EPTI had been a casual lurker without a registered account for a while, casually browsing BW streams and reading the odd topic here and there.
On the 8th of July I made my account (I know its the 19th now so this is a little late but ah well)
A little about me:
I started playing Starcraft 1 very quickly after its release and got into it due to a friend, a very dear friend. I remember one day when I was going round to his house to play Goldeneye or something on his N64 that he greeted me with a beaming smile on his face that screamed 'look what I just got'. He proceeded to show me his Starcraft 1 box which his dad had brought him from one of his many trips to Asia as a present. It looked awesome. We eagerly went and installed it on his PC and started to play, in the following few weeks we completed the campaign and then found out about the install spawn feature and played vs on his lan. We both sucked, really really badly. I wish I could see the replays but it went a little like this:
Island maps, every game (lol). Terran vs Terran, 200/200 Battlecruisers vs 200/200 Wraiths (at least one of the game I remember clearly). When we engaged each other I cloaked my Wraiths.
The subsequent rage was amazing: this was probably the first time I heard a complaint about balance in a game! Cries of - 'WHAT THE' and well that is just unfair were loud and followed with a small scuffle. All in good spirit however.
We played Starcraft for ages after then and although we were still terrible it was a lot of fun.
After my dabble in RTS I quickly moved into FPS games. Playing Counter-Strike (from something like 1.3?) and then Source since at the time I thought it would be the next 'big' thing. I had gotten very good at 1.6 by then so the transition to Source was not a hard one to make. I played competitively from its release to about 2008 at which point I started to play 'World of Warcraft' (._.). Thinking back to all the time I spent playing wow I can honestly say that I don't really regret it, I made a lot of friends who I am still in contact with today (one of them being Beastqt whom I leant my second sc2 account to early on since he 'didn't know if it was good or not'). In the mean time however I dabbled in the Battlefield games, Vietnam and BF2 (BF2 which I played competitively).
'Wow' was a time consuming endeavour and effectively killed my career in Counterstrike. It was also at this point that I was introduced to the opposite gender and had my first girlfriend this took away from my time playing CSS as I had played from 3pm when I came home from school to 3am every single day of the week almost. This new more social lifestyle suited me and my latter years in high-school are very fond memories to me. Anyway, enough about me!
Starcraft 2:
As with many people registered on this site what really got me into it was the release of the Starcraft 2 beta.
The day that I received my beta key was a wonderful event. I literally jumped up and down and ran round the house like a 6 year old receiving a nice toy at Christmas. I was at home in Switzerland at this point and as a 20 year old I think I may have - worried my parents some (lol).
I logged in and started to play, placement games quickly became ladder games, gold quickly became platinum and I was happy with my new toy.
At this point I started to watch tournaments, read TLSC2 forums and start to enjoy the community which I had held in a sort of special regard for so long. I played BroodWar on Iccup with some friends but mainly focused on Starcraft 2 and my university degree.
Since then I have seen the game and the community evolve so much, the players become characters and the competition become more and more fierce.
There have been so many tournaments that I have followed that they are too many to list. Going back to the HDH invitational in the beta through MLG, GSL, DreamHack, TSL but even things like CraftCup and these small tournaments I have followed. It's been great, I love the casters have grown and how the game is changing at such a rate that it is often hard to keep track.
My posts:
I started out never posting on anything really, or typing out a post only to delete it since it wasn't particularly good. Unfortunately several nights after coming back from being out with friends and posting absolute trash got me a few warnings and a ban.
It happens, I deserved what I got and frankly It was a good thing. One week of not being able to post on TL was interesting. I suddenly found threads that I wanted to post in, things that I wanted to post about or had an opinion that I wanted to share. Since that time I feel my relationship with TL has become even closer.
I read the news here, I read the articles here, I read the tournament coverage here, I read the fan-clubs, the Blogs the general, everything. I read it all here. I realize that there are other places that I can read the news but often the articles and subsequent discussion is really interesting.
Recently I have started to post more and more, I hope with 'good' posts but the temptation to troll still remains, albeit kept at bay (I hope).
People:
I have met a few people here on TL, not that many I guess since I have as I said always tended to be more of a lurker rather than a full blow poster.
I recently met Riptide here in Sri Lanka following a Blog post (http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=237556) that I had made asking if anyone knew of Tl'ers here in SL to my surprise Nazgul and a few others responded! We went out for a wonderful meal and enjoyed some drinks until the early hours of the morning, chatting, chilling and having an al-round good time. I hope to meet him again while I am here and we have chatted about it some already. Riptide is a truly awesome guy and I am glad to have met him.
Conclusion:
I have thoroughly enjoyed my first year here as a member of this site and hope to have many more.
Thank you TL!
TL:DR: TeamLiquid is awesome, I love this site, don't post rubbish. Riptide is a boss.
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I did too get in to it at the release of starcraft 2 beta, since then I have read tl.net 5-8hours a day. If I haven't been home it has been more limited on 2-3 though.
