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I apologize in advance for wall of text, I occasionally get an urge to share my thoughts and I'm too lazy to format everything to make it look all nice and pretty or throw random pictures in, so just read and enjoy kkthx!
So before this past week it had been about a full year and a half since I had really played broodwar. Of course I played a game here or there on a friends pc or at a lan center but nothing for any extended period of time and definitely no 1v1. I've been pretty much full sc2 only since release (late July '10). This past week has been pretty much a hardcore bw/sc2 combo week for me with probably a bit heavier leaning towards bw. (out of roughly 140 games played since last Tuesday about 80 were broodwar vs 60 sc2). Initially I had intended to full bw for some time after MLG Providence, I wanted to play some bw and it seemed like a great time to, it's been exactly 2 years or so since TSL2 ladder so I was getting kinda nostalgic about that as well as a new season of proleague was starting.
I realized I did have a number of sc2 commitments that I didn't want to completely blow off as well as some stuff to do with my team (yes NrG is still alive despite what many think) and a couple tournaments that I was previously signed up for. So it turned into sort of a back and forth sc2/bw week which was pretty fun. I tried to stream as much as I could when my internet wasn't being shit so thanks to the 20-50 viewers that were hanging out watching my super fails...I will continue streaming as much as possible, it's fun so please watch when you can ! 
Playing broodwar again for some extended periods of time really opened my eyes and helped remind me of just how epic the game really is. It might not feel epic at all times, especially when you're playing TvP with your gas getting stolen while you scout him last when he's going double nexus on fighting spirit...but even seemingly basic shit like when you successfully micro marines vs lurkers to dodge shots or even defending early zealot pressure with some nice sim city/marine scuttling without losing anything is SO FREAKING REWARDING. It was just so fun. It's honestly these rewarding moments that make playing good broodwar so special. And helps make you appreciate it so much more when you're watching. You can be worse than the worst D-/keyboard user on iccup yet all you need to have is an appreciation for how immensely difficult the game is to enjoy watching the game and understanding just how epic everything really is. Something I loved about broodwar was even people who were absolutely terrible at the game shared just as deep a passion as I did for watching games and following players. It made the community grow on me over time as I realized everyone around shared these same passions and cared as much as I did about everything. (this is true for sc2 too!! )
I almost forgot how glitchy broodwar is, hollllllly crap. I could have a group of a few units and I select them and click to move them down a ramp. 3 marines walk down the ramp and the other 5 plus the tank all decide to screw around moving along the ledge or back towards the main. my first couple games back I'm thinking how the fuck did I think this was so fun...you have to literally babysit so much, especially moving up and down ramps. Units take time moving up a ramp, 3 goons can defend a ramp of 5 incoming goons simply because of how long it takes the 5 goons to move up the ramp and how risky it might be (1 could get stuck or not allow you to get a concave or fight efficiently at all) I found myself thinking how amazing PvP could be in sc2 if things were like this. In sc2 AS SOON as you have even 1 less stalker you are in huge danger of losing the game no matter where your units are, simply because of how basic a simple thing like moving up a ramp is. It might not be fun when your units start to glitch as you try to move up/down a ramp, but tactically its beauty, it helps make the game sooooo much better thanks to giving the defender such an advantage. I've spoken about the lack of defenders advantage in sc2 in previous blogs I think last year so I don't really want to revisit that whole discussion, an entire post could be spent comparing bw/sc2 defenders advantage.
Having to babysit everything at such a detailed level from having scvs mining to keeping units in check so they dont freak out can leave so little time to actually think if you are out of practice. This is one complaint many sc2/anti bw people seem to point out which is true and false. While making everything easier leaves more room to think. I honestly feel having so much to babysit helps make the skill ceiling higher which helps the proscene in general. I had so many missed depots such sloppy unit control with big armies....Late game TvZ I'd wind up with a couple units scattered all over the center of the map including like 10 scvs which somehow get hotkeyed with the army...I've always known of this but playing again reminded me just how difficult everything is. The game is absurdly difficult to play at a high level. (I'm arguably not even high level, B- average on iccup at my best and never qualifying or doing anything noteworthy) I managed to get C rank on iccup pretty easily this past week with a 40-29 record over the past week (at least 10 of those 29 losses were to DT's TvP) but I was playing at such a level removed from what I think I was during my best (iccup ranks might be a little inflated now since most of the people playing even at C-/C level are god awful foreigners or utter shit koreans) it's really hard finding games at levels above C anymore on iccup in general. Fish is apparently where all the koreans are playing and I figure I might give that a try over this next week. I will probably continue playing bw for another week or so at least if I can keep my sanity.
If you've never given broodwar a chance it's absolutely worth getting your feet wet at least playing single player vs AI to get a feel for how crazy the game interface is and how units react. Half the challenge in most games of broodwar is manipulating the interface and units to do what you ACTUALLY want them to. I found as games were being played I was more scared of the broodwar engine than my actual in game opponent. "Dear broodwar game engine please don't let my marines freeze in place as a zealot and goon are charging up my ramp...please don't let my scv finish building the factory then spend 10 seconds dicking around inside of it preventing my machine shop from going down...please don't let this mine explode all over my own units..."
This sort of randomness and glitchyness might make it a bitch to play at times but I think it's absolutely amazing and fun from a spectating standpoint especially. Elements like that help keep the game so fresh and amazing even after 12 years. No matter if you are the biggest bw hater in the community, I really think you HAVE to respect the legacy of how long broodwar has survived and how epic the game was for so many people. (and continues to survive and be fucking amazing) even with all of the recent developments, the korean leagues downsizing, losing the MSL, so many teams disbanding, players retiring. Nothing will ever change the impact Broodwar had. Also a huge reason as to why Starcraft 2 is so massively huge was thanks to Broodwar. Teamliquid and this awesome community in general probably (definitely?) wouldn't even exist without broodwar and I know for sure I wouldn't be into star2 as deeply as I am had broodwar not paved the path for me. I've said it in other posts but it still holds true, while I think star2 is a great game, broodwar was more than great. I started playing broodwar and became obsessed with the game, then later found the community, star2 was essentially the reverse for me, I had become obsessed with the community, players and events, I played star2 almost out of necessity. It's not anything against star2 but I know for a fact had it been a game with a different name and different community I never would have gotten so deeply into it...It's grown on me and I'm excited for the expansions but taking a step back to broodwar, back to the roots is something everyone would benefit from. Even if you hate broodwar and never played and never want to play, simply what it did, has done and is still doing is something special that ought to be respected.
Respect broodwar yo even if you don't understand it and haven't played or cared about it in over 10 years...it deserves it for being one of the best and most historic games in the history of pc games.
Thanks for reading,
 
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Its called nostalgia man, we all have it for some games
This will be special to you, but me never playing BW i cant really say how epic it was. When SC3 comes out I will be nostalgic for this game and my children will be for SC3, and so forth. What makes a game special is not the game itself, but the community around it and the memories it gave you. I really enjoy reading these threads, because I think this is the aim of games in general, to give awesome memories like this. BW will never live forever in my heart, but it will in yours and I respect that
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Exactly. Try it out guys, download the multiplayer edition here for free: http://www.iccup.com/starcraft/sc_start.html , then buy it.
On November 30 2011 08:16 firehand101 wrote:Its called nostalgia man, we all have it for some games ... ....What makes a game special is not the game itself, but the community around it and the memories it gave you.....
Says someone who has never played BW 
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Croatia9490 Posts
On November 30 2011 08:16 firehand101 wrote:Its called nostalgia man, we all have it for some games This will be special to you, but me never playing BW i cant really say how epic it was. When SC3 comes out I will be nostalgic for this game and my children will be for SC3, and so forth. What makes a game special is not the game itself, but the community around it and the memories it gave you. I really enjoy reading these threads, because I think this is the aim of games in general, to give awesome memories like this. BW will never live forever in my heart, but it will in yours and I respect that
nostalgia - A sentimental longing for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.
Keyword there being past. If you read his post, he talks about playing BW last week and having those feelings. Hardly qualifies as nostalgia. I think more proper word is 'magic'.
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I watched your games and I saw your frustrations with the Brood War engine, such as the factory building in Luna, where you didn't send the SCV to complete construction for a minute. I agree that BW was something special and will always be special, because of the time invested into making your gameplay as perfect as possible.
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The glitchiness gave the defender more of an advantage, so more games tended to go into the mid-late game.
Actually looking back at BW in early patches and SC2 beta, it's easy to see the paths of the game converging. They get fleshed out from a glitchy broken POS with no chat channels and 1 supply roach into something resembling an actual DEEP game.
I think in a few years we'll be just as nostalgic about SC2 beta and WoL as we are about brood war now.
But you're right in that BW took immensely more skill to play, you had to babysit EVERY unit, and to do something resembling stutter step, you didn't just have to press A and click away, you had to know which way every marine would go, because when you tell units to move in a diagonal, they actually don't most of the time and move in some wird L manner like a horse in chess.
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yay rob we should start zvting again
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Aye it's fine to be nostalgic about Brood War. Why? Because it's actually the best fucking game ever made. LuckyFool you're the man and I hope you keep streaming.
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Nice blog post. I agree completely.
I also disagree that it's just nostalgia. I used to be an Age of Empires guy for the longest time (tried WC3 and hated it) and only got into the BW proscene in late 2009, and I can tell you that I feel just as passionate about BW as all the guys who've played it since like 2000. Winning a long macro game or perfectly executing a creative strategy is the most satisfying feeling I've ever had playing a video game, and BW proscene still contains the most mindblowing and awe-inspiring play seen in a video game, and you can only fully appreciate that when you've actually tried to play online seriously yourself and realized just how incredibly difficult the game is.
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Canada11335 Posts
I agree, the word is not nostalgia. It can't possibly be as I can play both games concurrently. BW truly is magic.
Actually similar to Dark Matter, Age of Empires 2 was my game of high school years (and to some extent warcraft 2) but neither of those games are nearly as fun anymore. Age 2 in particular has not aged well at all, despite my nostalgia. Unit control is so lacking... which when I think about it, seems odd considering how buggy BW units are. However, although there were buggy units, with better control you could actually improve the armies effectiveness. It was buggy, but within the buggyness also contained the potential for highly refined unit control (muta- scourge control, vulture micro, dragoon hold position retreat, reaver micro etc.)
And with Age 2 I hate the spikes and drops of resources- really hard to consistently pump troops when upgrades can take away 1000 resources. Warcraft 2 is still nostalgic for me, but gameplay wise it doesn't measure up.
And goodness, yeah dragoons are THE buggiest units ever. And when I first started out, I absolutely hated their guts- their tendency to freak out when being attacked by sunkens was absolutely frustrating. But there's something about slowly gaining the ability to get even more utility out of your units so that with a little extra control, you gain a slight advantage.
Ramps and cliffs really were the ultimate defence.
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I really like the BW stream, even the TvTs lol
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On November 30 2011 08:16 firehand101 wrote:Its called nostalgia man, we all have it for some games This will be special to you, but me never playing BW i cant really say how epic it was. When SC3 comes out I will be nostalgic for this game and my children will be for SC3, and so forth. What makes a game special is not the game itself, but the community around it and the memories it gave you. I really enjoy reading these threads, because I think this is the aim of games in general, to give awesome memories like this. BW will never live forever in my heart, but it will in yours and I respect that
... so why don't you just play it then?
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bw for life
thanks for the blogs and keep up the streaming 
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This is the most touching thing I ever read.
BW was in the right place at the right time, it had all the correct ingredients: pro scene, easy to spectate, easy to learn the rules but hard to master them, and a fanbase that revolved around the merits of the game itself, not propaganda...
I don't think blizzard really knew what game they were making until years after BW became popular...despite the flaws in the game, it is a masterpiece. And BW, like most masterpieces, was made by accident.
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My friend asked me what playing SC:BW was like in FPS terms...
WASD move your shooter 10 pixels per tap, up/down/left/right move your targeting reticule 1 pixel per tap, reloading only happens after you type the full name of the weapon... and often your gun jams and to unjam it you have to spin around in a full 360 and finish reloading at the same time.
And that's to be proficient. He said I was screwing with him... then I let him play 10 games on ICCUP... He recanted.
LONG LIVE BROODWAR
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For me, BW is an endless struggle to try to get dragoons out of my base past my gateways. Or worse, on maps like Blue storm when you can have entire armies wandering what the fuck they are supposed to me. I love how you never know if goons will shoot a spider mine in time. I love how workers can randomly glitch my zealots for ages. I love how scarabs decide own their own if they feel like going towards the enemy. All of these random glitches may seem frustrating, but all in all, I basically still love all of BW.
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On November 30 2011 08:50 keiraknightlee wrote:
I don't think blizzard really knew what game they were making until years after BW became popular...despite the flaws in the game, it is a masterpiece..
Not despite the flaws...because of the flaws They fixed the bugs in pathing, AI,casting,mining (understandable,as a company is supposed to fix issues in older systems..), and it actually made the game less fun.
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I never had the pleasure, perhaps I should buy it..
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yay! I love BW :3! I like how the feeling that we can play even more refined seems possible and yet, requires a large amount of effort!
I wish the engine was updated though ):
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EPT
