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3861 Posts
Share your story on how you found TL and how you got hooked.
I've been a fan of SC since 2004 - when MBC and OGN were my only friends in lonely Cheongju, Korea. As much as I enjoyed watching all of the games, there was one player I really had an interest in: Kang Min. I watched Kang Min play his games, watched all the specials they did on him and never ever even dreamed that I would meet him one day.
October of 2005, I went to Blizzcon and there, to my surprise, was the protoss god himself - and on the final day scurried my way to get a picture with him. I was a happy girl.
After returning to the States in 2006, I did not know how to watch games anymore (since I was void of my Starcraft channels) and became busy with graduate school and wow (No matter what, I just can't get away from Blizzard games).
However, in 2007, I decided to attend Blizzcon again in hopes to meet Min for the second time... and I did. I mustered up the courage I had to go and ask for another picture.. and to have dinner with me that night. He and I chatted and he took down my number to call me later on that evening. Around 6:30, he calls me and asks me to come to his hotel. Although I am at an event, I dubiously exit and go to his hotel lobby. Apparently, he had gotten locked out of his hotel room and needed someone to explain to the front desk. Ha! "You were the first person I thought to call", he says. I help him get his room door open and we talk and I tell him that I want to finish up the event first before heading out. He says that that's fine - and around 8pm we meet up again for dinner of steaks, beers and conversation.
Around 10:30 we head back to the hotel and see that there is a staff party going on at the lobby bar. Rounds of tequila and whiskey and the bar is closing. Min says that he needs the restroom and I sit in the lobby waiting for him. About 20 minutes later, he comes back with Tasteless behind him. "Are you his translator", Nick exclaims as he proceeds to invite Kang Min to a party up in his room. Min looks at me apprehensively and says, "Well, I'm only going if you go - I can't communicate with them!" At this point I call my friend to tell him to just meet me in the morning and that I won't be heading back to his place. I was going to spend the night with Nal_rA!!
I tell Nick that we'll head up and we all go to his room for some more booze. When we got there, there was a bunch of people in the room - people from a community called TeamLiquid.
A community of SC fans... who weren't Korean?! This opened my eyes. I had no idea!
In Tasteless' hotel room, I met mnm who introduced me to these forums and I was done. And the rest is history.
-- So the rest of the story is that we drank and drank and drank. Min made Nick drink a whole glass of soju while the guys taught him how to shotgun a beer. The night could have gone well into the morning but Min had a match to play and so we headed back to his room around 3am. He inevitebly lost his game the next day due to being hung over, but when I asked him about it, he said it was worth the loss to have been able to hang out with TL members all night. <3
 
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My friend kept linking me to threads here when I asked him for advice and tips and eventually I figured I watched this site so closely I may as well make an account and start being part of the community.
Now I can't keep away. These forums are my cocaine, my daily need. In a couple years when I can afford to go out to the TL meetups and go to blizzcon and such I will definitely go. Just you wait TL, just you wait!
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hahah wow nice story
mine: i used to frequent random forums like team liquid, team areola, etc. but this one seemed most active so i stuck around 
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i came to korea and saw sc on tv and it made me fall in love with progaming/sc
started getting into sites like starcraftgamers.com sclegacy than I found tl and after awhile stopped going on sc/gosugamers and sclegacy.
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That's a really great story!  (Can't seem to remember how I got into TeamLiquid, tbh).
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Kang Min is the best protoss player ever!
edit: omg i replied w/o reading the whole thing....LOL HE LOST FROM HUNG OVER!!! HES OFFICIALLY MY HERO
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United States11637 Posts
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holy cow, awesome story susie! i want to go to Blizzcon eventually.
Around late 2005, I got into teamliquid from some starcraft-related google search when I was in a craze to get better at SC. I learned about progaming and was extremely interested in it.
I was watching a ton of vods, reps, and reading the various strategies in the forum here. I played Protoss because of Nal_ra and Anytime, because their play was just so great.
After I started using teamliquid, I pretty much stopped visiting any other SC sites, because everything I needed sc-related was here.
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It was before teamliquid became teamliquid of today, My idol NTT aka Hasudrone was on the peak of his game, countless hours of NTT replays filled my time between classes and sleep. Then came WCG, my hero NTT was murdered by someone I have never heard of at the time. his name was liquid.nazgul. I watched the replays of those three games over and over and over, NTT did all of his usual tricks from massive dropships on cliffs to annoying vulture raids and of course the 100+ supplies of scvs. But nothing seemed to work. Nazgul always in the right place at the right time. NTT was never the same again, In fact, in my mind liquid.nazgul ended my hero NTT's starcraft career. Liquid.Nazgul was my first starcraft villain. I starting to follow this villian in the wcg, because he took NTT's spot, i cheer when boxer demolished him using 1 dropship + 2 tanks to kill 5 dragons and 1 reaver in jungle story. But when the epic boxer vs nazgul replay pack came out I starting to follow nazgul closely, and inevitably I wonder across teamliquid.net.
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hm. i remember posting about a similar topic before. let's see if i can dig it up somehow.
edit: i wanna hang out with kang min. :[
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aaa my story is kind of boring compared to yours :S, i was browsing for some replays and accidently found TL.net, then i just read the forums and stuff because my english is not too good and I didn't want to not be able to communicate, finally i started to post and the rest is history, now im a freaking VULTURE so hurray for me.
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I knew about pro-gaming for a really long time, but didn't start watching until SC2 was announced and saw the games for the tourney there (the only players I knew in that tourney were NaDa and Nal_rA; so yes, I did not know who savior or Bisu were at the time) on youtube. Later my friend told me about teamliquid.net. I was thinking "isn't that a counter-strike team?" but realized it was about Starcraft, instead.
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Mexico1178 Posts
Well.. i used to visit broodwar.com (someone buyed the domain and turned it over gosu.com lol), sclegacy, gg.net and randomly tl.. but somehow, somewhere, when i was playing WGT, someone told me about this, and about the tlt, so i was like, whoa.. i dont believe it. i started as a lurker for many years, watching the Stars that are the today staples of TL, reading, waiting, stalking... until one day, i said, well enough of this shit, lets go there.. (even there, it tookd me some days to start posting, lol) then the first panamericans came, i tried to do a hangout, but only got the latin players (testie was there.. and he ditched us.. he probably doesnt remember, i even offered myself to treat him, since iirc someone stole his wallet) anyways.. im always lurking, but somehow managed to know some ppl, and that ppl lead me to more ppl.. and since i always tried to be part of this site, now i can (in a way some of you mayb dont notice but i do) soooo
susie.. great story, im jealous since kang min is one of my favourite players (i did that cheerful) anyways, ill go back to my hole now =D
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United States7488 Posts
No mention of me?!
I am severely disappointed.
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Kennigit
Canada19447 Posts
My story involves a routine visit to Blizzard.com to see if they had announced any new games. I had played a decent amount of starcraft but not a lot of online play. On the front page of blizzard was a link to videos from and event called Blizzard World Wide Invitational featuring these 4 korean guys who looked like they were a big deal. I started watching the VODs which to my surprise were being casted by this blue haired punk with a lip ring - Tasteless. I couldn't believe this new world i had found....that these guys played a game...for a living...How did tasteless know so much about these kids? I never thought i'd end up at a Blizzard event, meet progamers or people who loved progaming as much as i do
In the middle of a match between Ra and Reach on Coulee, Tastless made some comment "i better watch my commentating or im going to get flamed on teamliquid.net". That was it, i popped the url in and the rest is history. I was so intimidated by how much these people knew about starcraft and dared not post lest i be ripped apart by the masses....after a couple weeks i finally got some confidence and decided to ask about Pro Team Scouting Methods.
........What a warm welcome that was ~_~ - http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=45486
Who'da thunk i'd end up helping run this show - funny how stuff like that happens
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I was randomly googling starcraft stuff. I found pimpest plays and became interested in progaming. Then I found gosugamers, and then finally teamliquid. I just thought tl.net was a better place and I lurked all the time. I finally decided to make an account one day and I still don't post much haha
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oh my god i love kang min so much..... T_T;;
thats real nice story susie
Well it started when i was like 10 years old and me and my friend brandon played starcraft 64
and i didnt know about progaming back then, well when searching for strategys for the game i found sclegacy.com and then i read on there news about them hiring players for blizzards sandlot tournament and i visited each website to see which 1 i wanted to win, it was teamliquid.net because of the sweet horse banner ^_^ and ever since then i been using it for progamer news =]
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Baltimore, USA22259 Posts
Wow, what an awesome story susie...
And Kennigit, ROFL, that's how you heard about TL?? I remember hearing Nick say that live and cracked up laughing. And OMFG -> That thread was your first post? HAHAHAHAHAHA, that was SOOO epic I remember that thread, greatest derailment ever... had no idea you created it.
Edit - My story is insanely boring... I'm a product of the battle.net forums since about 1998 playing a little game known as Diablo. I had actually gotten the battlechest (Diablo1, Starcraft, and WC2 at the time) from Walmart and took a look at the games. WC2 didn't interest me in the least, but Diablo and SC did... I played through the single player missions of SC, but that was about it for a while, I was hooked on Diablo and wanted to learn everything I could on it, so I wandered over to the Diablo strategy forum on battle.net and soaked up some knowledge, and really got into the Diablo game. I played Starcraft a little bit, getting BW at some point, but pretty much only comp stomp games and whatnot, I wasn't very competitive at the time. Around 2000, D2 came out and I was addicted for a good 2 solid years of my life.
When I eventually broke the D2 habit, around late 2002ish, I found myself with a bit of a void to fill and found myself looking back at BW. I found my way to the old S&T forums on battle.net again, and heard about TL.net from a few of it's members. I didn't initially think much about, but when I learned there were players, going on tv, and getting paid to play a video game, I was fascinated by the concept.
When I saw my first First Person View footage ever of someone (Elky) controlling his units, I was fucking hooked.
Like anything I become interested in, I have to get as much information on it as possible... back then, VODs were a scarce commodity, and battle reports were the staple of the day; every news update was treasured.
I just visited more and more until it was clear THIS was the place I wanted to be. The only thing I feel a bit bad about is that I've hardly met anyone from TL.net, and I would REALLY like to go to some meet-ups, I just wish more things happened on the east coast.
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Awesome stories, wish I had one as interesting.
Played starcraft like a year or two after it came out, no idea that there was a progaming circuit. I was a follower of WC3: TFT progaming. This lasted for about a year, watching VOD's on youtube mostly. Then while wandering around youtube, I came across a BoxeR highlight video, right then and there while watching the video, I went "DAMN... O_O". Found and re-installed SC:BW. Then I started getting hooked on SC VOD's and totally forgot about my WC3 playing/watching days. While watching a random VOD I noticed in the user comments someone mentioning tl.net. Twas around 2006?
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Baltimore, USA22259 Posts
SOG: Who is everyone in that pic? I recognize you/Nick/Ra/Susie and I think that's CM all the way on the left?
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i269/DunnegonMaster/P1000331.jpg)
