EPTI started playing the game in late 2000, when I was a wee boy, not older than four. I remember back then my dad and brother played StarCraft too, and we'd all pick Terran, and once in a blue moon we'd get together, the three of us, and play 3 Terran computers, maybe Zerg if we were feeling really adventurous that day. Never Protoss though. We thought Protoss was the strongest race (well they did have the strongest earlygame rush, they'd get 12 Zealots in no time and attack) and stayed away from that.
Time went by. Then in 2003 I discovered Battlenet was actually free. As someone whose multiplayer experience was Xbox Live (I never went on though, mentality at the time was "why pay money to play a video game you can play for free") this came as a pants shitting revelation. A shit break, a shower, and an underwear change later, I was back at my computer chair, getting on East. I was still Terran at this time.
So I thought, "no problem, I'll just turtle, get battlecruisers, and win every game". Then I got tank pushed. Thousands of zerglings up my ramp. Reavers in my only mineral line. What was this black magic? How did they get their units so fast? Where were they coming from? That wasn't right. None of this was right.
In 2004 I switched to Zerg.
I don't know what it was, but Zerg felt more "right" when playing other players. You get a lot of units out faster, easier to control the map, and all it requires in return is much more APM. My eight-year-old macro at this point was improving, so now I knew that you could use control groups and have an army bigger than 12 units.
But this handicap which had limited me for four years had its benefits too. My macro was on par with that of an elementary schooler, but my micro was up to scratch, maybe even beyond. Mutalisk harassing I could kinda do. None of that fancy go-in-hold-position-get-out stuff, but just attacking in one space with the mutalisks, then when he moves his army I'd send my zerglings and hydralisks into another base and just fight him on two fronts. That felt right. It worked decently against a lot of my fellow nubs on East.
The next two years I'd play the game casually like I had before. Maybe once a weekend I'd get on, play 3-4 games, go on with life. It was enough to be on level with people on East, and I had no idea at the time that there was a whole world above us. Professional gaming was still completely alien, completely unknown. They pay people money... to play video games? What? How does that work?
I think the rating system got taken down around 2005, didn't it? It was gone when I left. That I remember.
Around this time I started playing more, and I was getting hit harder. My muta trick didn't work because they had too many turrets. Psi storm melted my hydralisks, archons my zerglings, and dragoons hit my ultras hard. My winrate was around 60% in 2005. In 2006 it was down to around 35%. And dropping.
The one game I clearly remember from that time was a ZvP a little bit before Christmas. I opened up with 12 hatch and went into lurkers. I think he started out with +1 zealot archon. He pushed twice into my natural, but lurkers and sunkens held him off long enough for me to take my third and defense it. He took his third and we traded units for a good ten minutes. Neither of us could seize the game.
And so we waited. I was on four bases, he was on three. Rallying my drones to my newly constructed expansion, I noticed a golden speck in the top right corner of my screen. I sent a drone to investigate. What was he doing? What was coming?
It was a shuttle. Fearing the worst, I sent my mutalisks over. But they were a long time away. Out came a dark archon. He seized a drone. And then they left. I sent my mutalisks sprinting at that shuttle. I wanted it dead. I wanted it gone. But they never found the shuttle. I was already at his base, and I didn't want to engage those archons head-on. Hell no.
I did the best macro I could. It wasn't much, but it was intense for our scrub level. For ten minutes, all was silent. I produced as many hydralisks and lurkers as my fingers allowed. I plopped down two more macro hatcheries to get rid of that 2k excess I had. I built more zerglings. Defilers were coming out.
He let me max out. Zerg was very supply efficient back then, 200/200 zerg is a nightmare for anyone to deal with. And so I moved.
I see mutalisks of his own, the unit that I had been fearing, tearing up my third and fourth base. But I cast that aside. Where I go, I have no more need for those bases. 3a4a5a6a. Lurkers on 7. 7-u. Defilers came in, three of them, dark swarm on everything. Fresh batch of mutalisks arrived, morphing them into cuardians, and producing more lings out of my surviving hatcheries. Swarm, swarm, plague. Unburrow the lurkers, move them in, burrow.
He had storms. I paid them little attention, his aim was off. He had dragoons. I paid them little attention, they walked into my zerglings. He had archons. I paid them little attention, my hydralisks downed them in seconds.
He had hydralisks and a lurker on his main ramp. I paid them little attention, for I had more of my own. Up to that point, I was winning. But the lurker decimated my zerglings who attempted to progress further. His observers spotted my own lurkers, and more mutalisks and zealots arrived to clean them up. No dragoons at this point, all his gas was going into zerg units.
His mutalisks, the unit that I had been fearing, had destroyed my third, fourth, and natural. In final desperation I sent everything. Drones. Lings. Any surviving units. Just kill him. Please. Anything at all, just give me the win. And his reinforcements destroyed mine. Everything was lost. I quit the game and sat there in silence.
The game had lasted 71 minutes. And I had lost. Badly. Just like almost every ZvP that year. I had lost. At ten years old, that was the first time I cried over a game. It was hopeless. My competition was evolved, improved, adapted. I was still my old self. Playing my old 2004-style Zerg. And because of that, I had lost. Badly.
Demoralized, I quit StarCraft. Uninstalled that shit. Forgot all about it. And lived my life. Made some friends, went to school, same life I had before, sans StarCraft.
But when you cast your hate, your deepest, darkest hate into the abyss, it wraps its hand around your ankle. You either pull it back up and confront it again, or it drags you down into oblivion. And so, the next year I chose to pull it back up and fight.
I never found my original SC copy. It might be lurking around my house somewhere. But I did find out about iCCup in late 2007. I went on, and started laddering. I failed, and went through about nine accounts, of course, but that no longer mattered.
I didn't want to win anymore. I wanted to get better. To evolve. To close the three-year gap I had left, and to dominate the ZvP matchup. And if I let him mindcontrol one of my drones again, I would do everything in my power to kill it before it spawns a second army for him to control.
Every time I lost against a Protoss, I'd imagine the ghost of that player from a year ago, criticizing my every move, telling me how I should just give up again like the scrub I am. And every time I won against a Protoss, I'd imagine the ghost of that player from a year ago, raging, and pride. I'm not a scrub anymore, I'd say to him. I'm a kickass Zerg. I didn't even need to make new accounts anymore. I'd play on obs maps a lot more with people I met over time, and my rating was a consistent 950-1150.
My winrate was around 60% in 2005. In 2006 it was down to around 35%.
By the end of 2007, my ZvP winrate went back to 45-50%. My ZvZ was around 30%, ZvT maybe 40 or so, but that was OK. This was a whole new ballpark. These players were stronger, faster. Even more evolved. And I was catching up to them. I played as arcticwarfare for the last three years at this point. I decided to make a new account, with a clean slate, and see how far I'd get.
In 2007 i made the account [EmotioN]. That was my flaw. My emotion clouded my thought. They made me act rashly. And every game I lost would cripple me for a long time. But it was also my greatest strength.
My pride play as I called it, a three prong lategame attack, using mutalisks, guardians, ultralisks and cracklings. I'd siege his third or fourth bases with guardians, harass his main with mutalisks, and attack move his front with ultralisks and zerglings. And the pride, that I had come so far, and being able to attack and successfully micro an attack on three fronts, strengthened me. They almost never dealt with all three attacks successfully. Even if they won the battle, it crippled them enough to lose the war. In December of 2008, I hit D+ for the first time.
Around this time I started playing a bunch of EX people. I didn't know about the win trading or anything at the time, again I was pretty much isolated from the SC scene at this point. A lot of them ended up being great people, great practice partners, from the lowest D players to the C+ protosses who I did as a sort of crucible test against my pride play.
My ZvT and ZvZ at this point were decent but not the way I liked them. ZvZ especially was too volatile for me. So in 2009, I decided that in my perfect matchup, my pride play would be put to rest. My ZvP days were over. I had finally avenged myself from three years ago, and now I was ready to become friends with the ghost who had haunted me for so long. I switched to Protoss.
In the final days of my Zerg adventures, I had risen to C level. And the funny thing is, when I switched to Protoss, I knew the race so intimately from ZvP that the reverse matchup I could play at C- or even C level as well. I'd play obs games for PvT and PvP so it wouldn't take me down in the interim, but I'd gotten far enough to where I did better as a whole with Protoss than I did with Zerg. In 2010 I would hold a C- rating, and I'd finish my BW run in July of 2011 at a D+ rating of 2500.
In 2009 I also stumbled upon TL, which helped a lot with my ZvT and later my PvT and PvP playstyles. The Brood War strategy forum was amazing, a pure platinum mine for an isolated player like me. I learned about the proscene and other StarCraft players. I'd learn the newest builds and what to expect in all six of my matchups, three for Protoss and three for Zerg.
I think starting off SC with crappy four-year-old macro and intimate knowledge of Zerg really helped out my Protoss play. When I got older and faster, my macro became just as high-level as my micro. When I got older and faster, I'd learn and adapt and evolve much faster, using the wisdom of past losses.
Then I came to SC2 in July of 2011. Played as random for a while, then went back to Protoss. And it was great. I think PvZ became the hardest matchup for Protosses in current play, or at least the one Protosses complain about. I take that and laugh. Infestor broodlord ain't shit. At my level it's 100% beatable, and I have a feeling that once I get up to high diamond or masters I'll still be way over 50% in PvZ. The attack doesn't come from three sides and it doesn't have any ultralisks in it, why should I be scared?
That pretty much sums up the story. Although as a side note, the guy who beat me in 2006 became my inspiration in PvZ as well. In long PvZ macro games I'd steal his drone with a DA, turtle with my Protoss forces and beat Zerg with my pride play. Fun times.
If you made it all the way down here, a big thanks for reading!
