On November 09 2022 18:03 Liquid`Drone wrote: 'Best' is more possible to objectively characterize, and obviously favors people from later eras. 'Greatest' is subjective and more based around what you feel.
The issue there is, I think fewer people were really around for Boxer's heyday, and his play was much less accessible outside Korea - VOD quality was significantly worse at the time. But I will say that no player ever gave me the same feeling of amazement Boxer did. This happened many times - I'd be watching replays of him, wonder 'okay, so how on earth is he gonna win this one?' and then, 10 minutes later, after several incredibly cost efficient engagements in a row, he'd suddenly have it bagged up.
I still think the best game of Brood War I've ever watched - when factoring in the significance of the game - was Boxer vs DIDI8 from WCG in 2002. Boxer had, much to the surprise of everybody, lost against Josez from peru, as well as Froz from USA, and was sitting at 4-2 in his group. Then, he's playing vs DIDI, tvp on Neo Legacy of Char.
Didi gets a significant early mid game lead, and at one point, he has supply limit protoss with 6 expansions, plenty of money and all the tech and infrastructure, against a 90-something supply terran on three bases. This was before the era of turtling terrans with 3-3 upgrades just holding out until they got a huge army that trounced through everything - and the comeback quite frankly looked impossible. But then, over the next 20 minutes, there were constant engagements going Boxer's way, there was a 2 vulture raid that ended up killing more than 20 probes while being chased by speed zealots, and eventually, gradually, Boxer clawed his way back, and he ended up winning a game lasting more than 50 minutes. This gave us a four-way 5-2 tie, between Boxer, Froz, Didi and Chobo (french guy). (Interestingly, we also had a 4-way 2-5 tie at the bottom - of Androide, Josez, Star)of_Lucky and Adolf. Josez beat Boxer and Didi, but lost every other game.
After barely escaping what would have been the biggest upset of WCG history - Boxer not making it out of the group stage - he then waltzed through the entire bracket, and won the tournament. During his peak, there was a certain inevitability to his play- much like Flash, but also very different, in the sense that Boxer would, in the end, emerge victorious, but that it'd be a hard fought victory that he had to somehow, miraculously make happen. Compared with later players, he was incredibly flawed (early on, you'd occasionally see Boxer float 1500/800 before expanding) - but he'd make magic happen with how he utilized his units.
With Flash, there'd just never be any real doubt. It's certainly more dominant, but to me, less awe-inspiring.
Didi8 vs Boxer is one of the best if not the best ever game in BW history, indeed.
it was crazy how boxer and didi always had epic games, they had a warm-up/practice game the year before on LT which was also considered one of the greatest games of all-time (the one with the optic flares)
I'd like to encourage Boxer voters to post full vids/reps of his games that impressed you the most.
In this thread it's very clear that the people who were there since the early days mostly vote Boxer/Nada/Oov and people who joined in a bit later vote Jaedong/Savior/Bisu.
Speaking of Boxer games: Does anyone have the Boxer vs Nada rep on LT with nukes to push back siege lines? It was the first replay I ever saw of progamers. It'd be cool to revisit it.
On November 10 2022 21:48 Peeano wrote: I'd like to encourage Boxer voters to post full vids/reps of his games that impressed you the most.
In this thread it's very clear that the people who were there since the early days mostly vote Boxer/Nada/Oov and people who joined in a bit later vote Jaedong/Savior/Bisu.
Speaking of Boxer games: Does anyone have the Boxer vs Nada rep on LT with nukes to push back siege lines? It was the first replay I ever saw of progamers. It'd be cool to revisit it.
On November 10 2022 03:25 SpaNiarD wrote: This was so hard a choice. Even though Boxer was really special and dominant, I believe at their peak JD and Nada were the best (besides Flash ofc)
savior was so dominant nada looked like a mid tier player when they played. and he was at his peak during that period.
On November 10 2022 03:25 SpaNiarD wrote: This was so hard a choice. Even though Boxer was really special and dominant, I believe at their peak JD and Nada were the best (besides Flash ofc)
savior was so dominant nada looked like a mid tier player when they played. and he was at his peak during that period.
i forgot my favorite - julyzerg <3
I don't think the 1v1 pittings are good arguments for all time. Especially since we don't know what type of intel one player may have had. I really think the debate is JD vs Nada too. When I first started playing bw Nada's apm demonstration video was awesome. I do think he was off racing though, and they put the wrong video on the screen lol
If we have the debate over best zergs, I think it goes JD, Savior, Effort, then Julyzerg. I'm sure there's someone here that will disagree
On November 10 2022 21:48 Peeano wrote: I'd like to encourage Boxer voters to post full vids/reps of his games that impressed you the most.
In this thread it's very clear that the people who were there since the early days mostly vote Boxer/Nada/Oov and people who joined in a bit later vote Jaedong/Savior/Bisu.
Speaking of Boxer games: Does anyone have the Boxer vs Nada rep on LT with nukes to push back siege lines? It was the first replay I ever saw of progamers. It'd be cool to revisit it.
No, but it was fun to watch. I almost forgot how it was to watch the game without timer, resources and psi data. Even though it felt like one player was trolling, it created more exciting not knowing that information.
That brings me back to when I watched Pro-BW religiously and I was able to guess/know that info by instinct. It helped that players by then knew proper macro and that there were enough pixels to tell the upgrades on units and see individual units on the mini map.
The introduction of the in-game-timer changed BW so much actually... I remember how upset it made me when people used chaos launcher to add an in-game-timer as I considered it cheating to have that additional info.
On November 10 2022 03:25 SpaNiarD wrote: This was so hard a choice. Even though Boxer was really special and dominant, I believe at their peak JD and Nada were the best (besides Flash ofc)
savior was so dominant nada looked like a mid tier player when they played. and he was at his peak during that period.
i forgot my favorite - julyzerg <3
I don't think the 1v1 pittings are good arguments for all time. Especially since we don't know what type of intel one player may have had. I really think the debate is JD vs Nada too. When I first started playing bw Nada's apm demonstration video was awesome. I do think he was off racing though, and they put the wrong video on the screen lol
If we have the debate over best zergs, I think it goes JD, Savior, Effort, then Julyzerg. I'm sure there's someone here that will disagree
Effort is like my fav zerg, but there is nooo way I'd put him before July. July was much more accomplished. He won a Golden Mouse! That's still more impressive than reverse sweeping the goat in a finals imo.