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I have no idea where to post this, since it's asking questions of both BW and (implicitly) SC2, so I decided to just make a blog about it and cross my fingers.
I came into the BW scene around 2003-2004, around the end of the July/oov/Boxer domination and the beginning of seeing Savior start to dominate. At that time, the game was being played on an extremely high level. As well, this seems to be about the furthest back I can go in the BW strategy forum.
What I was wondering is: for those who started BW very early (I'm talking like 1999 or 2000, when foreigners were still competitive in Korea), what was the strategy discussion like? What was being figured out at that point? I'm aware that the knowledge of the game and of RTS in general was still in a primitive state, but if you can remember, how was BW being talked about in that time? Were you worrying about if X build countered Y, how to battle X unit combination as a certain race? How would you characterize strategy discussion at this time? What kind of topics were being talked about frequently?
Thanks in advance to anyone!
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I didn't follow the scene that early on, but the only foreign names that came to me were like Elky and Grrr. Nazgul for a moment in time played in KR as well I believe.
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I got into the scene in... 08-09 I guess? So I'm not a old school player but I did find some guides when I began to play bw more.."hardcore" (no fastet possible/BGH). I don't know how old they are but I guess they were pretty old since they suggested the 2fact as the best build because "it's the safest build with a nice balance between power and economy". Same author suggested a fact/port opening and you get 2 tanks and 1 dropship and just dropship micro the shit out of the protoss  And of course I found a guide to the famous Tornado Terran. 2fact vult -> expand -> add 2-4 facts and starport -> expand -> make 4 addons and start pumping tanks.
All I got was TvP strats since all my friends were playing protoss
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Well, back then everyhting was played on LT and BW being in the primitive state that it was, most strategies revolved around sitting on 1 base and trying to outmicro/ out tech your opponent. Expanding was only really seen in PvT and ZvT/P. The ironed out "standard strategies" were in TvZ say 2-3 rax MnM into tank into dropship harrass + science vessle. In PvZ you'd see tosses going 2 gate zeal into speed zeal into ht THEN expanding. It was very interesting to see how skill was basically determined by how well one micro'd and how much pressure one could maintain.
The unit combinations were pretty much figured out at that point.
TvP was vult/tank vs goon/zeal/ob/storm/shuttle.
PvP was goon/reav.
ZvP was mass hydra vs speed zeal/temp (the speed zeal/temp was less effective due to starting on 1 base)
ZvT since muta stacking wasn't figured out it wasn't as popular as going 2 base lurker ling into drops. You had to get lurks out as fast as you could because of the constant threat of 1 base mnm. And drops of course are very useful on LT.
TvT was yeah, the same except the strategies weren't as ironed out. Mass dropship play was the standard.
ZvZ was of course the exact same as now minus the insane micro lol.
Around 99/00 KBK was a popular way of "fast tracking" your strategic knowledge. The first solid builds were perfected by them; Builds like 1 base lurker drop vs terran, 1 base reaver/dt drop or 1 base tank drop. There were strategies that stemmed off from these but they were the building block of competetive ladder strategies.
It's funny, now that i think back everyone was using 1 base tank drop in tvp. I think that's because boxer revolutionized micro. You'd see him come up to the toss base and take out 3 goons with 2 tanks then proceed to rape probes because people werent fast enough to run them away haha.
Anyways, if youre really interested in checking out the way people played i suggest you download the 1.08 and 1.09 executable patches for starcraft and watch some replays from battlereports.com. I suggest searching for replays from Author: -zX-Ravage-, he posted tones of amazing games from the 2001-2002 era.
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Sadly, BW strategy was NOT being talked about at the time.
People(good players) were just keeping their strats to themselves so THEY could win. Communication was also much more difficult and tedious back then.
Only after the foreign scene started being utterly dominated by the korean scene did people get together and work in an attempt to get better at the game.
EDIT: also you can imagine without that without people helping them how bad players starting the game would be. doomed to do weird 1 base without set strategies in place.
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I know the only website I used when i played in that time was www.broodwar.com and it had very few strats. Most of it came from joining the bigger channels back in the day and playing against people in those channels and discussing the strats..
Shorter story, there was no real set in stone build orders, you just played and used stuff that worked against you.
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On May 28 2011 08:47 Bond(i2) wrote:
Well, back then everyhting was played on LT and BW being in the primitive state that it was, most strategies revolved around sitting on 1 base and trying to outmicro/ out tech your opponent. Expanding was only really seen in PvT and ZvT/P. The ironed out "standard strategies" were in TvZ say 2-3 rax MnM into tank into dropship harrass + science vessle. In PvZ you'd see tosses going 2 gate zeal into speed zeal into ht THEN expanding. It was very interesting to see how skill was basically determined by how well one micro'd and how much pressure one could maintain.
The unit combinations were pretty much figured out at that point.
TvP was vult/tank vs goon/zeal/ob/storm/shuttle.
PvP was goon/reav.
ZvP was mass hydra vs speed zeal/temp (the speed zeal/temp was less effective due to starting on 1 base)
ZvT since muta stacking wasn't figured out it wasn't as popular as going 2 base lurker ling into drops. You had to get lurks out as fast as you could because of the constant threat of 1 base mnm. And drops of course are very useful on LT.
TvT was yeah, the same except the strategies weren't as ironed out. Mass dropship play was the standard.
ZvZ was of course the exact same as now minus the insane micro lol.
Around 99/00 KBK was a popular way of "fast tracking" your strategic knowledge. The first solid builds were perfected by them; Builds like 1 base lurker drop vs terran, 1 base reaver/dt drop or 1 base tank drop. There were strategies that stemmed off from these but they were the building block of competetive ladder strategies.
It's funny, now that i think back everyone was using 1 base tank drop in tvp. I think that's because boxer revolutionized micro. You'd see him come up to the toss base and take out 3 goons with 2 tanks then proceed to rape probes because people werent fast enough to run them away haha.
Anyways, if youre really interested in checking out the way people played i suggest you download the 1.08 and 1.09 executable patches for starcraft and watch some replays from battlereports.com. I suggest searching for replays from Author: -zX-Ravage-, he posted tones of amazing games from the 2001-2002 era.
the guy is asking for around the VERY BEGINNING OF BROODWAR.
the ages where BoxeR was still a noob, or at least wasn't a legend.
You have to remember that Giyom (THE ONLY WHITE PERSON TO HAVE EVER WON A STARLEAGUE) won by HARASSING USING ZEALOTS IN SHUTTLES
you would see Hydra + Guardian incredibly often in ZvT and some of the unit combinations used would just be embarrassing if seen nowadays.
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Korea (South)11589 Posts
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Dude the startegies were absolutely terrible, 1base corsair/dt, 1 base lurkers(lololol skelton vs garimto) 4-gate zealot for pvp. It was basically the early equivalent of heavy pressure strategies with expansion being an after thought if your pressure failed/you were running low on minerals. I remember watching a game of everlast vs someone i forget, but the zerg was using an early form of 3-hatch mutas off 2 base while everlast(who was playing T) went for a 1base M/M combo with sci vessels for mutas(the mutas before then denied any expansion). Also after vgundam swept some tournament with a 2-fact build against protoss, that became a standard strategy(as in the bamboo rush).
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SC was a lot easier back then, that's all I can really say 
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I guess I should be a little bit clearer in that I was hoping I could find out the ways in which players were talking about strategy and not specifically what kinds of strategies were being used. Thanks so far though!
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On May 28 2011 14:00 benjammin wrote:
I guess I should be a little bit clearer in that I was hoping I could find out the ways in which players were talking about strategy and not specifically what kinds of strategies were being used. Thanks so far though!
As I mentioned before, strategy wasn't really discussed, it was more of something you would keep to yourself. I assume this is because everyone wanted to win themselves, and didn't like the concept of sharing strategy. However, there were things called channels and clans that people would enter and leave, and often times people would discuss stuff like strategy, however more often they would just flame each other =(. There just really wasn't a reason or a means of communication.
Furthermore, forums didn't really exist, or just weren't very popular, so there wasn't any way to really discuss it, and all of the "strategy guides" posted up on the internet was absolute shit back then. While I'm sure it was talked about between close groups of friends I can say otherwise there wasn't much strategy discussion involved.
However, clearly the game moved on pass that stage as the game became popular and people really set aside their differences and discussed strategy together. Which was a big step for a lot of non-Koreans or foreigners. In Korea though, Progaming teams were formed and under the crazy Korean practice system what we know today has been built (metagame, build orders, etc).
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I remember 1st~Tsunami had one of the first legit strategy websites. Years later, I heard his older replays were scanned and found to have hacking traces. I'm not sure it was true, but he was a pretty good player who shared strategies.
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On May 29 2011 05:02 guN-viCe wrote:
I remember 1st~Tsunami had one of the first legit strategy websites. Years later, I heard his older replays were scanned and found to have hacking traces. I'm not sure it was true, but he was a pretty good player who shared strategies.
Hmm his site isnt functional anymore. I remember this guide for 2 factory vulture tvp with elaborate pictures detailing how you obtain map control with mines...but i can't remember the link.
Although they may not stem that far back, there are still some relatively guides that lay around in the bw recommended threads, like bigballs guide on LT.. 
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EPT
