My 100th post and first blog

So you might be wondering don’t people usually make this kind of thread at some bigger cooler number like their 1000th post? This is probably true but I felt like writing my first blog and it just seemed right to do it for my 100th post. Beside that, I don’t post very often(and mostly in the strategy forum) which means it takes a long time to get a high number so 100 posts feels pretty big to me.

Anyway, over to what I’m actually going to write in this blog, for those interested. It will be about where I came from(what games), how I got into sc2 and TL, my sc2 “career” and also perhaps some of what the future holds. So now you know whether you should continue reading or not, sort of like a tl;dr just before the big chunk of text.

I’ve been playing one game or another ever since I was ~7 years old, as of today I don’t remember everyone of them but I do remember my favourites. The first game I ever played and owned was called Mass destruction(for PC), where you played as a lone tank destroying other tanks, silos, guys with flamethrowers and whatnot, maybe someone else also played that game?

Mass destruction, my first game

I sure had a great time playing that game and after starting out playing my first game on the computer I moved on to consoles instead. When I got my first console I distinctly remember having to choose between a Sega Mega Drive or a Sony Playstation, I chose Sega and all my friends ended up with either a super nintendo or a playstation. I still had a great time playing Sonic, Fifa soccer 95(I think it was), Golden Axe and many other games even though I could never exchange or borrow any games with my friends.

As time passed I still managed to get my hands on both a playstation and a nintendo 64(though not a the same time) and oh the memories from those days. I played two of my all-time favourite games on nintendo 64, Zelda: ocarina of time and Mario 64, no one can say that those weren't great games. I dare you!

Best console game ever?

I should probably also mention that playstation had some great games too like Crash bandicoot, Final fantasy, tekken, spyro and a lot more that I aslo loved playing. So how did I find my way back into the loving arm of a PC instead of becoming a console guy? I would have to attribute that to two games that still have a very special place in my heart even to this day.

Let me introduce them to you:

Dungeon Keeper, pure awsomeness!!1

The first one is Dungeon keeper an old and forgotten game by now but it’s still as awsome to me. In this game you actually played the bad guy, the evil master who controlled monsters like bile daemons, dragons, orches, trolls and many other cool creatures. The campaign was fun, in most missions you were supposed to destroy the heroic forces(nice huh?) or other dungeon keepers.

The second games is....

Heroes 3 as the cool people call it

Heroes of might and magic 3 is a turn-based strategy game much like the civilisation series and it can take days to finish just one game. That’s also the charm of the game, that you could go over to friend and just sit there all night and play a game of heroes. I still remember every in and out of this game, the move speed of every unit, what skills to take, even just writing about makes me wanna go and play a match right now.

I’ve now mentioned some of my favourite games I grew up with so now it’s time to see how I actually got into to starcraft 2. I also played some rts games but not as much as e.g. Heroes 3, but more briefly a few games here and there with friends.

Those 2 games were Total anihilation and Brood War, yes I’m sad to say I never really got to live thourgh brood war as many other people did. I never played on iccup or even a “ladder” game on bnet. I thought both of those games were fun but it felt like I got into them too late(don’t how to explain it exactly) so that’s why when wc3 came it was the first rts the I really played alot.

That’s one badass orc

Even though I never played competitively I was still the best of my friends, I was the guy who was good at rts which felt nice. Eventually though the stress of always having to preform your best every game, I’m sure everyone has felt it sometime.

You just can’t yourself to push the limt you just want to relax when playing and that’s why I crossed over from wc3 to Dota. At that time Dota was nowhere near what it is today, there were no tournaments in Dota but it was till a really fun and relaxing game to play and that’s probably also why it became so big.

After I had stopped playing wc3(normal games) I’ve always felt that what if I would have kept at it, would I have been any good? That always left a little regret that I did stop but at the time it was just to much effort to try and catch up to everyone so I left the rts and played dota instead.

Now there is just one more game to cover before sc2 and well it’s WoW, audience loudly gasps in horror!

Good ol’ vanilla WoW

As of right now I don’t feel anything but bored when I think of WoW maybe it’s because I’ve played it for so long or maybe it’s because Sc2 is such an awsome game? I don’t know. I can tell you one thing though and that is that I had one hell of a time playing WoW and many fond memories(especially from vanilla) so I guess I can only say that’s it’s one awsome game.

Finally when Sc2 entered the beta and I was one of the lucky few to get a beta key on the first wave of invites. That is when those old feelings from the wc3 times bubbled up and I decided to go for it, I wanted to play in the top at least as a semi-pro player and see how it was. That’s that for the first part, my gaming history in short(right?) and how that led me into Sc2 in the next part it will be all sc2!

Hell it’s about time

So before I actually got into the beta I had been listening to day9 for a few weeks doing bw analysis and he had also started talking about sc2. Day9 is somewhat of hero, he taught me such a good foundation of approaching the game, I would probably be nowhere without his advice.

This meant I actually wasn’t totally clueless when started playing so even though I got placed in silver it only took me a week or so to get diamond(no bragging) it was just very few people actually playing. I remember those first weeks of the beta, you could play “famous”people and no one had any idea what was going. I remember white-ra 2gate proxying me(it was like impossible to stop in the early beta) and mouz.dreiven cannoning me in PvP but I had a proxy pylon hidden in his base mohahaha.

I actually managed to beat tlo in the first craftcup just a few days before he got famous in the teamliquid invitational. So it was a lot of fun to have the feeling that you could take games of pro players.

After playing ~150 games or so with random I decided that zerg was the race for me and that is still true, it’s such a fun race to play. Then after a few months that feeling of not wanting to play(not sure how to describe it, anxiety?) came back because every game was pushing me to my limit I always had to do my best to have a chance at winning and that’s exhausting.

This time however I thought back to my wc3 days and said I’m not gonna make that mistake again so I kept going, kept playing and kept improving and I’m still here today playing sc2. With sc2 I also became an avid reader of teamliquid and after a month or two of lurking I made my account.

Go TL, Go!

What can I say but that TL is such an awesome site and community that I still almost 1,5years later spend so much time reading thread and news there. I’ve lately been trying to post more and wish I had done so earlier but most of the time I just try to help people out in the strategy forum when I can. Hopefully I can be a bit more active poster in the future, time will tell but now lets get back to my Sc2 story.

A part of trying to get better is to actually see the improvement and that can sometimes be hard since everyone is also improving around you. That is why it feels really good when you do well in a tournament or at an even because it’s a sort confirmation that you’re getting better not just wasting your time. I managed to win a local LAN(Birdie) here in Sweden in the beta and that kept me going believing that I could improve and actually had improved since I started.

Birdie, my favourite LAN, 7 years attending in row now

At the next Birdie a year had passed since I had last won or shown any results for that matter but I had kept playing and not given up like I had in the wc3 days. I was pretty nervous and I felt like I was at an disadvantage because players like cytoplasm, Fury and Bischu were attending.

After group play and some bracket matches I ended up in a semi-final vs Bischu and I somehow managed to win it 3-2. I can’t really describe that moment other than pure happiness, I think I’ve never been so happy before. It didn’t matted that I lost to Cyto in final 0-3 because I won that semi and all hard work and that I kept playing combined with being an underdog and it being a local lan I’ve been to so many times just made it a really great moment.

Just the other week I also full filled dream of mine, playing in a booth. It turned out that the people that qualified(which I managed to do, with a bit of luck and skill) for the Swedish wcg-qualifier/Swedish national championships got to play in the dreamhack booths which july and bomber previously had been playing a show match in.

Me playing in a booth with the headset July warmed up for me.

I eventually managed to get to the semis where Cytoplasm bested me yet again, perhaps we will become each others arch-nemesis. That was my story of sc2 up to now and now a short closing part of the future.

As of now I’m on break from the university(just finished my second year) and I am going to Australia on work holiday visa with a friend of mine. I a little sad that I won’t be able to play as much Starcraft 2 but hopefully I can bring my laptop or find some nice gaming café. I am also excited, perhaps I will meet some new friends(maybe from TL) at a barcraft in Melbourne(I hope there is one!). One thing is for sure and that is that my Sc2 journey won’t end even if I travel around the globe I will still play and of course read TL!

I thought I would end this blog by saying thank you to anyone who took their time to read it, thank you to day[9] who has given me invaluable guiding, thank you to TL for being an awsome site and finally thanks to team prOperty who I’ve help build up and stayed with for over a year you are one hell of clan.

Vandroy over and out.

My 100th post and first blog

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