EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ueXqy.png)
493 views over the course of one year seems impressive when you take into consideration that there is zero content (nothing of quality, not even a one-liner or two). So I decided to finally give an introduction and have something for those users to look at (I will go over my encounter with Brood War rather than StarCraft 2 as Brood War has had a much more significant impact on my life).
I discovered StarCraft back when I was about 10 or 11 years old while I was living in Daegu (my father is in the military so we travel quite a bit). Before I came across this game, the only computer my family had was an old 90s computer that barely ran Sonic CD (which was my favorite PC game at the time. It's a Packard Bell which was the one of the few brands that Sonic CD was ported to). My parents knew they had to go shopping for a new computer that could keep up with the blazing speed that was DSL at the time (which wasn't very fast by today's standards but it would be the fastest speed we had have at the time) and went into a local computer shop deep in Daegu. The guy was experienced at building computers and was willing to sell an older model to us for a lower price.
This guy looked at me and asked if I liked video games. I told him I did and said he had a game for me. He handed me CD-R disk with the word "StarCraft" written on it and said that this was a really fun game and that a lot of people were playing it. He installed it on the computer on the spot and we left the shop with the computer and that disk.
The disk contained a cracked version of StarCraft that wouldn't let me online nor would it let me update the game to a later version. It was enough to get me to explore the Single Campaign. Being 10 or 11 years old and only having the experience of playing Sonic or Mario, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I never got passed the Desperate Alliance mission (the one where you had to survive for 30 minutes) despite my best turtle skills back then. Eventually I grew too frustrated to continue and gave up. I did come across the cheat codes you can use but after using power overwhelming so much, you get bored since it takes all the effort out of playing. When I tried to play on Battle.Net with a friend, I wound up locking myself out of the game when it updated and suddenly started saying that I needed a CD to start the game (something I didn't have).
Fast forward to when I was 15 years old and living in the United States. I was an avid console gamer playing mostly single player games such as Crash Bandicoot, Metal Gear Solid, Tony Hawk's Pro-Skater (all those games were becoming old at the time but I refused to give them up). I had become addicted to internet forums due to my nature of not making friends easily and being depressed about being lonely. I don't remember how I came back to StarCraft or what spiked my interest to play it, but I asked my parents if they would buy the game for me and it is what I got for Christmas. I installed it and remembered back that I wasn't able to play online because I was using a cracked version but now I owned the game and when I clicked on Battle.Net for the first time, my life for the next 3-5 years would change drastically.
I had played the custom games with the CPU a few times before getting locked out the first time but I never got far without cheats. I was absolutely shocked at the new maps that were being hosted that I never saw before. Maps like Fastest or Zero Clutter or Micro Jail. I immediately jumped in without knowing even the most basic understandings of mechanics or strategy. Back then I followed the infamous philosophy "Mass Carriers" after a few losses and seeing other (bad) players perform. While a good chunk of users here will say that I wasted my time on maps like these playing games like 3v5 comp stomp, I cannot deny that they were the happiest times playing Brood War (before I knew about 1v1 and OSLs and ProLeagues and actual skill).
How did I discover actual 1v1s on maps such as Lost Temple, Luna, or Python? Another internet forum led me to playing several UMS games just to kill time into the early hours in the morning (usually up to 4 AM and such). I was commenting on someone else's skill when someone threw the name BoxeR at me. I had no idea who that was but I didn't question it at the time and left it at that. When I had time to go look I found a single video which would become the first VOD of progammers that I ever saw:
It was 2006 when I discovered this video for the first time and was blown away by it and completely shaped the way how I thought I should be playing StarCraft (which was not to go straight to mass carriers). After this, I started playing a few 1v1s with that same group of people and was introduced to Race Wars as well. I wanted to see more VODs like the one above, however, I would not discover TL until a year later (in 2007) and my limited knowledge only led me to very few VODs that I could find. Most of my exposure to StarCraft would be actually playing the game.
I did not progress much in terms of skill due to the way I play the game. It can be best described as not being able to remove my ego from the game. Everytime I was able to pull off some insignificant micromanagement like the players BoxeR or NaDa could, it fed my ego that I had potential to be a great player (I could if I practiced hard even now, but I would never with the mindset I had at the time). Losing a game when I had this image that I was potentially a great player when I was horrible was completely intolerable and I began to ignore playing 1v1s in favor of UMS maps instead to avoid losing all together. It started an era where I played badly and for all the wrong reasons.
This particular mindset was not unique to StarCraft, but manifested itself into a lot of things I do outside of using a computer though. It led to a very chaotic, lonely, and just a horrible experience for high school. Being a sophomore in high school was when I was at complete rock bottom. I had no motivation to do any homework nor projects which bombed my grades harshly. I was so ashamed when I brought home a report card where I passed 3 or 4 classes out of the total 6 I was taking while the rest were low Cs or Ds. By the time I was finished, my school informed me and my parents that I would have to retake Algebra 2 as well as World Geography. My father was the time where he would be getting a PCS (Permanent Change of Station or moving to another city) so that my next year would be at a new school almost starting fresh.
By some miracle I had managed to survive High School having to make up those classes (one in summer school and the other by getting credit by examination). By now, I had gotten most of the internet forum phase out of my system and I was managing life posting much less as well as playing a lot less of StarCraft. I would soon start my classes in college. It was around this time that I discovered TeamLiquid. I did not register for sometime and was using it primarily to discover even more VODs of professionals playing the game. Shinhan Bank StarLeague Season 3 would be the first tournament that I kind of followed (I learned later that the tournament and the Masters tournament that followed it had concluded some time ago). I started becoming a hardcore fan of NaDa as well as my irrational hatred of sAviOr at the time (simply on the reasoning that he beat NaDa who would become my favorite player in short time). I would register this account sometime in November but rarely used.
And that brings us to the present where I have managed to bring myself just a little bit forward than who I used to be. I am currently a Senior in a 4 year college majoring in Computer Science and minoring in Mathematics. Next semester will be my last one as an undergraduate and I can assure you that I'm rather nervous at such a huge transition in my life and career. Some parts of me still hold that bad mindset though I've learned to not let it take such a strong hold over me and I've enjoyed a few games here and there in Brood War (though I do not play anywhere near the hours I played in the past). I don't post much on TL but I still visit form time to time.
And that is my short story about me. Hopefully it'll be a nice change away from just a blank blog (though I will continue to wonder how an empty blog attracted so many views).
