EPTSelf Intro:
I'm 22 years old, a college student that's studying Computer Science with a focus on games. I'm in my junior year and I only have around a year and a half to go before I start looking for a job and things like that. I started playing some computer games when I was in middle school and since then I got pretty hooked. The original DotA that was played on WCIII was my favorite thing to do, even though I was absolutely terrible at the game. I would spend hours and hours playing with friends, and talk with them about strategy and how badly I fail at the game. I got into World of Warcraft a little, and I was at a pretty competitive stage after a few years of playing. I never got to the rank 1, please sponsor me, type level, but I was still competing with the best on the battle group at least. I continued to play it, but more casually so I ended up dropping in skill quite drastically.
The Start:
Somewhere in the middle of this I get a beta invitation for SCII, and I tried playing it. I thought it was amazingly fun because of how much skill was involved with it, and how a single player can do so much in a game to win. As I learned more and more about the pro-scene and what Brood War players did, I was enthralled with the entire idea that there were actual "professional" gamers. Whenever I had heard the term "pro" before I thought it just meant somebody was very skilled at a game, not getting paid for it. I always thought it would be awesome if I could do that, but I never thought that I could really do it.
I played the beta and climbed my way up from copper league (that was below bronze) all the way up to diamond. Once I got to diamond I just stopped playing completely because I didn't want to drop. This is something that I regret a little bit.
One thing to note about me is that I'm a very competitive person. I have been since I was little, and I also have a lot of pride that gets in the way sometimes (I've been working on this part). The competitive part of me realized that I get infuriated at myself when I lose. Why didn't I see this coming, why are you so slow... etc etc... Somewhere in my brain I think that I realized this so I didn't want to play the game anymore, that way I didn't have to feel frustrated. There's no time for that anymore though.
The Actual Game
I started to get in and out of the game when the release hit. I was placed into platinum and then I was shortly promoted to diamond without much difficulty. That's when I really just stopped.
I started focusing more on WoW, and HoN again and really never touched the game again because I thought that I'm good enough, even though Master's league was released sometime shortly after I was placed into Diamond again.
A year or two passed with me just casually playing the game with a bad case of ladder anxiety. I would sit down for a game or two and play and the second I won I would stop. If I lost I would get persistent and keep on playing until I won, but most of the time I would get frustrated to a point where I wasn't playing optimally.
I eventually stopped playing WoW as much and really focused on getting better at SCII. When I got back into it, I realized how bad I was and what I really should be doing. I started doing a couple of strategies varying by matchup, and I would practice a good 20 games a day because I didn't have that much school work. With a lot of hard work, effort, and practice I was able to power my way up to Masters League.
I stopped playing again because of my stupid "competitiveness" and pride, and I became very rusty. I was hooked on custom games, and I did everything to practice the game without actually playing it (marine splitting challenge, macro / micro mini games). I realized that this only helped to a certain point, but I was such a huge bitch that I couldn't do much besides that.
After eventually wanting to play the game again, I went on ladder and dropped like a rock back to diamond league for a long time. It was a hard grind learning strats and things like that, but it was rewarding as well. At some point when I was playing ladder I felt that it didn't matter what I did as long as I macroed well. I soon realized that I needed to factor in what my opponent was doing as well (man I was terrible).
I was able to get back into Masters league just in time for it to not matter that much anymore. Heart of the Swarm Beta is released and I got a key.
I was able to get into diamond again in HOTS, but it was a much harder road. The players in HOTS seem much better than the ones in WoL, and I'll just try to deal with that for now. I haven't been able to watch the pro-scene playing HOTS that much so I've just been playing around with my own builds and things like that.
The Realization
As I transferred to the college that I'm in right now, I sat down and realized that the time for games is coming to a close. I'm almost in my last year of college and that will be the end of me just playing games. Sure I'll still be able to play them in my free time, and I'll be able to program them as well, but I know that I won't have as much time as I do right now. I'm a generally lazy person, so I would always watch an asian Drama, or waste time on reddit / imgur constantly, but I don't want to waste my time on that anymore. I want to be good at this game, and I want to stand in front of a crowd receiving a huge check.
This is the last year that I have of college, the last year that I'm going to be fully able to play games, and the last year that I'm going to pursue my dream of being a pro-gamer.
