It's really awesome. - June-August. BW qualifiers
WCG Qualifiers going on almost every week here, nothing too interesting lan wise, sc2 beta is down during this time so broodwar action actually picks up quite a bit on iccup. It was a really fun month. Highlighted probably by a wcg match I played against CaucasianAsian on Blue Storm, a map I struggle on in TvP. CA is a pretty terrible player but gets super lucky sometimes in matches. I end up winning the best of three series against him 2-1-1 after an hour and a half draw game on blue storm where I made over 190 turrets during the course of the game. That was probably my most memorable game of 2010 WCG. All of my memorable games in wcg seemed to come on blue storm (vs Day9 2009, vs Lastgosu 2009, vs CA 2010, Vs some D kid I almost lose to in 2010, 2port wraith vs 4rax pure marines lol???)- July, TAD LAN, and SC2 at midnight on the 27th.
July was defined by the quite infamous "TAD Lan" that happened in our usual location in the DC area, organized not by me, but by Mack, aka TAD[nnilf]. This event had the biggest fallout of any lan held in the DC area. (Leave the DC LAN planning up to Me+Xeris+Superiorwolf kthxbye) Up till this lan, the previous dozen or so lan's or meetups the DC had in the past 2 years were totally amazing (Run by either me, xeris or superiorwolf, hmm see a trend here?) and they were all great experiences. This event was bad on so many levels and it was completely because of our 4 friends who traveled in from afar. Semih, LouDog (Who had to recently change his aka in SC2 because his previous AKA was tied so strongly to this) Buckets and TADnnilf (Used to go by TAD[Life] but was permanently chatbanned on iccup with that account so he changed AKA) all drove in from the midwest (Chicago area and Ohio) and they also drove Dejavu from PA.
Semih came to win the lan, Mack had some decent prizes for this lan, a decent PC, TAD shirts and other random stuff + cash from the buy-ins. Locals looking to spoil the fun included Slimpower, Tossim, SuperiorWolf (local during the summer while he was interning for the NIH) and LastShadow. All high level players which helped make the event pretty competitive. Well Semih loses in the semifinals to LastShadow and from that moment on shit hits the fan hardcore. Semih + LouDog leave the lan center not paying their fees, forcing SuperiorWolf (who won the lan) to use some of the winnings to cover their costs. Mack and Buckets try to skip out on paying for their dinners at the restaurant after the lan. They allegedly trash Storrs house, wreck his laptop by dling all kinds of horseshitporn that they watch all night on his TV, leave trash all around and steal booze. They also don't "like" Dejavu anymore so they leave him at Storrs house when they leave in the morning. Stranding him 500 miles away from his home in PA with no car or means of transportation to get there. (He eventually takes a 14 hour bus ride back the next day costing like $150 which is something StorrZergs family pays for)
Ugh it's painful just to revisit that horrible weekend through words here... anyway word of this spread throughout TL and the SC2 community. I talked recently to LouDog who said he had to change his aka because he would be laddering or talking to people in the sc2 community and they would say, "Hey ur that idiot who stole shit from a LAN right?" I'm really glad the TL and SC2 community is so strong that when bad things happen, we unite and do the right thing. All of those guys are perma banned from TL and all TL events for life for good reason.
In late July I do get to meet Day9 in person for the first time at a TL nerd dinner, that was quite amazing. He even knew who I was from WCG.
And in late July I go to best buy for a midnight release of SC2, it was awesome to see literally 200 people lined up, it felt really amazing and was awesome to realize that sc2 was going to be so popular. I was happy. - September Cyberground #1
September marks the first DC LAN I organize for Starcraft 2 and it's an outstanding success. It includes 50 players at a new lan center. We have an entire "DC LAN" staff in place now with Torenhire, GenoZStriker, Zlasher and MorningMusume to help keep the event on schedule. And on schedule we must stay. The lan center has only 35 PC's so in order to accommodate 50+ people the lan is split into 3 parts, 1st group stage, 2nd group stage and bracket stage. In past broodwar lans I would just list a time in a thread and then we would sit around for a couple hours and then have a convo like this:
"ok wanna start a tournament guys? "
"Yea sure."
"ok lets do it."
Now with 25+ people coming in less than 2 hours it's imperative that a schedule be kept and games get played on time. This helps make the event feel more official and with the amount of money that is involved when you have $10 per person plus donations the prize pots are over $500 with other gear thrown in from the lan center. (And this is all without sponsors, can you imagine if I made the time and was better at getting sponsors? lolol)
All of the broodwar lan organizing experience definitely helped me hit the ground running with SC2. We're about to hold our 3rd event the weekend after new years and I expect it to be just as epic as the first two. We always get a number of top 200 players in attendance and I feel it's pretty safe to say they are easily the most competitive regularly held in person tournaments in SC2 on the east coast.- October MLG DC
Wow where to begin here... the whole weekend was awesome. From JP giving me literally the last invite spot, to meeting white-ra, slog4 letting me crash in his room... seeing how short huk really is irl, seeing how crazy awesome catz is. And all of the other sc2 pros... me playing fucking crazy games vs some ppl and then losing to spades in losers round 3... this event was amazing. it was so sick to play in an environment like this with a massive crowd and huge screens, day9+djwheat+jp all there... playing my very first warmup match of the day vs IdrA... it was seriously an amazing event all around and I could go on for a while about it but this post is long enough already. MLG DC was amazing. ^_^- November Cyberground #2
Not much happens here other than a LAN in the middle of the month. It's once again a fairly high level tournament. SiN attends the lan and gets 2nd place, losing to Avilo. It was there I realized SiN could be a great up and coming player, shortly after that he gets 2nd in Tour Of Duty U.S #2 tournament and also qualifies for EG Masters Cup. The 2nd Cyberground LAN at DC is a huge success with 40+ players and we have a better situation for observing in the location. - December WV LAN
Year comes to a close on a quiet note, one fun thing that happened on the 2nd Saturday of the month was going to a lan in West Virginia with StorrZerg, got to see Machine and a bunch of great guys over there, Shaggy (one of Machines regular students) is such a funny guy and is committed to building the sc community there and they have a great lan center over there, Save Point. I was impressed with the place really nice PC's and setup. I got to play Machine some in person which was great and I won the tournament they did. All in all it's great to get out and meet people from all parts of the community and I'm in a great place in the country to be near so many events that happen so often.
And that was my year! Very happy with all I managed to do in terms of lans/events/meeting people. I'm sure 2011 will be just as exciting. Thanks for reading. <3
Thanks to these people who made an impact too in no particular order who I might or might not have mentioned in the main post,
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Sadistx for being a awesomehorrible coach,Sibwolf for keeping me patient. Slog4 for being a great friend (when he's not high/drunk which isn't very often rofl) CaucasianAsian for reminding me how good I got at broodwar over the past 1.5 years. Tossim for fucking knocking me out of literally every broodwar dc lan in 09/10 White-Ra for being a baller StorrZerg for having people over his place so much and always eager to drive/go anywhere on such short notice. <3 Haemonculus for hosting stuff at her place and giving me beta access way back in March. <3 Torenhire for being an awesome DC LAN head man and all the stuff he does for us in general. Hatchetwound for coming to literally every DC LAN ever held and being awesome. Assault for playing half a million TvZ's with me during my 2010 WCG qualifying months. Zlasher for getting lost at the Vienna metro like 5 times. :D GenoZStryker for helping out a ton with the first two cyberground lan's. LastShadow for the hot sex. Gretorp for being so handsome. KawaiiRice for never dropping the stolen toothbrush story. SuperiorWolf for being an above average wolf. Duckett for having anti hangovers (says he always feels so much better/refreshed after a night of heavy drinking) Steelflight-Rx for being my biggest fan. Ipp for being an awesome caster. Nokarot for being one sick photographer and a good guy. June-Zee for being the most famous Asian TL nerd in DC for like 3 weeks. orb for being awesome. Sentenal for popping up every once in a while to remind me of my TvP record vs him on Neo Requiem in broodwar. vx70GTOJudgexv for being the absolute worst bronze player I know. Machine for being the best zerg player I know... And for saying I've improved a lot recently. <3
And anyone else I forgot to mention who made a difference in my 2010. <3
Assault for playing half a million TvZ's with me during my 2010 WCG qualifying months. Zlasher for getting lost at the Vienna metro like 5 times. :D GenoZStryker for helping out a ton with the first two cyberground lan's. LastShadow for the hot sex. Gretorp for being so handsome. KawaiiRice for never dropping the stolen toothbrush story. SuperiorWolf for being an above average wolf. Duckett for having anti hangovers (says he always feels so much better/refreshed after a night of heavy drinking) Steelflight-Rx for being my biggest fan. Ipp for being an awesome caster. Nokarot for being one sick photographer and a good guy. June-Zee for being the most famous Asian TL nerd in DC for like 3 weeks. orb for being awesome. Sentenal for popping up every once in a while to remind me of my TvP record vs him on Neo Requiem in broodwar. vx70GTOJudgexv for being the absolute worst bronze player I know. Machine for being the best zerg player I know... And for saying I've improved a lot recently. <3And anyone else I forgot to mention who made a difference in my 2010. <3
