EPT
I've posted bits and pieces of this on TL, but I might as well put it here.
Origins:
Back in 97? I was introduced to RTS's via Warcraft II. Absolutely loved the game especially as it had the Lord of the Rings, epic feel to it. RTS's quickly became my favourite game genre, although I only played single player. My friend tried to introduce me to StarCraft, but unfortunately I didn't really enjoy non-Star Wars sci fi at the time and found the buildings too confusing/ similar.
From there, I played Age of Empires II for years, but again single-player, building UMS maps and campaigns. I also tended to play a lot of hot-seat turn-based strategy games.
Starcraft BW:
Finally, in 2007 my uni room-mate introduced me to StarCraft BW. I initially didn't enjoy it as I still enjoyed medieval/ fantasy warfare more than sci fi. However, I could never convince him to play Age II because there were no explosions or guns. As I played, I slowly came to love how differently each race played (unlike Age 2's largely cosmetic differences) and although I learned SCBW on Terran, I found Protoss more enjoyable with the amount of units that will do nothing unless you actually tell them to (high templar, dark archons, arbiters, shuttle-reaver) which is why I found the old 1a2a3a jokes rather irritating)
But our play was appalling bad. We had these 2 maps we'd always played on, made by a friend. One was 6 spawn points with walls all around with hundreds crystals and 6 vespene gas all lined up, the other was this big money map, shared base, with one choke point. We'd play 3 humans vs 2-3 computers and just defend for 2 hours before we could finally push out and defeat the computers. My favourite strategy was to make like 4-5 Dark Archons and steal all the Terran computer Battlecruisers because they didn't cost additional supply. Then build shield batteries to recharge the DA's shields.. seemed brilliant at the time.
Inspiration From An Unlikely Source:
The big turn around in my play-style was maybe a half a year later? I was just parking my car, listening to CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) when I heard on some familiar SC sounds. Quite by random, I had caught a CBC radio documentary on the Korean proleagues. I quickly began looking for video footage of this on youtube. Fortunately for me, sc2gg had a whole group of casters that had started casting youtube vods. (I know there were those on TL that hated the amateur casters, but for people like me, English casting was my gateway into the proleagues.) Klazart became my caster of choice as I faithfully listened to his rapid fire casts. At some point he must have mentioned Team Liquid and I soon came to lurk in the Strategy forums. (One of those people that never felt the need to register to ask a question because the search function worked just fine.) I remember defending Klaz' reputation on that writer's website that Klaz fans had accidentally crashed in their support for his book.
Between Klazart and TL, I learned of the OSL, MSL, and the Starleage. I learned to revere Boxer, the Emperor and became a Bisu fanboy (I did mention, I played Protoss?), despite Klazart's dislike for Bisu taking down Savior. For some reason, JulyZerg was always my favourite among the Zerg. Something about an old school player holding it down like a boss, plus being the one over-weight gamer?
Then I was introduced to GOMTV's classic with Tasteless and lil'susie/ SuperDanielMan. Man that was epic! Tasteless totally won me over and I was so disappointed when it got cancelled.
During this time as a player, I improved a lot by learning build orders, focusing on building more workers, learning hotkeys, watching replays etc. Not sure when, but Day9 started posting a couple audio podcasts, which were amazing. Didn't really know who the guy was, except he was the brother to Tasteless. Little did I know, how big this stuff would get. At our LAN parties, I was now pushing for person vs person matches rather than vs computers. For awhile this worked until I surpassed all my friends, but 2. And after a year even they were no match.
However, I was at a weird stage, too good for my friends, but absolutely crap online. I tried playing on iccups and found out they played it on fastest, not fast or normal speed. I tried 2 games, lost abysmally and took a break from iccup. However, now I started practicing on fastest, trying to beat 2 computers at that speed. Tried iccup another season, lost twice abysmally and quit again.
But I kept practicing and improving. Day9 started his daily with BW videos! Eventually I began to hate playing on anything by fastest and finally convinced my friends to play on fast, not normal. I also began making my own maps as I got bored of the same 2 ones we always played. My first few were awful in constricting movement. This epic post by Nightmarjaroo: Nightmarjaroo's Map Guide was absolutely amazing for my mapmaking understanding (although I always had to adapt to some quirky requests of my friends who hated to expand/ difference between 1v1 maps rather than 4v4 maps.)
Starcraft2: Even Competition
Then SC2 Beta was announced and I made the big step and registered on TL. You see, up to that point, I felt I had nothing to contribute as all the strategy was very high level and had been hammered out for a decade. But with Beta announcements, I could finally pipe up every now and then. I managed to get into Beta on April 1 (at first I thought it was a cruel April Fool's joke by Blizzard.) and began playing. I absolutely loved finally being able to play people my own skill. My brother also got a Beta key via the facebook contests and I got my cousin in with my friend invite. I could never get them to play BW because of the old graphics, but we ended up playing a bunch of 2v1's or join in 3v3. My cousin tended to ladder more, so he'd come up with these 5rax pressures or reaper snipes that he'd pick up on the ladder and I'd try to figure out strategies to beat them. (Desert Oasis was kinda ridiculous for reapers.) It was my first experience with playing with a practice partner and a lot of fun.
Setback:
Then came my disappointment. My laptop was pretty crappy, but could play 1v1's fine, 2v2 were a chore after the 20 minute mark and 3v3's, I'd just turn over unit control to my cousin and try my best to macro. However, one of the later Beta patches absolutely destroyed my ability to play, dropping average fps from 12 to 1. When the game was released, I bought it, hoping it'd be better, but found it was the same. My computer would just overheat and the internet cut out. After losing 3 of my placement matches to overheating, I raged and uninstalled the game (unfortunately losing an epic replay where we defended a triple cannon rush.)
Efforts Redoubled:
I moped around for awhile, but strategy and competition is too addicting. With no money (poor uni student), there was only one option. Back to BW, and this time I was determined to make this iCCup thing work. And after more work, and 30 losses on iCCup total, I had my first success! My first blog details my first couple wins. I managed to pick up a few more wins. I also joined a team sGs Active Brood War clanand got some good practice games and replay analysis from that- unfortunately, I've been rather busy of late and have been MIA.
Currently:
With LAN parties, we've finally found a nice way to handicap me so that's competitive. We tried off-race Zerg, no mouse (just touchpad), Protoss no zealots, and Zerg no air, but what's seems to work best is off-race Terran, no tank. (I absolutely love the creative play that I'm forced to use lesser units like ghosts, wraith's, nukes, and bc's... that and occasionally pulling out some gosu vulture micro to pick up hordes of zerglings and drones.)
Still only a D- player on iCCup, but I need to play more often to improve. I've gone back to the basics of probes and pylons and endlessly practicing hotkeys as I browse TL.
I tend to watch SC2 league games as they have English commentary, though I watch the occasional Taek-Bang Leessang games, mostly Bisu.
When I was a poster of 1 year and only 300 posts, I found LR a great way to pad my stats
But in all seriousness, I only started posting there when I found SC2 LR was rather lacking in the live report part... unless MoonBear was LRing in which case, I just leave him be as he does it much better. Recently I've been too busy to do any of that, and I can no longer stay up from 2am to 5-6am in the morning for the GSL. They seriously need to restream it at a more reasonable hour.If you've gotten this far, I congratulate you. This ended up being longer than I had pictured in my head....
Words of Wisdom:
I'll leave you with some final advice from a TL 09 member just joining the ranks +1K with not a warn or ban to my name: think more, post less, and remember, you and you're thoughts are probably not as great or as important as you think.
In addition, the Revolutionist will return. I have faith!
TLDR:
Why you cheeky little blighter
Why not skip it, if it's too long?Phew, I can finally go back to LR without fear of wasting my 1k post on a post about a medivac drop or some such.
