EPT~woosh~
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So it begins with finding BW. This is about 3 years ago: I can only say it was my sophomore year in high school for sure. A new guy had come to our school, and through talking we eventually discovered our interests lay in similar areas, and so a couple of friends started playing games competitively. This was completely novel to me, but I was enthralled by it. Then, one of the games we stumbled upon was BroodWar. I was hooked pretty much immediately. After a week of playing it, I had heard of TL, and APM, and read a bunch of strategy articles, and Ma Jae Yoon was my hero (even though he was slumpin' hard).
Then I met my korean friend (we'll call him Andy) Andy. He had heard of BW, and he was pretty good (definitely better than me), so we ended up playing lots of games together. After about 2 weeks of nothing but losses, I finally won a game. That was it. Of course, the next game I lost, but I had knocked over the first metaphorical domino.
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After that, it went downhill I guess- I got better and everyone else stayed the same. While I was intensely competitive, noone else really latched on to that idea, so it became a losing battle for me. In a way, winning was losing, so then all I had was iCCup, and unfortunately was hidden behind the veil of anonymity. I even paid money to play games with machine, because I figured I may as well try to be the god damn best in the country if the school was going to keel over and die so quickly. And he raped me ZvZ. I won the ZvPs and the ZvTs (except for a really interesting goliath build I learned about), but the ZvZs were really... enlightening. And entertaining, because I lost every one. I suppose I must be a masochist, because losing to people better than me is what I enjoy the most.
Anyway, it's safe to say I didn't conquer the country for 2 reasons: I sucked (C on iCCup), and SC2 took the competition away. When SC2 came out, I gave up, and descended into the obscurity of school and personal pursuits for about a year. Of course, it was a good year, probably better than when I was playing BW, but I'm just describing the phase.
Now, There are new kids at school- and they play SCII. And I hear stories about how good they are. And I'm intrigued, because it seems genuinely competitive. so to make this as quick as possible, I bought it and started playing. In my first 4 games with these friends, 3 were wins, and I promise you, I haven't watched/read/observed/played any SCII prior to these games. Since then, I haven't lost to any of my friends. I'm in gold, but all of my matches are against plat/diamond players (why are there even leagues? why cant we just see our true rating or whatever). There's no invincible target for me to reach for, so in my mind I've essentially wasted 55 dollars.
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Now, I have to reach for really big goals- Now I may as well try to be the best in the states (win money!).
But, something interesting has happened. The new guys, the SCII players, have not just given up yet, and I'm thrilled- but that makes me the target. I hate being the target. Every game I feel like, I dunno, that there's a pressure for me to do well. When people are equal or better than me, I fucking love the intensity, but when I feel like I'm supposed to win 10 out of 10 games, I never want to be the loser.
So I suppose this may very well be the first blog of many to come in my adventures of SC2. My goals have been set, so I suppose we'll see how it goes. I've yet to watch or read any strategy on SC2, but I suppose that's a danger in itself: too many people get so caught up in the media surrounding the game that they forget to actually play the game. So here I am, a 21-11 (I think) gold zerg player (zerg is so much stronger than everyone keeps telling me it is, srsly) with a declaration of war I suppose. We'll see what comes of it. Thanks for reading!
