EPTI've decided to kind of write about my experience and story with SC2, so, I know it's long but I hope you all enjoy!
note: I would've preferred to do this via webcam video but sadly I don't have a webcam right now haha.
Backstory: I have 2 accounts, one protoss, one zerg. The protoss account is not mentioned in this story too much so it's a bit less lengthy.
How it all began:
Before the summer of 2010, my younger brother and I played a lot of World of Warcraft (yes... I know what you're thinking). We tried to follow what was left of the pro scene as much as possible, always dedicating our time for competitive play in the arena, he was generally better than me though.
Fast forward to about August 2010. While watching the 2010 MLG Pro Circuit for WoW (when it was still on the circuit), my brother stumbled across the Starcraft 2 scene. He showed me the stream and I didn't think much about it at first, though he seemed pretty interested so I tried to watch the stream and keep up with what was happening (both of us had no idea what was going on). I saw Tasteless and Day[9] on the stream at points, and they slightly reminded me of me and my brother.
During one of the MLGs while the WoW stream had some downtime, I asked my brother if he wanted to go to Game Stop and pick up SC2 and give it a try. I drove us over to the local Game Stop one town over. I sounded like a complete nerd as my brother and I walked up to the cashier and asked "Hey! Would you happen to have 2 copies of Starcraft 2 that we can purchase?" The guy politely smiled and said yes, handing us both the copies as we paid.
While driving on the way home, my brother was fascinated with everything that was on the box, and all the information he could obtain just by seeing the pictures of great battles. I smiled to myself, thinking that maybe this game would be great after all, but I had no idea what I was in for.
We both loaded up our copies of SC2 and installed. Being the competitive players we are, we started some games in....PRACTICE LEAGUE! I started playing the game as Protoss, if I remember correctly my brother started off as Terran. The game was amazing. Sure I barely knew what I was doing, but just jumping into a game that is as deep as SC2 was a really thrilling experience. My brother and I spent the most of our first games reading tooltips and figuring out tech trees, since we had never played an RTS before.
We wound up getting one of our friends from WoW involved with SC2, he chose to play Protoss like I did. We were all really bad of course at the time, but it was fun just trying to solve these problems together, and brainstorm builds to ourselves then share them after beating each other with them.
I was the first one out of practice league. I found out about Team Liquid and went on Liquipedia to look for one build I could focus on for my placement games. I didn't know what cheese was at the time, and I wound up going 3-2 in my placement games using the proxy 2 gate zealot build (lol).
We all placed in Gold League, which was nice, because we didn't even know who was better than the other. I was the first to fall out. I fell out into Bronze League, where I then learned that if I didn't become dedicated to the game, I would never improve. Soon enough, I was rank 1 bronze and into silver league, shortly placing up into gold afterwards by the magical 4 gate every game.
My brother seemed to always be at least a league ahead of me, which sucked, but it gave me motive to improve. Also, our friend from WoW was around my skill level for a while. I played in an online tournament (a KotH) as Protoss even though I sucked, but I wound up winning the tournament in an awesome finish in a PvZ.
Video of me winning online: http://www.twitch.tv/massiveztv/b/282407223
Soon after I decided I didn't want to play Protoss. I made a new account, and played as Zerg. I went 5-0 in my placements though I had no idea of what I was doing. i noticed my mechanics were improving a lot, and my APM was decent as well. I soon figured out that APM doesn't really matter about how fast your fingers can move, it's about how many things you can remember to do, and doing them.
I fell all the way out of Plat and into Silver League due to my inexperience with the Zerg race. It was really hard to fall that far, but it gave me more motive than ever to get back to Platinum League. After a short time, I was in gold. About a month after that, I finally placed into Platinum League.
I have been Platinum League for about 3 or 4 months now, not playing as often as I should've, until today. Today I finally achieved my goal that was Diamond League. It made me happier than ever, knowing that I'm capable of pushing myself far enough to reach my goals. I am now in the same league as my younger brother, and our friend is catching up as well (he's gold at the moment, though if he wins his placement I feel like he will be Platinum).
It felt so good to finally be in Diamond. I actually shed a tear or 2 of happiness after the win, since it was such a relief, especially since I haven't been doing as well in college as I should be lately. I now hope I can reach my dream of being Masters or Grand Masters. I'm a very competitive and committed person. I even told my mom that I will finish college, but I want to use those 4 years (or less depending on what happens) to become really good at the game and hopefully become pro one day.
I hope this goes to show a lot of you that if you have the dedication, and the right amount of motive, you can achieve your goals and prove to yourself that you could do things that you once considered impossible. I hope to one day become a professional player, or at least compete at a high level in LAN tournaments.
Sorry for the long post, and thank you all for your time.
Any feedback below is greatly appreciated.
Regards,
Joe "MASSivez"
