Originally posted on May 3rd 2011.
WARNING - IT'S VERY LONG
Editor's note - Watching Day[9]'s 100th video post about his sc life, really inspires me coz of he plays an important role in the e-Sports community. I'm proud to be a sc gamer and will always be.
How It All Started
My first real time strategy game was actually Age of Empires (2?) when I was still in primary school, then I moved to Red Alert. But no game has captured my heart so much like StarCraft, you have to understand that in the past games were more focused on the story campaign line as oppose like today, for a 1998 game it was really freaking impressive to have such absorbing cinematic and graphics. Even until today, StarCraft Brood War cinematic intro still remains ONE of my all time favourite trailers ever in my book.
Simply beautiful.
Anyway if you like the music at the ending click here to download ;D
Sc came Into my life when my bro and I were walking around in Parkson shopping mall, and he saw a free sc demo play and went to play it. For me, at that time I was still a ra player. I wasn't attracted to it at first until my bro really went ahead and bought the game, of course since there was only one computer available we had to take turns and share, so when it was his turn I would just sit beside him and watch him play. I must tell you that since we had only one computer that time, we often quarrel over it. I remember that one time that I was so emo piss I 'accidentally' shut down the CPU while my bro was doing his homework on it, man I was really an asshole lol.
I only got into sc until I was really bored with ra, and sc campaign is a pretty hard game to beat, I mean c'mon...the AI cheated! It has infinite amount of money even though it ran out of minerals and gas to make an army, so it was only natural that my bro and I used cheats to play the game (lol). But of course to be 'fair' we set some ground rules like we can only use one cheat code (I used Black Sheep Wall often), and also as I was a noob in sc I never really got to finish the campaign without using any cheats. The sc craze was pretty popular, although I could only talk sc stuff with just one guy...but with the LAN multiplayer function my cousins with my bro and I were able to play together happily vs AI, the obvious map choice is BGH (Big Game Hunters). We always played together in a cyber cafe in Brunei every holiday, of course we also played other games like Counter-Strike and pool, but we also played some sc custom made maps that we could find online.
I really forgot which race did I start off with, but I know that I never really dig the shiny Protoss race for some reason. So I always switched between terran and zerg, but I think I actually started with terran and my bro played Zerg. Oh I just loved making those battlecruisers every time we played on bgh, but we would sometimes try other races out too just for curiosity. I remember that there was one time that my bro completely tricked me by attacking me with hallucinated carriers, so since my goliath force were so focused on the fake ones the real one was attacking from another direction lol gg.
21st century onwards
I entered secondary school, and as a casual Gamer I played lots of games. I did stop playing sc for quite some time, but it was until when my friends and I started going to nearby cc's around the pujut neighbourhood, and yeap we played scbw bgh style. I think the one who started the sc craze again was Adam (yes you) coz he had a Battlenet account, man come to think about it I don't even know what the heck was bnet but maybe that's because I only know LAN. Anyway, that was probably the first time I played my first 1v1 with Adam's older bro, Which was funny because I actually beat him using zerg.
Oh talking about zerg, I can say that I officially switched to zerg around that time because of my fascination with Lurkers. I remember that there was one time in a 4v4 bgh battle, all my allies got rushed, owned and I was the only one left. This also means that the game just turned Into a 4v1, and I was like like..."you know what, no way I can win. But I won't go down without a fight.". So I made a berzillion lurkers and burrow stacked them at a mineral patch just outside my entrance, I also knew the Lurker ambush trick where I would spam the "s" button for stop so the lurkers won't attacK until I commanded them to do so. The result? I held off two huge waves of four armies combined, it was a freaking Blood Bath. Well anyway I died after that because they sent in some Doom drops.
My beloved Lurker...you are missing all the action in sc2 =C
Aside from that, I also tried to play the whole campaign without cheats that time. But unable to complete the "To Slay The beast" mission, so I kind of stopped playing scbw for awhile again and played other games. But I didn't entirely gave up on that game, I decided to try it again before I graduated secondary and succeeded. Damn AI and their infinite mney ==
It was also at that period of time, I can fairly say that almost every scbw fans were wondering when was sc2 gonna come out. But then again, we were given other games to play around like WarCraft III and Diablo II. Also with the announcement of StarCraft Ghost sc fan were sure excited about it (I was really looking forward to it), although it was supposedly going to release on a console (which I didn't like) but then it was a chance for me to actually buy a PlayStation 2 or XboX instead of just sticking to the PC. Well the game never came, it went Into hell development which means the game development stage was going nowhere and was put on hold. Blizzard said that they hope to revisit it again, I'm guessing it would be revived in the next five years after they're done with the sc2 trilogy.
Who let the lings out?
Progaming
It was the year 2007 then, when I was casually talking with my friends and they told me one of the most mind blowing news ever. As you sc fans guess it, it was the announcement of sc2. Hell yeah it was about time!
The first thing that I did after I went home at night was search for sc2 info, I dig out all the information I could find about it. I watched the teaser trailer, I read all the interviews, pictures, the fans reaction, just every single thing. Also because of sc2 I started playing scbw again, I Remember that one of my cousins used to visit an official sc fansite called sclegacy.com and joined the community. It was also at that time something caught my eye at that pretty much change my gaming behaviour forever, sc pimpest plays.
What is pimpest plays you ask? Well if you do know What is Pimp My Ride, you basically know how pimpest plays work. It's basically some player that makes an Awesome move that makes you go WOOAAAHHH!!!!! OMG DID YOU SEE THAT?!
Amazing.
Now I was never really a competitive Gamer until I played GunBound and DotA, but scbw multiplayer...IS TOUGH. I started watching scbw matches in GOMTV Star Invitational First, that's where all the Stars were invited. I was curious to see how insane they were, and wow did I get mind blown by their moves. It was also a coincidence that I watched Flash and Jaedong's uprising, my bro fell in Love with Flash's terran mechanical play and I fell in Love with JD's destruction power. Until today, both of them are now the best terran and zerg in the world (although jd is in a big slump right now, oh well).
I didn't really touch scbw multiplayer until end of 07 december, I had my first official scbw 1v1 game while I was in my home town sibu through garena. I downloaded garena for dota purpose at first but I decided to use it as my scbw training platform, malaysia channel didn't exist yet that time so I was quite a frequent visitor to the euro channel. I did try to play in ICCup (the official scbw ladder ranking), but because since it's global my line often lags so I got lazy. And yes, I did lose my first scbw 1v1 match T,T
After a few months hanging out in the euro channel, msia channel was finally opened. I was excited because it was exciting to meet other msian sc players, and it was. I made many online sc buddies over the three years, I still hang out in garena msia channel even though sc2 is already out. And I shall list my sc buddies friends right here, because you guys rock, not only did we just train together, but we also share our happiness, laughter, sadness and craziness together like bros ;D
- onex
- cyllen
- nem
- craft
- tofu
- koaty
- King
- bon
- uncle toss
- noobilly
- Light
- Lamer
- marks
- rambo
- gen
- Tiger
- sun
- dis
If I missed someone out please lemme know <3
Oh FYI, I'm known as SoFool in that channel btw ;D
In garena msia channel before sc2 came out, we had clan wars and 1v1 tournaments throughout the season. Oh a quick trivia about my scbw tournaments in msia garena, I got a 100% winning record in all of my first game vs terran, that includes rambo one of the best msian terran players XD...although I never won any of the tournaments, but I had fun participating in it. As I continued to polish my skills and Star Sense (it's like map hack implanted in your brain), I never really know what's my actual scbw strength, I guess you need to ask those guys that I've just mentioned above. I think I can safely say that I've accomplish my goals in scbw as a zerg, so I needed a new challenge...
The road to
Before I get to that, I did mentioned that I joined sclegacy forum during sc2 alpha stage. I also joined another forums which was known as blizzforums.com because it was linked, in the forums the posters' job was basically give insight and thoughts on the process and development of sc2. During the alpha stage, I posted a lot of things. Like a concern scbw player, sc2 must succeed scbw in every way. I give insights, thoughts, feedbacks, anything really, for over the past three years I've given my criticism and support to blizzard especially in the multiplayer aspect. Come to think about it, I guess that's why the sc2 campaign feels so bleh.
OK, so sc2 was released. I was a bit reluctant to buy the original because being the cheap chinese person I am, I wanted to see if it was worth buying it. I played the campaign first though, I was very impressed at first but looking back it wasn't that great after all, because I didn't wait so long just to play the terran campaign only. So many unanswered questions left, like wtf did blizzard revert Kerrigan back to human? == I really hope the next expansion can fix that.
As for the multiplayer, I was really sadden how zerg was designed. But then again, I didn't really play around the race that much even though I did. I got a free guest pass from my bro's friend and played some battlenet, got gold easily in one day with a 7-3 record. But after my guest pass expired, my account became inactive. I continued to watch sc2 videos though especially from Husky (because he rocks!), I also continue my hate on sc2 with my scbw biasness. Heck, I even planned and designed my own sc2 zerg with complete data and stats while I was working part time during my semester break.
However, my sc2 hate started to change. I couldn't understand why and how could scbw players enjoy the simplicity of sc2 game play mechanics, I wanted to know why so I decided to give a try again to explore. I got the opportunity when cyllen (God Bless you man) decided to lend me his inactive account, and I started from scratch from bronze climbing to gold so far. After many games, I started to realize why blizzard have designed the races like this and that. My perception and views changed, the fact that sc2 was made for everyone to enjoy from newbs to pros (after all, games are suppose to be fun yes no?). I'm not saying that I'm betraying scbw, I still love scbw in fact. But the thing is I see myself playing sc2 competitively, I have to move on so that sc can be recognized as an e-Sports platform in msia sharing the same status as DotA. I want to freaking contribute damit, but I'm stuck in miri atm.
I'm not trying to say my life sucks from that sentence, whatever God has planned for me I just have to see what happens in the future. The fact that I'm now a Duskbin trial editor, I'm trying to mold up my future in the e-Sports industry hoping it can be successful one day like South Korea. If that doesn't work, oh well...that's too bad I guess but it won't be end of the world. At least I have a family that doesn't condemn me for playing too much sc ^^
Some remarks
Before I finish this post, I want to tell you why StarCraft is special to me.
- StarCraft is just not another game because it has three different Uunique, diversified and balanced races that requires a different play style, it's not like wc3 where almost four races have units that serves the same role (like catapults, get it??), or the imbalance unit of the soviet apocalypse tank from ra2.
- The compelling storyline from scbw and the sc-verse presented in sc2 that sucks sc fans into it.
- A game of magic pimp skills, speed and brains, has taught me to make fast decision making in real life bullet time style.
- For an old game to make a decade of appearances in the World Cyber Games within ten years, it's fking awesome. Besides cs, are there any other games that even last 2-3 years?
- The fact that it took me the whole day writing this post.
That's all from me, I still have other games to write about. Thx for dropping by +)
StarCraft, the best RTS game ever <3