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Well, that's it for BlizzCon. This Summer has been pretty eventful for me, but this whole week of hanging out with people I know from an internet gaming forum probably stands out as the best. In this post I will discuss a lot that's going through my mind right now (and obviously show more pictures) and hope to also entertain you guys who have been reading my BlizzCon blog report so far.
First and foremost,
THE PICTURES: + Show Spoiler +Didn't think I'd get it, but I GOT IT BABY. Reach is a cool guy it seems, and after the photo was snapped, he said "Thank you" to me as if I had just helped or given him something. Maybe he felt me mentally caressing his buttocks and liked it? So before the SC match they had a WoW Q&A session where a bunch of socially incompetent WoW nerds went up to complain about some aspect of WoW and question when appropriate changes will be made. This dude here is the most hilarious looking WoW downy I've ever seen. I hate to be mean, but really, this guy talking with a high-pitched voice and hilariously crossed eyes had us (TL guys) absolutely rolling. yubee and hot_bid on a date, look how cute they are together . The vintage 2005 wine bottle is totally appropriate. Grubby and his gf playing sc2
New Additions 8/5/07: + Show Spoiler +On August 05 2007 19:37 PanoRaMa wrote:Show nested quote +On August 05 2007 00:54 GTR-2-Go wrote: tell us everything about the progamers, everything This is actually a pretty hard question because it's not like I was hanging out with the pros all day long (whereas, if you wanted the inside scoop on TL.netters I'd be able to slander like no other ), but here are some things I recall: - SaviOr practices using Terran - YellOw practices using Protoss - YellOw's Protoss was actually pretty good, but still lost the game vs someone's main race (IriS i think?) - The pros practiced on Longinus, nothing else. - Everyone is shorter than you would think. Yellow's face/head is a bit smaller than I remembered, IriS is still pretty tall however. - Reach has soft hands, I liked touching them. - The CJ coach is still pretty close with Nal_rA and would ob his games and talk to him afterwards. - After losing in the loser bracket vs rA, XellOs and the CJ coach went over to the corner of the practicing area, wherein the coach lectured a dismal-looking XellOs. I really don't want to imply or suggest anything, but all I'm saying is that XellOs had the face of a player who looks like he's ready to give up/retire. - My favorite guys there were Nal_rA, IriS, Reach, and sAviOr in that order. XellOs looked very glum throughout the whole thing, and I didn't really get to see YellOw much (he was behind the scenes for the most part). Here are just some quick 1 min clips of XellOs playing. I would've taken longer videos but I was still unsure with how the video feature works on my camera (which isn't mine), so I didn't really plan to make a long recording. For some reason, when I uploaded it to youtube it seemed to have gotten darker. I even use a pretty high brightness level on my LCD. But meh, hopefully you guys can enjoy it or something.
StarCraft 2 Thoughts and Observations + Show Spoiler +I said I wasn't going to make this write up, but I think I have to, considering I am currently among the top 25 best SC2 players in the world (according to yubee, due to TL.net's absolute domination in SC2, we're probably at the top of the top right now ). We played somewhere around 10 games today, 15 games in total, I was partnered with NeoIllusions who has some sick protoss ground macro. I'm not going to write an essay, and I think it'll be easier to follow in bullet points anyway, so here are some thoughts: - "Death" in SC2 is confusing and detracts from actual gameplay. In SC1, when a marine dies, there is a loud cry and he pretty much explodes and red blood goes everywhere. Even for SCVs, there is a poignant sound to be heard, that if you hear it, you instantly think "dead scv", and there's still a bright explosion. In SC2, units take a tad too long to die, with no distinct death sounds. Some mechanical units diminish into rubble, and for the time being it's not really noticeable that something had really died there. This isn't a HUGE issue, but it does detract from the game in that sometimes you want to know exactly, at a glance, how many of x has died. Additionally, as a spectator sport, it helps the audience understand certain things better when things simply blow up, not take an ice age to slowly deteriorate. - As far as balance goes, obviously there isn't much because it's still so early. Terran, as I see it, is completely useless as of right now. Right now meaning, with no Zerg in SC2 yet, and with certain Protoss units just being too overpowered. - The Phoenix is the most imbalanced unit in the game right now. They control somewhat like mutalisks in SC1, but are much deadlier. For harassment purposes, it only takes 4 Phoenixes to kill a probe (off 1 volley of shots). It is relatively cheap, can be made VERY quickly (it's basically a corsair that owns everything on ground), and there aren't many counters to it, ESPECIALLY from the Terran side. - As far as strategies go, we kept devising new strats and constantly improved on them. As of right now, the most optimal strategy in my opinion for 2v2 is double protoss, with early game builds being flexible, just as long as you eventually mass archons and phoenixes. Archons may be the only viable counter to the Phoenix right now, but Archons are pretty much on the high-tech side, whereas Phoenixes are medium tech and are much easier replaced. Archons might not even be that great of a counter simply because of the Phoenix's mobility as an air unit. The Terran cobra should've been able to counter the Phx, but it's too slow and can't keep up with a smart Phx user. Same with the Viking, even with air-transformation upgrade. I expect the Phoenix to be changed within a week. - The game engine is roughly more like WarCraft 3's. This isn't too bad, as it wasn't particularly the engine that stunted War3 (it was more the hero and creeping premise instead). The biggest problems, however, might be the overabundance of "noob-friendly" features that are a controversy amongst us SC1 elitists. Such features have been addressed already, including multiple building grouping, auto-worker splitting, rally-to-mineral functionality, combat log (tells you when something is completed in text version), etc. - On the brighter side, as I've said before, gameplay can be fast-paced, especially if players opt for early game confrontation instead of FE macro whoring. Mostly because marines will still die in 3 hits to a zealot, etc. Also, as you progress in tech, certain units start oscillating in their effectiveness due to the armor/attack types (such as in War3 and SC1), which means the unit you were massing before can be rapestomped in 2 seconds by some unit some kid made by grouping all his high tech production buildings together and pressing one hotkey. What this essentially means is that micro and macro still play a huge factor. - Like SC1 and War3 before it, SC2 relies a lot on adaptability to your opponent's builds and trying to stay on top of game flow. The biggest things are basically, if you go MM (there are no Firebats btw, which sucks because mm sucks vs charged-zealots), your terran opponent for example, can tech to Vikings (vulture-level tech) and have an advantage because Vikings are light-armor killers. You have to respond accordingly, by having enough Cobras (a combo of a vulture/goliath, only assume the vulture also kicks ass and doesn't do crap concussive damage) to take out the Vikings, etc. I thought this specific aspect was cool, because it spawns all sorts of unit compositions that complement each other, for example viking/cobra, phoenix/zealot, etc. - I think there are more, but I'm getting a bit tired and have forgotten quite a bit. Regardless, it's been fun, especially noob-stomping with NeoIllusions.
Final Thoughts - The highlight of this event really wasn't SC2, or the Pro Gamers...well just kidding of course it was and nothing can top that. However, the TL.net crew I've met over the week have been really good people. A quick shout out to the people I've hung out with and have talked to starting since Wednesday: CM, Chips/trident, Mani, HB, yubberz, afk-illusions, Etter, omgbnetsux aka tawt in control, Meat, x_woof_x, Hurricane, dknight, semioldguy, mnm, tasteless, and jesus christ the list just goes on. All these people are stand-up guys simply because this is a great forum and community.
- Regarding XellOs, I talked with Autumn (aka translator lady) and I mentioned that some from the community may have acquired the impression that XellOs is annoyed by the fans (probably as a result of his cheerful). In actuality, XellOs appreciates his fans very much, and although he wasn't THAT fond of his cheerful, he still enjoys meeting his fans etc. etc. She even told me that she wasn't lying just to save face for XellOs, and when women tell me they're not lying, then that's good enough for me!
- Blizzard Staff, at least in the SC2 area, had been courteous, helpful, and friendly throughout both days, despite having to deal with a bunch of kids and a ton of smelly WoW geeks. I was really surprised, simply because if I had their job, I would've been a total asshole by Day 2.
- Watching and meeting the Pro Gamers was an awesome experience that I probably won't forget for another, I don't know, 2 months. But seriously, I've been to Korea before, was even in the audience during rA's famous Parallel Lines game against GF where he mass hallucinates his Arbiters to double recall, and that doesn't beat being able to share this geeky hobby of mine with other guys with the same interest, on the cold, hard floor of the Anaheim Convention Center. It probably had something to do with the Fighting cheers, which had officially given me a huge sore throat (we had to yell over thousands of people okay?).
- I'm very glad that Iris, sAviOr, and rA were able to show us such fantastic games (watch savior vs iris game 1, iris vs ra games 1 and 2, and savior vs ra game 1). Nonstop yelling/cheering for these guys that we've only been able to see on SC2 was a very fulfilling experience.
- Pro Gamers in Real Life: I would say Hot_Bid's RL Pro Gamer ranking system does well here, it's very accurate though of course XellOs' 4 rating can be disputed. But the KTF guys know marketing (well it's their livelihood - they're not being paid big bucks to win OSL because they never do - instead they're being paid because they're icons). Oh, and, savior looks kinda chubby on tv, but is actually a skinny, boy-ish looking guy in real life.
If you guys want to hear about anything pertaining to BlizzCon, the pros there, SC2, other TL.netters (such as HB and yubeast's little relationship), feel free to mention it in a reply and I'll be glad to answer. I've accumulated SO many memories at BlizzCon and I'd love to share them with you losers who couldn't come .
- Kevin
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P.S. despite all the crap I talk about the WoW geeks (which, btw, can be spotted/smelled from a mile away due to the sheer girth of some of these behemoths), I do in fact have a level 70 and a 60 and have once been what I now despise.
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United States20661 Posts
YOU LUCKY BASTARD
fuck you ;;
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51134 Posts
tell us everything about the progamers, everything
and lol at that wow guy, IIRC, he was complaining about ret pallies having to even out all stats or sth?
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Lucky
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pano wanna hang out tomorrow
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Yeah sure, pmed you my #, i'm gonna go to sleep now, tired as hell =[, call me up if you guys are gonna do anything.
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nice coverage throughout, thanks
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On August 05 2007 00:40 Last Romantic wrote: YOU LUCKY BASTARD
fuck you ;;
QFT.
Watch my blog next year. Watch it.
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is awesome32244 Posts
nice report. Im jealous. HAPPY???
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thedeadhaji
39472 Posts
regarding HB and yubee, who's the catcher? ^_^
and LOL @ neo already being labeled an afk'er after 2 days hahahahaha.
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Nice report, really nice , you said you can answer questions so i want to ask some:
- What about attendence in blizzcon, you were invited as a teamliquid staff ? And other teamliquid members that you met there brought tickets ? And what was the permissions to VIP and simple participants ? All fans who brought one ticket could watch SC & WC3 matches ? - you could talk and take picture of every pro gamer, or they were closed somewhere and when they where let out only at that moment you can grab them ? There was such thing as sign to fans or press conference with these guys ? - you said you talked with translators (none of boy translator, only beautiful korean ladys yea?), so you talked with them just "how you doing, how you doing.." or how pro-gamers feel about participating in such tourney, what their impresions of this tournament, how was the trip to USA and so on ? (satisfy our curiosity) - none of pro-gamers could talk in english ? I heard Reach said "Hi, hello" ? An others didn`t speak anything in this language ? - i noticed that guys wrote that if you wanted to watch some of matches you can do it only by siting on the ground or standing, there was mess in organisation or just people were very thirsty of great games ? - You communicated with many interesting persons, what contacts did you got ? Maybe you now can send straigth complaint about SC2 (other game) to blizzchief ? Or maybe you got saviors e-mail that you can write to him and praise for his good perfomances ? - There were any Blizzcon organized parties ? Or you just get all together in hotel room with your friends and drunk a little bit after the exiting day in blizzcon ? - Did you got many souvenirs ? - Every participant could try to play SC2 (there was a lot of PC`s), or this pleasure was only given to VIPs? And what about the game, it was imposible somehow to transfer it to laptop and get it out to freedom for sc lovers over the world (or they gave you these betakeys or smth.) ?
It would be great that you can answer some of these. Sorry for my bad english .
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I love the "yubee and hot_bid on a date"-picture..
Sitting at home reading about your experiences over there made me realize one thing, there is no fucking way i'm gonna miss the next Blizzcon!
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Wait, what happened between yubee and hot_bid :O?
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On August 05 2007 04:09 Registration wrote:Nice report, really nice , you said you can answer questions so i want to ask some: - What about attendence in blizzcon, you were invited as a teamliquid staff ? And other teamliquid members that you met there brought tickets ? And what was the permissions to VIP and simple participants ? All fans who brought one ticket could watch SC & WC3 matches ? - I wasn't invited as staff, in fact, only Mani and Meat were. So the rest of us bought our tickets, and the abilities of the press included being able to skip the SC2 lines, go into special rooms (like where the pro gamers stayed), play SC2 somewhat without a time restriction, etc. They also were able to play SC2 for hours and chat with the developers the day before, check out Mani's news post on that. Anyone at the Con could watch the tourney games- you could talk and take picture of every pro gamer, or they were closed somewhere and when they where let out only at that moment you can grab them ? There was such thing as sign to fans or press conference with these guys ? - We had to wait til they came out of their hidden rooms, no fan service time or anything- you said you talked with translators (none of boy translator, only beautiful korean ladys yea?), so you talked with them just "how you doing, how you doing.." or how pro-gamers feel about participating in such tourney, what their impresions of this tournament, how was the trip to USA and so on ? (satisfy our curiosity) - The guy translator was horrible btw, and the lady translator (Autumn) was very very nice and had good english, so it only made sense to talk to her. I didn't ask her about the pro gamers much, just about XellOs' feelings, etc. But the pregame interviews and whatnot probably summed it up well - they didn't have time to practice, some were a bit tired, etc.- none of pro-gamers could talk in english ? I heard Reach said "Hi, hello" ? An others didn`t speak anything in this language ? - They didn't speak any english except "thank you" or whatnot- i noticed that guys wrote that if you wanted to watch some of matches you can do it only by siting on the ground or standing, there was mess in organisation or just people were very thirsty of great games ? - There were a lot of chairs but you'd have to get to them early. A lot of people watching war3 tourneys would stick around and watch SC tourney so there was a limited amount of available seats, so the TL guys just went ahead and sat on the floor. During the SC Finals though, the whole place was PACKED. Absolutely no space on the floor, so even the sides of the seating area was filling up. There was literally thousands of people watching the SC final, which made me kinda smile.- You communicated with many interesting persons, what contacts did you got ? Maybe you now can send straigth complaint about SC2 (other game) to blizzchief ? Or maybe you got saviors e-mail that you can write to him and praise for his good perfomances ? - No contacts in the professional world, unfortunately. However, Blizzard does come to this site to get suggestions and feedback on the game, so I think that's big enough already.- There were any Blizzcon organized parties ? Or you just get all together in hotel room with your friends and drunk a little bit after the exiting day in blizzcon ? - Tasteless had parties after day 1 and 2 where a bunch of people got drunk. I didn't go though- Did you got many souvenirs ? - The pictures are the best souvenirs, but as far as real stuff, I guess if you can consider the crap they gave us in the goodie bags as souvenirs then yeah. I also did get XellOs' autograph on a picture of him so that was cool.- Every participant could try to play SC2 (there was a lot of PC`s), or this pleasure was only given to VIPs? And what about the game, it was imposible somehow to transfer it to laptop and get it out to freedom for sc lovers over the world (or they gave you these betakeys or smth.) ? - Yeah, everyone could play, but they'd have to wait in lines that would be 10-15 mins long. Untransferrable on these computers, and as far as beta key stuff goes, that's still in the air.It would be great that you can answer some of these. Sorry for my bad english .
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cool im kevin too
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Kennigit
Canada19447 Posts
Is your hair as epic IRL as it looks in pictures? how do you get it like that?
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OMG those WoW players are hilarious. I was waiting for SC and WC3 matches to go live and they switched to the WoW Q&A and some of them are straight up nerds. I felt so bad laughing at the guy who was Indian and had the accent, but it was just too funny. I bet Blizzard feels half bad knowing what they have done to 9 million people.
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On August 05 2007 00:54 GTR-2-Go wrote: tell us everything about the progamers, everything
This is actually a pretty hard question because it's not like I was hanging out with the pros all day long (whereas, if you wanted the inside scoop on TL.netters I'd be able to slander like no other ), but here are some things I recall:
- SaviOr practices using Terran - YellOw practices using Protoss - YellOw's Protoss was actually pretty good, but still lost the game vs someone's main race (IriS i think?) - The pros practiced on Longinus, nothing else. - Everyone is shorter than you would think. Yellow's face/head is a bit smaller than I remembered, IriS is still pretty tall however. - Reach has soft hands, I liked touching them. - The CJ coach is still pretty close with Nal_rA and would ob his games and talk to him afterwards. - After losing in the loser bracket vs rA, XellOs and the CJ coach went over to the corner of the practicing area, wherein the coach lectured a dismal-looking XellOs. I really don't want to imply or suggest anything, but all I'm saying is that XellOs had the face of a player who looks like he's ready to give up/retire. - My favorite guys there were Nal_rA, IriS, Reach, and sAviOr in that order. XellOs looked very glum throughout the whole thing, and I didn't really get to see YellOw much (he was behind the scenes for the most part).
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whats going on with Hot_bid and yubee ? o_o
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On August 05 2007 17:46 Kennigit wrote: Is your hair as epic IRL as it looks in pictures? how do you get it like that?
Meh, I was told it looks like a lion's mane and from the pics it looks like that. Dunno, when I style it in the bathroom it looks cool I guess? But yeah I use hair wax and it only takes like 2-5 mins contrary to what dknight or yubee will tell you.
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On August 05 2007 19:39 TesisMech wrote: whats going on with Hot_bid and yubee ? o_o
Don't worry about it, that was just a joke. At Coco's they had to split us (6 people) up into 2 tables, and me, Etter, omgbnetsux, and NeoIllusions both sat at a table and left yubee and HB to sit with themselves. It looked cute in a homosexual sort of way so we decided to snap pics of the lovely couple.
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panorama's hair is cool and so is panorama
he picked my stranded ass up today to chauffer me around. also he was like semi-pro in war3
edit: but sucks at sc
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WHAT TO DO when you're zerg without tier 2 and there's 2 tanks on your cliff in bgh??!?!
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Kennigit
Canada19447 Posts
On August 05 2007 19:37 PanoRaMa wrote: (whereas, if you wanted the inside scoop on TL.netters I'd be able to slander like no other ),
TELL US EVERYTHING ABOUT EVERYONE!
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there's no cliffs in bgh >.>
also i kinda feel sorry for xellos, probably hated the trip :O
edit: any videos of tl owning random ppl in sc2
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Is that wine from Valley Oak? I love their Merlot
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There's at least one cliff, at bottom right. No other vids unfortunately :[
No clue about the wine, it was on every single table.
Kennigit: Here's a quick one: Hot_Bid is 4'7 in real life.
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On August 05 2007 20:54 ATeddyBear wrote: there's no cliffs in bgh >.>
also i kinda feel sorry for xellos, probably hated the trip :O
edit: any videos of tl owning random ppl in sc2
rofl yea there are, on certain starting locations. and on certain map versions too, i guess =)
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On August 05 2007 21:31 S[n]0w wrote:Show nested quote +On August 05 2007 20:54 ATeddyBear wrote: there's no cliffs in bgh >.>
also i kinda feel sorry for xellos, probably hated the trip :O
edit: any videos of tl owning random ppl in sc2 rofl yea there are, on certain starting locations. and on certain map versions too, i guess =)
well what do you know, you're right lol
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props on the write up. Also to add to one of your answers about us sitting on the floor. Those seats were better/closer anyways. Comfort was a fair tradeoff
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That picture of that WoW Nerd is awesome. Nice coverage too.
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Nice blog. Thanks for writing this up.
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this was the kind of write up i wanted more of like behind the scenes stuff with progamers + how sc2 actually played and what the balanced was at the time...im sick of other people being like "im not gonna talk about balance now"...thats not interesting at all! i realize it'll be changed but its still cool too here where the game is at right now....really nice job;-)
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awesome write-up! lots of little details that just make my day... seriously, every little detail is great for those of us who missed this great event...
in the finals, someone was saying that everyone from blizzcon went? were there as many people during the wc3 finals? did most of the people know what was going on?
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Not everyone from blizzcon, but probably a good % was there watching. There was still people at the WoW Q&A, and probably some people still playing SC2 at this point.
There were more watching the SC Finals than the WC3 finals, though . People knew what was happening, but they did over-react to certain things. For instance, rA popping an overlord with an ovie early game, which is still a pretty significant thing, but not something for the crowd to go "woah! ::Clapclapclap::" over. Also, when rA pylon walled his 2nd expo at 12 nat on reverse lt to counter IriS' nonstop vulture harass, everyone went nuts whereas the TL guys were thinking "uhh..that's what he was supposed to do, guys.."
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Thanks for sharing
<--Kevin here too
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Braavos36362 Posts
On August 05 2007 04:02 thedeadhaji wrote: regarding HB and yubee, who's the catcher? ^_^
and LOL @ neo already being labeled an afk'er after 2 days hahahahaha. the catcher is every other 2v2 starcraft2 team
neo was afk day1 morning
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Sick write up.
Pano's hair is fucking epic. If I needed to find someone I looked for his hair or yubee (he's tall as shit <3)
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lmao
nice seeing you hurricane, all that crappy waiting on day 0 was well worth it at least
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really cool! Meeting Reach must have been awesome and probably overwhelming. lol at the WoW guy
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On August 05 2007 20:05 PanoRaMa wrote: WHAT TO DO when you're zerg without tier 2 and there's 2 tanks on your cliff in bgh??!?!
Do nothing and die apparently.
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lol nice pics and lol@ wow player
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I wanna hear more about TL.netters! Who was the best at sc2, who was the loudest, funniest, etc etc.
Excellent pics and write-up btw.
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Best was probably Hot_Bid, he was 200 apming sc2 like it was no big deal.
Loudest, hmm, i think we were all equal to a certain extent of loud, funniest is prolly like hb/yubee/omgbnetsux/etter or something. Overall a lot of the TL guys were witty and hilarious.
Neoillusions is apparnetly called afk-illusions, but really I could see where it comes from. After each of our 2v2s he would suddenly disappear and we'd be like wtf? he'd reappear minutes later out of nowhere, apparently he was going to the bathroom or something.
Etter enjoys eating horseradish..or something. We all segregated him for this reason.
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lol next time someone do something like this get a cam and record everything
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