EPTShit, over nine thousand posts on this website.
I'd also like to take the opportunity to thank the people of this forum for tolerating me for 9000 goddamn posts, of which many included a lot of LR spam, textual sarcasm, and Vile and Slayers fanboying. Hopefully I have only annoyed you all only mildly.
Damn, it's really been such a bumpy ride here in the SC2 world, with both the joys and the sadness. I remember watching MMA upset MVP at Blizzcon live with some friends, staying up into the early morning and cheering for the Slayers ace as he stopped the greatest Wings of Liberty player. I remember waking up on a cold December morning to see DRG and MMA clash in the greatest TvZ series ever, and remember going crazy when MMA won that Game 7, and all of Slayers rushed the stage like a big happy family.
A big happy family. Sometimes the most painful news are reality-checks, when the happy illusions that you had are cruelly broken. When a team that you thought was so close was splintering apart from infighting and distrust. When a legend and a icon retired from progaming, and when young promising talents leave the game for greener pastures and scenes. When heroes are suddenly vilified and hated, and their great achievements of the past suddenly mocked and ridiculed. When the greatest TvZ player is suddenly losing to random foreign Zergs.
I remember becoming a huge fan of Vile during the summer of 2011, when a young Zerg played a gasless style that foreshadowed the Zerg metagame, and a young Terran joined the team from revoli. I remember F5ing the Open bracket threads at MLG to see if the Vile guys bested their next opponent, and made it one step closer to the championship bracket. I remember watching the Vile vs FXO match during IPL TAC2, when so many people laughed and thought Vile's very presence in the tournament was a joke, and how such a small underdog team could not hope to touch a top tier team like FXO. I remember State finally stopping Gumiho that match, blanketing his army with storms of fury. I remember Illusion taking down Choya, Lucky and playing a hard fought game against asd. I remember haunting the LR threads at IPL 4, and hearing the news that Illusion had not only beat Zenio, but also Ryung and Oz. It finally seemed like Vile, the underdog team, was finally about to have its major breakthough.
But the economic reality of eSports is harsh and cold. Vile was absorbed by Quantic, and Quantic fell. Now so many of my beloved Vile players are teamless, caught up unemployed in this tough eSports recession of sorts.
But I'm the hopeless optimist sometimes. I'm a fool, but I will dream of better days. Axiom-Acer is joining the GSTL, and Illusion has found a personal sponsorship with Razer. The finals months of 2012 were definitely sad times for me, and it probably has made me more cynical, more bitter (this has reflected in my posting, and I do apologize to anybody I may have offended).
But even when I wanted to quit the scene, there was always something holding me back. It was the love of the game, the ever optimistic fan, the guy who believes that even when things seem bleak, and everything is going to shit, that victory score screen is still out there for the taking.
