EPThttp://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=357675#12
My BW Story; A View From The Inside
I thought about this for an hour, evoking various memories and emotions of how I should start something this extensive. I figured it would be for the worse to start off with such a negative view on BW and video games in general. However if this is going to be portrayed as a personal story rather than an out of body and out of mind third person view of the journey I've made in, and with BW, that I'd need to include an anecdote leading up to the best game ever.
During my childhood computers, internet, and general electronics besides the television were considered luxuries, unnecessary, and objects that detracted from the value of life. As an adult, I now feel those same sentiments, yet without them I wouldn't be who I am today. I mean that in a very literal sense, not in a fashion in which something entered my life at an arbitrary point and thus I was changed by it via the experience and knowledge contained within. My grandfather was in the upper echelon of the IBM corporation, so much so that he still refers to a point in time when the son of the original founder took over, and "Everything went to shit." Due to this, he'd at any point and time bring over 286 (25Mhz) to 486 (33 MHz) computers throughout my childhood. On those computers he'd install games like Doom, Leisure Suit Larry, the original Dungeons and Dragons, Oregon Trail, Arkanoid, and other miscellaneous computer games that were inappropriate for my age (3+). Through these I learned to attribute less value to death, sexual gestures, and other things before reaching the age of reason. At the age of 3 I was using Prodigy, one of the original internet services, to communicate with random people in Japan and look up cheat codes for Doom. The essence of cheating for the simple joy, paired with the intricate factor of ego remains an early memorable lesson in my life. What I am leaving out here, is that my family was poor. Dirt poor by American standards. My father was too proud to accept government assistance while remaining $50,000+ in debt on a minimal income. Due to this, I was limited the ever so important component of electricity to play said computer, games, and internet to 30 minutes a day. Two to three times a week my use of these devices would be shut off randomly by the Electricity God after five minutes of use, aka my father. This last point is really where an essential divvy of my BW experience kicks off. Given my limitations, I would regulate my time and efforts. For example, I would create an equation of time in my head based on a five minute plan, assigning values to 30 seconds of time and genuinely disciplining myself despite the great joy all the events brought me. Of course, there was always a backup, if the 5 minutes passed, I'd have assigned tasks for 10 minutes, 15 minutes, and past that point, it was free riding up until 30 minutes despite a rough layout for every 5 minute interval past 15 minutes.
Society looked down on computers, cell phones, internet, and all of their uses as proprietary objects for the rich or the pompous. Thus, I concealed any use of such demonic tools. When people would come over my house, they'd say "WOW! YOU HAVE A COMPUTER?! Can I... play it?" as if it were a mystic unspoken sex source that only in the privacy of trusted company you'd react to. I would always tell them it didn't work, and to my best friend, that my dad wouldn't allow it. After all, she pinky promised to never tell. Given the stress, mental capacity used, and the social view on computers, I became an outside kid. You know (sorry 90's kids), the part of your life where you go outside and play and use propaganda as well as malicious circling lies to make people like you, or at least hang out with you over another person. Until the age of 10 I never touched the computer much, forcing my mother to pay membership fees for various sports with tears and endless destructive temper tantrums. Until one day my brother, now a system administrator at a major software company, whom was a huge nerd always trying to scrape information from my grandfathers brain about coding languages, games, and technological work politics, was beyond the point of excitement for the release of a game. This game was StarCraft. He saved up his allowance for at least a bajillion years to be the first geek at K-Mart to buy a copy of this prestigious, ground breaking game. Whatever. Let's play baseball in the cul-de-sac, you little nerd, I used to say. Let's go and make forts in the woods and banish all of those who didn't bow at our feet! Nope, StarCraft. Six months later, my father started playing it, seemingly only to learn it and beat my brother (he has an inferiority complex). Silly little second nerd, at least he had an excuse, he was old and useless... duh.
After a little over a year of my father and brother playing their beloved StarCraft, and arguing over who gets to use CompuServe, to clearly check their e-mails, and not play StarCraft on Battle.Net, I became intrigued. Not in the overwhelming sense that I wanted to play the game, but I wanted to know what could keep somebody so consumed for hours at a time. At this point, we were better off financially. We were close to bankruptcy, but my father was making a 50k salary or something working like 900 hours a week. Who knows, that's how the story goes. As I was comfortable with my brother, I'd stand behind him and every few minutes ask "What are those things that shoot light?" (photon cannons). He would typically ignore me, engulfed in vivid concentration and 60apm. So I was forced to ask the Electricity God when he'd play. What I got: there were probes, cannons, one map with infinite minerals (BGH), and carriers that have little flying spaceships like Stargate SG-1. What also existed were random things that would die to cannons, and "bullshit reavers". To this day "bullshit reavers" despite preexisting, still are there.
I had been a starter on a soccer team that won back to back to back regional championships in Miami, a city absolutely overrun by hispanic people. I started to like girls, but they were full of shit because their estrogen made them all little drama queens. Thus, I was bored, and I lived in a very bad neighborhood. It was get involved taking part in juvenile delinquency, hang out with the said full of shit girls, which by the way, is not ideal for a young man socially, hang out with the geeks, or use my spare time checking out what my brother was doing. I chose to be a delinquent and learn StarCraft. The learning process was easy, it took me around 50 games to be able to beat 3 computers. That's boss mode, and I don't care what anyone says. I liked dragoons, but realized I was playing an inferior race, yet the ease of not only sitting home and playing games, receiving extra house benefits (aka sneaking snacks), and the ever so important winning kept me playing Protoss. Within a month I was better than my father, but by this time my brother had become what seemed like the best gamer in the world. Truth be told, he was a second tier player, constantly losing to Grrr... but beating some of the first pros at a 1:3 ratio and the other second tier gamers regularly, while being in the top clan of the time. During this time, although it has nothing to do with the timeline, he pointed out this stupid fucking Spanish hacker. Stupid mother fucking Spanish hacker always fucking hacking and fucking up the game for everyone else, what a piece of shit. This `SlayerS_BoxeR` mother fucking hacking coward always hosting his public games on Battle.Net expecting people to join and die to his pitiful hacks. To this day, I enjoy the thought of him dodging The Emperor, giving the reason that he was a hacker. Beautiful.
Here's the point of interest for anyone who knows who I am, what sealed me into this community indefinitely. Given my quick success I started to play on Battle.Net, and the time sharing of the computer increased to three people, making it far more violent. I can accredit this success to the math skills I achieved early in life (genetics I guess), and organizational skills dating back to my toddler years pwning monsters in Doom and going further in Arkanoid than the creator of the game (whom sent me an e-mail of congratulations through my grandfather who given his position contacted him). At this point my life consisted of soccer, trying, and sometimes succeeding in getting girls to kiss me and let me touch their training bra, attending and generally winning math competitions, beating up neighborhood kids, randomly destroying things, and fighting with my brother over who gets to use the computer to play StarCraft. Luckily, he was around 14 about this time, and would sometimes go over a friends house to avoid fighting with me to use the computer. I quickly realized online, far more quickly than I ever could have in real life, that people as a whole are generally immature or stupid, and more than likely both. Thank you, Battle.Net. But somehow, these imbeciles could beat me at a mathematically based game. It was time to learn unit balance and counters. There's no better way to achieve that than play Zerg. You learn that you're weak as hell, and you need to be cunning and decisive to beat someone. Remember, this is StarCraft. Hydras and expansions on LT, I was pro within months. Not an actual pro, but I had come to attract a few fans whom I abused endlessly, as I viewed them as a stepping stone in my dreams of grandeur. My first three fans were Moonrai, IntoTheIntel, and lastshadow. Lastshadow was really just a pompous little ass whom followed around Moonrai to abuse him (a popular trend for Moonrai) until he ran into me and I put his entire SC existence into peril. Thus, he then began following me. I would dodge them by playing with Maynard a lot in 2v2, pwning those French Canadian newbs from Tiny and various Americans from toyland. The rest of my SC existence was losing to hackers like Nico (JoeKim/sG.44) 50% of the time, EndingLife most of the time, DaZe, some guy that started with a lowercase "t" from Ladder Challenges whom was robbed while dealing coke and weed in NYC via baseball bat, and a few other blatant hackers like Damiani, et cetera, accompanied by beating people like Boxer (forgot who he is now, some good BW player), KuhYeSun (V-Gundam), and other rage filled non-hackers. I lost to KaLiN a lot, thank God he sucks at BW. I aimed to play the top of the grid, which was and still is hackers, rage filled geeks, and a few people who just understand the game at the core of its being.
It had been three years before I quit SC. I felt I reached a point of geekdom I never thought achievable for myself. Also, I was going into high school, and I only played SC through middle school because I was accepted into a magnet school that was then ranked 6th in the nation. They expedited my math talents, but every kid who went there was rich, and I was poor. They were all little 5 foot nothing misers, and I was 6'4 by 8th grade. I was from a neighborhood that I embraced many criminal, physical Darwinistic traits from. Clearly, I did not fit in with people who were poor if their parents made less than a million dollars a year. But high school was different, I had prepubescent goals of losing my virginity, regular things like that. I had began lifting weights to play football, and went back to a stage of denial of my true StarCraft being, shunning all nerds and geeks as something I was not. That lasted about a year. Upon coming back, I started up a clan with a B- 2v2er named Hottie where we attempted and inevitably succeeded in creating a monopolizing clan to run the upper echelon of Ladder Challenges, sG. We attracted players like Fayth, Nico, KuhYeSun, KaLiN, and other top players using myself as a skill base and challenging the players to be better than me as a recruitment method (sound familiar?).
One day, Dante.tQ stumbled into Ladder Challenges looking to recruit the best players using himself as a skill base. Of course I knew what .tQ was, I had gone and admired the BW players in Clan X17 and other channels. After all, they had Hungtran, CocoA, and other big names to me at the time. I say admire, because I viewed myself as a traditionalist. By that I mean that it'd be too much effort and a stab in my own back to leave a game that had meant so much to me. Then I beat Dante 3-0 and so did KaLiN. He invited us to play BW for .tQ. Who was I to deny such an opportunity? I was so in there. I got to watch Yan, CocoA, Testie, and other players play a game that was so foreign to me. They even would give me tips, especially Hungtran. He would beat me with 1 base reaver and dragoons every single game, as I was still a silly little Zerg player. After seeing Yan a-b-s-o-l-u-t-e-l-y demolish CocoA's WCG level Zerg, I knew I had to switch races because CocoA was... CocoA. After all, everything in BW was just SC with random cloaked units, of which I had not figured out the math or strategy for yet. Terrans have scan, AND siege tanks. Obvious choice. With the help of various .tQ players, half of which I just liked beating because they were loud mouths, I achieved B- on PGTour in 3 months. Do you know what B- on PGT means to a new BW player? I was a God. Just ask me. There were assholes like Worked there, and how could I resist beating such an asshole? I can't lie, impressing old Ladder Challenges players (sup tiLt?) and beating Worked were seriously my two main goals in becoming better at BW. The same day I beat Worked 2-0 on PGTour (3 weeks of practice and studying, I even fell behind on my weight lifting by skipping 5 days in 3 weeks), Hap[LighT] asked me to join [LighT]. Needless to say, this was the moment I was waiting for. [LighT] was the best clan ever, according to my limited knowledge. I thought I had won an oscar, or climbed Mount Olympus. Bandit, Schism, Sadist, Aerials, Hap, DeA are just a few of the players I had fapped to the idea of playing before. Although I didn't know who Aerials or Sadist were, I quickly learned. Aerials was better than you whether you won or lost, as I later learned was the case with IdrA. During my time in [LighT] I hardly improved. I went back "home" to show off, wearing Game[LighT] on USEast, going into Ladder Challenges, op tQ, Clan X17, and showing off my illustrious title. It took a player by the name of ChOseN to acknowledge that I was good, and much better than him, who I offered help to before I stopped idling in skill. GitM.ChOseN, what a great guy. So nice, and he had such unique ideas on how to beat Terrans on Luna. Upon helping him, I started to help myself. Sorry to cut it short, but shortly after getting him into [LighT] and USA B (both under Xeris at this point), I was banned from [LighT] because EndingLife smurfed into the team and started saying I was a hacker on the private forums. It created a giant rift with all the bad manner, as I wasn't banned because they believed him, but my valiant political effort to not only defend myself, but to counter his actions with my own libel.
Still on USA B, I joined forces with [xT] for a little fun and games (Dino's clan), then when that died, played on my own. While playing on my own, I improved enough to try out and join MgZ) (3rd best team in foreign BW - legitimately this time, not just in my head). Given my prior reputation as a BM twat, I changed my alias. Also around this time, I started to utilize the ever so important tool of U.S West Battle.Net. Through these Koreans, I went from a 3rd tier player to a 2nd tier foreigner during the peak of foreign BW. I built my way up the clan ladder, as that's what it was on US West, a giant unilateral ladder. From beating the players on erOs_, adjusting to their speed, mental reactions, and game play, I began to understand BW as more than a giant math equation. The second that happened, doors opened that flooded rainbow unicorns and bacon cotton candy. I began to truly, coherently comprehend the 5 W's of BW, Who, What, When, Where, and Why. Within months of 20-40 games a day (yes I would cut sleep) versus Koreans, I began to play with amateurs in [3.33], [KaL], Inter., [fOu], [yG], [NC]..., and various other famous clans regularly. Again, seeking endless endearment and adornment from massive gaming, I went "home". Home was now not only the ever more apparent scrubs on US East, but friends and fellow clan members on Europe. I truly was able to not only compete on Europe now in op ToT) versus the best of 2nd tier and lower 1st tier, but beat them. So much so, that MgZ) even threw me into clan wars from time to time. The aura of light was almost there, but my light was a little more distant, like Arew's. What I mean is that despite respectable skill, I was playing with Koreans. Once I was competitive, people started offering me money. I'll point out that at this time I was 17 years old. I had recently stopped going to school, had been arrested 14 times, did a little bit of jail time, was selling drugs, and generally just being a nuisance. My life outside of BW was in complete disarray. Money screwed everything up for me in BW. I took to it instantly. I would play for 3 different East clans who would pay me to come win clan wars for them, play in leagues for teams on iCCup for money, smurfed for a team on Europe to win division 2 WGTour clan wars despite being in MgZ) at the same time, quit my Korean team on West to play in Xion_G, which ended up scamming I think like 30 players (but paid 6 of us... not sure why the guy did that, me being one of the 6). Needless to say, the effervescent Game, inG, VeGa, Odin, whoever I was then, instantly disappeared. Soon after, I stopped even coming on Europe. MgZ) didn't kick me, but they didn't acknowledge me as an active player, either, which was important to me having built several bonds with players and leaders within the team. In an effort to make more money, I pretty much attempted to go pro without ever going to Korea. I started practicing with KTF via friendships I made on West as a good foreigner who offered them calculated, different play. Shortly after I joined [ScM] as the 8th member thanks to my friend Yoon, and started practicing through their team and their connections with semi-pros, and sometimes, if they would have me, progamers. I even rejoined ]iNTL[_ on Brain Server, which I had previously been in via Dino's connection to the Koreans.
Now that all sounds great to be in a position to be able to not only play with professionals in the hardest game ever created, but to compete with them cohesively. Now that I look back on it, it was all great. By the way, do not misinterpret my words. I was not a professional gamer, just an online practice partner, and didn't have the skill to play at the professional Korean level. Think of Scan today, much like that. Except I'm not a cheater, compulsive liar, or a Korean. However, it was all for the wrong reasons. Pay for play was my only intention. I began to really study the most efficient ways to win games, not the best route to win games, just the wittiest. I needed a niche. Without a niche, I was just another good gamer. Players that I aspired to be like had also done this. Yoon (MYM.YOON), 4 hatch hydra lurker and drop play, CaStrO, all in zerglings 50% of the time, the other 50% the strongest lair macro you'll ever hope to not see. Fenix, DT drops, the list goes on. Around the time I had achieved my highest level of pay, around $1,600 a month through different teams, leagues, students, and targeting specific players in the bet game channels that I would constantly beat, I felt a melancholy in regards to BW. At this point in my life I was dealing a lot of drugs, hanging out with top of the line menaces to society (and pieces of shit), living in my own condominium, and started to care less and less about BW. I knew nothing about the professional scene, one in which I even had a spectacularly small role in, but was more connected to than 99.9% of players could claim. My clan on iCCup (300/mo) stopped paying me. iCCup was my favorite server because people spoke English, and everyone I had long withstanding as well as flawed relationships with were playing there most of the time. I'd say around 20% of those iCCup players played West of Brain at this point, but it wasn't enough for me. What I left out in this timeline is that I was hospitalized the same way the lowercase "t" Ladder Challenges player was and had created a clan [MnM] on West shortly after to allow foreign players to compete in Korean leagues granted a lot of time of recovery. This also was dead. With that, all of my BW aspirations too and a little bit of my frontal lobe.
Soon after, I joined LRM) despite all of my ToT), MgZ), and mTw.amd friends laughing at me. LRM) was the SJ. of Division 1, never really won anything, and notoriously had most of its winning members as being hackers. I did this to retire. The top 4 Division 1 teams wouldn't take an inactive, uninspired ex-talented player. LRM) would. Thus, I quietly retired and started to work at a restaurant that CatZ got me a job in. CatZ was in [MnM] and we'd been friends prior to that, meeting up and playing in real life, etc. I played off and on, seeing players like Choosy play Terran and laugh at them for having LancerX type ladder statistics, but didn't care whatsoever about involving myself in another serious relationship with BW. I'd watch old VODs and cringe at how amazing Midas was, how sick HwaSin's TvZ was, but felt no attachment to the game that had filled my life for years, seriously dedicated years at that. Then SC2 had an official release date, like the 17th official release date. But it seemed legitimate this time. I had a few beta keys because of good friends, and sold 2, gave one to my brother. Fuck that, I'm a traditionalist. I'm not going to expend the effort learning a new game after playing the predecessor for so long and letting it have such an involvement in my criminal based life. No way, I'm not a fucking geek. Sound familiar? I expelled myself from the game, badmouthing it as my brother told me of its possibilities and ChOseN (now Sheth) plus others explained to me the money making machine it was. Not a chance! After a government security job and working at a strip club for 6 months, I was hired to manage upper end private security at a 5 star hotel in South Beach. Money was no longer my goal. I rekindled my love for BW out of spite for that bullshit game that SC2 is. Ha! I said it. I only play BW and have only organized everything I have since 2010 because I hate SC2. I hate it deeply. I hate it to the core of my being. I wish it would crawl back up in it's little imbalanced corporately and insincerely sponsored hole of mildew.
So I was back. As players prepared to play SC2, and let the words flow freely from their mouths about their excitement, I cringed. In my mind: "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, oh and fuck you too". Out loud: "Nah guys, I think it'll be bad, Blizzard hasn't done anything worthy as of late, BW is great, herpderp this, herpderp that". My soul effort was to try to change the opinion of every single person I ran into, and to keep them playing BW. Needless to say, I failed. Six months later, LRM) proclaimed its death. After talking to the leader of iG. (LRM) and iG. faced off versus each other in the only real league left - iCCupCL two times straight) and the remaining members of LRM), GeN, FleSs, Semih, etc, they said I should take over the team and create an effort to restore its former glory. At this point, LRM) was not the LRM) I joined to retire, but a compilation of members whose teams had died already. So LRM) and iG. merged. We created, with me at the helms publicly, a team that simply didn't lose. I knew as someone who had marketed things far more risky and addicting that not only in logic, but very realistically, if you create a monopoly, people will, without hesitation, find or create a means to at least compete with you. This was LRM) Evolutions, the combination of those two previously said teams. I kid you not, I saw players whom had previously told me they'd play SC2 just simply not play it in order to play in a team that was either paying them, or simply for free only to defeat my team. It was a beautiful thing. I felt like I was on the top of the world. Of course I knew I needed to continue my efforts. So I thought, I thought long and hard. I thought about my abilities mentally that I could use to achieve something that didn't exist, and that others couldn't make a success. I came back with the ability to acquire funds from dry wells, the ability to collect and provide dividends, the ability to organize (thank you Electricity God) with ease, and the ability to sell fallacies of grandeur to people of desperation, hope, or both. After seeing the success of TSL1 and TSL2 in front of my own eyes, with my friends being the players, I knew what went into it on the player end, and understood the level of dedication required and the adverse reaction of inspiration from it. Plus, everyone who played SC2 hated it. They really, really did. They'd come back and play BW half of the time because it's just a better game. But there was nothing to play for, and since I'm not the only person who had selfish goals of glory and spotlight, SC2 was clearly the lion's share winner in the long run. With that, I snooped around. I found people who were willing to donate money to a game that they loved, whether it was in excess or scraping the barrel. I knew I had to achieve my goal, and didn't care who helped me to accomplish it (of course I do now, but that was my mindset).
With that, iCCup's International StarLeague was born. There were a lot of beneficial components going into it. iCCup was the largest server. I was friends with the head admins. He could give me what I wanted. He had been telling me, as a utilitarian, how his biggest dream was to have a big iCCup league. It was vague, but it was there. He just wanted to tie money, glory, and a huge event post SC2 holocaust to iCCup. I noticed [AoV] was an awesome team, and they had a lot of members that were genuinely dedicated to the BW cause. With that, and at least 100-120 hours of talks with them privately, I convinced them to sponsor a starleague. Thank you previously listed skills. Of course TSL was my basis, TSL was genius in the BW world. Clearly I didn't have the site, the know how, the following, or the funds to create one. But I totally knew how to organize things, and their model was right there for me. I banked on TL viewers to keep the sponsor happy, which in the end was wrong, because he just wanted to see a great BW event with viewers who could appreciate it as much as him. With that, and being a super admin on iCCup, with my iCCup buddy needing a dream fulfilled, I took a wing from wingland and winged it. With the help of great counter abuse people from iCCup (now gone due to a meltdown of the server), the head admin, and the new to casting super ladder admin (waddup Sayle), we managed to cycle ideas through Skype and our availabilities of the server that we essentially ran. It pulled some players back from SC2, had great games, was everything I could've dreamed of minus the 60 hours a week of work (which was unnecessary but happened due to my inexperience in online organizing). During this time I even played BW, again cutting sleep. During this time, it was easy to see who the overly committed BW loyalists like myself were, and how to almost extort them for funds to create smaller tournaments as a way to maintain interest when nothing else was going on besides a couple old, outdated clan leagues. In doing this, I must say, LRM) fell as a priority for me, and after so many consecutive championships, seemed boring. Thus, I focused primarily on doing nothing public. Everything I said, did, or even looked at was behind the scenes. I helped every current organization come to fruition, organized funds for myself, and around $2,500 in sponsorship for them, too. I knew there needed to be variety. Especially since I was new to organizing, and folded when anyone questioned me, reacting harshly and much like a tyrant. Thus, I laid low and held small tournaments while helping other organizations.
Then, strife within the community. A person who will remain unnamed started working for iCCup in the lower part of the staff, but being a sociology major also had some of the same skills I had in regards to manipulation. He started whispering much like Varys on Game of Thrones. iCCup demanded percentages of the sponsorship money, things went downhill quickly. Even the head admin couldn't control him, because he would send letters of how this, that, and the other thing are bad, not working, or indifferent to the goals of iCCup to the owner of iCCup. I know, I was told by TL admins not to talk about iCCup, but this is my BW story, and I'm keeping it as vague as possible to not commit libel. My point here is, I was IPBanned. I was IPBanned right at the announcement of Kaal's International StarLeague, which put me in quite a pickle. I thought I was doing great things for the community that I quite literally only rejoined out of spite, and now felt spited by over half of them. Albeit, I had the funds for the starleague, which again was a TSL wannabe. I overextended the league, and with all of the hindrances from previously noted sources, the tournament didn't turn out all that great until the later stages, which then had an atrocious ending given the FlaSh vs Jaedong like slaughter that occurred. During all of this time, a guy who asked me if he could write an article for ISL1 had become my minion. That has a negative connotation, but like ChOseN , it was only for learning and bettering. During this time we discussed plans of $$,$$$ type leagues, servers, and various other important aspects of an established community center. At this point in my life, I was entering my 4th semester of college and working privately as a bodyguard pretty much whenever I felt like it. As you may have gotten so far, I do like money, so I ended up working 2-4 days a week. It all became too much. I also wasn't playing BW at all. I had again fallen in love with playing BW, or at least the idea of being competitive, after not caring about winning so much prior. The pressure got to me, and I retired. I still helped a couple of organizations and organizers behind the scenes, because I wasn't willing to just abandon the scene, I just couldn't foot the bill of pressure that existed after Kaal's International StarLeague combined with the huge cash ideas, their work, and my real life. I cracked.
I came back after a 5 month hiatus after seeing a few atrociously failed efforts by other organizers attempting to start leagues. Things looked like a circus. Many people had quit BW for good after KISL simply because iCCup, the primary foreign server, was in disarray with no plausible fix in a political rift, and everything looked like a circus. Random leagues with no foundation popped up, prize pools ceased to exist for the most part, and everything looked grim. I thought to myself that it just wasn't worth it to come back. Through my leagues, both major ones which he contributed to in some major way, endless casting of tournaments (even those not worth while), and his own personal casts, paired with a dedicated partner, and a now almost pure fit organizational minion, whom is also my friend, don't misinterpret the wording, I found a lot of hope in Sayle, nOoNe, and Eywa-. Their willingness to also not give up provided me a new vigor to create something unheard of in a post-war climate. With the help of TL gfx personnel (which helped me numerous times, sorry for randomly skipping over you for credit), and all of my old "staff", from Pholon to Dan187######## to the previously listed cast, and other unnamed helpers, I was inspired to bring my new vision to fruition. Through some nifty marketing and the available outlay of energy, plus the help of several loyal private sponsors that had helped in just about all of my prior efforts, I went all in to create something effective. During said expenditure of effort, Eywa and I partnered to bring to re-establish the wildly successful nation wars of the WGTour period, which was a very fun league in my eyes. After the completion of Nation Wars, I launched the most well organized league of mine to date, something I can finally be proud of. I can't be proud of my gaming talent because again, it was for the wrong reasons. But Altitude's International StarLeague was closest to the way I wanted, that I think anything could ever come to be. It was large enough financially to be relevant. It was functional behind the scenes. It had a competent staff. It had competent players. The games were high level for the most part (some landslides). The only thing missing was the viewers. It was well organized, but it had 1/2 the viewers of a league just one year earlier. Since then, I've been back to playing BW to help my team to victory again, feeling the need to play and win in Gambit's Cup Season 3. With that said, with my trending play -> organize, play -> organize, I am on break again. I have been thinking about asking the community for assistance in finances rather than spending the necessary working hours just to convince major public sponsors that BW is a worthy investment (checking for private before going public), essentially re-testing the field I find myself in before putting forth the effort I know is necessary for success. ... And that's about it for me, nothing really going on here as of late.
I must say, I am not that sad about Korean professional BW dying, because there is still a lot of money in that community for gamers who want to stay, like the iCCup International StarLeague period of foreign BW, but clearly with more monetary injection. I feel like I know what is coming, and it will last a long enough time for me not to panic, despite already investing interests in the Korean scene behind the scenes (SPOILER?). Thank you anyone who bothered to read the entire article.
- David "LRM)Game" Barr
