EPTI'm up at nearly 4am watching Starcraft streamed over the internet. I'm struggling to stay awake. I'm dreading tomorrow. I'm passionately rooting for one side over the other. The game has changed, the official stream has English commentary, I'm even a player of a different race, but there's something nostalgic about sitting here, staring at my screen, waiting for the music to stop and the next match to start.
Tonight, though, is a watershed moment. More than the release of SC2, more than the first big American tournament, more than my first barcraft, more than the new combined proleague, this is the night when it sinks in just how far Starcraft has come since I started watching it.
I got into Broodwar pretty late - I was about twelve the first time I played it. 2004. I played through the campaign, it was fun, but not lifechanging. I more or less forgot about it, until a couple years later, in 2006 when a friend first wanted to play against me. We played - I was protoss, he was terran. He won. I didn't say good game after - I didn't know that good game was what you said yet - but I congratulated him. And then I got on the internet to make sure I'd win the next game.
TeamLiquid was damn near the first site I found. There were articles on strategy. There were articles explaining how to play the game. There were links to videos of professional players playing Brood War on stage. On stage! A video game! To fourteen year old me, this was just the coolest thing ever. I started practicing build orders. I started watching pro matches. I started staying up late to watch the OSL and MSL and Proleague. Hell, how many people here today remember watching the GomTV Starleague for Brood War? I do. It was awesome. Superdanielman will always have a place in my heart.
Playing brood war didn't really last for me as a serious thing, but watching it did. More than anything, Team Liquid lasted for me. I've been regularly visiting Team Liquid longer than any other site on the internet besides Google - far longer than I've actually had an account. This community, this site, are damn important to me.
My girlfriend, when she went to bed at 3am tonight after a long serious online chat, asked me why I was staying up longer. And I answered her. I told her what I've just told you. I told her about how Team Liquid was foreign Starcraft for so long. I told her about staying up to all hours of the night watching games with commentary in a language I didn't speak. I told her about how big a part of my life TL has been.
I talked about how TL exploded when SC2 came out. I was used to being a 'new face' by TL standards. Today, remembering seeing FBH's ceremonies live makes me old. And I talked about how much it meant that TeamLiquid was there as a community for all that to build around. Yeah, TL isn't the entirety of the Starcraft community anymore. We're just too big - and that's awesome. But without TL, we wouldn't even begin to be what we are today, and I'm not sure how well newer members understand that.
And then, tonight, I got to tell her that Team Liquid has players in Korea, competing in a prestigious and previously all-Korean league. I got to tell her how far Starcraft has come. And she fucking got it, guys. She understood. She saw what this meant to me, encouraged me to stay up and watch TL play, she wished my team luck for me.
Yeah, TL's down 3-1 right now. Frankly, I was half expecting them not to win a single game. But I can't even begin to give a shit what the score is at the end of the day. The fact that we're here at all - and it is 'we', in my head - is what matters.
Congratulations, guys. Thank you. I can remember a time when this didn't even begin to be a dream. Starting tonight, everything is different.
Good luck, have fun.
