EPTThis is the first time I'm making a blog post on this website, so I'll do a quick breakdown of who I am before I go into how awesome StrifeCro was to my over the weekend!
My name is Wiliam and I'm a 17 year old student currently in high school, I plan on becoming an RN directly out of high school and about six months ago I fell in love with playing Starcraft II. I had followed the tournament scene since the game's beta and through release, however, I never really cared to pick the game up and attempt to learn it.
In March, shortly after my seventeenth birthday, I picked the game up and fell in love with learning how to play the game. My main race is Protoss because I'm a HUGE LiquidTyler/NonY fan and one of my friends Remy, was one of the original 200 players in Grandmasters on the NA server. Remy taught me some basic builds and gave me some replays to analyze and learn from to be a better player.
Over the last six months I've played from being a lowly Bronze player to a High Gold/Low Platinum player and I still love the game all the same.
Now, on Saturday ESWC was having their USA Qualifiers, I had seen that barely any players had signed up, and the ones did that were literally just pro players, I thought I'd pay the simply $10 entrance fee to participate and have some fun and learn directly from playing with these professional players.
ESWC USA Qualifier Brackets
In Round 1 I had to face IdrA, which was a joke of a series literally, Game 1 I was FEE and messed up my wall-in and IdrA was able to do a simple 6ling runby after opening 14 pool to beat me handily. Game 2 I was actually lasted about 15 minutes (remember.......I'm a Gold player) before he pushed into my natural while I was getting my third up and rolled over my army.
I wasn't upset with my loss, I knew it was obviously going to happen, but I was nervous of seeing who I would have to play in the lower bracket. After waiting for about an hour or so, StrifeCro lost his match against Minigun and would be paired up to play me.
I'm not very fond of the PvZ matchup, so knowing StrifeCro was a Zerg player didn't even want me to take the chance and play him, however, StrifeCro was having trouble with his computer that night and said that he was forced to play on low resolution settings and didn't feel like playing. I told him I was just a Gold level player and he could probably steam roll me, but he told me he didn't care and said good luck against Axslav in the next round.
Overall I was really surprised about how nice that was of him to do that for me. He basically gave up a chance to run through the bracket and place Top 4 and go to France and allowed me, a complete noob at the game to have a chance and play another match, and a matchup I was more confident/excited for. I would be 2-0'd by Axslav, however, I definitely learned a lot off of my matchup against him and I hope to use what I learned more in the future as I continue to play.
So thank you so much StrifeCro for allowing me to advance farther in the bracket and allowing me to play another match! That was really an awesome thing you did giving up your place for me, even though I'm pretty sure you figured I'd be eliminated the following round. Seeing people do things like this is why I love the Starcraft II community so much, the community is generous and helpful, thank you. I wish you the best of luck throughout your programing career and I hope to continue my work ethic to hopefully reach that level some day.
<3
William 'Payson'
