EPTAnyway, some background on myself:
I'm a 25yo electrical engineering student from Brazil, I started playing SC1/BW around 2000 thanks to my neighbor who borrowed me his CD. At the time my only RTS experience was playing AOE1 with cheats, if you played this game at the time you probably remember some of the funny futuristic units/vehicles you could spawn with cheats, I never bothered to even learn to play AOE1 straight up, I would just jump into the campaign, give myself infinite resources and faceroll the poor computer with 90range Photon Men. My initial experience with SC1/BW wasn't much different, I found RTS games to be really stupid at the time as I didn't like the whole idea of having to build up a base and economy before I could battle shit...why spend time fiddling around with buildings if I could give myself infinite resources and instant build time to instantly spawn a badass army of Battlecruisers and go straight into battle?? Hell yeah!
Before I tried out the campaign in SC1 I decided to play some custom single player games, I wouldn't log into battle.net back then because my neighbor's older brother would get angry at me if I was using his cd-key (until we realized that his cd-key was somehow not limited to a single online user -.-' but that's for later). After I learned what the races looked like my OBVIOUS choice was Terran, I mean, they were humans in space! I really don't get how anyone would prefer the disgusting Zerg or the arrogant/imba protoss over the badass (but kinda weak) Terrans! I did my usual infinite-cheating-method to stomp the poor computer over and over until I kinda learned what the units where.
At the time my idea of a "tech tree" was that the highest a unit was in the tech tree, the better it was...at everything...and everything means killing stuff because that's what you're supposed to do to win right? So my thought process was that the Firebat was "better" than the Marine because the former required a barracks AND an academy, while a Marine only required a barracks(also 50hp>40hp and 16damage>6damage), there was also the Medic but that was a silly useless unit that didn't serve any purpose because I was playing with the invincibily cheat on (A.K.A power overwhelming).
So obviously Factory units were much better than Barracks units because they came out of ADVANCED BUILDINGS! I instantly fell in love with the Vulture:
![[image loading]](http://www.evula.com/starcraft/terran/units/unit_faces/vulture.jpg)
Just take a look at this guy, the only word to describe it is BADASS.
This unit was FAST, and I was also starting to learn english at the time and I really enjoyed the Vulture's dialogue.
After messing around with the game for a few days I started to slowly realize that units served different purposes and had different strenghts and weaknesses, except for BCs and Carriers which were the 2 ultimate units and could kill everything regardless. I burned a copy of the game to my best friend in school at the time, I thought this game was so fun and awesome that I just wanted my buddy to enjoy it as much as I did! Oh and he did, he got instantly addicted to the game and started playing the campaign right away...WITH NO CHEATS! I was kinda jealous of his insane-non-cheating-campaign-beating ways that it made me want to learn how to play the game as well.
Also his favorite race was Protoss because Protoss was the only race that could make Carriers, and we all know that mass Carriers = instant wins (even against BCs
). Everyday in school we would talk about the game and campaign missions, and argue about how our favorite race was superior. At the time I was kinda pissed off at him because he had some pretty good strong points on his side...I mean, he'd make fun of Terrans because probes could just warpin buildings and GTFO, and how Zealots raped Marines, especially if you built the Gateways inside the Terran's base or how you could just make Carriers in your base behind a wall of cannons and that was the ultimate strategy, I'm sure millions of people around the world can relate to this. At the time I was bothered by this because although I always disagreed with him I secretly felt that he was right and Protoss was indeed invincible. All this arguing would eventually be settled in online match some time later but for now we didn't care about multiplayer seeing as we were having a lot of fun in the campaign and customs against the computer.When I first started playing without cheats I realized that the game was very hard (yet somehow very interesting) and that my friend was most likely right on Terran being shit. For people who played against the A.I. in SC1 you would probably remember some of the builds the computer would do. Zerg would sometimes 6pool you...such a dick move, it would always kill me too save the rare cases there were more opponents in the map and I wouldn't be attacked first. And Protoss...man, fuck Protoss! If it wasn't enough that my friend would keep bragging about his race in school the Protoss computer would stomp me in many different ways. IIRC the Protoss computer in SC1 had at laest 3 different openings:
One was a forge/cannon FE (very stylistic) which was cool because it wouldn't kill me right away.
The second was a 12 zealot rush which was pretty damn fast and for sooo long it would instantly kill me until I started preparing for it with stimpack Firebats with medics blocking the ramp/choke point which I think was pretty damn smart at the time (even though walling up with Marines and rushing for Factory tech was much smarter but I was only 12 at the time).
The third was a DT rush which was also pretty damn fast considering it was an A.I. programmed in 1998 and I was only 12 with no prior RTS experiences...that would also kill me every time.
Then I naturally started to become your classic turtling Terran with Turrets, Bunkers, Mines and Tanks everywhere (everywhere being only at the front of your base). All the while my friend was becoming your classic gimmicky/cheesy Protoss player with his cannon rushes, proxy gateways and 1base Carriers. I find it so funny and interesting thinking about this now, how each race naturally led the player into these paths/styles and how this kind of reflected our IRL personalities.
Seeing as my friend was already beating computers with his Protoss shenannigans and I was struggling to deal with all the bullshit gimmicks the A.I would throw at me I needed some guidance on how to properly play the game and beat campaign missions, otherwise I would never beat my friend an a 1v1 match to finally prove once and for all that the Terrans were superior! So I went neighbor and his supposedly PRO older brother. His older brother was playing online against other humans so he was certainly insanely good at the game, I watched him play some team games on The Hunters and thought it so cool, I was euphoric, that was also when he let me log online using his CD-key as long as I called his house first and asked him if he was playing at the time, because he thought you could only have 1cd-key logged @ battle.net, a few days later we ended up logging on at the same time and we found out that for whatever reason his CD-key would allow multiple people to be logged on at the same time.
Can you imagine that? That means me and my friend could also log on battle.net and play with each other and countless other people!
That's it for now everyone, if anyone thought this was cool leave your feedback below and I'll glady continue updating this blog, eventually in the next posts I want to write about my current SC2 experiences but I'll only do so if theres any interest from my fellow gamers.
My goal with this post was to just give you some backstory on who I am before I started my rantings about the present (instead of the past) but this turned out much much longer than I initially thought, remembering all this stuff felt really cool.
Thanks to anyone who read this, and once again, if you have any thoughts at all about this leave your comments below, they are all welcome.
