EPTOne year ago (or around about, who can remember dates?) I bought Starcraft : Brood War. At the time I was a typical enthusiastic, teenage gamer, into the new, flashy, awesome graphics games. I had decided that I wanted to get a strategy game, to expand my horizons, because obviously playing strategy games automatically makes you "smarter" than everybody else. I googled a lot for some good strategy games and settled on Warcraft 3. It looked OK, seemed fun, got good reviews, but most of all it could run on my computer :D. So, like any shopper with a target in mined, I went down to the local game store when I walked in to find, that particular chain of stores was having a half-price sale, so OK, maybe I could pick up something else too. Starcraft? It's made by the same people? I put both games onto the counter, bought them and went home.
That day I didn't even install Starcraft, just played Warcraft and mucked about the campaign a little, and cast Starcraft aside onto my PC table. Only 'till a few days later did I finally get round to installing and playing it. Started a campaign mission, and instantly reeled at the sight of the graphics. Shut down the game, and kicked myself for wasting 20 perfectly good dollars (NZD) on this old thing.
I didn't play Starcraft for about or week or so after that incident. I did get curious and google it though, and learnt about the amazing competitive scene that the game had around it, and wondered what all the fuss was about. Curiousity did get the better of me, and I played the game again, this time skipping the campaign altogether, and jumping straight onto US West. I remember one of my earlier games, it was a fastest (ugh -_- ) 2v2v2v2 and I can recall my ally yelling at me while we were getting destroyed, and I told him I was reading the manual :D. I soon grew tired of the custom maps and wanted to play for real like all the Koreans do. So, then I started what I like to think as of the "US West" era of my journey, the training grounds for iCCup. I would play casual games online as random and this is when I was really drawn into Brood War.
The game was so infactuating, so interesting, all the things you could do. All the different strategies that were all on the Liquipedia site, all the different ways to victory. I got addicted to the game, I even spent a whole saturday, 10am till 5pm (OK, that was considered a lot by me) playing games on US West. I wanted to win so badly but I would always lose. During this time I learnt of a site called TeamLiquid (yes, I have been here almost a year and never created a post), which I learnt lots of strategies from. I would constantly google "starcraft strategies" or "how to win at starcraft", picking up a variety of bad habits that I am still trying to get rid of today. I fondly remember the time when I stopped calling my games "1v1 LT NOOB" and started to call them "1v1 LT good players". Starcraft was uber-fun, Starcraft, Starcraft, Starcraft, Starcraft.
Throughout my US West adventures, I eventually got bored of cannon rushes and mass battlecruiser ALL the time, and I yearned for a greater challenge, something that would really make me learn how to play better. I had heard of iCCup as this magical land where all the top players in the world would compete, where there is a decent challenge. I made an iCCup account and left US West with a record of 45-112, and have never been back there since.
I think everyone remembers their first season of iCCup. I came out of it 0-20, E. I felt like giving up at that point, getting thrashed by even the lowest level was a real downer
. In fact I did take a month long break from Starcraft, but came back to it, because I was quite into the proscene at this point, and trying to be as good as those progamers always motivates me (QQ unreacheble dream). I thought at that point that the only way to get better was to play game after game after game after game. I did that, and it did improve my mechanics quite a bit, but I was still losing most of my games. Remedy? Play game after game after game after game. I didn't think about why I lost, the biggest thing I came up with was "he built units faster than me". I was memorising some very basic builds for my chosen race, Protoss (quite a nice little anecdote about how I chose Protoss, won't tell you here), and continued with my "practice".The next big thing to happen was when I joined the sGs clan, started here on TL. Playing with those guys has taught me, that thinking about what you do and why you do it is REALLY important. That there is always a reason for everything, that you or the opponent does in the game. I am still with them right now, having a blast, becoming a lot more enlightened than I ever previously was. I still lose 90% of my games, but each loss feels like I've learnt something, so even though I don't welcome it, I still appreciate a loss. My goal is to break out of D into D+ or maybe even C- by the end of this year, and I certainly think that it is possible.
Let's look at where I am now. I am playing BW almost exclusively now, I hardly ever play any other game. I haven't touched Warcraft 3 for quite a few months (a bit ironic isn't it), and I think about something related to Starcraft ALL the time, I have Starcraft fever. My friends know me as "the guy who plays heaps of Starcraft", although I don't I play that much... All this came from an impulse decision I made one day at the game store, something that I did right out of the blue.
That's been my first year with Starcraft : Brood War. Thanks for reading. ^^
P.S. Starcraft 2 actually came out only a few months after I bought BW, I was thinking of picking it up, but... I was too busy on US West...
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