EPTYa, I bet a lot (all 4?) of you might ask yourself this question. Surely I've hit some ladder games, roflstomped a few noobs in 4v4 (got pwned a couple times too!) and had some success in other areas of life (gf anyone?). So why would I discuss a real win? Lets get some background (it's extensive, skip to TL;DR or last few paragraphs if reading hurts your eyes).
I started playing SC2 in September 2010. I was a little stripped for cash, so I couldn't really get hold of it at launch. Oh how I envied those few friends of mine that had stayed up all night to get hold of the collector's editions. I swore that eventually I'd be ranked higher than them, to have some sort of achievement that made me better than them in some way.
When I finally started playing, I went 3/5 in my placement matches and decided to go with Protoss. The wonderful EU server stuck me into the Silver league. In all honesty, I had no idea what I was doing. I was just trying to make some units, spend my money, you know, the normal stuff. I had never heard of a build order, timing push, DayJ or Husky or anything. All I knew is that I wanted to reach Platinum league before my other friends did. They placed in gold, so I knew I could catch up.
Somehow, and honestly I have no real recollection of how it happened, I stumbled across TeamLiquid.net. I never knew there was such a huge community of SC2/BW/DotA/etc. fans that I had easy access to. It felt awesome, and I wasted no time in signing up to the practice partner thread. Not too long after that I found someone from England that would practice PvT with me. SeGi was his name (No clue what it is now, it got changed at some point and we lost contact
) and we practised a few hours a week. This lead me to my first promotion in December 2010 before the first ladder reset. I was ecstatic! This is what SC2 is about.It was around this time that I discovered Day9 and other commentators. I tried to learn from the Newbie Tuesdays and improve myself. It became a very grueling task along with 3rd year Chemical Engineering, but I was intent on improving. Also around this time, my friend "Marauder" started really getting into SC2. He had also placed in Silver, and so I took it upon myself to become his practice partner. Sadly by this time, one of my other friends "Lighten" had already been promoted to Plat. I was a little despondent, but I wanted to press on. I could still best him now and then (which he always attributed to lag, but I'd take what I could get) but I wanted to be in that league too.
Season 2 came around and the placement set me into Platinum along with "Marauder". We joked and challenged who would get to diamond first (spoiler alert, he did... I'm still working on it) and practiced harder than ever. I would often text him at night and log onto SC2, only to get a response from his girlfriend saying, "Sorry 'NoodleFish', but 'Marauder' is busy with more important things than silly games, he'll play later." Now that I think of it, I'm pretty glad they broke up :D
Season 2 came to an end with me still not making it to diamond, but I stayed positive. However, my focus on SC2 shifted a little when I myself got a new girlfriend (see my My 1st Blog Post
) and had to chill out a bit on the gaming side. However, this was also the time I joined a local SC2 league hosted by South Africa's biggest telecommunications company. During the 2nd leg of the league, I placed 2nd in my group and earned a promotion to the 3rd division in the 3rd leg. I had to tell "Marauder" about this and how awesome it was to be playing competitively with other South Africans.This is where the league became interesting... The 3rd leg started and they had an open 4th division for people who hadn't played in the earlier legs. And suddenly there were prizes! Samsung was sponsoring some amazing prizes! There were laptops, 23" screens, and 2TB external harddrives. This gave me an incentive to practise even harder. On top of this, the top 16 people would be invited to the championships at our biggest LAN event in the country to compete for R20,000 ($2500).
Over the weeks, I battled out with players of superior (and sadly very inferior, but this was due to bad placements) skill, but only managed to make 2nd place in my division. I felt defeated, knowing that a few micro mistakes had cost me the first place. But then my opponent said "Congrats! You also win a laptop!" I couldn't believe him, so I rechecked the prizes page and sure enough, I was eligible for a new laptop.
In the end, I feel like this has been my biggest win with regards to gaming. Sure, I didn't win and didn't make it to the championships (lost to the guy that made it to the finals though), but I feel that I have accomplished something I personally never expected to... Win something of value through a PC game. Even my parents who are often against gaming were impressed.
So why am I writing this all out? Well, I'm sitting on my PC with my new laptop updating SC2 next to me. I know that the next season of the League will be more difficult (I think I get promoted to 2nd Division... more diamonds :-/ ) but I want to push myself to keep my standard. Even though I might not be in diamond league, I feel like I have accomplished more than making it there. Don't get me wrong, I want to get there in Season 4 as soon as my exams are done, but there's no rush.
TL;DR --> Still Platinum league, but won a Samsung laptop. Makes me feel good about not having to be the best to achieve something in SC2. This was my first REAL WIN. Still gonna work hard at it though! :D
