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Hello! I'm a long time lurker who just had to make an account to post in this thread.
I played SC and BW when they were released for many years but stopped playing in 2003 or so. I currently play SC2. During the between years I religiously watched (and still do) the proleague. I definitely have a deeper love for BW than I do SC2. But I just can't bring myself to play it. The biggest factor preventing me from playing BW is primarily one of community.First and foremost I prefer to play games with my friends. I know no one who plays BW yet many who play SC2. To an outsider the BW scene appears arcane and intimidating. I don't believe it's simply a matter of more difficult mechanics, or steeper learning curve. Rather, it is a matter of attempting to find and make friends in a very old community who often appears hostile and derisive of new faces. Whether this is true or not, I do not know. It is merely my impression.
To respond more specifically to the OP's post, I am quite familiar with the problems old and much loved games have with the emergence of a sequel. My experience primarily comes from QWTF and TFC. The former game had great gameplay and a good community. With the release of a new game with better graphics, but generally assumed to be "crappier" gameplay, the scene hurt a lot. For the first year or so there was a general air of elitism and arrogance from the QWTF community who disregarded and lambasted the sequel alienating massive amounts of potential players. After the first year, the QWTF community realised it needed an attitude change to attract new players and there was a fairly concerted effort to be more helpful, open and friendly towards potential new players. I believe it worked to a degree (although not enough to save the game or community). Rather than crapping on the new game's players, yelling at them, or in short, telling them they are "n00bs", people tried to calmly and openly explain the benefits of the older game, inviting them to come and try it.
The many completely inane debates about which game has "more skill", about who is responsible for killing this or that game, etc. which have surfaced in this thread (and are seen throughout the forum) do nothing to help the cause of BW community. Clearly the OP has made a well throughout post. But concerning for the BW community are the subsequent posts which have quickly gone back to trying prove that BW and its players are better than the "scrubs" who play SC2. Whether this attitude changes or not will determine the fate of the BW community... in the non-Korean world anyway.
/end 2 cents
edit: Just an idea that came to mind. Maybe you convince someone who has a lot of currency with the SC2 community, like Day9, to do a cast about BW for SC2 players? Encourage them to give it a go etc.
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On September 21 2010 15:00 Hikko wrote:Show nested quote +On September 21 2010 14:28 aimaimaim wrote:
and regarding SC2 as an esport .. they stil dont have good players worthy to be seen on TV .. i dont like watching amateures (most of them are) duke it out. its a sight for sore eyes.
http://www.gomtv.net/2010gslopens1/vod/1114Watch game 1 and cry tears of joy and experience warm feelings of amazement. This is a comeback if there was ever one. It's worth the effort to register for Gom's website.
thats like .. uhmm 1 game??
i can post hundreds forom PL, dozens from OSL and MSL ..
1 good game or a couple doesnt make me want to watch SC2 as an e-sport .. and like i said, most of them are amateurs. some might be good but that wont be enough to top what PL is going to bring. and like i said before, i hate gretech's move to kill PL and exchange it with GSL, its like me want to watch UFC and these guys want to give WWE. (i dont hate WWE nor UFC though .. )
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Osaka27179 Posts
This is a great post, and if people can ignore the ridiculous argument in the middle of the thread there is some great stuff here.
Belatedly put on the front page.
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On September 21 2010 15:00 Hikko wrote:http://www.gomtv.net/2010gslopens1/vod/1114Watch game 1 and cry tears of joy and experience warm feelings of amazement. This is a comeback if there was ever one. It's worth the effort to register for Gom's website.
Not to sound like an ass but are you sure that Artosis and Tasteless didn't "trick" you into believing it was an amazing game? Yes, I did watch the game. They're pretty good at their job actually. I listen to GSL commentary in the background while I work, just cause those two guys are an awesome duo.
Anyway! I suppose the feeling you got from that game is the feeling I get from watching any game of Brood War.
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I hope that gretech and kespa finally negotiate and keep scbw and sc2 alive instead being so selfish.
But I am afraid that it'll only happen in my dream 
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Good write up, I liked the final thoughts the most. Foreign BW lacks "roots" at the moment, which should be alarming, if people care about its growth. Successful learning process requires occasional positive reinforcement. That is, when you improve something little about your play, you need an objective measure to test and confirm that.
When veterans were beginners, there were many other beginners to play with and improve reasonably, by small steps. Also, in Korea there is a well established coaching structure, in which naturally the older players teach the newer players and pull them in. Koreans aren't born with BW in their blood, it's about the way their community works.
The potential appeal of SC2 now lies not in graphics or gameplay, but the way it treats new players.
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Great read, thought I'd share my TL and SC experience as my group of people is referred to.
I am new to Starcraft 2, only played since beginning of retail. Took me a week or so to find TL, I have to say this website was pretty hard to navigate at first! As a gamer obviously I had always known about Broodwar, but the knowledge didn't extend much past 'Koreans are serious business about Starcraft'. I have to say, playing Starcraft 2, which brought me to TL has opened my eyes to how amazing the world of Starcraft was and is. I had no interest in Broodwar before, now I find myself reading up on players I hear about, watching matches, reading BW threads. I haven't played yet but with a little nudge I could probably be persuaded.
The most attractive thing about BW is the community! It's really inspiring to see how many loyal fans there are and the sheer passion that they share. OP is right though, hostility from BW players towards SC2 is not attractive. I even find myself becoming defensive, SC2 brought me into this world of Starcraft and just has you feel threatened, suddenly I am made to feel threatened too and the rift appears.
I could quite honestly see myself playing both games as the skill sets are similar so I wouldn't lose out too much doing switches.
So here, a person who would never have even glanced at Broodwar before, suddenly has interest because of Starcraft 2. I hope BW never dies, I wish it to run as a different game to the sequel. Being able to follow the scenes of and play both of the games just seems like a huge win win for me.
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Hosting games on iccup isnt that hard... just don be lazy and port forward... host and wait.. is better than finding a game. However, best to learn the game, practice, get a clan and train internally with one another on iccup...
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I've played BW since it was released, and for us old schoolers, we've heard people claim that the game was dying since as early as 2001. Of course, it never did die, and only got stronger. I play SC2 now, and I think there's some real potential in that game, but after seeing wave after wave of failed predictions of the death of BW, I'll definitely only believe it when I see it.
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OP excellent post and a really good read, thank you.
I played around with single player Starcraft with cheats as a kid and thats all I got to know about it. Earlier this year though I decided to try my hand at it properly in anticipation of SC2 and luckily made a great bunch of friends in [TA] who seemed like the remaining Aussies who played SC on iCCup. They literally helped me so much and taught me heaps in the space of a month to get me to D+ and I can really appreciate how rich and amazing BW is but I'll probably move onto SC2 as all my friends are playing it now.
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On September 21 2010 16:31 aimaimaim wrote:Show nested quote +On September 21 2010 15:00 Hikko wrote:On September 21 2010 14:28 aimaimaim wrote:
and regarding SC2 as an esport .. they stil dont have good players worthy to be seen on TV .. i dont like watching amateures (most of them are) duke it out. its a sight for sore eyes.
http://www.gomtv.net/2010gslopens1/vod/1114Watch game 1 and cry tears of joy and experience warm feelings of amazement. This is a comeback if there was ever one. It's worth the effort to register for Gom's website. thats like .. uhmm 1 game?? i can post hundreds forom PL, dozens from OSL and MSL .. 1 good game or a couple doesnt make me want to watch SC2 as an e-sport)
SC2 is in its infancy. The point he makes is that the game he linked gives us a glimpse of SC2's long term potential to evolve into what BW has been. Especially once your non-amateurs get involved.
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Your part about Super Smash wasn't accurate. Both games are popular, but Brawl is by far still more popular today. It's on the MLG pro circuit, the major national tournaments for it, Apex 2010 for instance, get people from other countries to fly out to compete, and have well over 200 people in attendance. Some of the super smash tournaments are larger than any Starcraft-only tournament outside of Korea honestly.
Ever since the release of brawl, more people have played brawl at the tournaments for brawl and melee together, and it's stayed that way for over 2 years. Just the melee community members are the loudest try to spread propoganda, like it doesn't have combos, it isn't as technical (this is untrue), and isn't as deep (brawl is deeper mentally than melee for sure).
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Croatia9565 Posts
On September 21 2010 09:41 conTAgi0n wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2010 21:38 infinity2k9 wrote:On September 20 2010 20:16 2Pacalypse- wrote:
Great read, really nothing more to add.
Except maybe that one annoying disadvantage BW has is that it's crashing on Win7, which might put newcomers off. Hopefully this will be fixed soon! http://sol.gfxile.net/ddhack/This is supposed to fix it. I haven't looked into this since I don't have Windows 7, but if that is a good fix it's a pretty big deal. One thing I didn't mention in my post and in hindsight probably should have is how damaging it is to Brood War that it and Windows 7 don't get along. Those kinds of mundane obstacles to playing the game can make all the difference in the world.
Apparently it's not a 100% working fix as it wasn't written specifically for Starcraft, but with a "little" bit of work I think it could be made into a 100% working fix and THEN it would be a pretty big deal.
Here's a thread about this fix: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=151063
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On September 21 2010 03:47 PJA wrote:
Everyone sticking to BW says the same shit all the time: BW is hard, SC2 is easy, and all the people who play SC2 just want to play an easier game.
This is like elitist go players saying go is hard, chess is easy, and if you really wanted to play a difficult game, play go. Nobody will ever reach the skill cap in either game, so it's ridiculous to call one "easy" and one "hard." Yes, it's hard to make your units even respond in a reasonable way in BW compared to SC2, but that has nothing to do with which game is more competitive, it only makes BW more frustrating to play as a beginner.
Clearly, BW with only being allowed to select 1 unit at a time and not being allowed to hotkey anything would be "harder" than BW in the sense that you guys are talking about, and it would raise the skill ceiling even higher, but would you really want to play it over BW? No, obviously not.
FWIW: Has anyone noticed that none of the people who switched to SC2 from BW agree with you guys? All of the top players who post on these forums who switched to SC2 pretty much agrees completely with what I am saying. Nony, InControl, etc. Are they all just newbs looking to play an easier game?
Hmm, to my knowledge, Incontrol and Chill all seem pretty cynical about SC2 and everything about it XD
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BroodWar will live if Blizzard lets it. That's what I think...
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Very objectively, and fancy graphics apart (they are not even that good...), I played both games (SC since 98) and BW is clearly much better than the sequel, on almost every part. I can't even imagine one of the top former BW player advocate against this point of view. If someone does, and has played BW enough, I'm very curious to know about his arguments except : freshness, money, graphics and community (which don't imply a good game on the long run).
Many people get tricked cause they see them switch, but it's often purely by personal interest. They want to make money (even very few) while playing a video game. Some people like Artosis or day9 are fucking paid to cast the new game ; what do you think they will say ? By the way, it's really painful to see some of them trying to advocate against the game which made esport possible, solely in order to get SC2 bigger.
Seriously, new SC2 comers should at least refrain their words when they talk about BW. For my part, I don't believe SC2 has a bright progaming future (no offense), even though it's a damn fun game to play with friends! So as long as it is not killed artificially, BW progaming will remain undisputed, simply cause the base game is much deeper and more enjoyable.
And don't tell me "the game will get better, it's so new, it will be patched" etc etc. We'll talk about this when that's the case, and it doesn't seem anytime soon.
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On September 21 2010 09:41 conTAgi0n wrote:Show nested quote +On September 21 2010 04:12 ziGG wrote:
That being said from what I understand you are pretty off on the halo transition. Halo 1 was (still is?) Condsiderd the best mutiplayer incarnation of the series. When halo 2 came out most high level players didn't like it nearly as much. But the main league MLG was getting very little attendance. They switch to halo2. And exploded with growth despite the "top tier" players disliking it. The reason I added qualifiers there is that I am not super familiar with the competitive Halo scene, and I might not have represented it totally accurately. In my defense, I did not mean to suggest that there was no push back from one game to the next, but that overall the community transitioned fairly quickly and did not leave behind much following to speak of in Halo 1 or Halo 2. I probably did not make this clear enough in the OP.
The H1->H2->H3->HR transitions have been pretty interesting, actually. Since MLG 'owns' the professional Halo scene, transitions from one game to the next are essentially business decisions to keep the larger community's interest high and attendance levels up. So yeah, the community transitioned quickly because they had to. And it wasn't because the core gameplay didn't change significantly from one title to the next, because it did. Replacing a highly-accurate single shot utility weapon (pistol) with a less-accurate burst fire utility weapon (BR) completely changed the game, especially with the H3 BR (which was horrible), as did a number of other 'improvements' (thanks Bungie) like weakening grenades, increased bullet magnetism, the elimination of momentum-based melees for H3, and style-over-substance maps. As such, many folks are happy to transition to Reach since it returns to many of the tenets that made H1 great (though it still has issues of its own).
There is still a vibrant community of MLG folks who still LAN/XBC H1 on a regular basis, by the way. The following is very much there (some will play nothing but H1), but tend to compliment that with whatever Halo is currently used for MLG competition.
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What an awesome write-up, everyone should read it.
And i love the calling for not letting bw die.Its our duty!
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Great read. I think we need to let brood war go slowly - right now SC2 isn't quite "balanced" and there needs to be tweaking. Until then I think Bee-Dub will have a grip on the the community.
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EPT
