EPTI want to state before hand that it's pretty obvious you guys are drama queens, and were basically begging for a scandal to occur. Whether it's Testie is map hacking, Madcow is not playing for himself, I realize now that SOMETHING would have been whined about hardcore, and it's just my luck of the draw that did it. I'm almost glad I'm the butt of the protest, as not many people have anywhere near the ability to prove themselves to be legitimate (for instance, no one has anywhere near my personality), and honestly I really don't care for the approval of the general populace over the next couple months. I say the next couple months because over time you guys will settle down and think "Oh maybe we were over reacting". Then WCG will occur and people will start putting my name in their "who will win USA WCG" picks and then I'll play just the same and everyone will finally realize they were full of shit.
Anyway:
THE RET SITUATION
Honestly, this is the only point where anyone has any justification in whining. I was having computer troubles from the mid-late time of Game 3 (when all the reps are released you guys will notice that I'm playing horrible in Game 3, you can call it nervousness or whatever but my computer was dying, and then actually did die. I came back from the channel admitting I was losing, but Smuft went to review the replay and it was mentioned to him, from Testie, that Testie thought Ret map hacked. When Smuft went to review the replay I also mentioned to him that I was suspicious of Ret's play, most especially that he scouted my first Lurker drop. Smuft messages me back a few moments later and says "That is really fucking suspicious" -- I later watched the replay and noticed that his SCV runs to the left of his mineral natural (he was right side) from my gas natural and doubles back after passing the Lurker/Overlord. This isn't about whether or not I think Ret hacks though. I'm not the admin. I didn't make the decision to replay the game, and I came back from my disc confessing that I was behind. Ret did not act very manner, and as MANY of you should realize, complaining, whining, cursing, and accusing does not win people to your viewpoint. I'm not speaking for Smuft/Elky, but it's my opinion they made their initial situation for portions of the following reasons:
1. Ret's poor manner in dealing with the admins (we all love being objective but there's a reason defendants in lawsuits wear suits to court and don't jump up screaming in their defense -- no one will side with you if you're rude).
2. I was ahead in Score. I admit I was behind in the game, but score is basically the only 100% objective way of judging incomplete games, and I was winning. If this were a live tournament and my computer died, I would be awarded the winner.
3. Ret's supsicious behavior. This probably didn't factor in much, if at all, but is there.
4. Smuft and Elky were busy. It's very late in Korea (this tournament started at about midnight Korean time, and when everyone logged off it must have been between 7 and 8 AM).
Their solution was a replay of the third game on Neo BiFrost. It's Ret's (among others') allegation that I switched with a Korean at this point who played for me from now on, but we'll get into that later. I won fairly quickly and easily, and Ret, obviously, was incredibly mad again. Whereas the "unjust" action still would have existed, I doubt Ret would have been complaining if he won, and this never would have been mentioned. I find that cute. Ret continues to throw a fuss and act very rude for a very long time, basically putting the tournament on hold. At this point *I OFFER*, without any suggestion from the admins or another person, to replay the ENTIRE series with absolutely no advantage to either player. Ret and the admins accept this, and we play again. Sure enough, despite my generosity, Ret resumes throwing his fit after he lost 2-0. I really don't want to bring the map hack thing into this (I never posted in chat about this, my thoughts were issued in a single whisper to Smuft, which only verified what was already hunched independant of me), but suddenly with the "eye" on Ret in the redo of game 3 and the whole new series, he seemed to play much more clueless. He didn't really play bad, but let's just say the sort of "Lurker drop running into a waiting M&M army and sieged tank" situation didn't happen anymore. Anyway, whatever. My personal sense of moral duty was far satisfied when I offered Ret a regame, which he accepted and then lost. We agreed to forget about the past series, but once the new light didn't benefit him he backed out on that. Whatever.
WDT "SCAM" THE MYSTERIOUS KOREAN
This is the most laughable, for so many reasons. The reason this is allegated is mainly because I don't "whore out" my skil. I don't post replays, and I don't go out of my way to let people know exactly how I play or how good I am (I tend to go out of my way to do the opposite -- I've learned this is best accomplished by posting how much better you are than everyone without actually proving it). I'm sorry that I don't host my own Brood War page like Nazgul, and I'm sorry I don't e-mail the replay every single game of Brood War I've ever played to CoSmO[RuSh] like H_Paul_W does, and I'm sorry I don't take the Nation vs. Nation games seriously enough to "play for blood." As evidented by this, it would have been against my best interest. Do you think people like Rekrul and Veg had any surprises up their sleeve? Sure, there's no replays around of them playing THESE specific maps, but theres tons of replays that show their playing disposition. I knew/know just from happening to observe a few games in the past few months that Veg likes using Dropships a lot. Then I'm called a hacker for expecting Dropships. Cool.
I see a lot of posts that say "Dudey is a newbie" or "Dudey sucks way more than that". Where the hell do any of you get any of your basis to say that shit? I HAVE NEVER PLAYED ANY OF YOU. There has not been a serious tournament in SEVEN MONTHS from which to judge my skill. Why is it so hard for all of you to comprehend that it's possible -- just possible -- that I can do more than 9 Pool->Lurker and save my real strategies for WDTour, WCG and the like and maybe -- just maybe -- I wasn't hung up enough on the outcome of a Nation vs. Nation game to play my absolute heart out. I guess I can realize why it's so hard for all of you to believe, because there's not much of a competitive BW environment for foreigners. Aside from WCG, the good players are separated from the bad by social status and that's it. Koreans are different -- the good players are separated from the bad by money. That's it. There's a reason that the same small group of players consistantly win all the big tournaments and these players were no where to be seen at the top of Game-I. Why? Because in comparison to OGN or KPGA, GAME-I DID NOT MATTER.
If anyone of you had actually seen me play before hand, you'd recognize the person playing as so obviously me it's not even funny. But unless your name is "Rekrul" or "ElkY" or "Smuft" you wouldn't have seen me play, because they're the only foreigners I really ever practice with. I mean come on, even in the replays that there are of me (Team USA qualifications for instance) it's still the same unit choices and hotkeys. People like Winter and WickedDreams liked to bring up that I went 1 Hatch/Lurker everygame, but they neglected to bring up the failed Lurker rushes that resulted in fourty minutes of Ling/Lurker/Drops/Mutalisks ended with Guardians and Ultralisks. I mean jesus, I DO NOT KNOW ANYONE WHO PLAYS QUITE LIKE I DO. Every facet of what signifies my Brood War game is evident in these replays -- my preference for anything but Hydralisks, obsessively scourging Science Vessels, my great Zergling micro (I find it especially cute that Cosmo[Rush] (does this man even play Brood War or does he just host a replay site and put up unfunny intervews?) says the big signifier is that I can't micromanage Zerglings at all, since basically the one obvious thing you can see in any replay of me no matter how little I care is that I am 'jergling jesus'), etc. etc. I mean shit, I even 9 pooled one game.
I've provided what I felt was more than enough proof that I'm me. I told everyone to "wait a second" then posted a pictures of me holding a sign that said "TESTIE". That wasn't good enough. I sat through a personality questionnaire consisting of questions like my plans for the summer, even really small specific details like where I slept at Proct's house when I went to San Diego. Answering them all correctly wasn't good enough. The occasional logging on/off and stupid things like my latency changing from 2 green to 3 yellow (Guys, I live in Missouri. My cable sucks. Deal with it.) made everyone think myself and a Korean were switching names no matter how fast the relogs were. So I did what I felt and still feel should be plenty of proof (and my feeling is doubled by the fact that neither Testie, Ret, Veg, or anyone else accusing me mentioned) -- I took a picture of myself in front of the chat room, posted it (you may view it at http://www.ilnp.com/files/testie.jpg), then making sure I didn't log off, joined and played VeG[pG]. I won both those games and the second, but did that satisfy anyone? Nope. You guys are all drama queens. Scandal is fun! I've basically done everything possible to prove I'm me aside from videotaping myself playing, and all anyone has to discredit me is that "There's no way I could be that good." You know why I played well? Because I practiced, because I'm smart, and because Sauron and Nostalgia are +Z maps. Aside from Elky/Smuft, Rekrul is basically the only one with enough knowledge of myself to accurately make a judgement, and he's posted he was convinced 100% without a shred of doubt that it was myself playing vs. VeG[pG]. As far as claiming it was a Korean vs. Testie, that's just going a wee bit too far into crazy territory. Why, if I'm capable of dismantling VeG, would I risk the consequences of cheating by having a Korean play for me in the prior game? Why are the playstyles/hotkeys identical in myself vs. Testie and myself vs. VeG? But of course, there's an answer to all this: with everyone on my case, a map hack was brought into play. I mean, come on guys. You're taking this a little too damn far.
I don't think I'm even going to address exactly how much harder it is to find a Korean ringer than you guys think, but it's not exactly like the best pro-gamers are itching to kill a day to win some stupid American tournament. As I'm sure Nazgul (who does not like me and probably thinks I'm cheating too, but unlike all of you will not lie/exaggerate/jump to conclusions) will attest to, iTV Trials are currently going on. Anyone who is anyone is participating in this. So now we have a Mysterious Korean who not only gave up an entire day just out of his good nature to play in a foreigner tourney, but gives up sleep the night before a very important league trials in order to play in it (P.S. Ret: I noticed you said it was suspicious Elky and Smuft were trying to rush this tourney on -- they had to attend the iTV trials as well).
So now finally we have the theory that myself/Elky/Smuft are some triumverate of evil who devised this clever plan to rip everyone off of $20. Let's take a look at how illogical this is...
I'm fairly well off. I'm not going to lie and say I'm morally above such shit, but honestly I wouldn't care enough to put so much effort for so little money. I doubt many of you know a whole bunch of 19 year olds with 5 digit bank accounts, but if you've talked to me you know one. And a few hundred bucks means pretty much nothing to me.
ElkY is sponsored based on his popularity, both in Korea and out. This is evident by the number of times he has traveled to France for events sporting the AMD gear. It was reported that he makes over FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS YEARLY SOLELY FROM SPONSORSHIP for this popularity. This is in Korea, and he pays very little of it to taxes. Not only does he need this money less than I do, he is actually putting something at risk by actually cheating.
Smuft isn't nearly as fine reputation wise as ElkY, but the guy obviously isn't in the shit. I'm not going to get in on his financial situation as I really don't know the half of it and the other half is personal information anyway, but just use your heads. The guy went to Korea for six months, left, then returned for another six months. He hasn't won any tournaments or ever been sponsored. Obviously he has been doing just fine. And although a lot of you are not very old for "grown ups" $1000, or however much this cute little scam idea could possibly net for one person, is not very much money. If Smuft was actually having money problems, 1000$ would not save him.
Now, if ElkY and Smuft were planning this little scam, why would they include me? Sure, we're friends, but I'm only a hole in the pipe. Why not just keep it between them and have ElkY win on a smurf name? Lord knows there's dozens of Chinese players that are great we've never heard of he could claim to be. Not to mention that in that situation, I'm sure ElkY would be far more motivated to win than any Korean ringer could be. Why bring in a third (me) and then a fourth (the person playing for me) when you can keep it just between two people? It's useless spending of money. "To make it believable"? Why pick me, someone who takes obvious pains to be secretive and is not flamboyantly good. If they were doing this cute little scam, wouldn't it be wiser to claim Daaman, Tomson, Veg, or Fisheye as the planned winner and then help him out? They are known to be good, no one would raise a ruckus, and I really doubt they would be against receiving X amount of money in return for accepting a little help in winning the tourney. Also, if they had so much money riding on a SPECIFIC person winning, why would they make it single elimination? Amidst controversy of the tournament being unfair, no less! It's 2 out of 3, but still, it's easily possible for even the best of players to make a couple slip-ups. If I were trying to fix a tournament, I'd be a little more cautious than that. Try double elimination. Try 3 out of 5. While a good Korean could lose 2 games to anyone, not a single one of them would lose six.
What other ludicrous arguments are there for me to strike down? I really don't intend on going back and responding on the forum actively, so this is it. I better get them all.
I noticed someone suggesting they did an IP scan and found the account switching from a Korean ID to an American ID, there's really no way for me to respond to that other than that they are flat out lying. Aside from the fact that A) I'm fairly sure it's not possible over Battle.net, B) You cannot tell an IP's locale with just the first set of numbers, C) None of those numbers match my IP address, they offer no proof other than that they "know a guy" who checked. I mean, come on guys. Wake the hell up.
Ah, and I remember Liquid.Venice's post about what Nazgul told him. Personally, KidDie-, I think that was in very bad taste, though you obviously don't give a shit about my opinion. Fuck morals and the friendship thing, you took something Nazgul told you that was essentially gas and poured it all over a fire. Did you ever stop and realize that Nazgul does not live with Elky and Smuft, he is only peripherally part of the Dream Team, and he is not part of organizing the tournament? That maybe he asked you not to repeat it not because he was worried about his reputation, but because he wasn't exactly sure what was going on? You made absolutely no effort to corroborate what was going on or give it a think, you just posted it. Anyway, to address it:
I'm sure that's verbatim what Nazgul told him. And I'm sure Nazgul was not exaggerating anything. However, you guys seem to have a pretty large misconception of how WDT works, or even Korean pro-teams in general. Korean pro-teams are players united under a single manager. In some cases they have a sole sponsor, but in other cases they do not. The Dream Team was not always solely sponsored by AMD -- before, Elky and Gundam were sponsored by iVenture while Grrr was sponsored by AMD. It was after the iVenture contract went up that AMD brought other members onto their team. Grr was the sole gamer sponsored by AMD after Byun retired, and thus his manager was the only pro-gaming manager they dealt with. It pretty much makes sense they would continue that relationship by bringing on Elky/Gundam/Jinnam/jinsu later. Basically other than having a manager and these team leagues that just cropped up, the only inherent perk to being on a pro-team is a place to sleep and practice. No money is promised. AMD wasn't in any way sponsoring WDTour financially, and it really wasn't ever insinuated they would. Also, as far as Elky and Smuft's manager not "fully approving" of WDTour, that's far more casual than you guys realize. While Smuft and Daniel (their manager's name is Daniel) had a fight a little while ago, and Daniel said WDTour was bullshit (they have since made up as people have arguments all the time), Daniel's sponsorship over WDTour was never this big emotional deal. How do you guys think Nazgul got on the Dream Team? Was it because he played the perfect race to deal with the current pro-gaming environment (sarcasm alert!)? Was it because of his stellar performance in WCG, being embarassed quickly in the tournament by Hellghost and then Yellow? Or maybe it was just because he was friends with Elky and Smuft and Grrr, who asked their manager to bring him on. That's exactly how big of a deal it is -- Elky and Smuft and Grr saying "Hey, a buddy of ours is coming to Korea to game. Help him out." "Okay." This is exactly what would have happened with the WDTour winner. The WDT entry fees were allocated in the following way:
A) Money to WGTour for hosting it (Yeah guys, WGTour is getting your money too! Better add them to your axis of evil!)
B) Funds to provide support promised to the winner. This includes plane ticket, etc.
C) Leftover money to Elky and Smuft. Obviously they're getting money from this -- they thought it up, they put it into action, they obviously deserve pay for what they did.
**CURRENTLY READING LATEST FORUM POSTS TO GET THE LAST OF THE ALLEGATIONS RESPONDED TO **
I continually see people bring up that Jinnam was playing for me. I don't know if his hotkeys match, but it should be plainly obvious that it's not Jinnam to anyone that has ever seen the guy play. Jinnam likes Hydralisks. I do not. I went Hydralisks vs. VeG in Game 2, and that's it. Why did I break my usual trend? Because I had lots of Minerals. Because I was on an open map I could easily flank. Because VeG was trapped to one gas and would not be making Tanks (the problem with Mech, which I'm sure many of you don't know because you've exhibited yourselves to be horrible at BW, is that if you make too many Tanks you die to Mutalisks, too many Goliaths you die to Hydralisks, and you are incredibly immobile -- with one Gas, that means few to no Tanks, hence Hydralisks).
Again with the Ret thing -- I'm not going to lie and say the decision was 100% just and no one can dispute it and I wouldn't be pissed if I were Ret, but personally Ret handled it poorly himself (by acting rude, amongst other things) and by his actions he can't be surprised what occured when two overloaded admins are making hasty decisions. We played a regame of the third game. I won. I felt bad, DESPITE the fact he continued to act even WORSE. I OFFERED HIM A WHOLE NEW SERIES UNDER THE AGREEMENT WE FORGET THE FIRST ONE. I unneedingly put my shit on the line to satisfy mine/everyone else's emotions. And I won. And you know what, that + his actions (not swallowing his shit and saying fuck it) make me feel 100% morally vindicated.
As far as personal comments, as I'm not planning on dignifying people here who selfishly and unnecessarily act rude towards me because they are mad they lost with future "private chat time", here we go:
Testie: I always liked you and was nice to you, not I "knew" you "did" or "didn't" hack, but because you were nice. You stayed out of the BS foreigner BW community (though part of this was just because everyone thought you hacked) and played BW for BW. I always respected that, and even during the WDT allegations you made your defense but you made it swift and left it at that. I always had a respect for you to some degree (and assume you'd had respect for me too) and during my most confident times I was only fearing you and two other people for this tournament. But seeing as once you lose you start to act like a big baby, I don't really see how I can have any respect for you after that.
Veg: You go on and on about how I'm a newbie. When have we played serious games? When have you seen me play? Fuck, when have we fucking talked, just the two of us? What the hell do you know about me? Nothing! I map hack because I found your dropship? Why don't you try fucking SURPRISING SOMEONE FOR A CHANGE. I'm sorry you've never played against good Zergs in a tournament before, but Dropships are fairly easy to stop early, ESPECIALLY when you know they're coming. I'm not even going to touch on how you played the second game. Ooh, Vulture rush. Scary shit!
So yeah, I'm done. I feel I've responded to this way more than necessary, and in objective eyes it would be most obvious that yes, indeed, it was I playing vs ZelotIto (Who played Zerg vs me, probably the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. In case you guys don't know, I'll tell you right now: ZvZ is my favorite and best match-up by far.), vs. Ret, vs. Testie, and vs. Veg. It will be me playing against Tomson when the finals occur. I've done everything but videotape myself gaming, and personally even if it were within my means to do so (it's not, unless you kids all want to chip in another $20 of what seems to be your blood money to buy me a video camera that works) I wouldn't unless the admins demanded I do it.
So yeah. This is Dudey (you guys can stop calling me this, I changed my ID when I was fucking 16), aka ilnp, aka banana.milk., aka GG12-mockturtle, aka Daniel (IN THE REAL WORLD), and I'm wishing you all a happy Saturday night and I hope you have fun enjoying my replays from this tournament and in the future from WCG. Because I know that's what all of you (excepting the few people who participated in WDT and are mad because they lost when they didn't expect it to happen) live for.
Dan.
PS I'm not rereading this. It's too long. Sorry if I mispelled a word, because I wasn't paying that much attention. That and maybe the mysterious Korean wrote my forum post too.
I'm really baffled you guys think someone else played for me. No one talks like me. No one plays like me. If it wasn't known banana.milk.=ilnp before today, there'd be plenty of proof to make it 100% obvious it was me. But whatever, you guys are just looking for someone to complain about.
