• Log InLog In
  • Register
Liquid`
Team Liquid Liquipedia
EDT 06:40
CEST 12:40
KST 19:40
  • Home
  • Forum
  • Calendar
  • Streams
  • Liquipedia
  • Features
  • Store
  • EPT
  • TL+
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Smash
  • Heroes
  • Counter-Strike
  • Overwatch
  • Liquibet
  • Fantasy StarCraft
  • TLPD
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Blogs
Forum Sidebar
Events/Features
News
Featured News
Serral wins EWC 202515Tournament Spotlight: FEL Cracow 20259Power Rank - Esports World Cup 202580RSL Season 1 - Final Week9[ASL19] Finals Recap: Standing Tall15
Community News
[BSL 2025] H2 - Team Wars, Weeklies & SB Ladder2EWC 2025 - Replay Pack2Google Play ASL (Season 20) Announced27BSL Team Wars - Bonyth, Dewalt, Hawk & Sziky teams10Weekly Cups (July 14-20): Final Check-up0
StarCraft 2
General
Serral wins EWC 2025 #1: Maru - Greatest Players of All Time Greatest Players of All Time: 2025 Update Power Rank - Esports World Cup 2025 EWC 2025 - Replay Pack
Tourneys
Sparkling Tuna Cup - Weekly Open Tournament FEL Cracov 2025 (July 27) - $10,000 live event TaeJa vs Creator Bo7 SC Evo Showmatch Esports World Cup 2025 $25,000 Streamerzone StarCraft Pro Series announced
Strategy
How did i lose this ZvP, whats the proper response
Custom Maps
External Content
Mutation # 484 Magnetic Pull Mutation #239 Bad Weather Mutation # 483 Kill Bot Wars Mutation # 482 Wheel of Misfortune
Brood War
General
Google Play ASL (Season 20) Announced Shield Battery Server New Patch BW General Discussion [BSL 2025] H2 - Team Wars, Weeklies & SB Ladder BGH Auto Balance -> http://bghmmr.eu/
Tourneys
[Megathread] Daily Proleagues [BSL20] Non-Korean Championship 4x BSL + 4x China CSL Xiamen International Invitational [CSLPRO] It's CSLAN Season! - Last Chance
Strategy
Does 1 second matter in StarCraft? Simple Questions, Simple Answers Muta micro map competition [G] Mineral Boosting
Other Games
General Games
Stormgate/Frost Giant Megathread Nintendo Switch Thread Total Annihilation Server - TAForever [MMORPG] Tree of Savior (Successor of Ragnarok) Path of Exile
Dota 2
Official 'what is Dota anymore' discussion
League of Legends
Heroes of the Storm
Simple Questions, Simple Answers Heroes of the Storm 2.0
Hearthstone
Heroes of StarCraft mini-set
TL Mafia
TL Mafia Community Thread Vanilla Mini Mafia
Community
General
US Politics Mega-thread Russo-Ukrainian War Thread UK Politics Mega-thread Stop Killing Games - European Citizens Initiative Things Aren’t Peaceful in Palestine
Fan Clubs
INnoVation Fan Club SKT1 Classic Fan Club!
Media & Entertainment
Anime Discussion Thread [\m/] Heavy Metal Thread Movie Discussion! [Manga] One Piece Korean Music Discussion
Sports
2024 - 2025 Football Thread Formula 1 Discussion TeamLiquid Health and Fitness Initiative For 2023 NBA General Discussion
World Cup 2022
Tech Support
Gtx660 graphics card replacement Installation of Windows 10 suck at "just a moment" Computer Build, Upgrade & Buying Resource Thread
TL Community
TeamLiquid Team Shirt On Sale The Automated Ban List
Blogs
Ping To Win? Pings And Their…
TrAiDoS
momentary artworks from des…
tankgirl
from making sc maps to makin…
Husyelt
StarCraft improvement
iopq
Socialism Anyone?
GreenHorizons
Eight Anniversary as a TL…
Mizenhauer
Customize Sidebar...

Website Feedback

Closed Threads



Active: 630 users

Brood War, StarCraft 2 & (possibly) competing

Blogs > Liquid`Ret
Post a Reply
1 2 3 Next All
Liquid`Ret
Profile Blog Joined October 2002
Netherlands4511 Posts
Last Edited: 2017-11-09 00:24:50
November 08 2017 16:49 GMT
#1
Hey guys,

Figured this would be a good place to give a little update about what I've been doing and thinking lately. I've recently not streamed any brood war, and took a break from the game and I want to explain why. I'd also like to talk about some of the differences between StarCraft 1, and StarCraft 2.

Since being a SC2 progamer

Some of you might know, I had recently started playing brood war again with the release of SC:remastered. Before this, I stopped practicing StarCraft 2 and competing in tournaments in the summer of 2015, after making it to top16 in WCS, and doing decently in IEM cologne by qualifyting for the group stages, but then getting my ass whooped by innovation and lilbow. When Lotv came out and they nerfed injects, and made them stackable, it made me not enjoy playing as much because I had spend a great ammount of time and attention on perfecting my injecting method, including hotkeying every seperate hatchery to be able to track the progress of the inject bar. So it was a decent time to move on, I thought.

Since then I have kept a few jobs, nothing of note, and had decided this year I would get back into school to learn programming and web development. By now I've been doing this for a month or 2, and it's going fairly well so far, especially considering that I hadn't been in school for nearly 10 years, so far it's manageable for me. Anyway, back to this summer, they announced SC:Remastered and I figured what the heck, why not play the game that got all of this started for me back in the day.

Coming back to BW

I think I started playing again around june, or july. At first, it was extremely difficult. I was crazy with customizing hotkeys in StarCraft 2, and going back to BW without customizable hotkeys was so hard, because I had trained my brain and fingers to press keys differently than I was doing when I was playing BW, but the experience was very enjoyable.

I had so much fun just playing games on iccup, and then when I got invited to the launch event practicing actually became meaningfull and it gave me so much satisfaction. Since august I had been streaming quite regularly, up untill about 3 weeks ago, and my progress was steady. My muscle memory and the way my hand was moving around the keyboard really felt like coming home in a way, and just use the keyboard in a way that everything started to make sense again. You could say that somewhere along in the way in sc2 with all the changes I made to my play, I got a little lost. As I played more and more, the way my hands were moving around the keyboard just started to feel better and better. Even my typing got better again, and I just felt more comfortable overall. My mmr would bounce around between 2600-2800 and towards the end I was pretty much able to beat anyone outside of korea (but also lose to quite a few people ).

If anything, dedicating all of my free time (4-5 hours daily) to StarCraft, made me hungry. I felt hungry to improve, compete, strive to be better each day. All of those things are so addictive for me, its like my brain just goes crazy and I wake up and every inch of me being just wants to be better at the game. Difficult to think about anything else. But at the same time, a lot of things made playing difficult. I started to have lag with korean players right around the time I would be home from school which was Korean peak hours (3-7 pm CET). So everytime I would start practicing I would jump in and out of unplayable games for a very long time. Then I also had some experiences in tournaments playing against Dandy (Terran from peru). Games we were playing were high latency on tr8, making it so difficult to control mutalisks. While this player might have been better than me at the time, it made me realise the online competitive environment simply wasn't that good for me. I could practice my ass off, but at best I would have to play ZvZ vs some very capable zergs (eonzerg, trutacz, sziky, notforyou), which would most of the time be 50-50 or very close to it.. And then playing vs terrans with high latency in tournaments, it would make it difficult for me to really enjoy competiting and playing in these tournaments. Combined with the fact that ladder had become unplayable for me unless I played after 8 pm, it was hard to keep enjoying brood war, even though the game itself remains really great.

Around this time also it was announced that Draco, Morrow would be invited to the italian esports open. I was a little bit dissapointed to not be invited to this tournament, since I won the remastered launch event, have a big history in the game, and, was streaming my practice almost everyday and showing steady improvement and ability to compete with the best Europeans from an early stage of picking up the game again. Recently Zotac Cup NA also announced that they would invite Draco from the Europe region to play in their tournament.

Now - I am not the only person who is unable to play tournaments. It's a sad situation where guys who have been practicing the game for years like eonzerg, bonyth, trutacz, sziky, dewalt, etc. are for the most part not rewarded for being the strongest players, as well as having dedicated years to becoming better. So really I don't want to complain too much about that. There are people who are more deserving to play in offline tournaments than me anyway. The sad reality is that these 2 events are the only big ones, that have been announced. All of these factors combined made me take a break from the game.

With the announcement of SC2 becoming free to play, and seeming lack of interest from any of the established circuits such as dreamhack, iem, mlg, etc. as well as Blizzard making zero announcements for remastered tournaments outside of Korea, at this moment in time it feels unlikely that there will be any big BW events of note in 2018 for me to play in. (But hopefully I will be wrong on this).

StarCraft 2 vs BW

However, playing BW really sparked the competitive fire in me once again. So recently I have also started to play a little bit of StarCraft 2 again. Especially watching blizzcon made me feel hyped for the game. I'll be honest, I don't enjoy it as much as I enjoy BW. I strongly feel like there is much less deliberate unit control, micro, and just overall gameplay elements that attribute to 'fun' are found much more in BW than in SC2.

I've heard all these people say that, StarCraft 2 is a strategic game, and BW is a mechanical game. I strongly disagree. I feel StarCraft 2 might be a strategic game, but very little of that strategizing happens while you are actually inside the game. Games are so fast paced, and being on top of scouting everything is nearly impossible that you have to decide on most strategies before the game. You might change your path slightly if you get different tells, but most of your responses are pre-programmed and you try to execute as good as possible. Of course there is strategic variance, you play differently vs different unit compositions, but it's not the same kind of strategy I've experienced in brood war.

In brood war, I feel like players have oceans of time. Once both players have their mechanics on an adequate level, there is so much time to dedicate to thinking about the game, where to place your units, how to setup engagements, which bases to take and which key locations to defend. Alongside the high ground mechanic, defensive positions are much stronger in brood war and this gives the game a much more strategic feeling to me.
In sc2, I feel like I'm racing with tunnel vision to a timing or a unit comp based timing in the game where my chances are highest to win (differentiating slightly depending on what opponent is doing) - but in brood war my eyes are wide open trying to observe and take everything in, then pondering about how to proceed and best trap my enemy into the claws of my lurkers, dark swarm, plague, and 100 zerglings which are impossible to control.

StarCraft 2 does still have lots of the elements that make rts 'fun.' Unit movement is very important in the game, counter attacks, perfect injecting + overwhelming opponents is very enjoyable, and overall playing the game ignites the same kind of competitive fire, wanting to improve, making progress, and wanting to compete. If I could somehow learn to enjoy the useage of spellcasters, I might even say I 'love' that game as well. Of course everything surrounding SC2 right now, the battle.net interface, automated tournaments, ladder systems, updated map pools, constant balance/design patches, it's all really good right now. Perhaps with constant improvements it really can come to a place where it can feel as fun to play as BW for me, or at least close to it.
Also some of the guys playing at blizzcon and in GSL are so skilled and set themselves apart so much from other competitors, that you have to respect their ability. It's something worth trying to immitate, or try and learn to do yourself.

Competing

So I've had to do some thinking about what I want to do. I could keep playing BW, not play anything at all and dedicate all my time to school, or try playing some SC2 again.
Because StarCraft 2 actually has tournaments announced for 2018 (and lots of em!), I think that if I will continue dedicating my free-time to gaming while going to school I will be playing and streaming StarCraft 2. The reality is that which game I find more fun, is less important to me than the possiblity to compete. Because the competitor in me needs that feeling of practice being meaningfull. All of my life I have wanted to compete with people, prove myself, improve. The oppurtunities to compete makes a world of difference for me. To all the people that enjoyed my stream and are wondering what happend, this is pretty much it. I have been torn about what game to focus on and what to do in the future. Since I have not played StarCraft 2 competitively in over 2 years, undoubtfully I am going to be terrible for a while. But most likely my stream will be back at some point, if anything for some casual fun. BW has taught me, that despite being old af, I can still pick up games and learn relatively quickly.

Thank you for reading, guys!

- retjah





****
Team Liquid
Musicus
Profile Joined August 2011
Germany23576 Posts
November 08 2017 17:06 GMT
#2
Best of luck Ret, it will be exciting to see you play sc2 again!

Hopefully sc2 continues to improve and will be just as fun as BW for you at some point.
Maru and Serral are probably top 5.
Zaros
Profile Blog Joined September 2010
United Kingdom3692 Posts
November 08 2017 17:13 GMT
#3
Hope to see you competing in WCS in 2018 and good luck. I think the new balance patch will help you enjoy sc2 more as they are trying to reduce the reliance on mass spell casters but I guess infestors are still pretty good.
intrigue
Profile Blog Joined November 2005
Washington, D.C9933 Posts
November 08 2017 17:23 GMT
#4
gl with everything, ret
Moderatorhttps://soundcloud.com/castlesmusic/sets/oak
Edpayasugo
Profile Joined April 2013
United Kingdom2215 Posts
November 08 2017 17:26 GMT
#5
Great blog and insight. Thanks.
FlaSh MMA INnoVation FanTaSy MKP TY Ryung | soO Dark Rogue | HuK PartinG Stork State
raff100
Profile Joined April 2011
498 Posts
November 08 2017 17:52 GMT
#6
Best of luck, I loved your stream
bartus88
Profile Blog Joined October 2010
Netherlands491 Posts
November 08 2017 18:10 GMT
#7
Great to hear you might compete again in SC2! It took you relatively little time in BW to improve to the point where you could take games of players like Rain, so hopefully you can get back in shape quickly in SC2 as well.
Random master race
Qikz
Profile Blog Joined November 2009
United Kingdom12022 Posts
November 08 2017 19:11 GMT
#8
It was an honour having you play in one of my Clash for Char tournaments Ret. Hopefully you enjoy whatever you go on to do, but the Broodwar scene will miss you!
FanTaSy's #1 Fan | STPL Caster/Organiser | SKT BEST KT | https://twitch.tv/stpl
blade55555
Profile Blog Joined March 2009
United States17423 Posts
November 08 2017 19:18 GMT
#9
I hope you come back to SC2. Funnily enough I started playing SC2 again a week or so before Blizzcon. It's in a much better state than 2015 (which is when I quit as well). Hope to see you go at it.

Good luck with whatever decision you go with!
When I think of something else, something will go here
FueledUpAndReadyToGo
Profile Blog Joined March 2013
Netherlands30548 Posts
November 08 2017 19:56 GMT
#10
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Would be great to have you competing next year.
Neosteel Enthusiast
candapat
Profile Joined November 2015
6 Posts
November 08 2017 20:09 GMT
#11
Great read! I sure hope that you come back to sc2 again, you've always been one of my favorite players to watch. And we need more 90-drone zergs out there )))
ZigguratOfUr
Profile Blog Joined April 2012
Iraq16955 Posts
November 08 2017 20:34 GMT
#12
GL with any path you choose.
Waxangel
Profile Blog Joined September 2002
United States33388 Posts
November 08 2017 20:54 GMT
#13
gl, hf
AdministratorHey HP can you redo everything youve ever done because i have a small complaint?
fazek42
Profile Blog Joined April 2011
Hungary438 Posts
November 08 2017 21:22 GMT
#14
I'd prefer you playing BW, but I get the explanation. Hopefully Blizzard will fix the lag and there will be BW events (although I guess this is just me dreaming) and then everybody will be playing BW, my favourite game Thanks for showing us cool games Ret and GL with everything.
paxconsciente
Profile Joined January 2015
Belgium91 Posts
November 09 2017 00:02 GMT
#15
playing sc2 seriously as a macro player is just bad
the game is good if you don't take it seriously, i can't imagine how rough life would be if you were trying to succeed as a pro in that game though.
The best way to predict the future is to create it - Peter Drucker. <3 so0,ret,JD,Happy,Innovation,Snute
Heyjoray
Profile Joined September 2015
240 Posts
Last Edited: 2017-11-09 00:19:25
November 09 2017 00:12 GMT
#16
On November 09 2017 09:02 paxconsciente wrote:
playing sc2 seriously as a macro player is just bad
the game is good if you don't take it seriously, i can't imagine how rough life would be if you were trying to succeed as a pro in that game though.

Not at all. Its just incredible cool to say shit like that, isnt it?
boxerfred
Profile Blog Joined December 2012
Germany8360 Posts
November 09 2017 00:55 GMT
#17
gl, ret!
dragoon
Profile Joined December 2010
United States695 Posts
November 09 2017 02:45 GMT
#18
this makes me very happy jos i still remember meeting you in Columbus for MLG and ive had great respect for you long before that.

goodluck! i'll see you there man:D
i love you
TT1
Profile Blog Joined December 2008
Canada10009 Posts
November 09 2017 03:30 GMT
#19
papa nyoken is gonna be all alone
ab = tl(i) + tl(pc), the grand answer to every tl.net debate
NoS-Craig
Profile Joined July 2011
Australia3095 Posts
November 09 2017 04:00 GMT
#20
I had fun reading that man. I hope things can keep going for you and BW. Shame we're not getting more offline tourneys outside of Korea at the moment.
Artosis loves Starcraft
1 2 3 Next All
Please log in or register to reply.
Live Events Refresh
Sparkling Tuna Cup
10:00
Weekly #99
CranKy Ducklings87
Liquipedia
[ Submit Event ]
Live Streams
Refresh
StarCraft 2
Harstem 297
Nina 173
StarCraft: Brood War
Horang2 3132
Bisu 2139
Soma 647
Jaedong 421
EffOrt 295
Stork 293
Mini 287
Zeus 276
Leta 233
Flash 201
[ Show more ]
Killer 174
ggaemo 140
Hyun 127
PianO 98
Mind 93
Soulkey 91
Dewaltoss 72
ToSsGirL 64
yabsab 46
ZerO 44
Rush 44
Free 44
Aegong 42
soO 38
Sharp 36
Backho 35
Shinee 25
Sacsri 23
sorry 22
sSak 21
Bale 13
Noble 12
scan(afreeca) 11
Movie 10
ivOry 2
Dota 2
XaKoH 435
BananaSlamJamma324
XcaliburYe234
Fuzer 148
League of Legends
JimRising 363
Counter-Strike
olofmeister2314
x6flipin615
Super Smash Bros
Westballz81
Other Games
singsing1270
Happy338
oskar211
DeMusliM149
SortOf147
Lowko24
ZerO(Twitch)11
Organizations
Other Games
gamesdonequick961
StarCraft 2
Blizzard YouTube
StarCraft: Brood War
BSLTrovo
sctven
[ Show 13 non-featured ]
StarCraft 2
• davetesta30
• AfreecaTV YouTube
• intothetv
• Kozan
• IndyKCrew
• LaughNgamezSOOP
• Migwel
• sooper7s
StarCraft: Brood War
• BSLYoutube
• STPLYoutube
• ZZZeroYoutube
Dota 2
• lizZardDota283
League of Legends
• Stunt785
Upcoming Events
WardiTV European League
5h 20m
PiGosaur Monday
13h 20m
OSC
1d 1h
uThermal 2v2 Circuit
1d 5h
The PondCast
1d 23h
Online Event
2 days
Korean StarCraft League
3 days
CranKy Ducklings
3 days
Online Event
4 days
Sparkling Tuna Cup
4 days
Liquipedia Results

Completed

BSL 20 Non-Korean Championship
FEL Cracow 2025
Underdog Cup #2

Ongoing

Copa Latinoamericana 4
Jiahua Invitational
BSL 20 Team Wars
CC Div. A S7
IEM Cologne 2025
FISSURE Playground #1
BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025
ESL Impact League Season 7
IEM Dallas 2025
PGL Astana 2025
Asian Champions League '25

Upcoming

BSL 21 Qualifiers
ASL Season 20: Qualifier #1
ASL Season 20: Qualifier #2
ASL Season 20
CSLPRO Chat StarLAN 3
BSL Season 21
RSL Revival: Season 2
Maestros of the Game
SEL Season 2 Championship
WardiTV Summer 2025
uThermal 2v2 Main Event
HCC Europe
ESL Pro League S22
StarSeries Fall 2025
FISSURE Playground #2
BLAST Open Fall 2025
BLAST Open Fall Qual
Esports World Cup 2025
BLAST Bounty Fall 2025
BLAST Bounty Fall Qual
TLPD

1. ByuN
2. TY
3. Dark
4. Solar
5. Stats
6. Nerchio
7. sOs
8. soO
9. INnoVation
10. Elazer
1. Rain
2. Flash
3. EffOrt
4. Last
5. Bisu
6. Soulkey
7. Mini
8. Sharp
Sidebar Settings...

Advertising | Privacy Policy | Terms Of Use | Contact Us

Original banner artwork: Jim Warren
The contents of this webpage are copyright © 2025 TLnet. All Rights Reserved.