EPTI hope I am in the right part of the forum here because I'm not that familiar with TL yet. (Hope that will change soon). If this is the part to blog away on anything thats on my simple minded RTS brain then lets start without further ado!
~ The following will be my 'history' up to the point where I started playing SC 2. My English isn't that great so bear with me please.
# Part 1 ~ My birth till DoW
I'm a 19 years old German, who is into Computergaming since I can actively remember anything. The very first RTS I played was Age of Empires, and boy was I fascinated with that game. Hours on end I bested CPU after CPU and felt like the king of the world but at the tender age of ~maybe 9/10 (cant remember that clearly) the concept of Internet was somewhat lost on me, so if competitive AoE 1 even existed I did not knew about it. The following year I played a bit here, a bit there but after all nothing really captured my interest until the follower of AoE 1, namely AoE 2 appeared before me. Again I cleared the single player as soon as possible and at that time I found a great interest in experimenting with different stuff. Mainly not just building stuff whenever I feel like it, but building something when it is need at a certain point in time. (In short I learned my first buildorder.) Again I didn't have the luxury to play on the Internet but this time I was saved by my father, who was a huge AoE 2 fan as well (still is) and so in the confines of our living room my father and I got into epic battles. Unfortunately I lost every time because even if he did not know the concept of micro, he got some innate ability to pull the hurt units back... Well, while we played I slowly started to grasp some basic concepts of RTS, like build orders, overall gameplans etc. (Even till today, the only time I ever won against my father was on a map I created where I got a bunch of recourses and he got nearly nothing. Seriously that man plays AoE2 nearly every time he is not working...)
When I was like 12 years old, I got first introduced to the concept of the internet and I loved it. The RTS that captured me at that time was Battle Realms and as soon as I got internet I tried to log in (fckn Gamespy, I have to puke every time I remember it). I got smashed. Not just by my father, but in a 1n1 against someone I did not know. I got absolutely demolished! To be honest even if it sounds extreme but after my very first online game I sat back and contemplated for a while if it was even worth playing when I feel such a humiliation every time I lose. I came to the conclusion that I should try again, and I did. This time in a team battle. We won, even though I wasnt that helpful in the game, it gave me a sense of accomplishment. So while I played Battle Realms I slowly got the hang of the whole online business and wasn't 'nervous' anymore when I had to play someone. I even got into a clan, and I felt pretty awesome. (The BR lobby was like 60-80 people big at that time, so to get into a clan was pretty big, at least for me).
So I played away and 1/2 year after that I bought my first game that wasn't an RTS. The Elder Scroll Morrowind was described as an awesome game and so I tried it. Unfortunately I never got the hang of playing it but that could also be seen as the 'final' straw that brought me into Esport. While I absolutely hated to play Morrowind I fell in love with the Map editor and soon found myself in a modding team where we tried to create a pretty awesome map. That was the first time I was really dedicated to something. After a while even my father became worried because I emerged myself in the mapeditor any given time of the day when I did not have school. One guy on the team I was on was called Neo.Genetic, and I got along pretty well with him even tough he was like 4 years older then me. One day as we drew near the deadline for one of the steps of our mod I once again mapped like a madman and while it drove me higher and higher, some people of the modteam could not keep up. When Neo told me he had an clanwar I was furious, and asked him for what. He told me that he was needed for a game called 'Dawn of War'. At that time I thought it was a shooter so I became even more furious but I learned a valuable lesson at that time. You can't dictate the life of other people over the internet. Even if I insist that someone should do something, there was no guarantee that he would do it. After a while I was shopping in a Media Markt ( I imagine something like this also exist on the rest of the planet ^_^) and saw the game 'Dawn of War' on the shelf. Curious I picked it up and I nearly lost my footing when I read that it was an RTS and not a shooter like I originally thought. I instantly bought it and contacted Neo, with whom I had nearly no contact after that 'incident'.
# Part 2 ~ DoW - Never before was I that captivated
After I first contacted Neo again he invited me on a Teamspeak server. I used TS2 sometimes before but never regularly so I always felt somewhat insecure when I had to talk with people instead of writing (I was about 13/14 that time). Well on the teamspeak were Neo and another player called 'LaZy' who even was my age. They both played 2n2, and after I asked about a Unit LaZy asked Neo 'This guy doesn't even know what a Defiler is, I don't think he will be good at DoW'. Well I was pretty pissed. I listened a bit more but left soon after that and started playing DoW. (Over the years I got pretty competitive and I believe that moment in TS2 was the moment when this certain part of my personality finaly broke out) I was not just determined to get better, I was obsessed with the game. (I once answered a question my teacher asked me with DoW slang and got laughed at pretty bad) Luckily for me Neo was friend with a guy who called himself sCa.Phoenix. I did not knew that he was a bigshot in the DoW community at that time and happily accepted his help when he showed me one of his builds. (Later I found out that he was going to Singapore to participate in the WCG. I believe it was 04 or 05. That time he did not do so well but at the WCG in monza he got 3rd place). I practiced his build till I knew it completely and could play it with my eyes closed. After proximately 3-4 months I considered myself pretty good and got a good solid understanding on builds. And then I saw SeleCt. (In SC2 know as Dignitas.SeleCT) ... TmG)SeleCT has to be considered a god among man in DoW, there is no way around it. I watched his replays, I analyzed his style and I was completely absorbed by his play. It seemed kinda outlandish because it hugely differed from my own and was highly focused on multitasking and micro. I was no slouch in those areas but against someone like SeleCT I couldn't even hold a candle. I played him once on ladder and he completely crushed me. It wasn't even close. (While I lost Squad after Squad he micro'd and even tough he lost some units, he never lost a whole squad). Well after the WCG SeleCT disappeared from the DoW Scene and I played like usual about 6-8 hours DoW a day just because I could. (hehe beautiful school life). I got into a clan participated in some clan leauges and 1n1s in the ESL and even reached #2 on the global ladder for 1n1. #1 was firmly reserved for ToT)Left at that time and it didn't matter how hard I tried I could not dethrone him... Well it went downhill from there. New add-ons came out and with that new races until we finally had a total of 9 races which where nearly impossible to balance. Some times I 'sought' inspiration and uninstalled the whole game to install the classic version and patch it until I could watch SeleCT`s replays again ^_^ When I remember it now, I needed about ~2 hours just to get it to the point where I could watch the games again.
Even tough the game was imbalanced as shit, I cant deny that it was partly my fault for getting worse and worse after all I became somewhat arrogant when i finally reached #2. Additional to that I became a mod in the German webpage for DoW which was something like TL is for SC2 and after nearly 4 years of DoW every day it kinda fall into the background. I still deeply love the game, but I do not think I could ever again become good at it. I guess my obsession with DoW slowly faded away and I started playing fun games like DoTa or Footy (for all the WC3 fans!!). This continued until I was 18. SC2 came by and I started playing it until I got Platin league in the early states of the game. Pretty soon after that I got some computer problems and after they got solved I kinda forgot about SC2. At that time it did not captivate me as much as DoW had.
# Part 3 ~ SC2 might be my new DoW!
About 2 1/2 Months ago I once again wanted to watch some replays of TmG)SeleCT and patched my DoW classic (Hadn't done it in a while). So I watched his replays and just for the lulz started to google him. After some search I found something about him related to SC2 and I was flabbergasted. Could he really be playing SC2? Well I finally installed my SC2 again and was still in Plat. leaugue. That was kinda weired and I lost about 20/25 games until I got demoted into Gold. There I finally started to pick up, get in touch with some builds and decided to choose Protoss as my race. Protoss really reminded me of Eldar at that time and it was one of my favorite races in DoW.
And than it began, as I played I finally began to get obsessed again. For the last 2 months I breathed SC2. Before the season reset I got promoted to Platinum after I played about 400 games and I found out about Day9, TL and GSL. I watched, I played, I inhaled SC2.
After the season reset I played again and got promoted to Diamond and finally 1 week ago I got promoted to Masters after about ~450 ladder games in the new season.
I don't know if I will be any good in SC2 or even close to the level I once had in DoW, but I'm happy that I got my determination back. RTS shaped my life since I was about 9 years old and it will continue to do so in the future as well.
At this point I like to thank TL because it provided some excellent informations and tactics. Also without the tracker of the events I would be much more confused. Because it is all listed on TL I can divide my time optimal between gaming and studying on streams/event casts.
Well it is about 4:20 am here in Germany, and + Show Spoiler +
Grubby just got roflstomped by Artosis on NASL.tv
