|
I started RTS games way back in the days of Kali and War2. It was so long ago, I do not even remember how I ended up playing war2 to begin with, but I played war2 for a good 5 years. I remember stumbling upon Case's Ladder and thinking that competitive RTS gaming could become pretty big one day if someone could organize and maintain a legitimate league and appeal to all ranges of skill. Case did an awesome job of paving the way for companies like Blizzard to justify putting in the R&D dollars/time to making something like Battle.net attractive...ultimately spawning the PGL and subsequent pro gaming leagues.
I'm pretty sure many people would recognize some names like Tillerman, Agent911, INcinerate, MekLarian and maybe a few others that go all the way back to those humble beginnings at Cases Ladder, where most of the elite gamers hung out on Kali in the infamous "Katan's Lair". I remember being quite intimidated when I first entered the Lair looking for games against the top war2 ladder players in the hopes of refining/testing my skills. Despite what many people would have described as a bunch of elitists, the Lair Rats as we were often referred to were quite friendly and welcoming to anyone who was an overall decent person - okay, well maybe @Bulldog would give everyone a hard time, but that was just his personality. It was not long before a few others like myself that didn't quite yet have the skills developed to become part of one of the premier clans - the Agents of Death, the Sons of Shagrat, or the IN clan - started our own clan called the Pondering Peons. While we may not have earned the prestige of the other war2 clans for our skill, I doubt a single on of the top war2 clans does not fondly remember the Pondering Peons. Most of our members either lacked the skill, focus, or desire to become elite 1v1 RTS gamers, but as a clan we would often give the top 10 teams a run for the money - even claiming the #1 ladder ranking on Case's Team Ladder on a few occasions.
We carried our clan ways over the Starcraft 1 when the beta was launched, well into the initial years before hacking became a huge problem on the ladder. We started out solidly holding the #1 Team Rank on Cases Ladder (as most of the top clans still preferred that ladder system to Blizzard.net's ranking system). Unfortunately it was not long before hacking became a major issue on battle.net and most of us went back to playing war2 on Kali until we ended up abandoning RTS for MMORPG's as Everquest became the dominant player in online gaming at the time. Some of the top players eventually went back to playing when BW came out, but most of us did not return to RTS gaming until the highly anticipated release of warcraft 3.
Never was I so disappointed in a game that I was so excited to see made into a reality. I would have thought that RTS game makers would have learned from the failure of Total Annihilation to ever have a game place so much importance into a single unit. And so the hero units of war3 turned me back off of RTS games and I wondered if a game like war2 would ever be rivalled in terms of its versatility in strategies.
No other RTS has given the players the option to start off with a low resource, medium resource, or high resource option. Essentially most RTS post-war2 basically gave you no choice but to start with the low resources option of war2 - where most of the better players would shine as each peon allocation was critical in gaining the advantage over your opponent. The early game was so evenly balanced with the main differences in the races coming in the mid - late game. When you add the component of a third element in the ground vs air vs sea, an element of choice became available that I have yet to see duplicated in any RTS. When I first heard that War3 was in development, I so hoped for a third dimension to the game and was crushed when I learned they not only eliminated it from the game concept, but instead complicated balance by added 2 more race options. If they ever do make another warcraft series of RTS games, I certainly hope they are not married to the hero concept and instead consider returning to the roots of the three-dimensional tactics of Land/Sea/Air. Some of the most fun games were on island maps where you could either rush for an early shipyard to: 1) put pressure on your opponent 2) expand 3) gain map control or you could function off of 1 or 2 bases depending on the map and go air to pin your opponent down until you could secure a naval force if that was necessary. I imagine there are not any island ladder maps in SC2 because the races are not very well balanced if you eliminate the ground threat from the early game as Terran easily gains the advantage by being able to expand before Zerg or Protoss would even have the tech to get up any air transport. You can't even really develop land-centric maps (islands attached by narrow bridges becoming death traps if you engage the enemy on these corridors) that encourage air play because Protoss gains the upperhand with warpgate tech and zerg would either need to use nydus tech or go fast mutas. Yet, even without these options in SC2, I am finding the game much more versatile in strategy than SC1 (never played BW enough to compare them)...still I occasionally will load up war2 for nostalgia and reminisce of the good old days in Katan's Lair...hell, I still have the only hard or soft copy of MekLarian's build orders and sapper guide that I am aware of in existence - maybe one day if there is a Pro Gaming Hall of Fame, I can sell it to them for big $$$ 
I often wonder how many of the Pondering Peons, or anyone from Katan's Lair are still out there playing RTS games. After so many years of not playing RTS, my skills have dropped off big time. In the peak of my war2 days, I would say I could have been grand masters level, but I will say that with age, the speed just isn't what it used to be. So, I've mostly started this blog to chronicle my journey from bronze to whatever level I can attain at this stage in my life when gaming must take a back seat to higher priorities in life - namely completing my schooling to become a Doctor of Chiropractic and raising a family - who knows, maybe one day my son who is now 7 weeks old today will become a future pro gamer.
|
On May 09 2011 17:15 silverhand wrote:
No other RTS has given the players the option to start off with a low resource, medium resource, or high resource option.
How about Age of Empire I/II? Or do I recall it incorrectly?
It has no air, other than that it was a great game, still is fun to watch and play.
As for island maps making it impossible to expand in SC2. Destructible rocks. Make the main island have two bases and the other bases be blocked by rocks. That way terran has to distance mine if they want to expand before sizeable armies.
It is possible to have low/medium/high resources as an option in sc2 as well. They do require different strats though, so it isn't done on ladder. Map makers don't seem to like the option either.
Check out the MineralZ custom map to see that it can easily be done (even if that isn't a a melee map).
|
i remember you
i was jeSteR\"/
|
I do recall AoE having the multiple resource options, but you are also correct in that it did not have an air component. I am also aware of the custom map options, but as they are not available in ladder nor are they used in any of the major tournaments, I haven't bothered to mess with those strats because I'm still working on refining my builds for each of the matchups so I can progress through the ladder faster.
@jeSteR\"/ - I remember you too. I ran into @Shaman on Facebook, but he's not playing SC2 and I don't know if there are many others out there.
|
I'm not from your era quite, I played the last year or 2 of War2 mostly in Lobby/Custom games and only really became aware of the War2 greats as they entered SC/BW, Agent911 and others. I enjoy reading about old Kali players, I kinda hope to meet up with someone who I used to play with on #111 with all the "scrub" players. As some of the servers opened up without an "invite" (I think Katan's for some time, and Maven's Haven I'm sure was open without invitiation for some time) but most of the people there were too snobby to bother with. I kinda regarded your group as I would have the Duke guys, kinda stuck in the past where Starcraft was lightyears ahead IMO.
Instead the people that were much more notable for my era were people like Grrr, Maynard, Shlonglor, and of course a bevy of elite wannabes like some guy called Control from the IN clan. Of course our group of players on 111# wasn't even in the prestigious status of wannabe. I tapped out of SC around 2002 or so after everyone I knew and enjoyed playing with sort of lingered away. Last I recall was sites like TeamLiquid and SKGaming and talk of travel to Korea...
I did well when War3 came out, got #3 on the team ladder 2v2's that I would mostly probably attribute to the number of new RTS players, the fact the game before TFT was imba as hell, and that of course, it's 2v2 again. Well, me and my teammate got bored of the repetitive nature of the game after a while and stopped playing, we both bought TFT but I think general interest just pewtered out after that. The general consensus I got was that things changed big time after TFT launched, for the better, but I was long gone by then.
I still love SC2, and I considered myself to be a "good" SC/BW player so it's a bit depressing that I'm in diamond league when my ego told me I should be masters at the very least. I do think it's true that the skill diminishes as you get older and not all the neurons fire in the same way anymore...which is also depressing. Still an enjoyable game and it's awesome to see the thousands of people watching streams, would have been pretty unthinkable back in the day. If Actiblizz doesn't fuck things up completely we have a chance.
Probably not worth mentioning a non-wannabe nick but I played (largely) under GRC~Seifer on #111 (Official Kali Starcraft) server.
|
Incredibly, shamefully late comment. Here goes.
I went poking around for remnants of the Pondering Peons, and this is where I ended up. I used to be Cyberkarkas, a.k.a. CyberPeon, and spent some very good years in Katan's Lair. I think most of us from that era are in a situation similar to yours; jobs, families, age and the rest of life have bumped us from the level of commitment to RTS we once had. I am somewhat ashamed to say I haven't played Starcraft 2 yet. Yep.
I have many fond memories of the shenanigans our clan would get up to. It still tickles me to go back and find our clan's relatively low win rate compared to our relatively high ranking. We simply did not give a fuck; we would routinely try crazy, ridiculous maneuvers, often with little chance of success, but just as often with surprisingly effective results. In retrospect, I think this made our clan unpredictable and therefore dangerous, even though we weren't the absolute best in terms of raw technical skill.
I've spent a lot of time thinking about my war2 time and what it says about me as an RTS player. I was never the best at efficient resource gathering, build orders, or micromanaging fights, but I've come to believe that I was one of the best at controlling my opponent's perception of what was happening in individual skirmishes and in the game as a whole. I won many games against enemies I really had no right to beat because I convinced them they were losing when they were actually winning. Warcraft 2 was primarily a psychological game of smoke and mirrors for me, and I think that's part of why I fit into the Pondering Peons so well. Being a part of the clan only helped reinforce those skills. Good times.
Thanks for posting your memories. I had a nice little nostalgia ride reading it. Good to know you're still out there.
|
Hello Silverhand, and CyberPeon.
I sure wish I could find my old poem about the pondering peons. It really was good.
Nice to see some familiar names again. It has been a long time since I have seen a Pondering Peon, I think the last one was RobDog on the Xegony server of Everquest... Kalpakjian was his wizard's name. My ranger, Aetherial, in Everquest hit level 75 or something before I finally quit yet again.
I also was guilded with MogKupo (Eldorado Furfoot in Everquest, and Eldorado in WoW) for a brief time,
Fond Warcraft memories...
-Aetherial, Aether Peon
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
