5k1 Posts: My Start with Starcraft

eviltomahawk

United States11133 Posts

May 01 2012 23:23 GMT

I wanted to make this my 5k post, but another thread tempted my reply, so I guess this is a 5001 post celebration.

Anyways, there was once a time when I actually wasn't a fan of Starcraft. That didn't mean that I hated it. I was rather neutral towards it, in fact. Certain aspects of the game didn't appeal to the younger, noobier version of me. There were no AI difficulty settings, and the fact that the AI almost always rushed or turtled successfully to a deathball made single player too difficult without cheats, and cheats made the game dull after a while. Plus, I HATED the 12 unit selection limit, and I still hate it to this day. My early experiences with Starcraft involved watching my friend play it, and other games, whenever I go over to his house, or me getting destroyed whenever I try to play against AI without cheats or speedrunning the campaign with cheats.

However, I was, at heart, a Command and Conquer fan. Red Alert 1 was the first RTS that I owned. I played countless hours on the Playstation version of C&C1. Many years were spent in C&C: Generals, and many more years were spent playing the countless mods created for that game. When visiting relatives abroad, I played the shit out of Red Alert 2, which from first sight I found to be one of the funnest experiences I've ever had. I consider classical C&C (C&C1 to RA2) to be some of the best RTS games that I've ever played, especially RA2. Frank Klepacki did a superb job with the fun music, and the game was full of hilarious jokes and fun units. C&C3 was pretty fun too, although RA3 didn't appeal to me for some reason. C&C4 was shit, and I would like to forget that that was ever created.

But anyways, I had occupied myself with tons of C&C until perhaps the early parts of 2010. I had only heard about the pro scene in passing. Most of my knowledge was about that Koreans were crazy about the game and crazy good at the game. The first, and for a while only, game that I ever watched was Boxer's perfect SCV rush against Yellow. Heck, I kept that video, and other internet videos, on my first iPod video to watch whenever I was bored. The sheer enthusiasm of those crazy Koreans baffled me for a while.

During spring of 2010, I went with my school's wind ensemble on a trip to Memphis, Tennessee. Seeing how this band trip would never live up to our trip last year to Disney World, I brought my laptop with Starcraft (Brood War), Half-Life, and Team Fortress 2 installed. On the way there, I went part of Half-Life and played a bit of BW against AI.

At the hotel, I found out that my Korean friend had also brought his laptop. Seizing this opportunity, I played my first real 1v1 game of Starcraft ever.

Basically it went like this:

I (orange) macro up a huge army and kill him.

[image loading]

He lifts.

But alas, he was outplayed.

[image loading]

It was a low-level TvT, and definitely not a pretty game. But from this win (against a Korean, mind you), the embers of Starcraft passion within my heart were ignited into a raging inferno that, to this day, have not died down.

When I returned from my trip, I played another game. It also wasn't pretty, but my win further fueled this raging inferno of Starcraft passion.

Spoilered for courtesy.

+ Show Spoiler +

Noooooooooooo. I just realized that I posted these pics in the wrong order

. Oh well. Battle report shall be done in reverse time.

Enemy Zerg GGs.
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Doom drop dead.
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Doom drop intercepted.
[image loading]

Interception incoming.
[image loading]

Doom drop loading.
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Last of the Lurkers being annoying.
[image loading]

Last of the Lurkers left after the air army dies.
[image loading]

Ehhhhhhhh, there are so many images. I'll let you draw a picture in your imagination.
[image loading]

Anyways, the rest is history. I started watching some vods here and there. TLO vs Nazgul as well as other TLO games during the SC2 beta were quite good. Jaedong vs Stork from WCG 2009 was also amazing, even though I play Terran lol.

I did get into the SC2 beta, but I only played against AI and Nexus Wars the entire time lmao. The following summer, I played a ton of BW with friends at LAN parties, and I even got the girls (*gasp*) in my circle of friends to try out in these LAN parties. Of course, we all were terrible, and this was evident when my D+ Protoss friend managed to beat us all in a 1v6, though he only beat us once out of 4 games.

I got SC2 at the midnight release, and I enjoyed the entire game. The campaign was really fun despite sub-par plot, storytelling, and dialogue. I played Protoss on ladder at first, and all my games were just 2-gates rushes or 3gate Robo expands. Eventually, I got bored and switched to Random, dropping from Gold into Silver before working my way up into Platinum due to how bad Platinum Zergs are at ZvZ.

I started watching some livestreams back then. Goatrope was pretty fun to watch during the hours late at night. I loved to watch Huk stream from Korea with terrible video quality on Livestream and trance music or random kpop. My first live BW game was Free vs Canata, which I watched on Craton's stream back in the day.

Since then, I've played a decent, but casual, amount of SC2. I play BW against AI to play around with mechanics, though I've dabbled in iCCup a bit. I try to catch whatever tournaments are on, SC2 or BW, and I browse Teamliquid almost religiously.

In fact, I first started seriously browsing Teamliquid right before SC2's release. I went through Starcraft Legacy's forums and the single-player subforum on Teamliquid for story speculation, and eventually, I branched out to other parts of Teamliquid. Before that, I mostly lurked on Reddit's /r/starcraft section, which back then actually had a lot of good content, SC2 and BW. I eventually made an account, but I didn't use it very much back then. Eventually, I dabbled in a few too many SC2 vs BW/ KeSPA vs Blizzard threads, which I do regret. But otherwise, I had a lot of fun posting on Teamliquid.

And here I am, 5001 posts later. I'm sad that BW is dying just as I got into the scene, but at least there is a lot of history to look back on when I'm itching to see some good games. SC2 is, for me, still fun to watch and fun to play, and I love watching whatever tournaments or players are streaming at the moment.

I'm happy that I found this community. I've had a lot of fun posting around here, and I hope to have more fun in the future

Deleted User 135096

3624 Posts

May 02 2012 00:07 GMT

yay for irregular milestones! TL is indeed a fun place to hang around, so much diversity.

FlaShFTW

United States9943 Posts

May 02 2012 00:20 GMT

5k WOW

lets keep BW going!!! TO ICCUP! OP TEAMLIQUID!!!

kerpal

United Kingdom2695 Posts

May 02 2012 00:52 GMT

man i want to go play BW again now... it's a lasting regret that SC2 came along before i got any good at it.

maybe in the summer after exams? i think the standard on Iccup has increased in my absence though, as all the D/D- people have moved straight into diamond ^^

Ares[Effort]

DEMACIA6550 Posts

May 02 2012 01:21 GMT

Congrats on your 5k

PolskaGora

United States547 Posts

May 02 2012 01:59 GMT

Nice man, gratz on 5k!

Similarly, I bought BW after I purchased SC2, and was really getting into the scene right when the announcement came that BW is essentially dead. But alas, some good will come of it at least. More BW pros will switch to SC2 and this means that the skill ceiling will go up, and this of course means that the metagame will develop and games will be a lot more entertaining to watch!

See you at 10k!

P.S. I don't know why but whenever I see you post I always read your name as 'eviltomatohawk' >.>

eviltomahawk

United States11133 Posts

May 02 2012 02:02 GMT

On May 02 2012 09:20 FlaShFTW wrote:
5k WOW

lets keep BW going!!! TO ICCUP! OP TEAMLIQUID!!!

If only I was better at BW -_-

The reason I play a lot more SC2 multiplayer is because of how convenient the matchmaking system is. I will most likely not get matched up against a high masters smurfing in plat or a lowly bronze playing way out of his league. Whenever I go on iCCup, it's more of a gamble to play someone of equal skill instead of running into someone way better or worse than me. Also, all my IRL friends play SC2, and to them, BW is just a distant memory that only exists for nostalgia.

But I recently reinstalled the iCCup launcher so that I can play a bit on iCCup again. But I doubt I can get to my dream of D+ if I can't even perform that consistently in SC2 Plat.

3FFA

United States3931 Posts

May 02 2012 03:25 GMT

Haha I still love that 2nd map you played on in the blog. I've had quite a few fun games on that map. I also found a blizz map that is so imba that a well executed cannon rush wins no matter what o.O (not telling, there is already 1 user on US East massing free wins from the map)

Oh and at least you don't play on a mac that can't install AH...

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