I’m going to be completely honest here: I don’t follow a lot of foreign BW, but I did occasionally watch Altitude Nation Wars. And I really liked it. Not because it was more BroodWar action, but I really loved the fact that some company was still out there supporting this scene.
I mean, let’s be honest. After SC2 came out, the foreign scene died down. A lot. How much? The two ISLs that were held were sponsored by a BW team and a foreign individual, Gambit’s Cup Season 1 didn’t have a ‘huge’ sponsor if I remember correctly. Only twitch.tv was the noticeable sponsor, but it was natural after seeing that BW also had a large fanbase on twitch.tv (not as large as SC2, but it still does have quite a viewer-base).
(I'm not saying that the previous sponsors were awesome; in fact, they were amazing sponsors who put foreign BW back to life. It's not as big as it was before, but they helped us from getting killed completely. Special thanks to AoV and Kaal, because I worked on ISL with them. Amazing sponsors imo.)
I know some people tried to contact bigger companies for the tournaments, but I think (after TSL2 and stuff) the only company that made a huge impact was Nimbly games, using their game ‘Altitude’ as the sponsor. And I really want to thank them.
Some amazing matches were played out, but I respected the company for the fact that they were supporting the scene while also promoting their game, which I think was completely beneficial to both sides.
Anyways, with Altitude Nation Wars gone and not catching Gambit’s Cup most of the time, I just spent time doing something else. I even tried out Altitude game itself, but I found out that I wasn’t too good at it.
Though, I did spend so much time playing games that I rarely walked outside of my dorm. I did get some message that I had a mail in my student mailbox down at the University Center, but I never bothered to check it out. I mean, who would want me to send me a physical mail? It was also a long walk for me. 5 minutes? Seriously?
But after days, I started getting reminders, and it seemed like the mail was piling up in my mailbox, to a point where I got a message saying that they have been stored somewhere else due to the volume of mails that I received. I started getting worried a little, but I thought it wasn’t a big problem.
Personnally, I'd like to say that it has never been easier to be a foreign bw fan. When you remember what the situation was just after the realease of SC2... Nowadays we have weekly foreign tournaments, low-level ones, English PL rebroadcast, the PL write-up have never been so beautiful, awesome LR threads, many translations, awesome casters (Sayle is obviously the greatest, but I really think Elegant/hacklebeast is talented too <3 )... It's really awesome what some person in the community do.
And I really like the foreign BW tournaments. Sure, the level of game is abysmal compared to PL, but those guys are still pretty damn good, and they can give really crazy games too, bw is just a beautiful game. Remember those island tournaments ? Those crazy comebacks in ISL ? That final between Pro7ect and Michael ? GC nailbitting final ? The group of death in ANW ? The Ribbon classic ? (where we got up to 1800 viewers, which is crazy good, I mean, look at the old day9 broadcasts where he had 300...) FUCK YEAH THAT WAS GOOD. Maybe not as good as TSL, but yeah man...
It's a pity that all that is spoiled by some stupid ego problems and senseless drama.
So anyway a bit of an offtopic rant, but you're right BIG SHOUTOUT to Altitude ! <3
That mousepad, the Qrk, is a piece of shit btw. The fibers are oriented horizontally and in a 60 degrees angle instead of horizontally and vertically, huge disappointment. So are they going to sponsor another tour?
On February 05 2012 21:12 FourFace wrote: That mousepad, the Qrk, is a piece of shit btw. The fibers are oriented horizontally and in a 60 degrees angle instead of horizontally and vertically, huge disappointment. So are they going to sponsor another tour?
It took me a while, but that could possibly be SNM's BW problem.
EPT
