EPTThis blog might be a long read so better hold your horses (see what I did there , tl, horses,
) but don’t worry there will be pictures!This is the story of a small organization in El Salvador that was inspired by team liquid to spread the Starcraft love in a place where video games are a true luxury.
Allow us to introduce ourselves. We are StarcraftSV, basically the only Starcraft community in El Salvador a small country located in Central America and in fact the smallest country on the whole continent.
Our Starcraft journey began in 2007 with the solitary endeavours of our founder Jacopana. He basically was the only competitive starcraft fan in the whole country for a long time. (At least to the best of his knowledge). He was a big fan of the korean leagues thus he used to lurk sites like teamliquid (specially teamliquid), among other communities. (So basically he didn’t have any IRL friends xD) he eventually wanted to know if there was a community like this in our country and sadly there was nothing to be found but a few disperse players who only played with their mouse. Gladly he didn't quit there and began recruiting these latin pros, they played online casually for a while, at least to have some starting point to make a clan to compete. Sadly again, nothing became solid but like our starcraft hero that he is Jacopana did not quit there. (you might know him for his blog about his paper mache marine gun right here Gauss riffle made of paper)
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our starcraft hero in question,also a terran player
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the tiniest country in America
By 2008 Jacopana met some friends from out of town that owned a small Computer Cafe (the other 2 guys that knew about competitive gaming in El Salvador) made a contact with the organizer of the largest anime convention in El Salvador (of course like everything in our country comparatively small). This guy agreed to give us a space to make the first ever national tournament within the convention. They didn’t want the action to end there with a single tournament so they gave the organization a name thus SCSV was born (short for starcraft El Salvador if it isn’t too obvious)
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Our banner
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The first tourney ever, the rumour is the guy in the orange cap would launch a nuke then stand up to see how it fell on the opponents screen xD, notice all the one handers...
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We even had a girl in there
This tourney was an absolute new experience for jacopana, he actually had to come up with a system to run a tourney with the 30 players that showed up, and opted for a group phase followed by single bracket elimination. This resulted in the tournament taking too long and the organizers of the convention kicking everyone out of the building come nightfall. The final game was between the players Vic (later AcmeSV) (P) and Belcebez (Z), Belcebez trampling Vic like a bull on mating season due to the fact that apparently he was a C+ Zerg player on Iccup (No one knew what that shit was), so basically we found out there where actually decent players in the country, we just had to find them.
By 2009 we had a small staff formed by members of the community in order to organize the tourneys. This time it ran a double bracket elimination format (we learned a lesson, Incontrol might be proud that we did not try extended series) and had 26 participants that had vastly improved since last year, the top 8 players where all C level players on ICCUP and we had a very exciting final between Belcebez(R) and Itrainsforever(Z) with 3-2.
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itrainsforever playing while everyone watches attentively, this guy had gosu muta micro...
In 2010 we got our first visitors from another country, we got the Guatemalan champion at the time Chivu.GT (P) and WCG veteran and some of his friends. This time we had even a smaller affluence of players, but got a very nice final between our champion and the Guatemalan, who played at B level at the time and rocked our Salvadorian asses 3-0
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The tourney
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Acmesv, hums and extasis looking confused discussing strategy with Josh our youngest player, all tricky protoss players
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Notice the map pool stuck on the board, fighting spirit was one of them
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The guys from Guatemala holding our banner with some of our staff
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We even had cake, the cake was not a lie
And then came the dawn of a new Era, the launch of starcraft 2. We aimed high in making a sort of launch event where people could try out the game in some FFA, challenges and team games.We ran into many issues including the rampant poverty that we have in SV, we only had about 6 members who could afford Starcraft 2 on the date of launch (and had computers capable of running the game) so we had to improvise so everybody could play (Thanks God for Guest Passes although no lan really made it tough for us). Thankfully the event was a success. The boom of a new game was enough to get everyone’s attention, we had an attendance of about 300 people ready to meet and try out the new game.
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A new era! Belcebez our Older player with Acme.sv and Hums also oldschoolers
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Me and my brother playing in the teams tournament, we were both diamonds and rocked everyone.
After the first SC2 event we got a corporate sponsor for the first time (like everything in El Salvador, small, but we Thank AEON computers for giving us prices, I really got lucky finding our sponsor. I am a business student so I have gotten my practice doing marketing and relations for us and this was my first big contribution to our community). But the largest thing of all is that the WCG took notice of us and for the first time a Salvadorian representative in the World Cyber games for Starcraft was a possibility. We creamed our pants after we heard the news, our hard work finally was getting noticed.
We finally ran a SC2 tournament this last December, had a small turnout like always, and visitors from Guatemala. The finals where between myself and a former WC3 pro from Guatemala that runs under the handle “Cool” in Masters league. I came a long way to achieve that second place, I was a d- zerg during the broodwar days and currently rank at high diamond zerg(haven’t been able to hit masters yet with all the cheese and rushes, somehow I have a very low mmr, but I hope to get into masters soon) I had to topple a few currently masters league players and even our former champion, but everything is possible when you have the spirit of fruit dealer inside of you
. Best thing is that the WCG has decided to run a Starcraft tournament in our country and because I got second place I get seeded directly into the round of 8. The winner of that tourney will head for korea in the WCG 2011. Needless to say everyone is training their ass off.First sponsored prices!
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Usb drives courtesy of Kingston, I got the 8gb then it was taken from me by Jacopana but that is a different story xD
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We even got a projector and a crowd
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There where actually 2 players behind the screen, also the tournament brackets on the tv...
We have always been a small organization with all the funds coming from the players. We don’t charge more than 2$ entry fee for our tournaments and rely mostly on our own equipment and recently what our sponsors can afford to provide us with. With all those limitations we have been able to run the events we have and even run some online leagues with Central American players.
We currently are at the best we have ever been and have some good players with a promising future. We have our old veteran player Belcebez who has been playing the game for 9 years now and is rumored to have played with the best of the best in his time (maybe someone knows him from back then.) We have our youngest player called Josh who is a 15 year old masters league protoss. His biggest dream is to get trained by Incontrol and to challenge pokebunny to earn teenager supremacy. Me and Jacopana dream of meeting all the big names here in Teamliquid, I personally would like to shake hands with Idra as he has been my inspiration in playing Zerg in Starcraft 2 and to follow his path I have been playing my best even though I complain about balance every now and then
. Maybe I can even shake hands with the guys from State of the Game, one can only dream...So basically this is it for this blog. Feel free to ask for our Character codes so we can play some games (We play on the NA servers since LA servers suck
), and also feel free to visit our website. our webpage and facebook page so you can follow our endeavours StarcraftSV on FacebookAlso if any of you are in the country feel free to contact us, we will take you out for dinner and talk starcraft, and if we have a tournament running you can play as a guest with us.
Team liquid, we salute you, you have been a huge inspiration to us and we hope one day we can meet in a LAN and play like the biggest of rivals!
TheBlueOne signing off!
