EPTToday was a good day.
Story:
My family has always been very fond of StarCraft. Back in 1998 when StarCraft was released both my mother and grandma bought the game after having been introduced to it by a family friend. They loved the game and created a clan by the name of Dark League. My mother played zerg and grandma protoss. To begin with, just like any person who's new to the RTS genre, they were pretty bad yet extremely determined to become good. In 2000 their clan was at it's peak and they had become pretty damn good. The clan often played amateur matches against other clans, purely for fun as the online scene was pretty vibrant. They had a even created a website/forum thing where they shared strategies, fan-fic and other StarCraft related things!
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/0Y36M6L.jpg)
This being the early late 90's/early 2000, they of course had to print out the strategies so that they could be read easily whilst playing. The documents you see above are some of these forum posts/strategy pages that I now, 14 years later, found in an old Blizzard Battle Chest box the other day.
In 2002 we moved to Beijing, China. The StarCraft hype still continued and even I had picked up the game by now (I was like.. 8 or 9) but there was one big problem. Latency. For those of you who don't know, accessing any website/IP that's not hosted within China itself is incredibly infuriating as the latency is very high. All outgoing traffic is passed through the Great Firewall of China and so if you were to play any game you'd experience game-breaking lag, be it accessing Europe/NA or even countries like Taiwan or Korea. You would have latencies ranging anywhere inbetween 200-1000ms on average. This meant my mother and grandma couldn't play anymore which kind of killed their 'spark'.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ButWCEs.png)
In 2006 we received a new TV box that was Korean based. Most expats(expatriates) in Beijing use TV Boxes that receive channels from other countries as China censors most of the western media/tv channels. This meant we had a ton of Korean channels, one being OGN. This was the first time any of us were introduced to the concept of e-sports. Prior to this we knew who Lim Yo-Hwan was as his name was everywhere. What we did not know that the scene was this big. My mother didn't care for it too much as she had given up on StarCraft but I was hooked from the start.
With the announcement of StarCraft 2 in May of 2007 and hearing that they were designing the game as an ideal e-sports platform, I quickly showed my mother the announcement video. At first she didn't believe me as the previously rumored StarCraft: Ghosts had been long overdue and her faith in Blizzard's ability to produce a sequel to the amazing original game was close to non-existent. She was not impressed. :/
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/YJyWGL1.jpg)
When the game hit the stores on July 27th, 2010 we were fortunately on vacation in Sweden and I was able to pick up the game at the midnight release. I personally was blown away by it and played it non-stop for months to come. I also tried my best to watch GSL but since the internet we had in China was extremely shitty it only sometimes worked.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/s0PA4hO.jpg)
The only good thing about being in China when it came to StarCraft 2 was being able to attend BWC in 2012.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ywrR0Jo.jpg)
Oh and I was also able to go see GSL live once! This was maybe late 2011/ early 2012
Four years later and I now live by myself in Sweden while the family still resides in China. My mother has re-found her StarCraft passion (actually thanks to Husky and his videos on YouTube) and eagerly asks me questions about everything e-sports related. My grandma, who didn't stop playing when we moved but instead reduced her gaming by a lot, picked up Hearthstone during the beta and has been addicted to it ever since. She too enjoys watching StarCraft 2 and since most of the Dreamhacks are broadcasted on national television here in Sweden she will always watch it. My brother, though still young, has worked his butt off by watching every Day9 episode, read every guide available and has put in hundreds of hours in order to reach top 8 masters.
I am so impressed.
