What's in a name?

ninazerg

United States7291 Posts

June 02 2016 23:32 GMT

Remember when you started playing StarCraft?

I do - but the multiplayer experience was really cool. I originally just played with some friends on Battle.net as a thing I thought would be a one-time deal. We ended up playing quite a bit more and I was constantly messaging my friends to get online, but alas, their "lives" got in the way, and I had to branch out a bit.

Playing with strangers meant getting my ass kicked. Getting my ass kicked meant there would be smack-talk (It was US East), and that meant that I had to prove that with a little training, I would show them what was what! This meant I had to find the biggest StarCraft nerds. The absolute die-hard geeks who lived and breathed StarCraft. This meant that I had to join their clan.

"Clan" just had this really nerdy vibe to it, and I thought I'd be talking with some decent players. Oh, absolutely not. They were a nice bunch, though, and I appreciate that when looking back. I've met a lot of people who are 'good' in regards to talent, but are unbelievably immature, to put it lightly. People who are kind, and people who are humble, are so much better to be around than people who are constantly negative.

I got into a really negative place very early when I started playing 1v1 games, and became really angry with myself for not winning. The human mind is a funny thing, too; I would start getting legitimately upset with myself in general because of a video game. I think I broke like three pairs of headsets because I would rip them off my head and slam them down on my desk, and broke one keyboard by slamming my fist down onto it. I would put so much pressure on myself to win the next game that the stress would make me play WAY worse, and I'd go on these ridiculous losing streaks. Even worse, I'd get into the bad mental habit of not thinking during games because I was so used to playing in this manner. This further inhibited my ability to progress skill-wise. Finally, I'd get depressed and start thinking StarCraft was a metaphor for life, and that no matter how hard I worked, and no matter what I did, that I'd be a failure.

If you've ever felt this way, I wrote this blog for you! I hope you don't give up on yourself, and start judging yourself based on your StarCraft accomplishments. I read a lot of people going, "I wasted so much of my life, and I'm garbage at this game." And maybe you wish spent that time elsewhere, but I think you'd be madder at yourself for not even trying at all. You found a game you loved, and then came up with an admirable goal: to excel at your favorite game. Somewhere along the way, you and I both just got obsessed with being good that losing games just hurt so much that it made each game an emotionally painful mess to struggle through.

But it's okay.

I really truly believe that we both missed the point. StarCraft, DotA, MarioKart, Quake Live, etc., are just things that we as humans use to connect with each other. We happen to live in a remarkable era of history where you can interact with people from all over the world without getting your passport stamped even once, and there are so many different communities, that there is almost certainly going to be one that you fit into. Even if you're a sociopath, I'm sure there is a message board or dating website for sociopaths only. There might even be a psychopath dating website.

The point is: The thing that's important is the people, and finding people who are positive influences in your life, who build you up instead of knocking you down, who inspire you, and who make you laugh.

So that's my story, what's yours?

I have a few questions I always get asked, so I'm going to answer them!

Why did you pick the name 'NinaZerg'?

This remains a "what-the-hell-was-I-thinking" decision, but in my US East clan, everyone just called each other by their name. I also changed my user ID a lot. I never picked one particular name and stuck to it for long. I've used "Serenity" (Actually not a reference to Firefly. I just thought it was a cool word because it meant 'peace', and I was brainstorming for names, and it just sounded cool. I ended up not using it because I was getting asked about Firefly a lot, and there was a g4i.Serenity on iccup.), "UtadaHikaru" (Yes, the Japanese pop-singer. This is sort of a joke since I don't like any of her songs, but she did a cover of "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" by Green Day, and I thought it was funny to hear her say the f-word.), "Cat" (Like the feline animal. There was a really good 2x2 player who went by aaf.cat, so this started off kind of smurfy, but I find it hilarious because 'cat' is a legitimate insult in Korea, and so is 'your mother is a cat'. Also, I like cats.)

I have a bunch of other IDs, but never settled on one. I was going to pick something totally random for my Teamliquid ID, but wanted my clanmates to know who I was. I also liked JulyZerg. Someone from the clan linked me to a replay of JulyZerg vs TheRock, and I was like "Well, my name is Nina, and I play Zerg. Let's just slam those together." and I have been kicking myself ever since. Now strange people call me by my actual first name. smh

How did you start playing StarCraft?

The same way anyone else started. I still don't know why people ask me this. Some friends and I were just talking about random shit, StarCraft came up, and I was like "I HAVE THAT GAME." (Which was technically a lie, since the CD belonged to my brother, but he was cool with lending it to me) and later on, I found the Brood War expansion in a bargain bin at a thrift store.

Why did you pick Zerg?

Cuz I'm a rebel. I had no idea there was a "pro scene" going on in Korea. I heard about Korean players, and how good they were, but I didn't know how big it was. I got beat up a few times in early 1v1s, so I just started joining 'observer' games just to watch what other people would do. On battle.net east, there is no LAN Latency, so it's impossible to micro mutalisks, and so there were very few Zerg players. So I saw Terran and Protoss almost every game, and I thought people didn't pick Zerg because Zerg just sucked.

Then one of my clanmates said, "No, Zerg is actually the strongest race, but it takes the most skill, and that's why people don't play it." and I instantly was like "I want to play that one." Never mind that it was total BS, it sounded legit to me at the time, and then I saw the replay of JulyZerg crushing TheRock and I was sold.

About that Liquipedia user page...

There's so much going on there. I guess the place to start is just to say that I have never experimented with illegal drugs, and I'm like a clown. You can find me scary or funny, depending on who you are. The page seems like it makes a lot of people laugh, and even if they're laughing at me for being weird, I'm fine with it because it's putting smiles on peoples' faces. Part of the reason it seems so random is that there are so, so many inside jokes in there.

I'm just gonna give the generic artist answer and say, "It means different things to different people, and the point is to find out what it means to you."

About the Garena thing, though: iCCup will deny this, but their page gets hacked frequently, and the hackers delete huge swathes of data for no reason. They're usually very Russian, and very angry about losing a DotA game. I was an iCCup admin at one time, and during a conversation with a couple of other admins, I was told about the site being hacked, and I asked who hacked it. They didn't know, so I joked that it was 'probably a rival server, like Garena'. Gradually, we kept the joke rolling by blaming more things on Garena.

Raven is a pretty good artist, and he made this cartoon:

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Bonus material:

Best meme

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Here are some banners I made:

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I made my own header overlay for a tournament:

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Arcania (SnowFantasy on TL) was going to host a tour and asked if someone would make him some art. I made several "joke" ones, and I'm pretty sure this is the only one I'll be allowed to show on teamliquid:

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Not sure why he didn't use it.

GeckoXp made this. Still one of my favorite things ever:

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I don't know if I ever released this, but it was supposed to be GGEsports 3, and now it's yours:

+ Show Spoiler +

"내 거시기가 꺼져 떨어지려고 생각합니다. 난 그냥 생선과 섹스를 했어요."
~ ancient Korean Proverb

Letter From The Editor
Begrüßung, miststück! Hello, family, friends, fans! Hi mom! It looks like the Mayans are liars. They told us the world would end on December 21st, 2012, and we're in 2013 right now. Literally. I even bought an underground bunker, and stockpiled stuffed animals, such as bunnies, teddy bears, squirrels, kitties, puppies, penguins, and lobsters. For drinks, I didn't buy water, because water tastes bad, so I stocked up on 500 gallons of Stolichnaya Vodka, made in the motherland itself. For food, I just planned to use a harpoon to hunt wolfs. As you may very know (I hope), wolf-meat gives you superhuman powers, such as the power to whistle really loud, and the power to tie really complicated knots.

So anyway, I'm really happy that you're reading this, and I think it's really cool. I worked pretty hard on this, so it's pretty nice. Yeah, thanks for reading this. It's good. I remember this one time, I was listening to Woody's Yoc-Influenced mixtape (before the government killed him, as he knew too much about that thing we're not supposed to talk about) while I was smoking a substantial amount of PCP, and I was watching The Wizard of Oz simultaneously, and it was really trippy, dude. Like, the movie synced up perfectly with what I was listening to and I realized that the Earth is like a grain of sand, and we're grains of sand on a grain of sand, then I blacked out and threw up all over my cat. The point of this story is that I hope you have a similar experience while reading this latest edition of Giggly Girl ESPORTS, although, you have to keep in mind, this edition is probably going to suck. Think about Spiderman 3. Think about the third Matrix movie. Think about Kill Bill Volume 3. They all were terrible, so considering that this is the third issue, it's probably not going to be up to snuff.

I can't guarantee to deliver cuddliness or cuteness, either. I just can't. You might as well just stop reading right now, because there's no point any more. I think we peaked in the last issue, and we can only go downhill from there, and our secretary, Helen, got really depressed and stayed in her apartment for 2 months, eating nothing but sherbert.

MondayMorningWarlock demanded the writing staff produce material, but they just shrugged sadly and informed us that they would have to copy jokes from popular television shows. Upon hearing this, I slammed my cup of coffee and said "Well shit! If you guys can't write anything useful, then in my Letter From The Editor intro, I am going to diss you all so bad. You are going to get roasted SO HARD. Your assholes will never be the same after this shit."
So, MaxTerran, you are a whiner and the reason you lose games isn't because of imbalance, it's because you suck at StarCraft. Lacuna eats cereal without milk, and that's retarded. McLemonadeStand, you disgust me; I don't know why, but your face is ugly. Luigikart, you smell bad. StOp[kOny], you are a disappointment to all of us, and should pay your ex-wife some damn child support. RapidRappingRabidRabbit, you need to clip your fingernails, because they are slightly too long for office policy to tolerate. Helen, you vindictive fucking piece of slutfuck, I would call you a whore, but that would be bringing you up to their level. You are below whores. You are below the excrement of sea creatures that live super-deep in the ocean. Everything about you is an obscene scream from the forces of nature that God made a mistake, and therefore, the universe should not even exist because you are so fucking disgusting that it might cause existence itself to cease, and I'm not even joking. Finally, Atlas[Mouse], you are fired, you piece of shit. Take your jars full of boogers and get out my building.

Club Penguin: The Next ESPORT?
by McLemonadeStand

There is a lot of speculation from unknown sources that the popular children's role-playing game, Club Penguin, may emerge as the next big ESPORT in the ESPORTS scene. Developed by Disney, and released in 2005, this high-octane MMORPG boasts an impressive depth to it's gameplay, twisting storyline, and mind-bending strategy. The game that declares "Waddle around and meet new friends" certainly is making many friends within the ESPORTS community, who see the competitive nature of Club Penguin as a potentially multi-trillion-dollar industry. Although the Teamliquid.net staff denies that TL.net may give Club Penguin it's own section and cover Club Penguin tournaments and events on the front page, we should never rule it out of the realm of possibility. Already, this game is vastly popular in the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Republic of Korea, with almost 19 billion players in each country respectively, the craze sweeping the globe may inevitably reign supreme in the ESPORTS market after replacing LoL, Dota2, and SC2 as the rulers of the universe. Many professional teams, such as Evil Geniuses and ROOT Gaming are already making the transition over to Club Penguin, with big names such as IdrA, HuK, Stephano, Taeja, and many more secretly practicing Club Penguin. When asked about Club Penguin, Greg 'IdrA' Fields just walked away from the microphone without even saying anything.

Infestors Are So Fucking Imbalanced
by MaxTerran

Playing Terran in SC2 is fucking disgusting. Zerg is just fucking disgusting. I'm not even sure what David Kim and Dustin Browder were thinking when they designed this game, but I'm pretty they were really, really high on meth and having a money fight (which is like a fucking snowball fight, but you throw money stacks at each other) and saying "How can we make this fucking game as fucking nooby as possible?" and then they fucking decided to fuck Terran over so fucking hard that I'm never going to be able to sit down properly again. Let explain what the holy flying fuck I'm talking about. First, you have this goddamn fucking bullshit Queen buff which makes Zergs not afraid to just go ahead and take five bases right away without worrying about, I dunno, fucking aggression. Then, they just fucking sit there for 15 minutes, get Infestors and kill your army, and there's not a fucking thing you can do about that shit. Fungal Growth just wrecks any prospect of you being able to do shit about anything and fuckin' infested terrans just blow everything up, and have a fucking huge area of effect that makes nukes look like firecrackers. That shit is so goddamn stupid, it's no wonder 99% of the players are Zerg now, and all the up-and-comers are fucking Zergs, fucking duh! Regardless of this fucking fucking fucking bullfuck cumstain asswipe shitnipple of a broken game, I'm going to continue playing, because I have too much dignity to quit in the face of Zerg bullshit. Patchzerg patchzerg patchzerg.

Editor note: If you read this and felt bad for MaxTerran, don't worry. About 20 minutes after writing this article, he went beserk and ran off and ended up in a local mall, where he met a beautiful girlfriend, and they have been going out for about three weeks now. He has not touched SC2 since.

Pictures of IdrA Smiling
by SmileCosmic

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OMG CUDDLYSTARCRAFT REAVERS SO ADORABLE OMG <33333
by SmileCosmic
I know we've been promising cuddly reavers for a long time now, but I lied. Like most major corporations, I made a projection and reported it in advance, which I don't feel bad about, because if it's good enough for Enron (rmbr dat?), it's good enough for me. As a bonus, I am releasing a montage of cuddly StarCraftness. Enjoy this toe-curling adorableness.

iCCup Suddenly Goes Down Due to Spilled Coffee
by RapidRabidRappingRabbit

SIBERIA, RUSSIA - Somewhere out in the waist-high snow of the Siberian forests, the bold Russian Unk has returned to his wooden cabin, with a freshly-killed bear slumped over one shoulder, and a huge log for firewood over the other. He drops the bear onto the snow-covered ground, and removes his jacket. It is far too warm for a true Russian - a boiling -20°C - so he sweats, but it is a manly sweat. Unk unsheathes his pocket knife, and opens the bear's belly, reaches in, and pulls out a fresh bear heart, which he takes an enormous bite out of. Suddenly, a wolf appears, smelling the bear meat, the greedy wolf wants some of Unk's bear meat! Unk smiles and hurls his axe with insane accuracy, and it's blade strikes the wolf in the ribs, causing the wolf to run at full speed through the woods in retreat, with the axe still protruding from it's side.

Unk is a true Russian. Every morning, he drinks vodka and eats a bear. He has a picture of Vladimir Putin by his computer monitor, which always gives him inspiration and energy through the hard times. He brings many beautiful women to his cabin and has sex with them. However, despite his strength, which has helped to build the strongest nation on the globe, approximately last Thursday, he made a small mistake: he accidentally spilled his coffee into the iCCup servers, causing them to catch on fire, and one of them actually exploded. Unk looked at the servers, and commented on the situation by saying "Oops! Xexexe."

Meanwhile, millions of iCCup users instantly lost their accounts, and demanded answers. When asked why this situation had happened, Yelloant gave this statement: "Why not?"

It's REAL

Bangers and mash, m8

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I've been meaning to post this for years, literally. I just keep forgetting about it, but here it is:

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In 100 games, Biar would definitely win 5 games against Flash. I mean, he's Biar.

RIP in pieces, X17

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micronesia

United States24676 Posts

June 03 2016 00:36 GMT

Haha I bought a 6 pack of that bear semen drink and brought it to a TSL afterparty once.

I bet many people have very similar starcraft origin stories to yourself. Any particular clans you got involved in early on? What timeframe was this?

ninazerg

United States7291 Posts

June 03 2016 01:41 GMT

On June 03 2016 09:36 micronesia wrote:
Haha I bought a 6 pack of that bear semen drink and brought it to a TSL afterparty once.

I bet many people have very similar starcraft origin stories to yourself. Any particular clans you got involved in early on? What timeframe was this?

It was 2008 on US East. I joined a clan called Afterlife Gaming, which was aG. but it was a noob clan. I received a lot of advice that I find hilarious now in retrospect.

Artanis[Xp]

Netherlands12968 Posts

June 03 2016 01:43 GMT

Thanks Nina, you just made me rant about my BW history.

Started out playing the shareware thanks to a friend of my sister's at the age of 7. Shareware came out in 1997 which she linked to me and I got pretty hooked. My first nickname was something with Lion, which changed to Tiger after slapping on my first clantag, (OD). Still have no idea what it meant or who was in it.

I made a friend called Samus_Aran. I thought he was a really cool guy since he let me win a ladder game on the original ladder. All I remember from the game is that it was a TvT on a badlands tileset and I laid vulture mines somewhere in the middle of the map around structures when I was already dead when he asked me if I wanted the win. Best day of my life. Guy bought original starcraft, I got it a little later. Same with brood war, then suddenly he stopped coming online and it saddened me.

One or two years into BW, I started a clan called TDTT, which was totally awesome and rad and stood for The Dark Terror Tigers. We were the most badass clan alive and terrorized many UMS games. The clan was short-lived as it fused with n1p (number 1 players) into TDP (I forgot what TDP stood for ironically enough) due to an e-romance between me and one of the n1p members. I don't remember who either, but (s)he went offline pretty shortly after and I never saw him or her again. I ended up switching my nickname to Artanis from Tiger because I really liked his voiceovers from the mission briefings.

TDP got quite big and existed for a few years but I got tired of how big the clan got and how many noobs it had. Learned that UMS wasn't actually the most popular game mode despite some map makers telling me it was and learned of the existence of sites like teamliquid and brood war through a british mate called AAR, or andrew, whom had I believe hacked WGTour before. He showed me GosuGamers and Teamliquid and told me that GG.net was far better. Ended up becoming staff for GG.net for like 4-5 years, first as event member under Zoxxer and later as event team leader, which allowed me to go to a bunch of World Cyber Games events as press. Visited Monza in 2006, Seattle in 2007 and Cologne in 2008 (all together with my sister) where I had my very first alcoholic beverage served to me by Apollo himself. Tequila Sunrise, it was awful. I still don't like drinking.

Somewhere along the lines I also joined e[Xp]erience, a clan of a bunch of dutchies whom I don't really speak to anymore as well as the home of the archdemon known as Gecko. There were some cool folks in there though like Brownhair, Power, and Geert (forgot his nickname, I just remember I crushed him ZvP all the time with hydra busts). Kinda wish some of them were still 'round.

Cele

Germany4016 Posts

June 03 2016 11:34 GMT

5/5. Somewhere in this blog i felt connected to an akin soul who has shattered a tremendous amounts of headsets (mice for me) in BW rage and who came to understand it's about the people. Love it.

And yes, we deny it. It's Garena rlly. i have the proof and willing to share it with you. Join the staff and i'll show u :D

brian

United States9617 Posts

June 03 2016 14:55 GMT

chat craft best craft. USEast Terran Strategy was where it was at.

JieXian

Malaysia4677 Posts

June 03 2016 15:37 GMT

well look who's back

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imre

France9263 Posts

June 03 2016 16:09 GMT

Awesome blog.

Chef

10810 Posts

June 03 2016 18:22 GMT

I played UMS forever, then made games called "NOOBS ONLY" on US West on Jacobs Ladder, where I would make a wall on the center of the high ground bridge to your opponent's main using something like a barracks, a factory, and sometimes an academy with a bunker behind it, then get a dropship and siege tank as fast as possible and land it on the low jungle above their main where siege tank could hit their town hall.

I never progressed beyond that pinnacle of excellence.

catplanetcatplanet

3829 Posts

June 03 2016 19:15 GMT

#10

i too know the pain of picking a terrible ID and being stuck with it forever

outscar

2832 Posts

June 03 2016 21:47 GMT

#11

Now I finally get that Garena thing. Cool story sis. I feel like exactly same, I'm still garbage but it's time to fix it with upcoming new brand server and become bonjwa on Blood Bath.

pebble444

Italy2497 Posts

June 03 2016 21:49 GMT

#12

you can always change your ID. That is part of life also. Restarting from the beginning, but with all the experience that you have lived.
btw i sent you a pm Nina. I always thought it had something to do with Tekken 1.

GeckoXp

Germany2016 Posts

June 04 2016 01:07 GMT

#13

Ah, the good old times, I totally remember bla bla bla bla bla
dore ipsum dole
artanis must die a horrible death
spam spam
bla bla bla

tl;dr:
BW MASTER RACE 5/5

ninazerg

United States7291 Posts

June 04 2016 01:24 GMT

#14

On June 04 2016 04:15 catplanetcatplanet wrote:
i too know the pain of picking a terrible ID and being stuck with it forever

Incidentally, your ID is one my favorite ones.

On June 04 2016 10:07 GeckoXp wrote:
Ah, the good old times, I totally remember bla bla bla bla bla
dore ipsum dole
artanis must die a horrible death
spam spam
bla bla bla

tl;dr:
BW MASTER RACE 5/5

I agree, except that Artanis is awesome. Also, remember that fat American guy with the neckbeard? What was up with that guy?

On June 04 2016 00:37 JieXian wrote:
well look who's back

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Tell a friend.

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eskashaborn

United States177 Posts

June 04 2016 12:09 GMT

#15

Hmm...interesting yarn.

Teoita

Italy12246 Posts

June 04 2016 13:35 GMT

#16

5/5 for the bear semen pic

GeckoXp

Germany2016 Posts

June 05 2016 00:38 GMT

#17

Alright, nostalgia, bla bla

I met so many people by happenstance online and joined clans with them, it's hilarious. Among those were future head admins of big time leagues, such as TrustTheDwarf managing the BWCL. Gosh, remembering how much I hated him back in 2002 and how much this changed in the DECADE to come.

Not only those, but also like... I remember regularly going up 2v2 with a good ally of mine on Fastest Possible maps against HoRRoR.Terran, later meeting HoRRoR in the first "internationally advertised" PGTour season, where I bet him 3-1 in a Bo5, him being Protoss.
I distinctively remember crushing MYM.Ghost at least ten times a row with the most idiotic openings, just because Allen, Ghosta's brother, wanted to convince Ghost he should leave B.net. And also how Allen ranted about Ghosta losing his initial German Team Challenge against some random ash. player (ash.johannes?)
I also remember, after being talked into "trying out a new clan" by wuT)Ausbruch over a beer, that wuT) was dead except this one guy who kept challenging me AND EVERYONE ELSE ONLINE on WGTour and always, literally always, kicked anyone. Turns out the other trial of the dead clan was Schnibl0r.
In real life, I remember some occasion meeting the ToT-LAN-Crew in a local McDonalds, entirely unrelated to me being aware a BW LAN was going on. In hindsight, this was the most stupid thing in my "BW career".
I also remember talking to some Ukranian Zerg over several days about how to do video edits, and for whom I translated random stuff. This guy was YelloAnt.
I remember attending the first big "BW LAN" which wasn't local in 2008. After a seven hour train ride I somehow managed to place within the Top16 in the 1v1 tour, despite having faced a 0-2 loss to two 5 pools in the "fun tour" by one of the MYM guys only five hours earlier. I dunno how, but I bet a couple of players seriously being better than me by just fucking them over with timing attacks. I also remember this 80 apm newb killing a couple of "better" (C ranked) players in his first event ever.
Last example, I remember this ridiciculous season in which all e[Xp]erience members went from a lower C- ranking up to an average of a B- rank to our icons; and how I tried to improve yet again. Only to have Twisted smash my face in a "serious" PvZ Bo5 set up by our leader. That was the point I officially decided to only be the guy to hang around and replace missing people for BWCL, as the standard was so incredibly subpar in division 2 compared with our good players.

This all leaves out the real life friends I made over Brood War, such as Vonarrh, Fleischmann and NoMaK and the stories that go along with them. Such as Vonarrh accidentally joining a hippie cult while trying to find our Clan LAN in the middle of nowhere. To his defense, Vonarrh was severily drunk. He also was a player I'd rate at least in the solid B-rank area. I still don't know why he didn't make it into the German B-Team. Probably because of his personality and all the troll actions he did online.

Nevermind, back to

On June 04 2016 10:24 ninazerg wrote:

I agree, except that Artanis is awesome. Also, remember that fat American guy with the neckbeard? What was up with that guy?

It's an e[Xp]erience thing. Go ask our mutual friend Power what the infamous Reverse-LT proxy-Gate/Reaver/DT-Drop combo is. Or ask how Geert played off-race on Gaia.

Artanis sucks. Big times.

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