EPT
)Preface
I'm going to be honest here. A few years ago, the only genre I really cared about was FPS-games. I played Counter-Strike, Modern Warfare 2 among others. I did play WoW & WCIII, but not half as much as I played the first two. I also had no idea what this thing called "streaming" was all about, neither did I care too much. I mean, I had just started Senior High School (or "Gymnasiet" as we swedes call it), and was very excited about that.
Since then, a lot of things have happened. I've gotten my driver's license, my first hangover, my first car, I've been rejected, I've rejected others, I've lost some friends, and I've gained some. I like to think that I'm a lot better off now than in Junior High. That was a time I'd rather not speak about. But what's in the past is, exactly, in the past. I like writing, and so, I decided to share some of my thoughts with you guys here on the TL forum.
To me, StarCraft is a lot like candy. It's something that's not healthy if taking too large doses (then again, what is?) but it's so good. You can try to make your own (as in play ladder games), and even though the product usually fails, it's still pretty damn good. However, when professionals do it, the taste is one of the greatest tastes in the world.
My story about how I got into SCII:
The Start of something new
I didn't hear about SCII launching until it was a few months before it launched. I remember playing StarCraft I & Brood War, but since we had no internet connection except for a modem (wow, do you guys remember those things?), I never played the Multi-Player, so there was no way for me to know what was going on in the professional scene. All I knew was that you control units & build bases, and that was as wide as an understanding of the game I had. For the record, I used cheats to get myself through the campaign, and even then, I failed a mission or two.
But I digress, let's get to when news of SCII reached me. I saw what trailers & videos that were out at the time, and thought back on how much fun I had with the original one. Finally having decided, I told my parents about it, and to my great joy, I found it under the Christmas tree during the Eve (which we mainly celebrate here in Sweden instead of Christmas Day, like the guys in the US).
Not prone to tardiness when it came to gaming, I immediately ran to my computer (which was kind of crappy, but at least worked) and started to install the game. Looking back now, I guess that was pretty rude of me, but we were only really my family & my grandfather on my mother's side (my grandmother died about a year before this) at our home that day, since we meet with our cousins, my father's siblings (my mother is an only child) as well as my dad's parents the day before Christmas Eve, which is called "mini-Christmas" or "Lilla Julafton" over here.
As soon as the install was finished, I jumped into Single-Player. I really liked it, especially the unit design, and explored the Hyperion thoroughly between my missions, thinking long & hard on WHICH upgrade really gave me the most of an edge with my play-style (I was, and still am, a complete newbie). When I finally finished the Single-Player the week after Christmas, I decided to try out the Multi-Player.
My first games went, as you might imagine, terribly bad. At the end of it all, I came out as a bronze player, which wasn't too surprising. I found myself actually winning some games, only to lose to more powerful opponents. And after a few month of playing every now and then, I lost interest in SCII for the first time. I had too much else going on, with tests, working at our summer house & what-not.
Second wind
A few months later, through my ex WoW-guildies (ex since I quit WoW), whom I played StarCraftII with every now and then, I found out about this guy named Day[9]. They told me how funny he was and I, feeling intrigued, decided to watch one of his so-called "Dailies". Little did I know what was in store for me.
The first ever Day[9] daily I watched was #337: "We have Liftoff!", which was a Funday monday (I chose that since if something has "Fun" in it, there's about a 75% higher chance that I'll enjoy it regardless of content). The daily made me laugh like I never had before, and I even fetched my father, since he, like me, studied German when he was still in school, to make him watch when Day[9] attempts to translate German to English, and I suddenly found myself watching more dailies, and getting back into the game.
Fast-forward to summer of 2011, or more precisely, the start of my last year of High School. By now I'm subscribed to some casters on youtube who I enjoy listening to as well as regularly checking out Day9.tv for more dailies. At our school, everybody who's in their last year needs to do a "project" of their own, and me, wanting to further my E-sports interest, decided to do a project about just that, but focusing on StarCraft II, since that's, in my opinion, the biggest game in the E-sports scene right now. However, I haven't really been able to start working on it yet.
The current status
Let's do another time-skip (starting to look like a manga/anime with all these skips) to November 2011, where I went to DreamHack Winter as a crew. I've already written a blog entry about that, so I won't write any more of that. However, I want to note some of the things I found out during the event that I didn't know before.
+ Show Spoiler +
Yes, you can haz the link to the blog about my DHW experience, it's here: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=301918
First: there may be some rotten eggs among the visitors or players at events, but most of them are really very friendly & just want to enjoy their time at the event. Me, having visited a few Metal & Rock festivals prior to this, thought that there would be some people just looking for trouble, but to my relief, that was proven wrong.
Second: While E-sports might not be as big as other sports such as Hockey or Football (or what you Americans call soccer), it's most certainly a force to be reckoned with, which the Grand Finals in Kinnarps Arena definitively showed (at least that's how I see it).
Third (just because it seems weird to stop on second, don't ask me why): Events such as DreamHack are AWESOME! I know, this is probably biased, but there were just always something to do there, you were never bored (and I came there WITHOUT my gaming PC, I just had my crappy school laptop to write on). To be able to fully dedicate yourself to E-sports & nothing but E-sports for 3 FULL DAYS was a dream come true.
After DreamHack, a few weeks went by without me doing anything out of the ordinary. But then I suddenly got the urge to contribute with something to the community as a way to "pay it back" for the great times I had at DH. And since I had time, I decided to write some recaps of the GSL Up&Down matches. I didn't know too much about the LR threads, so I posted it on a blog I made almost for that sole purpose (the blog is still active, but that's barely as I post most of what I write there here on TL as well).
I found myself taking great pleasure in the fact that people enjoyed the, as I call them, "Recaps" on the games I write, and kept doing it. But then, school hit me in the face like a hurricane, and I'm not half as active as I used to be. However, I will still write recaps if I have time to, and I'd love to maybe get into casting in the future (probably mostly for my own enjoyment, don't see myself getting too far as a caster).
Holy cow, this got a lot longer than I imagined. If you've managed to read through this whole thing, which took me approximately one hour to write, I salute you for your tenacity and thank you for reading! I hope it was worth your time!
Sincerely,
Oscar
