EPTPart 2: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=271998
Interlude: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=272765
On and on I went. A worker rusher. That's what I was, what I had become. When I would log onto SC2 my mouse would wander unthinkingly to the Find Match button. Before I would realize what I was doing, my SCVs were en route to the nearest enemy base. After hundreds of worker rushes, I had lost sight of what I was doing or why I was there.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/5DDP9.jpg)
Bronze league: Come for the panda decal. Stay for the bat-shit crazy.
The mystique of those first worker rushes had long since worn off. The games were short and they quickly became routine. Send workers, attack move, win game. Send workers, attack move, lose game. Over and over and over. It was so habitual that each time a bronzie decided to prolong the games unnecessarily I became enraged. It was more vexing when someone was doing it not out of spite, but out of some misguided newbie notion that he could still win the game. It's one thing to spend time teching to mutas to kill a floating CC just because someone is angry. It's another, more mentally taxing ordeal when 10 times a day you have to try to explain to people the logistical futility of lifting off to an island with 1 SCV while I still have 7 drones. It's like trying to explain to a tone deaf person who loves to sing that their singing is hurting the neighborhood cats. Whether you say "Look bro, you aren't a very good singer," or "Cut that shit out, it's causing Mr. Fluffkins to yowl," there is no way of doing it that will satisfactorily convince the singer that he should stop. Now imagine that you live in a high rise apartment where every tenant is one of those people, and you are tasked with silencing each of them. That is what worker rushing is like. It's a quagmire of BM, ignorance, and rage. Half of my games devolve into an elementary school math lesson taught to people who don't know how to count. It's frustrating.
So, after seeing the tenth Terran of the day lift off his Command Center and call me a noob, it takes every fiber of my being to resist rapidly typing out a paragraph explaining why the situation at hand, i.e. the fact that he just lost to a fucking worker rush, would seem to indicate the opposite of what he had proposed—that he was the noob, not me. That, in fact, you are all noobs. That the fact that you even have a similar MMR to someone who only worker rushes means that you are dogshit, and should be ashamed. Why are you here? Why are you in this game? Is not Farmville more suited to your level of skill? Agh!
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/wVtNo.jpg)
So try asking for store credit?
Soon, I became so angry that my get-wins-quick scheme had a few irritating road blocks that I began to take it out on other, more innocent players. When I started just insulting bronze kids for no reason, that's when I recognized a problem. There was no justifying this. Why was I doing this? What was I gaining from it? They weren't leaving the games any faster just because I was explaining in great detail how retarded they were. If anything they remained indignant and stayed longer. So slowly, I decided to start changing my behavior. I couldn't quite bring myself to be completely mute, as I had been when I first started my journey. No, it is impossible to remain silent in the face of such irrationality, but I did resolve to become better.
So, dissatisfied with how my stay in the bronze league had altered my attitude, I decided to set up some rules for myself.
Rule 1: I would not GLHF. Neither sentiment would be sincere, as I do not wish my opponents good fortune nor care if they enjoyed themselves. I would GG if they GG first, but that's all.
Rule 2: I would try not to BM.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ZrGDS.jpg)
Exception: once in a lifetime pun opportunities
Rule 3: I would begin every game with a worker rush. If my opponent lifts to an island I would tech and kill him. In the event that I would meet a player who had BMed me before, I would not worker rush and instead utilize all my strength to crush him as best as I could under the weight of my middling platinum level macro as retribution.
Rule 4: If someone politely asked how to defeat my "strategy" without first calling me a faggot, I would answer them truthfully. If someone really wanted to learn how to play better, then I would respect that, despite how self-evident the response to a worker rush should be to anyone with any hope of ever improving.
Rule 5: I would use the portrait of Dr. Ariel Hanson until the Dark Voice is obtained, so as to disguise my number of wins from my opponent. I noticed that it became easy to detect enemy worker rushers because they would use portraits that were rewards for 250+ games.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/bLM4D.jpg)
I… may need to amend this clause.
So, new rules in mind, I decided to set a new course. I still had the eventual mission of winning my 3000 games, but If I focused only on that extremely far off goal, every little annoying delay would just anger me that much more. I would just frustrate myself to the point where I was once again flaming 13 year olds. To avoid that, I determined that I would stay in bronze not only for the quick wins, but for the stories. I would become a sort of Starcraft anthropologist, studying the primitive inhabitants who dwell in the lowest tiers of Starcraft 2. Thus, a blog was born.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/M3vJV.jpg)
Do you think Jane Goodall ever wanted to throw the feces back at the monkeys? I know I do.
When I first arrived in the bronze league, I noticed something peculiar. Things are not always as they seem; people are not always who they appear to be. I quickly discovered that there were others like me; adventurers from higher leagues exploring the depths of bronze for interest or personal gain.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/S4Yk9.jpg)
Not all bronzies are happy with this arrangement.
Some were nice, others malicious. Some were simply loss botting, some were worker rushing, some were just trying out a new race and overshot when they were mass leaving games to lower their MMR. When I had first worker rushed myself down to bronze, I decided to start 6 raxing people. I didn't really have a build order or even know what I was doing, but the fact that I used hotkeys, control groups, and both hemispheres of my brain was enough to completely roll over every bronze opponent. Until one game, where a Terran managed to hold off the rush in convincing fashion. Then, he dropped Blue Flame Hellions into my base while transitioning into Marine/Tank. The game ended up being 50 minutes long and I felt utterly lost and behind the entire time. I checked his league after the game: he was platinum the previous season. I had lowered myself 3 leagues only to play the match up I hate the most against someone in the league I used to be in! This incident convinced me to only worker rush, for it was the quickest way to reveal if I was truly facing a bronze player, and not a higher level player masquerading as one.
Many of the players I met were, to my astonishment, master leaguers. In fact, I worker rushed one of them. And won.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/r2KTK.jpg)
No, he was not AFK. Yes, this is real. This happened. And you have to know that this replay exists, because I do, and I can't carry that burden alone. Others must share my confusion.
Most of my encounters with those of the master league have been negative, however. I know not whether they have, having played thousands more games in the bronze league than I, fallen victim to the primal urge to be a complete douchebag that I try desperately to avoid, or if they're just plain old douchebags. But, perhaps emboldened by the air of superiority that their master league achievement tag gives them, they are the douchiest of all the douches. While bronzies are content with blind, irrational fury, the masters have their own brand of sadistic crazy. Whereas I only want quick wins, these gentlemen want to inflict pain. Like this fellow, who told me I was shit before the game even started, and then proceeded to insult me for worker rushing even though he was also worker rushing, too.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/nshcy.jpg)
I know the ESRB label said " Game Experience May Change During Online Play," but I did not foresee that experience involving creepy psuedo-rapist prostitute shop-talk after a failed worker rush.
Another group wishes not to cause pain, but fight for righteousness. I call them les enragés, for they have been worker rushed time and time again and they are pissed (and because I'm a bit of a Francophile).
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/7TxcG.jpg)
I'm not sure, but I think he's mad.
Rather than learn how to attack move and defeat those worker rushing them, though, these trouser-wearing plebeians refuse to stand for what they deem the "faggotry" that I and others like myself perpetrate against their kind in their league. So they mete out justice with their weapons of choice: delirium and frantic, often penis-related insults. These internet warriors make up for what they lack in sense with sheer tenacity. Even those who choose to appear friendly on the outset of a game can quickly turn hostile when confronted by workers. For every GLHF, there is a following diatribe about the great lengths to which I will go to satisfy my love for dicks or a detailed account of my mother's sexual history. Or sometimes, something completely inexplicable.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/HrsBN.jpg)
Now I'm just not sure.
The most extreme version of an enragée is what I like to call a "terrorist." This person has discovered that his Command Center has an ability called "Lift Off" and by God he's going to use it no matter how many people get hurt in the process.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/6mkjY.jpg)
If I don't get a million dollars in unmarked bills and a Cessna with enough fuel to get to Cuba, you better bet your ass that I'm gonna float over here and wait for you to kill me. Just fucking try me.
One of the sadder groups I've encountered are the self-loathers. As I have hinted at, "bronze, bronzie, and bronze leaguer" are as much insults as they are demonyms. It is a phenomenon similar to the situation where if you say "Mike's a Jew," it's not racist, but if you wrinkle your nose and sneer "Mike's a Jew," you're an anti-semite. What I found strange, however, was that even among the bronze themselves, they use their own station as a slur.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/R0Ieb.jpg)
Yes, that is generally the only place this is allowed to occur.
Players in the bronze league have convinced themselves that they are only in bronze because of some cosmic injustice. They are good players, they couldn't be bronze, right? It's just because of all the cheesers that they lose. If they could play macro games they'd be diamond for sure. It's just that a bronze player has to prepare for even more all-ins than grand masters, because the players in bronze are less predictable. Well, that's at least what they tell themselves. I thought the "forever bronze" meme was just a joke, but apparently it has a basis in reality: these people think they are stuck, the hopeless victims of some affliction that is anybody's fault but their own.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/0bzIv.jpg)
Well, that wasn't very nice, either.
Basically, my experiences in the bronze league boil down to a clusterfuck of hatred. People hating themselves, people hating me, people trolling just to cause hate. Most people just f10n out of the game, but nobody wants to look at 400 screen captures of people leaving the game wordlessly. There are, of course, nice people, but they aren't particularly interesting, either.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/EUxFd.jpg)
Here's one, just so people will stop thinking I'm a complete asshole.
People have said that Starcraft 2 is the nicest gaming community. But down in the bronze league, I'm not seeing it. On progamer's streams, I'm not seeing it. Is there some "Isle of Niceness" between the two extremes? Perhaps, I most definitely saw less BM in gold and platinum than I do in the depths. I continue onward, however, because despite all the flaming and idiocy I still get a big fucking grin on my face when I successfully worker rush despite the nearly impossible odds. Also I want to have panda decals on my buildings.
On a serious note: I now understand why people have formed LGBT gaming communities. I used to not really see the point, but after spending time in the bronze league, I can see why. I'm just imagining some 15 year old kid just figuring out that he's gay, coming home from a shitty day in high school and then seeing this shit (read bottom to top):
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/OxeDr.jpg)
Rednecks can be amusing, however.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/0Ff52.jpg)
Uh, enjoy vag, pusshound? I don’t even know what to say.
So I'll be removing "faggot" from my insult repertoire, because even though I never really intended it as an anti-gay slur, there's way too much of it online anyway.
Part 4: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=283221
