EPTFirst, and most importantly (to most BW fans anyway), I apologize for not having streamed much recently, primarily the pro scene. The reasoning behind this is due to a couple things:
- I've had trouble maintaining stable stream sources. If I can find a source for the night, there is pretty much guaranteed lag to some degree.
- My internet here is pretty shitty and unreliable. Combined low bandwidth with the previous point and a limited upload bitrate and you get my shitty stream.
- Event times. I usually try to go to bed at around 10:30pm my time (it's 11:39pm now, yikes), and korean events tend to start at 8pm/9pm, so it runs in to my sleep schedule. I don't want to have to shut down my stream halfway through because I want to sleep, so I try to refrain from letting that happen in the first place.
On the bright side, I am done my co-op term in 2 months from now, where I will move back to Kelowna to finish school, eagerly awaited by much faster internet speeds. Instead of getting up at 6:15am every weekday, I will have a semi full-time school schedule, where I will hopefully be able to stay up later for events if the part-time job I get permits it.
Next in line - BW ladder activity. I truly enjoy still playing BW competitively, but to be honest, it's hard to stay into it when iCCup is deserted. I know other servers are available such as Fish, Brainclan, etc, but it really is a pain in the ass to try to communicate with people of different language and endure the lag and other problems that go with it to find and play games. I still hop on for race wars or what have you, but I've practically stopped laddering for those reasons. I still plan on following the BW pro scene and casting/streaming events for iCCup, as I became a BW TV admin about a month ago.
My new sink for the majority of that time now goes to SC2 laddering (gasp!) actually. I've never followed the SC2 pro scene and am not really eager to to be honest, except for occasionally stealing builds and metagame stuff, but I do enjoy laddering and actually using my computer specs for what they are worth. I've probably only got 60ish 1v1 games under my belt, but I'm a masters terran so far, and consistently ranking up. When I move back to Kelowna and have better internet I might get around to streaming my ladder if anyone actually shows interest in watching.
Anyways, that's about it really. I feel kind of guilty for playing SC2 since I haven't been as active as I was a year or so ago, but I'm still around and I there is plans to make progress there this fall when I go back to school. Look out for iCCup BW TV events though and you will hopefully find me casting + streaming though!
tl;dr - Haven't been super active in BW lately, but will hopefully improve come this fall. Now switched to laddering SC2 due to lack of availability in BW ladder. Will be casting BW events still and maybe streaming some SC2 when I get better internet.
Thanks for reading. Gotta sleep now, I'll check back in the morning.
