I've been watching a lot of Brood War lately, and it has occured to me that oov's stretch of play in '03 - '04, was pretty unbelievable:
- Had a stretch from 2003.10.23 to 2004.02.03, in which he went 33–3 (according to TLPD). This is the best streak by a player of all time.
- Has the longest TvZ winning streak: 25 wins from 2003.11.08 to 2004.07.01 according to YGosu.Com (26 wins from 2003.10.25 to 2004.07.01 according to TLPD, but TLPD is incomplete)
- Oov won all 5 major finals he has been to.
More or less, in a fairly short time window, he won as many titles as just about any other player. For whatever reason (could someone perhaps elaborate on this), be it health or desire, he was not able to sustain his amazing success as long as some other progamers have. Crisium's great topic, seen here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=164280 further exemplifies oov's dominance.
Finally, a list of the most Ro16 appearances in the OSL. This shows the long term success of many players, even if they never graced the top 4 very often.
Notice how oov is right up there with the greatest players ever in terms of titles, yet accomplished this in a much shorter period of time. To summarize, it seems to me that oov is definitely the most dominant player of all time. What he accomplished during his prime is unmatched by any other player. I don't think its unreasonable to consider oov the greatest of all time either.
Of course, there is only one player who I think could legitimately challenge oov for this...:
iloveoov ultimately took the H.O.T-Forever route of team welfare > selfish individual attempts at stardom. Also, he got married. But I'd agree with Holgerius, how can you look at sAviOr's measly run and ignore Flash? A whole host of Zergs were ZvP gods.
On January 13 2011 23:19 elf_01 wrote: Read Plexa's Final Edits (I Loved Victory, Parts 1 and 2) on oov. It more or less sums up his entire career/dominance and its an amazing read.
Forget Plexa's articles: this article (which btw is what brought Ver to public notice) is the best article on iloveoov out there, hands down.
To me Flash's dominance this year was more impressive than Oov...everyone seems better than they were back then, so it's even harder to pull off something like that.
dominance wise is always a controversial topic, if we stretch the period to around 6 months or so, a few more would pop out, like jaedong, around 8 months would probably a very one-sided victory for savior as the contender, while around a year could be flash. the 33-3 statistic you pulled out of oov's was over around 4 months, its always hard to measure.
JD is the second most accomplished player of all time (2 others have as many titles, but he has more silvers than both of them) and he had a magnificent year himself reaching 4/6 finals, and still Flash dominanted the way he did last year. THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is why Flash's 2010 is truly the winner when it comes to domination.
On January 13 2011 23:49 integral wrote: Sounds like someone didn't see flash play the entire year before he joined TL.
Well even his current PL run is still incredible (23-2 or something very close ^_^ ).
The only mistake Flash made is to let EffOrt catch up on him and win the Korean Air OSL Season 1 while he was up 2-0. Oov would never had let this happen.
This makes me want even more for Stork to win both individual leagues this season. I mean he is fucking tied on first place with Lim yo Hwan with 13 appearances in Ro16 and no win for him ;( Iloveoov changed the meaning of term macro mechanics, yeah he was great. I don't really remember how dominant he was, but the percentage speaks for itself. You can't really compare Flash to Iloveoov, it's like apples and pears.
ive started seriously playing starcraft in late 2007, but i knew the game since ive watched proscene since 2001 and occasionally played the game every now and then
to me the most dominant player relative to other players of their time is Flash
i mean in terms of statistics flash and iloveoov are probably close but like the way you feel about a player, like this "wow this guy just doesn't lose" kind of feeling, flash is king
1 big difference between iloveoov and flash from my perspective is that iloveoov just mass up units and crush opponents, but flash wins impossible games. iloveoov felt very powerful and strong but flash feels like he is a perfect player.
also in terms of greatness, we learned from iloveoov, improved from his gameplay, and starcraft today is much much more complicated than iloveoov's time. and also much more difficult. if there was a time machine and i could go back to his time, i could probably win OSL/MSL like 5 tiems in a row. it is ridiculously remarkable how flash is so dominant when starcraft gameplay has almost reached theoretically perfect.
in terms of dominance.. or the "aura", i would rank 1. flash 2. oov 3. savior (if you watched bw in 2005~2006.. you would know) 4. jaedong
EPT![[image loading]](http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/3249/oovscaryrecord.jpg)
NaDa 6
Stork 13 (14)
YellOw 11
