EPTI still can remember vividly how amazed I was when I first played Starcraft and Broodwar back in 2001.I loved the original campaigns for their cool characters and the evil plot twists, which made Kerrigan the best villain I've ever seen in a video game. But even though I tried really hard to beat every mission by myself, I just couldn't win some of the later BW missions. I sucked completely and I was pretty young back then, so I also didn't have the patience to try a mission again and again. My personal solution to this was obvious: I cheated. Back then, the word "achievement" was still a real life term - there were basically no drawbacks to cheating. (Well, I think everyone of us remembers "black sheep wall" and "operation cwal"...)
When I finally "beat" the campaigns, I started messing around with the AI opponents, which (as you all know) are basically doing the same things over and over again and whose routines are easily abusable. Well, I didn't have internet back in the day, so I also couldn't search for guides and hints, which led to more cheating. I just wanted to get the biggest army (preferrably carriers) as soon as possible and I didn't care about playing the game according to its rules. Even though I surely didn't learn anything viable about the game, I still had tons of fun. I was a happy noob, playing as casually as it gets. Being a casual player, I then quickly moved on to other games and soon forgot about Broodwar.
Fast forward to 2008. A good friend of mine had become a starcraft addict. He just couldn't stop talking about his bnet experiences and I got curious. I remembered my casual days and decided to try the game once more - this time online. Obviously, I got smashed. In 2008, some people had been playing the game for 10 years, to describe the skill gap as "huge" would be an understatement.
I didn't use hotkeys, I didn't understand the game and I lost. Every. Single. Game. But my friend still was trying hard to show me the beauty of BW, he kept sending me links to VODs of korean progamers and finally I got hooked. (Main reason: Lee Jae Dong) I was reading every guide I could possibly find, I was watching the OSL, MSL and Proleague, even if it meant that I had to stay up the entire night. And I got better, slowly but steadily. In the beginning of 2009 I finally hit D+ on Iccup, which I still consider to be one of my biggest triumphs in gaming. (Remember that I basically had no RTS background, I started from square one.) I even managed to improve more, in 2010 I finally peaked at C.
Since 2008, I've been constantly following the scene. I've seen Flash rise to be a god among men, I've seen Savior fall to the ashes, I've witnessed Jangbi's final ascension to glory. As I didn't consider myself to be a "hardcore" broodwar gamer, I transitioned to SC2 without much hesitation. (But I still love BW and I also play it from time to time - it's still the best game out there.) The explosion of the western e-sports scene was just amazing, suddenly there were tournaments with huge amounts of prize money almost every week, which were watched by thousands of fans like me.
With my broodwar background it wasn't too hard to reach Diamond in WoL. I developed okay-ish mechanics and reached an average knowledge level about the game. Overall, I've played around 2000 1v1 games between release and now and even though I'm still a bit sad that I didn't get into masters league, I'm happy with my playstyle. WoL might have had its flaws (bnet 0.2, deathballs, shitty maps), but it turned out to be a very good game.
Now HotS is near. With all the new features and the tweaked UI it's looking to become more than just a breath of fresh air. I'm also part of the beta and I really like most of the changes Blizzard has applied to the game. (tempests being the only real exception here...) I'm sure that I will continue to play the game.
2. Casual(ties)
We all remember the outburst of self-proclaimed hardcore gamers when WoL was announced. "MBS is bullshit", "The whole game is dumbed down", "Infinite unit selection is making the game too easy", "Lol, auto-mining"...the list is both endless and well-known. To a lesser extent, I even agree with some of these points of criticism. Of course, Blizzard had to make SC2 more accessible for newer players. You just can't sell a game like BW these days, and you especially can't sell a game like that to more than ten million people. And let's be honest here: SC2 may be easier to control than BW, but it's also faster in general and the huge amount of high dps units leads to the fact that large battles are a really unforgiving experience. One wrong move? Bad positioning? Well, you're dead.
The game is still hard enough, though. If it was "too easy", skill gaps wouldn't be as huge as they are. Macro may be easier in general, but hitting injects while being harassed is definitely not.
Obviously, it's highly debatable, if the way Blizzard has taken with the game design really was the way to go. Maybe slower battles and more positioning-rewarding mechanics would have been better, but I guess we'll have to deal with it. The new HotS units clearly show that Blizzard is aware of the problems - if the new stuff will really solve the fundamental problems of the game is a different kettle of fish.
I won't discuss these problems here, because it's time to link the story I've told you in the beginning to the upcoming HotS release. Blizzard has implemented even more "noob-friendly" elements: For example, you now can show the number of workers you need per base, which might seem insulting to good players.
But don't we all tend to forget where we came from? Every single one of us has begun his (or her) RTS career playing mouse-only, being clueless of what to do in the game. We all were terrible noobs once, even Flash was. (well, I guess he got out of that pretty quickly.
) If there had been all these little helpers back in 2001, I maybe wouldn't have stopped playing Broodwar after a few weeks. I would have killed to have a training mode like the one Blizz announced for HotS. Nowadays, the resources for information are almost infinite. We have this beautiful website here, we have the liquipedia. There are tons of guides, tutorial videos and strategy discussions. And if that isn't enough, you can watch a professional player live on his stream. Learning a complex game like Starcraft has become so much easier during the last few years - it's amazing, and I think this community can be very proud of that.
But even if there are all the nice things I've mentioned, new players still often think that becoming a good player in Starcraft is almost impossible. I know people who love RTS games, but they just can't get themselves motivated to play 1v1 in SC2. They know that they're bad and they also have figured out that they won't improve as fast as they'd possibly like. Losing sucks. And losing without knowing how to win sucks even more.
3. The wall
Most of the people who bought WoL are in Bronze league. They've had fun with the campaign, they have maybe played a few team games on battle.net. But they didn't jump into the "real" game. Surely, you can't expect everyone to play competitively, but it's still kinda sad to see that so many people give up on the game, because they have never managed to climb over "the wall".
What does "climbing over the wall" mean? Basically, it's the point where you stop caring about losing games. It's the moment you decide that you're going to focus on improving your skill. Sometimes, it's a game you've lost and you decide to never lose that way again.
With all the new training features Blizzard will add to the game, the wall will become easier to overcome. But HotS is an add-on to a game, which is almost three years old. How many real noobs will actually buy the game? Of course, many people who have stopped playing WoL long ago will come back, mainly to play through the new campaign. But isn't that sad?
4. A rant
Thom Yorke once sang "We want the young blood". I would go further: We need the young blood. I don't want to jump on the SC2 vs. (insert game of your choice here) train, but there's a reason why SC2's viewer numbers have become stagnant. It's easy to forget how unforgiving the first weeks of getting into a competitive 1v1 game are. Instead of bashing noob friendly features, we should try to see them as a chance. Do we really want to turn into an elitist circle jerk? I don't hope so.
Imagine you're a complete newbie, how does the scene in its current state look to you? There are numerous people out there who fight their own frustration by whining about balance issues in almost every thread. This will never go away, as it is part of the nature of an RTS community, but we still should be aware of the fact that a choir of "imba imba imba" sounds like the german techno band Scooter to new users. (in case you don't know Scooter, here you go: How much is the fish?)
Moreover, too much people are focusing on stupid drama content instead of talking about the game. I know that discussions about some incidents can be fun, but to me it seems that some of these things are taking up too much space in this community. If it's not for the love of the game, for what else should it be?
I don't want to go too far here, and I also don't want to insult the majority of this community. The vast majority of the people I've met on my journey has been nice and helpful. The Starcraft community has come a long way, just by looking at the numerous memes and running gags you can easily see how much fun being a part of the scene can be.
I also understand that it's almost impossible to get beyond mechanisms like mindless whining and noob bashing. Starcraft is hard and frustrating and the internet allows us to let off steam (almost) anonymously. But I sincerely hope that the future of gaming isn't like a twitch chat. Flaming has always been a part of internet culture, and if it's done creatively (or randomly stupid), it can provide lots of entertainment. I just really dislike this terrible subtone in many discussions nowadays. (just look at the whole Jay Wilson drama to understand my point.)
HotS is a chance to take a deep breath. Hell, it's about time.
It's up to the people to turn HotS into another awesome part of the Starcraft legacy. Let's think about all the good things that have happened during the last years and let's do everything possible to show new players the beauty, depth and awesomeness of the game we all love.
