God of the Battlefield: Part 1 - Page 38

On May 26 2011 00:22 Ack1027 wrote:
Simply amazing write-up and analysis. It's a real blessing to have people like Ver around and stick around for many years.

On a personal note, I was around long enough to see Savior as IPXzerg and even following BW way before that. To me, what Savior did for BW can be compared to what elite soccer players manage to do sometimes:

For a while, or even for a single game they do beautiful plays that transcend the game and create art.

However, as we now know, Savior was not and is not the best to ever play the game even if you only look at ZvT or ZvP. Players like Jaedong and Flash have outdone him in the play-transcending-bw category and Savior simply has the advantage of nostalgia in a lot of poster's minds. I am really disappointed that a lot of old members who were around for Savior disregard what people like Nada [ More successful and dominant than Savior ], Oov [ Undefeated in finals series ], Bisu [ Undoing Savior who you praise so much in 1 series ] and the relatively simple decline of Savior from ' Maestro ' to chump [ being stuck in a rut vs firebathero lol ]

In the history of BW we have seen incredible mental toughness like Nada winning a starleague for his recently-passed father. Boxer passing the torch to his pupil etc....yet people ignore this for nostalgia and somehow put Savior on a pedestal. Savior may have created the word bonjwa, but if you look at Flash its hard to say he hasn't reached a level beyond bonjwa perhaps.

For reference:
"Conditions needed to enter the god line"

Win at least 4 individual league titles in a season.
Achieve 80% winrate in 100 matches in official games.
Become the MVP for the Proleague Regular season, Winner's League, and the Post season.
Have your team win the Proleague in the regular season, the winner's league, and the Post Season.
Be in the finals of every official league in one season, including the Proleague.
Obtain over 100 wins in official matches in one season, and obtain a 70% win rate against all races.
Three consecutive dual-league final apperances
Win both individual leagues in one season.
Golden Mouse

This is in the most hyper-competitive era ever in BW with players like Bisu [ who dethroned savior ], stork, jaedong, fantasy, etc.... players who may have been able to been bonjwas themselves in slightly different circumstances.

In the end, I don't know whether to attribute my views to simply just hating savior for what he did or actually looking at his play realistically within the highest echelon of BW gamers we've ever seen. I loved Savior when he was IPXZerg because he was on the scrappy SUMA GO team with xellos, midas, and others but it was such a huge let down to know he was in the center or at least involved in the betting scandal. I firmly believe a lot of people here completely underrate the impact of what Savior did and what it could have potentially done to BW progaming, and even sc2 progaming.

There was a segment done by oldest and best BW commentators about the effect of what Savior and crew had done and even though it was right after-the-incident it really opened my eyes to how terrible Savior is as a person. This led me to question his play too, because even though I like many others was at the edge of my seat whenever his perfect defiler-hive-tech timing came into play vs a SK terran....I realized that he would never be as good as Flash or Jaedong in technical skill or as inspiring as July winning the first zerg starleague title, or experience the absolute tyrannical dominance that Oov commanded.

In the end, this is all just personal opinion but I feel like sharing it because in general it seems to me that old posters and people in high places at TL overlook what could have brought down the blood, sweat, effort, and tears of an entire industry we devote ourselves to so much.

On May 26 2011 06:41 TurboMaN wrote:
No doubt sAviOr was a very good player, but all the wins vs Top Terrans were long after their Prime. It can't Really be compared in my opinion.

On May 26 2011 07:25 Jukebox Joe wrote:
Brilliant article. I wasn't part of the Brood War scene, but reading that and then watching SC2 where people just smash deathballs against each other really opens your eyes. Hope this sort of play develops at some point

On May 26 2011 06:14 d(O.o)a wrote:


You realize we don't know whether savior legitimately lost those games to bisu or if it was simply a part of his betting scandal, there's no way to know and I used to agree with you that Savior's time had less dominant players but that's simply not true. Nada, Midas, Bisu, Anytime, Iris, Oov, Light, Much, hwasin, casy, nal_ra, ggplay, sea, and many other good players were there. Notice how there's only one other zerg name there, the reason why? Zergs were playing on ridiculously bad maps for them.

Savior overcame adversity and dominated when no other zerg could against some of the stiffest competition of all of BW. Oov and Nada are both considered bonjwas, Bisu is still amazing to this day, anytime, iris, light, much, hwasin, casy, nal_ra, ggplay, and ggplay were all amazingly good players that pushed even the top players to their limits, you're drastically underplaying his competition.

On May 26 2011 07:40 semantics wrote:
Well i go back to it's much more impressive to be a big fish in a small pond then it is to be a big fish in a ocean. Undoubtedly current sc is much more competitive then it was in 2006 as that was true in 2004 an 2001 the scene changes over time and people get better. I bet in 2007 any person that could do C+ in iccup could beat any pro pre 2003, does that invalidate ppl like yellow, boxer, nada, july? during those times? Savior seemed much bigger i suppose the hype was much better back then relative to what is currently going on. With all gaming scene it's all about the hype and savior had it up the yahoo.