Year is 2003 or so. I am a student in Donetsk, Ukraine, and I don't even own a PC yet. But of course, I can't live without video games and Internet! I spend a lot of time in internet clubs, and though I don't live in dormitory (or the hostel for Brits -- I am trying to learn the correct English), I sometimes visit my friends here -- as like me, they study for IT professions, so many of them have PCs, and the whole dormitory is connected to a LAN (which is still kinda new in early 2000s, and they won't get Internet access in that LAN until 2004 or so).

One day I go into an internet cafe with friends (which is appropriately named Matrix), and one of them goes to some Russian gaming sites and saves to his 3.5" diskette some articles about Quake3 and StarCraft. I become interested. By that time I identify myself as an RTS fan, but when it comes to multiplayer games I mostly was into Quake 2 and 3. I think by that time I maybe finished original StarCraft campaign, but not BW (actually I didn't finish BW till this day, having played about half of it). But I played the shit out of Dune2 and some other RTSes in 90s (I watched my brother playing most of Human campaign in War1, but our pirated version of War2 didn't work at all past several starting missions)

So, fast forward a few years, and War3 and TFT come out. Eventually I own a PC that can play it. I get a hold of licensed copy (which is a feat by itself, when 99% of sold/rented CDs around there are pirated, and a lot of "licensed" CDs are actually pirate CDs with a shiny case). My first games in Battle.net are on laggy GPRS connection. In 2005 I finally move to where I can have a decent Internet connection at home. By that time I am addicted to Miker's VODs.

Miker is a legendary Russian caster. Basically he is Russian Day9. Like Day9, he is a professional gamer in the past, being one of the top in WCG Russia in WarCraft3. He made WarCraft3 VODs for a few Russian gaming magazines and even appeared on TV. He has great game knowledge and nice voice (no, really, very nice voice). Later on he starts working at proplay.ru, so finding his VODs becomes not as hard. The era of streaming has not yet come -- but with War3, you can watch games in WaaaaagthTV and listen to Miker's commentary in audio stream. Later on Miker leaves proplay.ru and founds goodgame.ru, the biggest Russian e-sports site to date -- and when ISPs around me start to provide decent unlimited plans, I occasionally start watching Miker's streams in a stunning 480kbit bitrate.

All that time I rarely follow other games besides War3 -- sometimes Quake, sometimes StarCraft. I don't follow international sites -- my English wasn't as good at first, and then I was just satisfied with amount of content I could get from Miker. And I definitely do not follow Counter Strike, even though this is the most popular esports game in ex-USSR. Actually when it comes to Donetsk, War3 events were almost non-existant, and even if there was an event I would miss it because of bad coverage (I don't follow Ukrainian sites since a) they mostly cover CS and b) they haven't managed to get into 21st century and get an RSS feed). I visited only 2 local events to date, one of them was WCG regional qualifier, where participants just played each other in the club -- no stage games, no commentary, no audience (except me and few other people, standing/sitting near them). There are still some regular events for Counter Strike though I think -- the game I almost never watched, except a few NaVi finals

Funny thing about WarCraft3 -- when I tried to get into it, I didn't last for more than 2 weeks or so. I tried to become better, played till level 20 on ladder, read articles, watched VODs -- but in the end was getting too frustrated with my low APM and not being able to do anything vs Blade Maser (I played night elf). I quitted and returned a few months later, just to quit 2 weeks later again.

Then the beta of StarCraft 2 came out, and changed everything.

It was actually typical for me to become bored with any game after 3 weeks max -- even "addictive" (lol) one, World of Warcraft (I got addicted to TotalBiscuit's podcast though). When I started playing StarCraft 2, I never got bored of it. I just stopped -- because I decided it was time to switch to other games temporarily.

I couldn't follow SC2 as casually as I followed War3 before -- so I had to start reading TeamLiquid, watching Day9 and following streams. I am definitely getting a little overloaded with content since the beginning of the year though, and now follow mostly big LAN events (since hearing the crowd cheer adds a lot to watching experience)

I am still having trouble with getting out of Platinum (I got into Diamond on Russian server after release though), but I am continuing to improve, and far from abandoning it. I started as Silver in beta after all.

The local SC2 scene is still non-existant though. While Kiev hosted a few international tournaments, there won't be even qualifiers for WCG in Donetsk this year. One thing is certain though: StarCraft 2 has came, and it won't disappear any time soon. Local events will eventually catch up

PS. There should be a honorable mention of a game Perimiter here. It's not really big and popular RTS title. It's buggy, and most horrible multiplayer bugs were fixed only a year after release -- and only in Russian version. To add a confusion, some single player missions were cut in international version -- to "simplify plot", but ended up messing it up. An add-on was meh, and sequel (Perimeter 2) was attrocious. But I spent a lot of time playing Perimeter online, because the gameplay was really innovative and original, and the community for that game was small yet great. Too bad the developer and publishers killed the game by poor support, and then the whole franchise by horrible sequel. At least I got some great Internet buddies from that comunity.