EPT
Part 1: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=92690
This part will conclude how I got back to Broodwar and eventually ended up on TL. I am afraid this is the least interesting part actually, since my story is probably very similar to most people who joined TL in the last couple of years.
So, before I begin with BW, I want to go back to the LAN days and introduce two other games that gained notoriety back then. Actually two Half-Life mods that were usually played during the morning hours when everyone was dead tired and couldn't hold an MP5 straight anymore.
The first is called Ricochet I believe, and it was the most simplistic mod ever. It was 3 or 4 maps, which consisted of a number of platforms floating in space. The platforms had jump pads that would catapult you from one to the other, and they were arranged on a lot of different levels, and everything was psychedelically colored. You were armed with an number of frisbee discs, and the idea was to hit someone else with your disc so they got pushed over off the platform and crater to death.
The maps also had walls randomly scattered among the platforms, which was where the ricochet came into effect. You could throw your discs to the walls so they would bounce, which made for a lot of surprise hits. All in all, it was insane fun to play - especially since it took 5-10 seconds for you to die when you were pushed off a platform, during which you could scream and curse and insult the one who got you.
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/zatic/Ricochet.jpg)
Ricochet.
The second mod was PVK: Pirates, Vikings, and Knights. That was it, a bunch of pirates vikings and knights smashing each others heads in with an awesome selection of weapons: Swords, crossbows, powder keg, muskets, pistols, spears, axes. The main knight had a broad sword that would always kill in 1 hit, but he was kind of slow. The pirate captain could send his parrot to attack. The musket pirate had the sniper rifle, however it took about 15 seconds to reload, during which he could not move. The viking could go into berserker mode and run faster than any other player.
The original mod seems to have been wiped from the Internet's memory, but there is a fan made PVK2 for HL2.
So, 2004, university time. Everybody was playing games nonstop during lectures, except me of course, because I was running Linux haha. I had my windows partition still at home though, so one day I just felt like playing some of the Broodwar campaign games again. So I installed the game, and the moment I was in game I remember how great Starcraft really was.
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/zatic/pvkdesertruinv800041rr1.jpg)
Screenshot from PVK2
The next day I messaged a couple of gamer friends from the LAN days for a couple of rounds of Broodwar, and everybody liked the idea. Quickly, we had a small group of people playing regular round robin 1on1 or 2on2 games, first on Europe, then later on Hamachi.
We had all no clue about "modern" Starcraft, or about Starcraft in general for that matter. But, some of us quickly improved and got more into the game. I regularly consulted one friend who had stayed with Starcraft when we all left for CS, and who had sometimes told me stories about Boxer and Starcraft in Korea. So I asked him for strategical advice, how to improve, where to get strategies, etc.
He told where to get replays, who was best at the time ("what the fuck is iloveoov?"), where to read guides. We still played our regular games, but the group got smaller since only a few committed to improving our game.
Some time during 2005 I got this replay of NaDa vs some Protoss (Nal_rA I believe?), where NaDa bunker rushed, blocking his bunker with an unfinished ebay and barracks. From today's perspective it was just a cute micro move, but for some reason it really opened my eyes to the depth and creativity that lies beneath the visible layers of the game. So after that I went hunting for more NaDa replays and quickly became a fan.
This must have been the time I got to know about TL. However I didn't get TL at first, not at all - I was looking for replays, and found horses. So the next year or so I just hovered around TL, gosugamers, broodwar.de, never bothered to commit to one site or register anywhere though.
What eventually brought me to TL was three things: The first was DaZe's guide for Terran (I played Terran back then), which helped me a lot to develop something like a standard play. Compared to what other sites had to offer this guide was just on a whole different level. I was on an internship in the US during that time so due to the time difference I couldn't play much with my pals in Germany. As my interest in Starcraft did not diminish at all though I tried to get more reading material like guides or battle reports and started watching VODs and became more and more interested in Korean progaming.
The second, more important reason was sc2.org. From 2006 to 2007 I had become a fan of Korean progaming -and sc2.org was just a blessing. Live pro gaming, with a chat function and LosingID8 (<3) live translating interviews - it was amazing. Apparently many of the big names of TL hung out in the sc2.org chat but I didn't know anybody really yet. And, as ITW would point out to me later, having an ID with a leading Z doesn't get you much attention in online chat rooms haha. It was my last year at university and I tuned in to sc2.org pretty much every single day to watch progaming. Naturally a lot of references to TL were made in the chat so I also visited TL more and more.
The thing that finally convinced me that TL is the beginning and the end of online Starcraft was actually TLPD. I was really blown away when it was released. I mean I probably don't have to tell you how great TLPD is - just try to imagine online Starcraft today without TLPD.
What followed was TL's reporting from Blizzcon '07, which was so much fun to follow, and after that I finally registered here.
Well I know this part is really unspectacular as my getting back into BW story is so stereotypical (At least that's my impression). Maybe some time I will write more about the last two years on TL similar to semioldguy's piece.
As for gaming, Broodwar has been and still is the only game I play. I have been trying to organize an "old-school" Counter Strike LAN with the CS people from back in 2000 but it's almost impossible to get even 3 people in the same city at the same time now.
I have my SC2 beta key though and I can't wait for the damn thing to be finally released!
![[image loading]](http://imgserv.gamersunity.de/starcraft2/filebase/screenshots/januar09/Screenshot02.jpg)
Soooooooooooooon.......
![[image loading]](http://h.imagehost.org/0180/700frags.jpg)
