EPTThe beginning
I started watching starcraft during the first season of gomtv in BW. I thought tastless was such a funny commentator that I said "hey I should watch more of this game". The first time I'd ever seen BW being played was actually many years before that at a baby-sitters house. This guy who was a few years older than me, the brother of my babysitter, was playing it while I watched cartoons. He was playing Evolves- his favorite custom game- and I was pretty immediatly taken back by the awesomness of it all. I was amazed, and somehow the game stuck with me.
Of course at that point I already owned the warcraft 1 demo which I'd beaten many times. It took a few years for me to finally get into broodwar. I got into warcraft 2 first (even though this was like, 2001ish) and loved it. I remember arguing with my sister that warcraft 2 was a more complex game because the animation of a grunt swinging his axe was much more complex than that of a marine shooting- obviously. I played warcraft 2 a lot, although I'me pretty sure I never beat the singleplayer. warcraft 2 was not good for my health. I gained a lot of weight, and theres a puicture of me being like 11 years old or something with a big pot belly and white as snow skin pouting in a blow-up swimming pool because my parents made me go outside on a beautiful summer day in stead of playing video games. Thats besides the point I guess.
So I played a lot of warcraft 2 and eventually, as these things happen, warcraft 3 came out. I want to emphasize that at the time the family computer was running mac os 8 and had like a megabyte of ram. So I basically had to force my parents to get a new computer so i could play warcraft 3 (another woefully expensive and under powered turn of the milenium mac product) and was able to play warcraft 3 on the lowest settings. Oh the joy of warcraft 3. The first 3d game I ever played. It was beautiful- incredible. Of course I only really got into tower defense games and such. My greatest moment in that game, probably a few years after it came out, was playing the last lane in a tower defense and saving my team from a whole bunch of bullshit and typing in chat "no leak is a good leak" and like 3 people typed lol back to me. It was a pretty good moment. I also remember playing a tower defense game ans someone saying that "this was the map where jaina has her top off"- like a fool I zoomed in and was burned by disappointment. I guess now that I think about it theres no way he could have known I fell for his little trick, but I felt like an idiot anyway. Other pivotal moments of sexuality mixing with blizzard games include trying to quit out of the game as fast as possible when my sister walked in on me playing one of the siege tank defense maps where every level another bit of the minimap gets revealed and if you beat the game you get 64x64 pixels of brownish nudity. Also there was a whole fiasco where two players where cyber dating in War3 and being all kids I had to ask each of them if they were hot for the other because they were too nervous to ask eachother. I assume now that they were both men.
I guess I should mention that before actually buying war 3 I played the demo a ton and alsways went for the fast-tauren build because, hey, they're the best units. Remember the demo where you could only play orcs online? How I yearned for some night elf tree walking goodness. A memory now surfaces of me and my cousin sitting on a boat at the family lake and him telling me all about how awesome the night elf tree buildings were- that they could walk and eat other trees- before I had found the money to buy the full war 3 product.
So this sort of warcraft stuff went on for quite a while until I was exposed to the wonderfulness that is competitive BW through tasteless on Gom season 1. Yup we're back at the beggining. So at this point I owned BW for whatever reason (warcraft 3 motherfuckers play it or go hom), and was totaly amazed by the sort of stunts players could pull with the units that seemed so clunky in my hands. Tastless was, of course, absolutely magical during the first season of gom. I don't think he was ever better, or will ever reach that level of excitement and knowledge he held for a game as he did at that time. It was insane. I invited friends over, bought them energy drinks, and we would wake up at 4 am to watch tastless comment on some of the most exciting stuff we'd ever seen.
My love of the game continued to grow, and I even tried my hand at it- although the results were pretty mixed. I peaked at a D+ zerg player before the crushing reality of starcraft's nature descended upon me. All and all, those first 2 or 3 years of my exposure to broodwar were a pretty magical time. Games commentated in ENGLISH every weekend, korean pro games for the nights when I didn't care about school the next day (most), and as many games as I wanted to play inbetween. Being "above average" in highschool meant that homework was always a breeze, and I had loads of free time. I sort of miss those times. Then, there was no guilt in playing a game for 4 hours at a time. No voice in the back of my head telling me to work, or do something more productive. Great times for sure. This constant excitement and love for my favorite game continued fairly consistently until disaster struck.
The middle
Starcraft 2. Oh Em Ef Ge. For every serious BW fan who was actively playing and watching games when SC2 was announced, it was like a crazy nuts party when that game was announced. We all renewed our vows to play consistently and become a pro gamer, and to devote LIFE to this new game that was coming out. Every once and a while we got those retarded battle reports ("Hi I'm dustin Herpdor and let me bring you ACTION TERRIBLE TERRIBLE ACTION"), and occasionaly a cam of the game being played at a convention was uploaded. More magical times. The game look amazing, and showed a lot of promise.
Then the beta came out. For zerg players, it was fucking sick. Roaches were so good. If you haven't been playing SC2 since beta, then you just can't understand. There was almost no point in building anything but roaches. It was cool in the "I can't lose" sort of way, but a bummer in the "this game is broken" kind of way. Blizzard's genius solution was to nerf zerg into infinity so that at retail zerg enjoyed a balmy 30% win rate, which sucked.
There was a lot of things I did not like about sc2. Infinite unit selection seemed retarded to me, as did the maurader/roach/immortal triumviratt (luckily those days are behind us), and the maps where awful. "Just give us a port of destination!" I shrieked, but my cries went unheard. So now 11 months later the game is pretty much balanced, but empirically more boring than BW. Tepid players, huge death balls and continued play on shitty and broken maps have pretty much destroyed my interest in the game. Of course some players are better than others, but the skill ceiling is just stupidly low. I'm looking at you infinite unit selection. Of course the game is still in flux, and certain units are still grasping to find their place, but it's just less fun.
Undoubtedly in my mind, the worst thing produced by that game is the SURGE of pop-star commentators and instant-personalities. Some of the scummiest and most annoying people on the net pull tens of thousands of viewers and make huge salaries off of them because the have some shreds of a personality in a community littered with monotone and bland nerds. That guy? Oh he was popular in the wow scene and has a european accent. Lets get him a mic. This dude? Well, hes kind of a douche bag and doesn't know anything about the game, but he streams 24/7, and hey- I think hes making a music video! For whatever reason these kinds of people make thousands of dollars off this community. It sucks. Meanwhile, great commentators like Day[9] of Wheat produce quality content without bombarding with ads or insisting on donations every couple minutes. It's frustrating the so many drastically less talented and frankly - less good- people can make so much money off of us. Thats enough about that I imagine.
The GSL seemed terribly exciting to me for a few seasons, but over time the allure of watching mostly average players compete for WAY too much money while two goofballs (I say that in a loving/teasing way) try to make it sound more exciting than it is wore off. I got really excited for NASAL, but the production values were weirdly low, and the commentating was sub par for a lot of it. IGNPL was actually surprisingly fantastic. The quick pacing and diverse commentator pool made it a lot of fun, and frankly, very refreshing. I hope to see more from those guys. For me, SC2 has been an overall disappointment (not even going to talk about the single player -_-), but maybe the expansion will add onto it in the sort of meaningful way BW enchanced SC1. Maybe.
The end????
No probably not. I like this community and am hopeful for its future. I won't leave anytime soon. Unless ban. These "omfg I hit XXXX posts" threads are really silly.
THANK YOU FOR READING AND HAPPY 1311TH POST DAY
