Dark Onyx Player Profile : Phalanx Blog #9

DOxPhalanx: Well, my original gamer tag was "Skye", which came from my name Sola which means the sky in Japanese. I don't really remember why I changed it, but one day I just felt like changing it. I guess i came up with "Phalanx" because i really liked ancient Greece, and wanted to use the only military formation from ancient Greece that I knew of .

DOxReyder: That's actually a cool story, I wish my name meant something cool But alas I'm not as good of a nerd baller as the great DOxPhalanx.

DOxPhalanx: Haha, nerd baller I am.

DOxReyder: What kinds of things about ancient Greece interest you or why does it interest you so much?

DOxPhalanx: Hmmm, I guess.... It kind of is the civilization that everyone looks up to (that or the Roman Republic). It was a period of art, of thinking. It was a time of science. I guess that's what I like about it, it's the best civilization by far, in politics, art, science, and writing.

DOxReyder: So if I may read between the lines here Greeks Imba, one may also assume that they were created by the Xel'Naga

DOxPhalanx: Probably so. Or the Greeks created the Xel'Naga, since they were so awesome.

DOxReyder: oooo yea didn't think of that

DOxPhalanx: FYI anyone who thinks "Sparta FTW" when they think of Greece are lame. Athens is where it was at.

DOxReyder: LOL im sure no one is thinking that

DOxPhalanx: no way that anyone's opinion is shaped by popular war movies about Sparta

DOxPhalanx: Well, StarCraft 2 is actually one of the first PC games I ever played. My parents weren't really (scratch that; NOT AT ALL) happy about me playing games, and I didn't get to play many games until I got my own laptop. I'd always liked strategy, but a RTS like SC2 was a very new experience to me, and I was immediately immersed in it's awesomeness.

DOxReyder: RTSFTW!

DOxPhalanx: YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! THIS! IS! ATHENS! .... I tried throwing that in there, Athens doesn't quite work for that

DOxReyder: lol yeah doesn't sound as epic.

DOxReyder: So what about gaming did your parents not like? Why couldn't you play?

DOxPhalanx: Well it still holds up to right now, but I think they just thought it was a waste of time. Like I could be doing something better with my time. I LOVED playing games, and tried to as much as I could. I guess my family and I are quite different, since I'm the only guy into computers/electronics while everyone else is into the arts.

DOxReyder: Well no shame in being the oddball

DOxPhalanx: If everyone's different, doesn't that mean everyone's the same? hmmm, throwing out that food for thought. don't get too fat off of it.

DOxReyder: lol sry already overweight here so YAY FOR GLUTTONY

DOxPhalanx: Well, I must say that my main reason for picking Protoss was because of lore and their high cost, strong unit feel. The concept behind Warp Gates also was quite attractive to me, as warping units all around the battle field just seemed so awesome. I've always liked having my in-game character/units to be heavily slanted to a certain aspect rather than "well rounded", and I liked that Protoss had relatively costly but strong units. As far as their lore goes, I absolutely love high-tech aliens. They're just too awesome to resist... It's like if the Greeks had modern knowledge, maybe they'd be like the protoss.

DOxReyder: Well i would say that all of those points makes me want to switch to protoss as well... not gona happen

DOxPhalanx: :D JOIN US! we have warpgates!

DOxPhalanx: awww

DOxReyder: WE HAVE STIM!

DOxPhalanx: How about we give zealots gauss rifles and call it a day?

DOxReyder: Give zealots Stim and we will call it a day.

DOxPhalanx: ooh, that would definitely be nice.

DOxPhalanx: I would say that I mainly got to this rank because of 2 things; 1, I'm just sexy like that, and 2, I play to win.
#1 is quite self explanatory; I'm sexy.
For #2, I play to win.... I'm VERY competitive. When I lose, I don't just go like "herp derp i lost, time to hope the next guy sucks". When I lose, I figure out why I lose. And I promise myself to never let that happen again. I think doing this could really improve the game play of most people; Next time you lose, analyze your game. And if there was a critical thing, make sure you never do it again, even if it mess up other aspects of your game play. I think that doing that really stacks up, and now I've got so many things that I've messed up on and I know how to not do that.

DOxReyder: NAME CHANGE INCOMING

DOxReyder: DAY[Phalanx]

DOxPhalanx: hahaha, maybe not quite as long. Also I'd like to retain some originality.... at least Day[P] lol I should start a daily and cast pro games.

DOxReyder: lol i'm not sure any of us poultry gamers will ever amount to the Nerd God that is Day[9] But i love the attitude toward you games, very much the measure twice cut once type of ideal

DOxPhalanx: my mindset definitely has been heavily influenced by Day[9]. before I joined DarkOnyx, I probably watched his videos more than I played the game.

DOxReyder: Yea they are without a doubt some of the most informative and clearly mapped out tutorials to the game

DOxPhalanx: I don't like having to think of myself like this for some reason, but I'm mostly a turtle to deathball kind of guy. I'm not too great with knowing when the enemy is vulnerable, so it's safer to turtle hard and get up an epic army than to try to have small attacks and get chipped down little by little. My shell as a turtle is quite strong.

DOxReyder: dat kitenis plating lol...or however its spelled

DOxPhalanx: *Chitinous, i think.

DOxReyder: sure we can go with that

DOxPhalanx: I'm 15, 16 in December.

DOxReyder: Ah the force is strong with you young one.

DOxPhalanx: Yup, got an older brother who should be going to college soon... very much into music, not a gamer

DOxReyder: YOU LIVE IN JAPAN. Why don't you give us some backround on that?

DOxPhalanx: Well. As far as ethnicity goes, my father's Japanese while my mother is American. We're currently living in Japan because my mom's a teacher for DoDea (Department of Defense Education Activity), and so we live at an Air force Base. It's pretty nice in Japan, although the earthquakes can be pretty disastrous, like that 9.0 Magnitude one.

DOxReyder: That all is pretty crazy to me. If we can touch on the earthquake for the moment. How far are you/were you from the nuke plant?

DOxPhalanx: I live quite far up north, so I actually wasn't affected much by the nuke plants, although everyone in the base was in a hype about it. The electricity went out for a while, but up where I lived that was about it. The destruction from the tsunami and such also barely affected up here. Most of the action was further south.

DOxReyder: ok well glad to hear you and your family came out unscathed otherwise we at DOx wouldn't have such a bad ass nerd toss.

DOxPhalanx: lol, what would you poor nerds do without me

DOxReyder: be less cool nerds.

DOxReyder: What about school? Is school done in the same way as here in US or whats the structure?

DOxPhalanx: I wouldn't really know if it's different or not because I haven't lived in the states since the 2nd grade XD School up here is tiny though, I believe last year's graduating class was 40~50 people. I've heard that DoDea schools are generally at a higher level than schools in the U.S., although once again I'm not sure about it.

DOxReyder: I think any non-us school is at a higher lever

DOxPhalanx: it might also be that the sample of students is in better conditions here, since there's no way that kids here have a bad family relation like abuse or something, people would find out right away. It's really safe in Japan by the way :D

DOxReyder: well you do live on a military base lol

DOxPhalanx: I found the team from your posts on the forums. Until I joined Dark Onyx, I just didn't play SC2 much because of my extremely ladder anxiety (oh god, it made me so scared to press that find match button). I'd always wanted to be part of a clan or team, and I just decided to try it out. Joining really motivated me to play so much more than I used to, since I was quite close to quitting altogether, and the motivation got me to play enough during the summer to jump from silver league to diamond league <3.

DOxReyder: yea you ranked up incredibly quickly im so glad that you were able to get over the anxiety and see some serious results

DOxPhalanx: I guess that the biggest thing is that I feel like I have support and that getting better can be appreciated by others. Let's be honest; Who doesn't like people admiring you? Working towards become grandmaster, then having no friends to show off to. You'd kinda feel sad when you should be happy. Thinking that working towards a higher rank will make me be more prominent and capable of helping others definitely motivates me and gives me confidence.

DOxReyder: Amazing that the clan has helped you so much in such a short time. I think though it was more that you had massive potential and have finally realized it :D

DOxPhalanx: more like I had potential but I never played enough to draw it out also, may lack of playing and watching Day[9] definitely changed my mindset towards the game as well as how to learn from myself, so that might have actually been more of a plus for me.

DOxReyder: Its always great to hear of and see players enjoy the game and be at a rank that they can now appreciate the skill it takes to be great at this game

DOxPhalanx: Well, I think that Dark Onyx's players (even the lower league ones) have a very solid understanding of the game, and there's often at least one member in our chat channel "DarkOnyxSC2", so anyone that's having troubles or needs help should definately come around and ask away. We're generally more friendly than the common BM player in this game, so we can offer friendly advice and practice. Heck, maybe some of us could learn from people checking out
our channel XP.