EPTFor a long time before I was first introduced to StarCraft I had played only console games for the duration of my entire life, and it was always Nintendo consoles. I think I played some Nintendo 64, Gameboy Advance, the thing with the thing and thing, and the Gamecube, and then finally the Wii. I was very into console gaming and I was always rooting for Nintendo.
I remember I'd check on the Nintendo Wii's sales on its own Wikipedia page every single day to compare how fast its sales were growing compared to the rate of the other two consoles amidst the heated console wars. I was kind of sad when Nintendo's consoles would get vastly outperformed and I still vaguely remember the number of units each Nintendo console sold compared to the competitors and I still am apt in video gaming history. So that was my obsession for a little while to occupy my childhood wonderment.
I completely lost interest in all of that when I first picked up StarCraft though. I wasn't aware of just how prevalent PC gaming was at the moment or that it even had any games besides the educational ones I used to play in preschool. Never in my life had I played a strategy game other than chess that used the keyboard and mouse as its controller and certainly not an RTS game. It was an enlightening experience to say the least. :o
A lot of the playing was pretty strange, I formed my own circle of people on east server on original StarCraft so it was as if we created this primordial soup of StarCraft as if everything had degenerated to the year 1998 and we did plenty of theory crafting and noobing up. I had sworn myself by a sacred oath to not play the expansion pack, Brood War until I had fully completed the BW campaign which was a challenge in itself. It was a sort of rite of passage for me. When I did finally complete Brood War I was ecstatic to see so many people on the Brood War side of the server :o . Around this time I decided to play Zerg from watching burrowed banelings during the sc2 pre-alpha.
My first mentor, Jynadowa, who would regularly host observing melee games would teach me all of the internet acronyms (e.g lol) and lingo I know today. It was funny because he was saying to me "Is this your first time using the internet"? and it actually was the first time I had communicated to someone over the internet other than my parents and friends over gmail. Other than observing I'd play lots of UMS games like Cat N' Mouse and Snowball Wars and Team Micro Arena. I don't know how I never got tired of those games for years.
I still had a good deal of childhood innocence within me and I made up this rule that no one with a crude or inappropriate username like PigBenis was allowed to be in my games. I wouldn't ban them like a heartless heathen though, I'd ask them kindly and repeatedly to please leave the game saying "I don't want to have to do this. I don't want to ban you" and I'd do it until they left the game.
Going into a melee game I had this sort of preconceived notion that I was going to lose just because anyone that had cared to play melee in 2011 was super good mostly and there were rarely if any new players but then I just....I don't know how I did it but I didn't care. I'd give a little "aw darn I lost" and then go play some Cat N' Mouse. Funnest thing ever. When I did go up against an opponent equal to my skill my heart would beat rapidly and I'd start going into a super intense sweat as I skyrocketed up from 50 apm to 60 apm while shaking uncontrollably. It was the best type of rush.
Oh god, the games I'd play I'm still having a hard time picturing how I was so slow but it happened. Yes, it did. I'd always go into Korean mode and not give up ever until my last larvae died and until my last pair of lings got eviscerated to dragoons or marines. That was fun to me and I'd always play in the play/obs games so I felt like I had to put on a show sort of. It's hard to describe. Nowadays I'm more like Idra and I'm tempted to type gg at the slightest disadvantage. Oh no his worker killed my worker 3 minutes into the game. GG.
This one game I had gone for some drones and hatcheries and then I massed up some Hydralisks which was my common strategy. I kept on losing to storms in these unwise middle of the map engagements. Then I lost my 3rd base and a dozen more Hydras but the Korean mode in me refused to give up and was having a ton of fun playing. My ultimate trump master card came right on time when my Lurker Aspect finished but a little too late as the Protoss was already banging on my front door. I had 6 and more Hydralisk Lurker babies morphing and all I needed was to buy time until those Lurkers finished morphing to finally help me defend. The amount of strain I was putting on my head and arms to pump out more than twenty apm is...indescribable. All of these hopes in a surge rush of adrenaline were realized until a High Templar stormed my Lurker eggs and killed them all. This was the chat at the time word for word:
"Me: My lurks!
Someone else: Died"
I was so devastated. Not really.
I tried to hold on for as long as possible and possibly I could perhaps try to prolong the game even further by mounting a powerful counterattack but all of my Hydralisks and sunken colonies melted at the very sight of the onslaught of Protoss units barraging my defensive line. I was forced to submit to yet another opponent who was far away from my grasp that I thought I had no hopes of ever coming close to beating for the eternity of time but the game was fun nevertheless. I can't say I ever bothered learning how to 1v1 but I slowly trickled my way up in skill over the initial 2 years. I never played ladder so from a rough estimate from hindsight I'd say I moved from E rank to D rank.
:D I was kind of proud I had cultivated my skills but again most of my time was spent playing UMS games so I never really worked on my melee skills and the melee skills I did improve came little by little. The feeling I got when I felt like playing one versus one amidst the group of play/obs people I observed with I felt like I was taking out a dusty guitar I hadn't practiced playing for weeks. I'd be like one of those bosses in a game seeing if they could beat me with the skill I've accumulated over my wise years. And if they beat me oh well.
I didn't really care and I had this very upbeat nature to losing, always a positive and somehow always having fun. I wonder how. Needless to say I was fooled around with a lot where people would get 10+ bases while I kept blindly attacking with a control group of Hydras at a time at one location getting tunnel visioned not having any map awareness at all. Then they'd vision me at the end and I'd see a humongous splurge of dots on my minimap incredibly amazed they had created so much. Sometimes they'd form words on the minimap using buildings and I'd get a hearty laugh. :D
This one game a guy wrote "Fuck you" in missile turrets on Lost Temple as a joke and we both lol'd. I was too amused to be mad at the effort he had put into it and it was the first example of forming words on a minimap I had seen. He kept making Science Vessels and I kept sending tons of scourge to suicide kill them. He had a ton of missile turrets though so I only ever killed 4 science vessels for every 24 scourge I sent in (only takes two scourge to suicide kill one vessel). I did this repeatedly though until I ran out of minerals. The problem was I ran out of minerals so quickly because for the start of the game I was stuck on 2 bases doing random stuff not even bothering to scout for 30 minutes or do anything. During this time he had taken every other base on the map and depleted nearly all of the minerals. I got sloppy seconds and salvaged the few minerals that were left when I finally started to attack his bases with the Hydralisks I had amassed. Then he started cammping in his little corner. I kept throwing scourge at him and he asked if I had run out of minerals yet. I said "yes" and that's when he came out with 20000 Battlecruisers. I think that game must've taken over 2 hours
I never was hotheaded and I was never bad mannered because the UMS community was solely casual players in the games I regularly played in. The earliest type of bad manner I had come across was when I was playing ZvT and some guy sunken broke me. Then he retreated his marines not bothering to finish my drones off or my hatchery completely exposed but I was still going through an adrenaline rush I get every 1v1 and I was never a negative Idra, I was always looking to seek opportunities and grab hold of them firmly homing in on victory. My opponent said he needed a "real challenge."
The first game I ever won....was when I was Terran and I was floating my last CC while my opponent had the entire map. He left the game and I was kind of ecstatic that I had won my first game after having close to two hundred losses. Playing melee games I kind of expected to lose and was never bothered whenever I did end up losing. :D I mean, to me it was fun just playing and learning in small ways.
Yes, so I guess that's it. This blog post of mine has the same name as one of my older blog posts I made nearly one and a half years ago. I pay homage to it :D
I guess that's all I really wanted to share. Hm. There was something else but but but I think that's it now.
