EPT
It was in the year 2010 when I first saw a Starcraft 2 commercial for the then new Wings of Liberty. 3 races, all with completely different ways of being played, different abilities, different units, and some of the best strategy in the world. I was captivated. The first Starcraft 2 games I ever saw were in the Battle Reports, a collection of games played when Sc2 wasn't even released in beta. I can only remember one caster, Dustin Browder, who'd always introduce a new, exciting unit. He'd carefully explain what was going on in the game even a person who was completely new to Starcraft could understand what was happening. Frequently I'd see early aggression, micro, intense macro, what unit counters what, new abilities like psi storm, force fields, and most of all, comebacks! David Kim was a miracle worker always pulling off the comeback even if he was far behind through smart economic harass and genius plays. With his genius tactics he'd win all 5 games in the Battle Report.
It was in these Battle Reports that I first witnessed the race known as Zerg. Already the thought of being in control of a race of man eating insects that had quantity over quality appealed to me. My love for the Zerg and the feeling of overwhelming the poor humans or having the Protoss lament will always stay with me. I frequently look up to Julyzerg, Jaedong, and as of 2 days ago, Savior, but mostly Julyzerg. Julyzerg's style is just so good and seeing it translated into Sc2 is even more exciting even though walling in is easier. walling in has made all the difference I feel and completely outrules a 9 Pool, but I may be wrong since I've never played Sc2 myself, but I've seen millions of games.
My computer couldn't run Starcraft 2 even on the lowest settings so I made the choice to buy Sc1 and learn what the storyline was. When I first got the package and installed it into my computer I experienced some of the most revolutionary gameplay ever seen. The idea of strategy and the variety the 3 races had was a fresh idea. Each race has a variety of units which you can make with each one taking a certain role and the idea is to create units that counter whatever units your opponent has. All 3 races despite their varying differences were balanced with no 2 units the same.
In the summer of 2011 was when I decided to go online to b.net. My first experience was in Starcraft original. Sadly, this server was empty and I had no idea how active the Brood War server was because I never bothered going there for the first year or so deciding that I should finish the Starcraft original campaign before I go on the BW server.I made a few online friends who I remember, Sobe34, rehan317790, morkeleb, and Bobby1989 to name a few. We'd go on the original Starcraft east server daily, gaming. My first encounter with UMS was with Sobe34 who introduced me to Tank Defense 4.0. I would later be playing far more UMS than melee games in a certain point in my BW gaming amazed by the flexibility of the SC editor and the possibility of how far UMS could go.
The first time I went on the BW server was when Bobby1989 mentioned he was going to the BW server to look for some people. I decided to follow him and what I saw immediately lit up my eyes. I saw literally more than 100 times more people than on the original east server and the games list had more than 1 game on it. I also discovered players who were much more better at 1v1 gaming than any games I saw on the original east server, and I thought I was pretty good. Turns out I was one of the worst. I was taught the concept of builds, scouting, tactics, constantly creating more than 8 workers, not getting supply blocked, and other helpful tidbits like how ranged dragoons out range bunkers. This was also the time I learned that hotkeys were commonly used and that there was a progaming scene. I was also enriched with several UMS maps like Classic Cat n Mouse, Team Micro Arena, RISK 2.2.5, Snowball Wars, all of which I would play constantly.
When I joined the BW server I was introduced to the Justice, Jt, or simply J clan which I became a member of. I learned a lot from members like Seven(J), Lucky(J), Burgercraft(J) and saw ingenious plays that were very SlayersBoxer esque further fuelling my awe in how vastly deep and flexible Starcraft strategy is. I've since departed from the Jt clan and have gone through a fair share of clans finally ending with the eMg Clan(East manner gaming) in the year 2013.
We zoom into the year of 2013, probably one of the most inactive years for BW. Several of my online friends have since gone inactive when I took a long break, around 6 months or so in the year 2012. My love for UMS games has also decreased. Maybe its simply my decreasing enthusiasm for Starcraft, but I no longer see Boxer plays no longer. Seeing a good Zerg is also pretty rare. The amount of people playing has overall decreased and several people have moved over to Sc2. Something about play/obbing gets tiresome for me, and nowadays I do less UMS, more melee as the Zerg. Iconic progamers like Stork, Flash, and Jaedong are moving to Sc2 progaming. Those 3 I always considered the masters of their own respective races, for a long time I thought that. Below is a list of BW online buds that I remember.
Outlaw_Star, sud83, magebane, protostitute, jynadowa, esrb(J), seven(J), Lucky(J), Jace_Beleren,
Lately I've been experimenting with all 3 races and I can play them better than I could before I started experimenting with the races. I figure that it's good to have the thought process of all 3 races and how each works. To me the Zerg works probably the most different out of all 3 races with a different means of production and how you can't make both fighting units and worker units at the same time. I feel like I could get better at Zerg though, but the feeling of being toyed around with and being bombarded by merciless harassment has made me think that the Zerg is susceptible to such things more than the other 2 races. Maybe this is the mindset that's causing me to lose as the Zerg a ton.
There are a ton of useful things that weren't intended by the developers when they first made BW. Mutalisk stacking is a good exmaple as developers hadn't intended for air units to be able to stack into the surface area of 1 unit, but this has been exploited and is very useful. I believe BW has been figured out and small things like Muta stacking have been all but uncovered. You know you can parasite an opponent's detection unit with a Queen and gain that detector's detecting ability seeing your opponent's cloaked units. That was something I learned from Liquipedia and further proof that the Queen is underrated and should be used more in games.
This post I believe may be more than one can handle in one sitting. Blog entries may be meant to be small and my extremely long posts shall be its very downfall, but if you are reading this message and have read the entire post, congratulations, but if you're skipping right ahead to this message, then congratulations anyway. In conclusion, I hope to continue this blog and share my thoughts with you. My next blog entry might be more based on strategy for the Zerg.
