EPTMy dad is really old fashioned, so that may be in my personality a little - even though I am a gamer. But anyways, he didn't have a PC in the house, and he actually doesn't even know how to use one very well to this day. But anyways, im trying not to get into my life story (lol). I ended up buying the PC version of Starcraft when I was 11 or 12 and installed it to my moms computer. When I first started playing on battle.net I met this guy named ReconX, we would always play 4v4 on big maps like the killing fields. I was a terran player and would always die in the first 10 minutes, but that was ok, I didn't plan on living in the first place. I would float to one of the many islands to continue my BC production. I wonder what ever happened to ReconX.. He helped me learn the game a lot in the beginning, but eventually he lost interest in SC just like a lot of my friends.
Eventually I met a guy who used the name "FeLT" on USWEST. He introduced me to Lost Temple and the competitive BW scene (I think this was in 2000 or 2001).
He was a protoss player and taught me a lot even though I was terran; I remember him showing me a replay of Nada on LT, I remember a lot about the replay. Nada was at 12'clock and the game went for about 20 minutes, at the end of which Nada just had a maxed army of tanks and just pushed out tornado terran mode and rolled the protoss. That was one of the most inspiring games I had ever seen.
The next person that inspired me was Be)Real, Get)Real, and in the later days "Nova-The-Feared." He played zerg and he will help me practice. At this point I was still a terran player and would never take a game off of him, but regardless he would still play with me.
Eventually I started playing a lot and trying to improve. I started visiting gosugamers and teamliquid and would download pro reps. I always had trouble controlling bio in TvZ, and someone told me that my 130 apm wasn't enough for terran, so eventually I gave up and switched to protoss.
Eventually I started to improve. I was one of the very first NrG members when Neverexpo started NrG on the USWest server. I had my ups and down with that team, lots of good memories there though. My ID was NrG.Aggressive, because I liked to play an aggressive style.
As I started to get older, I think I got better faster because I began to have a better understanding of the game, and by that point I had played so much that its like I was living and breathing the game, not sure how else to explain it. Im not sure when I decided that I wanted to be a progamer, but I think it was around the time when I changed my name to RaNgeD. I remember playing in my first WCG USA qualifier in 2007 or 2008. I actually made it all the way to the final 4, I don't remember who the 4th person was, because he/she didn't show up; but the 3 players were Yosh, Incontrol and I.
At this point I hadn't really played any of the higher calibre american players, I had just been practicing on PGT and I think ICCup had just started up (hopefully my timeline is right).
I remember the first game I had against incontrol was on gaia, I actually won the game and I was super excited - but then I lost the next 2. But because the finals were double elim I had to play yosh next, and unlike my games against incontrol, my games against yosh weren't even close. I got absolutely rolled and when I watched the replays I was fascinated. In the end yosh won the qualifier over incontrol 2-0. I then messaged yosh and asked if he would help me get better, and from that point on I think is the turning point, because he totally changed my mindset towards the game and taught me how it should be played.
Yosh started coaching me and playing games with me; He had me practice like 100 games with him on troy, because that was a WCG map that year. I really had and still have a deep respect for him, not only because he is/was such an amazing player, but because he didn't care that I was bad, he still played with me and coached me for free.
I started improving at a huge rate at this point, watching all of my replays with yosh and filling in the holes in my gameplay. Eventually I reached A- on iccup, which was a huge goal for me from the very beginning. Im not going to go any deeper on my history now (I actually think I went too far and may have made this confusing.) But I think that some people probably have seen my name around recently as I placed 3rd at WCG USA in 2010.
After WCG I had plans to quit gaming altogether. My dreams of becoming a progamer for BW were squashed because of the fact that SC2 was coming out, and I felt like SC2 just wasn't the same as BW and I would have to start all over again. And its true to an extent that they aren't the same, but I ended up buying the game to play some 2v2's with Yosh. And ya, I guess the passion that I had for BW transfer to SC2 and soon I got into it and decided hey, I can really do this, I can become a progamer.
So here I am, a lot of you may not know much about me, I wish I could say more but it would just take so much time. Today I decided to take an offer to go to Romania and live in a pro house (I know it seems odd considering its not Korea) Not everything is 100%, but I would say it is about 95% that I will be going a long with SleEpy, another american zerg player. Its a big step for us, going to another country to play a game for a living, but hell, I love this game, so its worth the risk to me. We will be practicing 8 hours a day and attending EU tournaments. All the details haven't been finalized but as of now it looks like we will be leaving in about 2 months. Anyways, this is something that is really exciting, its actually surreal, who knows what it will be like?
