EPTSpace marines and bug aliens? I loved the similarities with Starship Troopers! I had played WarCraft and WarCraft II, but this was space, lasers, and aliens!
My dad downloaded the game on our very slow modem internet and I waited as it took hours and hours, and it wasn't until a day later he finally installed it and set it up for me to play. Looking back, I think it was a demo version-- that or I couldn't get past the first couple levels of the terran campaign...But man, the graphics were so cool! And I loved the blue marines I got to fight with--I almost treated them like my friends...I still remember the first mission where you have to go around and kill all the zerglings, and the mission after where they over run your base over and over again. I was so amazed with the game.. the days before micro and macro weren't even part of my vocabulary.
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![[image loading]](http://www.businesspundit.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/angry.jpg)
AOL, WHY SO SLOW!?
It wasn't until a year or two later when I was around 9 or 10 that I got the battlechest and BroodWar expansion. It took me awhile to realize that Battle.net even existed! By that time, I had pretty much cheated my way through the singleplayer missions and had a base understanding of the units. The first time I logged on Battle.net, I joined a 3v3 no clutter game. For those who don't know, it was a high high money map, and called "No clutter" because it was big and had room for you to make 20 gateways and 10 stargates for each player
. I still remember how badly I got raped; here I was, with only like two gateways and getting overrun by everyone else with 15-20. I quickly learned the importance of having lots of facilities.+ Show Spoiler +
![[image loading]](http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs51/f/2009/329/2/6/Zerg_rush_my_arse_by_DespairsEnCiel.gif)
You have how many factories?
I spent a lot of time messing around with custom UMS games and a lot of money maps. It wasnt long before I met some friends in school that I wanted to beat. They were older-- in highschool, as I was only a middleschooler-- and they had a clan called TUSF.... The Unstoppable Force. They even had a website and everything! I totally thought this was cool.. I ended up getting to join with them, but I never could win. Shortly after, I found out they all used hacks, and the only possible solution was to get my own. I had a small period where I was using maphack and drophack consistently, man did I hate losing to those 3v3 no clutter noobs.
Being the person I am, I had the conscience to realize that cheating was for noobs, and it was totally unfair after one of my CDkeys mysteriously got disabled. What... Blizzard bans hackers!?
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![[image loading]](http://images.cheezburger.com/completestore/2010/8/10/f0251248-df3f-43ec-bb7d-ef6084554d90.jpg)
Long story short, I eventually found my way into Clan x17 somehow. For those of you who played BroodWar years ago on US East and knew about progaming/low money maps, you damn well know about this place. I remember the first time I played someone there-- it was on the 2 player map Challenger. Basically, I didn't know what the F hit me and it blew my mind how he played the way he did. This is where my Brood War journey began....
I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about it, but it was the start of a huge love affair that carried me through middle school and all the way to where I am now.
The first vod I ever saw was of a great zerg progamer named ChoJJa. It was a first person vod, and I was so amazed to see the way he played-- how fast his actions were, how crisp his micro was. Right after the vod, I tried to play and go as fast as I could-- it was a 12 vs 3 on Lost Temple just like in the VOD i saw, and I ended up getting 160 apm! Granted, a lot was spam, but it totally opened a whole new door for me and my playing. At the time, Blizzard didn't support esports as much as they do with SC2, so it was really hard to find out about stuff like TeamLiquid and VODS, etc. Some of the popular sites at the time were replay.co.kr., gosugamers.com, and of course, teamliquid.net!
Although there were periods of months where I stopped playing Brood War, it was always there for me to come to whenever I needed it. At one time I'd be playing protoss and playing WGTour ladder and lots of games, but then stop playing out of anger at the game or boredom for random periods of time, and then pick it back up and play another race and repeat the process. I eventually was pretty decent at all three races, probably around b6 level on WGTour (at the time, the blue ranks were sooooo appealing...)+ Show Spoiler +
![[image loading]](http://hem.bredband.net/lotbra/bilder/news_86(1).jpg)
Shiny blue ranksssssssAt one point, I was in a tiny 3 man clan on Europe. It was called MiSFiTs- and the three members were myself, someone named Greg aka MiSFiTs-Pyro, and one other guy that I only remember as "mike". I later found out that this "Greg" was actually IdrA and that he made quite a name for himself. I didn't really know them all that well because I was only 12 or 13 at the time, but I do remember losing to IdrAs zerg without having a chance. Obviously he eventually switched to terran and became pretty strong. To this day my email is still misfitsrob.
On a sidenote, I eventually found and listened to the band the Misfits, (I actually played a show with them, or atleast the remaining members now, last year in my hometown with my band) so I use the to explain my misfitsrob email
Fast forward to present tense. I just recently re-installed BroodWar to play some games on iCCup. I'm close to C- at the moment and just having fun with Zerg. I bought an official game from Blizzard, because I figured I'd help them out and also just to have it for sure due to the state of the game at the moment. I was dismayed to find that US East was nearly dead. The amount of games wasn't there.. all the channels I knew were of course gone... And I check on iCCup and there's only 500-1000 players on average, and it takes minutes to find a game at certain times. I guess it just makes me sad to see something I love falling away.
I've been playing StarCraft II for quite awhile now, and I love the game a lot... but it was hard to believe that Brood War was really on its way out. Today I logged on Battle.net and read a Blizzard news post about the ongamenet StarLeague.... FINAL tourney? They're saying it's JangBi, Flash, Zero, and Fantasys LAST CHANCE to find the FINAL BROODWAR CHAMPION?
Final....? It's over?
And the truth hits like a ton of bricks.......I am going to miss this shit..
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And life goes on
some shoutouts from the past:
-sup theory, now AKA LgNTheoRy and grandmaster toss.... known him for quite a few years now and one point he couldn't win against me in broodwar, now i can't beat him in starcraft II
-sup kevin aka echO...gotta get back into the game!
-sup Aeolus[LighT] aka tom! Do you remember our clan called HeRoS)? Haha.
-sup JiNBlackRose aka matt from california (brother JiNSeizure, crazy good zerg player). Thanks for helping me as a 13-14 year old in making my own website and teaching me about HTML and a little java! (which I now totally forget.. but at the time was great!)
-anyone know what happened to gO) clan? gO)Rain from austrailia, and gO)hOpe the protoss player, i remember you guys!
-what's up Jidojazerg aka Kevin.. you helped shape my great taste in classic hiphop/rap music, and I remember your dedication with practicing all day!
-sup oG)Freezer from australia... now my clan leader in SC2, and its funny how we met years ago but we didn't even realize it
-what's up Entreri aka vincent! I remember us playing a lot together a lot!
-so many more people I wish I could remember
![[image loading]](http://a.imageshack.us/img194/817/60thelastemperor.jpg)
