In spring 2007, I was a sophomore in college and I was just getting into the professional BW scene. I had a Korean roommate named Seungmyung Lee. He played BW almost every day--only TvZ, only bio. Lee made me sit down to watch a classic NaDa vs sAviOr game one day as my introduction to Korean players. I was hooked immediately. These players made BW look like a totally different game than the one I grew up playing on dial-up. Marines aren't just an early-game unit??
Lee and I followed the important matches in Korea together, through the beginning of 2007. At this time it was complicated to follow Korean SC from the States. There were no stream relays, few English-language commentators (shout outs to VioleTAK and Klazart), and VODs were posted late if ever. But Lee--being Korean--had the Korean GOM player installed and knew how to pull up the important matches by navigating the program in his native language (there was no English-language GOM client at that time).
Lee and I were geared up for the OSL and MSL finals in February and March 2007. sAviOr was in both of them, and we hated Zerg and wanted the Maestro to lose. Our hero NaDa faced sAviOr in the OSL final in February 2007. We figured that NaDa was humanity's best shot at keeping sAviOr from winning both titles.
sAviOr rolled NaDa 3-1 in the OSL--and from my memory of the games, 3-1 was a generous set split for NaDa. NaDa got destroyed. sAviOr was unstoppable.
Going in to the MSL final a few weeks later, everyone knew that sAviOr would win. He was up against some unknown Protoss player called "Bisu" who was nowhere near as accomplished as NaDa.
Lee and I had no idea who this kid was. And PvZ was an impossible matchup. Zerg always won. sAviOr's recent record against Protoss was proof of this:
Lee and I decided we wouldn't stay up to watch the MSL finals live, but would catch the VODs first thing in the morning. It was a Bo5. We pulled up chairs around Lee's secondary monitor in our dorm room.
Lee and I tried hard to avoid spoilers. But when Lee navigated to the VODs of the MSL finals in GOM player, only three entries popped up--only three games. We knew what that meant. sAviOr had won another title, and this time he had only needed three sets to do it. It was going to be another beatdown.
When Bisu started producing Corsairs, Lee and I bugged our eyes out. When the camera revealed that Bisu had a huge army at his third despite relentless mid game harass, we bugged our eyes out. When sAviOr tapped out after 12 minutes, we looked at each other and bugged our eyes out. sAviOr lost a PvZ. Wait--sAviOr lost not just one PvZ, but three in a row, and to a Protoss we'd never heard of.
We were giddy to watch the next two sets. And you should be too. This was the end of an era for sAviOr, the beginning of one for Bisu, and the seminal moment for the style of PvZ that would define that matchup in BW's final years.
As a person who got into BW pretty late i found the games luckluster (1 sided). I understand the premise of revolution and fall of Savior but entairtainment wise it was not even close to my top10.
GGplay vs Iris OSL series is the king. It includes both new and old style of play and is so dynamic.
Also while Bisu had never won a title yet, he wasn't a complete stranger, if I remember correctly he was already #2 in TL power rank before the finals.
If you removed all the context from the finals, those games were really bad. As someone coming into that series expecting a highly contested series similar to that epic Nal_ra vs Savior clash I was left very disappointed.
On January 30 2015 18:03 DinoToss wrote: As a person who got into BW pretty late i found the games luckluster (1 sided). I understand the premise of revolution and fall of Savior but entairtainment wise it was not even close to my top10.
GGplay vs Iris OSL series is the king. It includes both new and old style of play and is so dynamic.
that exactly what was so awesome, that it was so one sided, after years upon years of zergs bashing the shit out of protoss it looked like jesus walking on water
ggplay vs iris might be one of the best finals ever if not the best
I remember this game off Tempest. I think it was versus Light. Where he effectively won the match with 3 dragoons versus some sort of bunker rush offrax strat. that'll probably be the most memorable match i still have in mind.
What a mindblowing series. I rarely woke up in the middle of the night to watch live but I got a good feeling about Bisu when he beat Nal_rA and I just knew I had to see his attempt at doing the impossible. There are big events that happen in the world and in each person's personal life that stick with you forever. This series for me is one of those events where, decades later, you ask someone "Where were you when the revolution happened?"
As I was watching, I remember thinking "yeah that's good, but..." and doubting every step of the way until Protoss victory was absolutely clear. For better or worse, this series will always give me hope that there's no impossible situation and no strategic dead end. Looking back at the periods when SC2 got stale, I always think of the failure of the players to rise above it, not of the failure of the developers creating a "solvable" and "strategically stale" game. Who knows what revolutions we missed out on.
On January 31 2015 00:46 NonY wrote: What a mindblowing series. I rarely woke up in the middle of the night to watch live but I got a good feeling about Bisu when he beat Nal_rA and I just knew I had to see his attempt at doing the impossible. There are big events that happen in the world and in each person's personal life that stick with you forever. This series for me is one of those events where, decades later, you ask someone "Where were you when the revolution happened?"
As I was watching, I remember thinking "yeah that's good, but..." and doubting every step of the way until Protoss victory was absolutely clear. For better or worse, this series will always give me hope that there's no impossible situation and no strategic dead end. Looking back at the periods when SC2 got stale, I always think of the failure of the players to rise above it, not of the failure of the developers creating a "solvable" and "strategically stale" game. Who knows what revolutions we missed out on.
so u blame the players for not making sc2 more dynamic ?
i mean its not like the whole korean pro gaming world got at it and nothing happened..
On January 31 2015 00:46 NonY wrote: What a mindblowing series. I rarely woke up in the middle of the night to watch live but I got a good feeling about Bisu when he beat Nal_rA and I just knew I had to see his attempt at doing the impossible. There are big events that happen in the world and in each person's personal life that stick with you forever. This series for me is one of those events where, decades later, you ask someone "Where were you when the revolution happened?"
As I was watching, I remember thinking "yeah that's good, but..." and doubting every step of the way until Protoss victory was absolutely clear. For better or worse, this series will always give me hope that there's no impossible situation and no strategic dead end. Looking back at the periods when SC2 got stale, I always think of the failure of the players to rise above it, not of the failure of the developers creating a "solvable" and "strategically stale" game. Who knows what revolutions we missed out on.
so u blame the players for not making sc2 more dynamic ?
i mean its not like the whole korean pro gaming world got at it and nothing happened..
I think it's more about the approach to SC2 balancing, compared to Broodwar.
Back in the days it seems like they took much longer to balance via patches and gave the players more time to figure stuff out. Nowadays in SC2 imo it seems like, patches are thrown out every couple of months.
I think that's what Nony is getting at too. Given more time and different/better mapmaking, players could have figured out much more.
I remember having the experience that even on game three I was like "there's definitely more VODs than this.." but I'll be damned if I remember whether I got them off a TL torrent and they were just spoiler VODs, or if I was already downloading VODs off youtube or stage6 at that time.
Hahaha, oh beesuit. Those were great games. One of the first times the FPVODs were released shortly after too, and you could really see the fear in Savior's FPVOD.
I don't blame anyone. I think blame requires evidence that we can't collect. But there are different ways that SC2 could have been better and the players playing better is one of them.
It seems like the community and the players themselves have made it so that the players feel obligated to think about balance and act as authorities on balance and design. I think that that attitude doesn't improve the development of the game and it hinders their ability to do their job. It's not natural to be yanked both ways -- to try to do the impossible every day in practice while trying to convince developers that it really is impossible and the only solution is to change the rules of the game.
The players can contribute best by playing their best. There aren't any words to add to it. Their brain doesn't have to waste energy and become confused by being on both sides. Blizzard doesn't make changes without evidence supporting it anyway. The devs watch tournaments and collect statistics. Players just gotta play and that's best for everyone.
To relate this back to the blog, I think there's a scary high chance that Bisu would not have done what he did in that series if his environment was like the environment of many SC2 players. All the more reason to treasure it since we're unlikely to see a similar context come up again.
On January 31 2015 04:11 NonY wrote: I don't blame anyone. I think blame requires evidence that we can't collect. But there are different ways that SC2 could have been better and the players playing better is one of them.
It seems like the community and the players themselves have made it so that the players feel obligated to think about balance and act as authorities on balance and design. I think that that attitude doesn't improve the development of the game and it hinders their ability to do their job. It's not natural to be yanked both ways -- to try to do the impossible every day in practice while trying to convince developers that it really is impossible and the only solution is to change the rules of the game.
The players can contribute best by playing their best. There aren't any words to add to it. Their brain doesn't have to waste energy and become confused by being on both sides. Blizzard doesn't make changes without evidence supporting it anyway. The devs watch tournaments and collect statistics. Players just gotta play and that's best for everyone.
To relate this back to the blog, I think there's a scary high chance that Bisu would not have done what he did in that series if his environment was like the environment of many SC2 players. All the more reason to treasure it since we're unlikely to see a similar context come up again.
if you go down that road then you really have to pin point the whole balancing insanity thing to where it comes from
i dont recall bw pro gamers whining for patches what prompted them to do so in sc2 ?
my guess is that frustration played a big part in this as for my personal experience, I use to play games hardcore since pretty young and sc2 was along with war3, the only two games I couldnt play more than 3 hours straight without getting bored out of my mind
maybe it's 3d, game design, idk... but it always felt slow and boring feelings i never got from any other game like quake, sc, even aoe etc
Nonyyyy erudite as always. Hope you coming back man! Anyways just logged in to say .... Boonbag, you are part of the minority if you cudnt play war3 / SC2 for more than 3 hrs. Now back to the blog and revelling in good times gone by !
On January 31 2015 06:42 MrBitter wrote: Yo words cannot express how happy it makes me to see you still writing about BW.
MrB the hero. How are you man? Where you living these days? Job? Still casting anything?
Also so glad to see some other heroes of TL the old pop out of the woodwork...big hey to all of you guys after all of these years. Awesome how shared memories of great matches will keep people together
As for this match itself, in response to Plexa's comment and others like it all I have to say is that the reason I loved this series was ALL about context. It really felt like watching a revolution in real time, given the nature of PvZ at the time and the backstories of these two players. And looking back on the match 8 years later only makes it seem more important--Bisu went on to become one of the greatest players in BW history and sAviOr's career imploded.
No other match in BW gave me the sense of "WHAT AM I WATCHING" like this one (Nony I think you hit it on the head--it was a "where were you when this happened" moment). Though of course there were many epic finals that were much more back and forth than this one!
EPT
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