EPTBACKGROUND:
I’m currently 31 years old. I started playing Starcraft vanilla at launch in 1997. I was at San Diego State University and believe it or not we had a decent sized Starcraft group in the residence halls there (Yes, we did stuff other than drink copious amounts of booze). We had T3 connections and we would form brackets and battle each other best of 3 style. The official scorecard was taped to my dorm room door. It was all fun and games until I started getting a little bit addicted to the game…
Halfway though my sophomore year I found myself playing endless ladder games and working my way up the ladder. It was so time consuming, especially since back then ladder games were set to ‘fast’, not fastest. It took forever just to get a ling out back then and I had hundreds of games played. Even my girlfriend at the time threatened on more than one occasion to defenestrate my computer. Needless to say I failed that semester and needed to quit playing right around the time of Brood War launch and channel clan –x17. For the most part I left Starcraft behind at that point and focused on my studies.
After quitting SC cold turkey the following semester, I ended up doing extremely well at school and I was accepted to a Ph.D. program in genetics at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. It took six long years but I finally finished my thesis in May of 2009 and headed to UCLA to conduct my postdoctoral studies. That’s where I fell in love with Starcraft again, only this time it has been more of a healthy hobby than a total obsession.
Unlike UTSW, UCLA has an undergraduate program and no shortage of gamers! I noticed that UCLA had a PC bang called GameOn and saw that they have gaming tournaments. At the time I was playing Xbox regularly so I ended up entering a Modern Warfare 2 tourney and winning it. Then I noticed that there was an SC1 tourney coming up in a week. I naively believed that I could practice a week and acquire enough skill to win. But little did I know how wrong I was.
I entered the tournament and was beat my first opponent, he was protoss and I was zerg it was best of 3 and I ended up winning 2-1. Man I was rusty and keep in mind the last time I played it was mainly vanilla SC, not BW. My next opponent completely destroyed my face. His gamertag was ‘blind’ aka Dai Nguyen. I knew I was in trouble when he invited me to a channel and he was sporting a WCG icon next to his name. It was ZvZ and I was completely destroyed. I learned later that he was an iCCup B- zerg player (not that I knew what that meant back then). I was so newb that I was going hydra while his stacked muta were in my base destroying everything. I was totally destroyed, this guy knew how to play. After the game he told me that he played on the UCLA CSL team. I was intrigued. He also asked if I was in TeamLiquid, I had no idea what he’s talking about… But again, I was intrigued. After that day, my interest in SC was again sparked and I wanted to become a better player. I joined the Team Liquid community and also ended up joining the UCLA CSL team. But then came the much anticipated launch of Starcraft 2.
My experience with TL.net, SC2 and my contributions to the community.
When Starcraft 2 was in beta I found myself desperate for a beta key. Luckily enough for me those same friends I told you about from college knew my love for SC and surrendered their beta keys to me. I couldn’t have been happier. I dove right in and actually made it into the platinum league (that was the highest possible league at the time before diamond league existed). I enjoyed game after game and played all I could. There was another tourney at the GameOn at UCLA and I entered this time I wanted to win it all. Again, this didn’t end up happening for me. I beat a diamond level player (again this is when Diamond was the top league possible) but then lost to top 200 NA player ‘owmygroin’ 1-2. But nowadays I’m 31, a scientist and husband. I’m playing for the experience and fun, not the competition. Just when I thought it couldn’t get much better guess what? A guy you may have heard of named Sean Day[9] Plott had a launch party for SC2. It was to be held at the Harvey Mudd College, Galileo Hall, in Clairmont, California on July 27th 2010. The event went on roughly 12 strait hours!
My first major contribution to TL.net was this thread about my Day[9] launch party experience which you can read about here: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=139103 Manifesto himself featured the thread back when I had around 36 posts on the forums.
Needless to say the event was a huge success and a blast. I ended up sleeping only 3 hours that night and then returned to the laboratory to find my copy of the game waiting for me!
Since then I’ve also had a chance to meet several SC casters, pros, and fellow casual players at Blizzcon which you can read about here: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=168649
Even my wife has given in to the fact that SC is now again part of my life when she presented me my birthday cake and needless to say it was SC greatness: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=149652
I have gone so far as to even stream my own games and you can catch them sometimes on TL: http://www.teamliquid.net/video/streams/greatfall
Since then I’ve enjoyed hanging out with the UCLA CSL team (didn’t get a chance to play many league games due to rl obligations T_T), made many friends on line and even had a stint as the co-host of the Starcraft 2 podcast ‘StarCrack’ with a character named Monarch. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=164902
I also made up these fun little images:
White-Ra cheerful for TSL3:
![[image loading]](http://i111.photobucket.com/albums/n159/dazedhavoc/SPECIALTACTICSTSL3.jpg)
Special Tactics!
I made this one is for APM spammers everywhere. I should really make this shirt I think it would sell.
![[image loading]](http://i111.photobucket.com/albums/n159/dazedhavoc/sAPM1.jpg)
I also contributed to the single player strategy forum by discovering the way to make the ‘Outmatched Crusher’ achievement easy as pie to complete. You can check that stuff out here if you haven’t already:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=156628 and http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=156514
Anyway, long story short. My two years on TL.net has gone by in a flash! I wanted to thank you all for making this a place that I like to visit often and have an awesome time with. I continue to learn all about SC and life here. When I get bored I watch some of my favorite players stream, when I am raging I read some funny posts which involve White-Ra’s face on various bodies or listen to some nice underline entertainment and when I am internet serious I read some strategy, and when I am fan-boyish I hit up the fan pages. And all this and I've managed to only get 1 warning
Thanks TL for making my 2 years here great and I hope to share more SC2 experiences with you for years to come.
Cheers!
