My subjective guide on Starcraft and Teamliquid history. Please note that I omit the newest events, because most people already know them and they are well described in the news section. I mostly focus on the interesting and forgotten parts, as well as the biggest fails and the biggest victories.
1. The beginning and background
To start the history of Starcraft, one has to go back to the previous Blizzard game - Warcraft 2. It was the first RTS game to introduce "super VGA"graphics (aka 640:480 resolution). You can laugh now, but at that time it was something big (and the game still looks pretty well), especially in comparison to Command and Conquer with it's crappy 320:240 resolution. Warcraft 2 also had great music and sound effects - if you clicked on units they would make funny sounds, critters would explode etc. But the most important thing is that Warcraft 2 could be played on LAN. With 8 players! It had such good IPX support that professional network architects would often use it to test if the LAN is built properly ;-) (and maybe other tools was Doom).
What Warcraft 2 lacked was the possibility to play on-line easily. Players had to use other ways to play over the relatively young Internet - a tool called Kali. In times of Hamachi it might sound easy, but it wasn't as easy. In fact you had to pay to play via Kali! It was a service which allowed to connect by means of modem to a special "server" that would allow you to play with people from other countries/states without having to pay as for an international call. Yes, otherwise you'd have to pay A LOT.
StarCraft precursor - Warcraft 2; believe me or not, these graphics were beautiful at their time.
Despite its drawbacks the Kali community was really strong and organized few competitive ladders, but what the game lacked was diversity. Players complained that both races were very similar. Nowadays most people write that the races in Warcraft 2 are the same, but it is not true - Orcs have a spell called Blood Lust, which gives them a big advantage over humans. Consequently everyone plays orc till this day...
After the success of Warcraft 2, Blizzard started to work on their new game - Starcraft. The subject of our love, and this guide. The alpha version was really, really exotic and different than the game that we play today.
Protoss fighting Zurg. WTF
Star crap?
After the first few screenshots were published the community went mad - it was just "Warcraft in space". It's not even the crappy looks, the races were still very similar. After some thought, Bob Fitch, the main programmer of Starcraft asked the team to give him 3 months and he completely rewrote the game engine - so that it would allow not only much better graphics, but also special abilities/effects such as blind, mind control, mutalisk splash and so on. In addition, during the development of StarCraft the Warcraft "map making rage" started - most gamers without a proper Internet connection (or without any connection at all; yes there were dark times without Internets!!!) would make their own Warcraft maps. At first using the normal editor, but then by means of third party tools such as Puddraft or War2xEd. Why is it so important? These tools were so good, that reportedly Blizzard started using them in-house.. and decided to make a better editor for their next game! :-)
This is how the maps were made back in the day. Notice the lack of details...
The work on the game was quite slow - the previous Blizzard games (Warcraft2, Diablo) were delivered on time - Blizzard still didnt have the reputation of a company that "publishes games when they are made" (which is good, when compared to companies like EA). As a consequence of the delay a group called "Operation Can't Wait any Longer" has emerged on the Blizzard forums... and had to wait for few months anyway. Have you ever thought what does "Operation CWAL" cheat code stand for? It speeds up the time of constructing everything :-) There is also other code, "there is no cow level", but it's important to Diablo players...
At that time, Starcraft became StarCraft (capital C), because apparently there is a brand of cars called Starcraft.
No wonder that GM went bankrupt. If you try google searching for Starcraft, you wont find any pictures or websites about their "Starcraft" vans.
2. The beta Before publishing StarCraft, Blizzard decided to make a beta test in order to search for bugs in the game and balance it. Nowadays it might sound as a typical move made by any other publisher (apart from EA), but at that time it was revolutionary. Probably only Windows 95 received more beta testing - 1000(!) lucky people were given the chance to play and change the game before its release. Beta-testers competed the ladder; tested the interface and the units- some of which were removed; some of which changed their abilities. For example, during the first days of StarCraft evolution one of the main Zerg units were the Zerg queens! They had the ability to attack just like the Mutalisks with bouncing glave wurms PLUS they could cast Broodligns. Imagine that Queens would do 15 damage now! This would be insanely imbalanced! Archons had the ability to mind control, but it was removed later on; just like Valkiries and Dark Templars. The beta test was a great success and the gaming magazines (at least in my country) made multiple articles about it.
StarCraft beta. Do you recognize the units? The graphics slightly changed between alpha, beta and the final version..
3. StarCraft is published - 31 March 1998 The game debuted at a rather unusual part of the year. Most games are published around Christmas, but Blizzard knew that StarCraft was so good, that it would succeed at any period. At first gamers noticed the great campaign and story line. It was the first RTS to use scripting so extensively. The units "talked" (just like in Warcraft 2, but this is rare even for games published in 2005...), the missions were not only "seek and destroy", but also "rpg" style, there was a good story line... there was a great map editor. I remember that many magazines would publish campaigns and custom UMS maps made by casual gamers. There was such greed for more StarCraft maps! Of course the lucky ones could play on battle.net - mostly by means of modems, which led to gigantic telephone bills.
The main competitor of StarCraft at that time was a game called Total Annihilation. It had 3d graphics (which were in fact pretty hard to read) and doezns of units. Small tanks, medium tanks, heavy tanks, super heavy tanks and so on... Many people considered it a great game, but in fact it was very repetitive (all the single player missions were the same "build a base->destroy your opponents"), plus there was barely any story line. But you are probably mostly interested in multiplayer - Total Annihilation did not feature any battle.net service... so people had to use other means of finding opponents. Also the game was quite boring, all the units were the same, they did not shoot enemy buildings (!) and the maps lacked any details.
Total Annihilation - main competitor of StarCraft at the time.. believe me or not. Can you find a tank on this picture?
4. Battle.net Only lucky few could play at battle.net during its early days - mostly rich American kids. Telephone costs were expensive (at least in the country I live in) and I would prefer not to write anything about the lag... because Im trying to omit swear words in this guide. Anyway, as far as I know, at the beginning most people played simple maps, such as (2)Challenger (which was also included in the Starcraft demo, I think) and (4)Blood Bath. Most gamers did not know any effective strategies and the play was quite sloppy. Spawning pools costed 150 minerals, and were build faster, so Zerg was the dominant race. Terrans had very hard times, as they struggled to stop the infamous "zergling rush" tactic, which we would now call a 4 pool... Some old player once told me that in the past people did not use the psi/supply limit to control the game flow, but rather would use a watch - "build spawning pool at 0:45, 6zerglings at 1:15, then a hatchery at 2:00" etc. This sounds funny now, but that's how the game was played. Protoss were the 2nd popular race, people would often start with cannons first in order to stop the Zerglings. Something which was reinvented only by Nal_Ra years later.
The best players would compete in the official StarCraft ladder. People would play for points and hope to get to the final 16, which would compete in an official Blizzard tournament with nice rewards. Good players, such as BratTsunami (who also created a great website about playing zerg), would often have problems in finding the opponents, because everyone was dodging. Not to mention the hacking. Zynastor published his map hack and ruined the game for many players. People would cheat even in official tournaments, to this day, there are big controversies about the "Blizzard 10 000 dollar tournament"... Hell, I think even I would hack in a 10 000 dollar tournament. Testie hacked too!!!!11oneoneone
5. StarCraft add-ons StarCraft was gaining more and more popularity in 1998. Players demanded more missions. To test the demand Blizzard pubslished a single player campaign called "Enslavers: Dark Vengeance". It was made using the standard editor and quite cheesy for todays standards, but became very, very popular. Blizzard knew that a follow up was needed and decided to create "add-ons". Please note that "add-ons" were different than "expansion packs". Add-ons just added new missions... - the first one was called Insurrection. It consisted of a single player campaign, with some new sounds, but without any new units. In addition it included some some average multiplayer maps. Despite its drawbacks it was quite a success and the 2nd addon, called Retribution. It also featured some average single player maps. You probably think that these campaigns were poor, but in fact some of the missions were designed in quite a smart way by the standards of that day; for example in one of the Insurrection missions the player would have to build a base while being constantly harassed by multiple Queens, who would spawn Broodlings on nearly every unit he had.
Due to the popular demand (which also led to creation of Big Game Hunters) a third party add-on was created. It was called Stellar Forces and the maps were simple and boring. Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately?) it was quickly blocked by Blizzard's lawyers and is quite hard to find nowadays.
Precursor campaign. Do you know any other games, apart from Warcraft3, that feature hero units and installation terrain? Most people rememeber only the Terran demo, with multiplayer capability, which allowed only TvT battles.
6. Brood War - 30 November 1998 The expansion pack was published 8 months after the release of the game. It featured new units and a completely new campaign. It was also proceeded by a beta test, during which the units were balanced again. Rarely would an "expansion pack" receive 10/10 points in reviews. It was so good because, it made the game much more complex... Brood War was mostly focused on multiplayer; new maps were added and the game was balanced as Blizzard published the few final patches. The first ones fixed bugs and balanced the game.. but then a special patch was published, the 8th one.
The new unit gave a great advantage to the poor Protoss race, they could mind control an enemy worker in order to build their units and win.
7. Patch 1.08 This is one of the most important patches for StarCraft. It is the one that made the game so big. Hated by many, loved by others... - it introduced replays! These small files would allow to watch games played by other players. You could observe the "gosu" players struggle in long battles.
You might think that replays are not important, but they allowed the casual gamers to spend hours studying them in order to improve. Mutliple websites have spawned - in order to host the replays; good players would publish them - for fame and for money! Companies like coca-cola or AMD would sponsor the players to use their brands as the tags.. only years later would they learn that advertisements can be included in texts showed at the beginning of the game. (A brief description of some of the older maps can be found here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=84214)
Anyway, where did this Boxer guy come from?
8. Korean scene and the emergence of pro-gaming In the late 1990s Korea has been investing a lot into the development of cable Internet. Today it might sound not important, but at that time, most countries had to rely on slow (and laggy) modems. Cable Internet allowed not only fast Internet spped, but also the more important thing - fixed fees! Your parents would not rant about your telephone bills any more! You would not have to be afraid of getting a "dialer" (malware program) that would make you dial some operator in a third world country and your telephone bill would get astronomical.
StarCraft gained lots of popularity in Korea. Seriously, what else could you play at that time? FPS games? They casual gamer had really big problems in running them, as graphic accelerators, such as 3Dfx Voodoo were really expensive at that time. Players could play not only at home, but also at Internet cafes, called PC Bangs in Korea. Im not from Korea but I remember that I used to go to cafes to play StarCraft with friends! This was one of the opportunities to play Hunters on LAN.
Players like Boxer and later [NC]..Yellow would get recognition and slowly gain sponsors. I do not have much information about StarCraft in Korea at that time, but I assume that it looked similar to StarCraft tournaments in Poland: at the beginning we had tournaments for the best player in an Internet cafe, then we would have off-line tournaments for the best player in a town, then tournaments at country level. Netcraft/Netwars.pl server was born at that time, and most peoeple in Poland Started to play it (it was less laggy and did not check if the CD-key is original).
9. Meanwhile in Europe - Team like weed is formed!
When montaro.org failed and Tsunami quit; few new websites would emerge. One of them was http://battlereports.com/, where people would describe their epic games with other good players (ok, it was launched before the 1.08 patch), another was http://sclegacy.com/ with descriptions of different strategies.
In addition, two fellow Dutchmen, tolkien fan Liquid~Nazgul and and meat fan Liquid~Meat decided to create a clan.. The clan (and the accompanying website) was called Team Liquid. These two guys were interested in two things - StarCraft and horses. Horses were dropped later on (for poker), but the StarCraft sentiment remained.At the beginning the website was small and less moderated. For some reason, probably the quality of posts, few English speaking Koreans decided to visit it frequently and provide English battle reports describing the events of the emerging Korean scene. Koreans managed to transmit StarCraft on TV!!!
Teamliquid had Stimey the ok GM fish. Teamliquid had Rekrul who banned people randomly. Teamliquid had OrangeTerran who claimed that he would beat people. Teamliquid had Hovz who would beat people (in game and in real life). Teamliquid had Elky the French progamer who clashed with Boxer on TV!
Believe it or not, this guy is great at StarCraft and poker despite the fact that he is French.
One would come to teamliqud.net to learn some broken Korean phrases that could be later used in order to play with the "Korean gosus": me łŞ¸¦ foreigner żÜ±ąŔÎ game °ÔŔÓ
You would come to teamliquid to ask for the names of the best channels on US West, because for some reason this was the server with the most skilled players for some reason (after all the servers were split into realms. Before that there was a big single server for everyone!). My theory is that the best Koreans came to US West to clash with the best US players, like BratTsunami. Europe was always multikulti garbage and US East was about dodging, flaming and trashtalking - does anyone remember X17 clan? They are still doing this, after like 11 years...
Did you note that Koreans seem to prise "U.S. West server" till this day.
Go West? Screenshot taken at ICCUP in 2009
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Does anyone remember the best US west clans from the old days?
Op HyO- Op DaK Op Nal Brood War KOR-nAmOmO Brood War KOR-NeXus Op -NC z-zone Op AKUTA Op ErOs- Op GsP- Op 397 Op Sasin Op HyO) Op Ever) Op Promise) Op Think) Op S.G- Op is) were the best...
And at Europe server: op tot) op id-
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The progaming teams were much different too:
On December 10 2003 07:15 stimey d okgm fish wrote:
KTF jinnam, joyo, hovz, rekrul
hanbitsoft boxer, slayers, limterran, yaoyowan
team liquid nazgul, meat, john sears, liquid
OGN reach, assem, gundam, yellow, orange
10. Somewhere around 2003, Legionnaire and Rekrul would go to Korea.
Teamliquid got pace. Not only did it have battle reports. It also had players competing in Korean teams. Not only Elky and Rekrul, but also Leg, who in fact would write about strategy and answer the questions of average Joe. A real progamer! StarCraft was so cool back then, that some lamers would create a "StarCraft university" and would give lessons for $80 per hour.
Teamliquid also had the VOD thread. You might think that VODs are common bread and butter. But Im talking about 2005. The times where there was no Youtube. Do you remember it? Bandwidth costed a shitton, hosting video was hard. But teamliquid members managed to do it! Everyone would try to spam to get 300 (or was it 500?) posts in order to be able to download VODs, as only the users with a hydralisk or more could download them.I remember that many people from netwars.pl would write to me and ask to borrow my account in order to download the VODs, as they did not have enough posts. And I usually refused ahaha! I sorta miss my old account, it had 2800 posts, which also grant some other privileges up to this day... (some people will know what I mean).
11. Former history
The boards became more and more similar to the one you can see nowadays. The strategy forum mostly consisted of Protoss players, who would complain that the game was imbalanced. They forgot about fast expands known before Brood War, they forgot about observers. They only used 3 units, Zealots, Probes and Dragoons. But there was this guy, called Johnattan Walsh, aka Frozen Abitur, who would come and bash them.
Protoss players would complain that lurkers are imbalanced and that they would always forget to make observers. There was even some replay, where some guy used an Archon and few Zealots to kill the burrowed Lurker. He positioned the Zealots on top of the Lurker and attacked them with an Archon. Splash damage would be used to kill the Zerg unit. And no, the Protoss player did not have storm. He was considered gosu though! FA ridiculed it. We also laughed at the strategy involving mind controlling the enemy Overlord in order to get a free observer. But for some reason it worked. Just like Boxer's blind spot rush.
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At that time everyone was playing pure Lost Temple. I remember that I had 500 (yes 500!!!) versions of that map. Due to the increasing boredom, new maps would slowly start to emerge e.g. Nostalgia.
Difference between neogamei and regular LT; screenshot made by Bill307 (IIRC)
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Blackman would get third at the WCG, everyone would try playing macro Zerg at this time... oh no sorry, everyone would switch to Terran. Because Boxer became even more awesome! He had the micro, he had the strategies! He was so great. He had a big rivalry with [NC]...Yellow... whom he would bunker rush multiple times; for example during the OSL final - THREE TIMES in a row: Dhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYLhOXn5rTw
or on an island map!
Yes, Boxer bunker rushed Yellow on an island map, just after he ridiculed him in the OSL finals
The average Joe would play on gamei - the gosu Korean server with antihack (only if you had fellow Koreans who would explain to you how to do it); and later on WGTOUR - the big ladder website, with lots of drama and abuse. At some point the Koreans even came to WGTOUR in order to participate in the ladder, LastGamer aka Yellow had 100 wins and 2-3 losses (he only lost to a map hacking German Terran from clan BWD as far as I remember).
Gamei would die soon; but not before Boxer acquired 2000 points there and hand picked 3 training partners for himself (one of the training partners was called Iloveoov, does it sound familiar?). JulyZerg had only 1300 points and was playing 50 games per day at that time. After the server died we would play on US West again; Koreans would run "HanStar" program, which allowed them to write in Korean in StarCraft (blizzard later updated it). After the servers demise, neo-gamei would emerge - this time made by Russians, and die too..
Protoss sucked in 2005
Terran sucked in 2005 too o_o
We did what we could to make the other players leave the game to get the points.
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After ngi died, a brave, but forgotten social worker from Canada, called Pat, together with Ashur from Czech republic, would create a new server - PGTOUR. This was one of the best StarCraft servers, it had a great launcher, great website, lots of other features.. it was perfect. It was even better than ICCUP, because it was also focused on news and replays But everyone flamed Pat and one day he simply disappeared. Perhaps after PGT was hacked, perhaps due to the problems with getting enough staff - he had to do all the things himself. He is one of the forgotten people, just like Emlary, from the VOD thread, or ToKoreaWithLove, the old TL.net moderator.
Meanwhile, in Korea, a player called [Red]Nada would emerge and stomp Boxer. He would also stomp the Protoss players with his "tornado Terran" build. They would cry that both the Terrans and the Zerg can defeat them easily. After Nada, Iloveoov would emerge, and then Reach, and then JulyZerg.. and then Jaedong... but this is the more known history of StarCraft. There was also Xellos, the imperfect Terran
12. The biggest secret of StarCraft revealed. After 8 years from publishing the game, the biggest secret was revealed. THERE IS A MAN INSIDE OF MISSILE TURRET
Great research, but I have to bitch a bit about TA.
It was actually a pretty good game (not like SC though!!), and you do it a big disservice by saying that all the units were the same. The physics engine led to some revolutionary (at the time) tactics, such as the ability to dodge incoming shots. Also, the size and scope of the game made perfect micro/macro just as impossible a goal as it is in Starcraft. No it wasn't balanced since everyone played the same faction, and some maps tended to turn into 40 minute turtle fests, but there really was a lot of strategy and skill involved in being good at it.
It wouldn't have been a "main competitor" if it was as crappy as you seem to portray it as.
Good post, but your SC beta screenshot isn't really the beta. Its the alpha. The beta looked incredibly similar to the SC we know and love today, the units had some differences at the beginning though. There's a beta thread with screenshots somewhere around here if you search for it.
On June 11 2009 02:37 tec27 wrote: Good post, but your SC beta screenshot isn't really the beta. Its the alpha. The beta looked incredibly similar to the SC we know and love today, the units had some differences at the beginning though. There's a beta thread with screenshots somewhere around here if you search for it.
It's the beta; alpha screenshots are on top. They just switched the graphics later on, the screenshot shows a spire; and an "evolution pit" (aka unused zerg bulding 1 in the editor).
Btw. why did everyone discuss the Boxer Yellow island map bunker rush on my blog, but not here t.t
On June 11 2009 02:37 tec27 wrote: Good post, but your SC beta screenshot isn't really the beta. Its the alpha. The beta looked incredibly similar to the SC we know and love today, the units had some differences at the beginning though. There's a beta thread with screenshots somewhere around here if you search for it.
happy birthday!
omg sexy post man, i skimmed thru it but oh the memories, definitely gonna read this now.
Why would I ridicule someone for killing lurkers with splash? It's good and I've always thought it was good..
Also, Jonathan Walsh*, FrozenArbiter*. Abitur ;(? <3 for including the imbalance picture.
The proteam list is weird tho - rekrul was never on KTF, and Teamliquid was never a proteam, for instance. Infact, I think you must have used a poor source for that one - probably a joke infact EDIT: Oh it was a reference to an old joke, I'm an idiot, nevermind me! I blame it on lack of sleep.
Why would I ridicule someone for killing lurkers with splash? It's good and I've always thought it was good..
Also, Jonathan Walsh*, FrozenArbiter*. Abitur ;(? <3 for including the imbalance picture.
The proteam list is weird tho - rekrul was never on KTF, and Teamliquid was never a proteam, for instance. Infact, I think you must have used a poor source for that one - probably a joke infact
Yeh it's from a thread ages back where someone wanted to know team lists etc, and some dude wrote that :o
The proteam list is weird tho - rekrul was never on KTF, and Teamliquid was never a proteam, for instance. Infact, I think you must have used a poor source for that one - probably a joke infact
I think he knows that proteam roster is a joke...? I mean it's patently absurd.
For the record: YellOw annihilated BoxeR in that island-map bunker rush. Then he proceeded to throw his game against DoGGi to get BoxeR eliminated from groups.
Good work, although you did make one mistake. When Blizzard received the backlash for their pre-Alpha build, they first tried to fix it by heavily modifying the old WarCraft II engine. However, later on, they encountered the problem of not being able to implement some of the special abilities such as Burrow. It was only then that they decided to completely scratch the old engine and write a completely new engine for the game.
Otherwise, very nice. This preety much reduces the chances for the rest since this and the Stove guide are almost guaruanteed to be among the top three winners.
Starcraft is not a GM product. Many people modified their GM vans using Starcraft parts. Starcraft Distribution is still running today. They modify cars, trucks, and vans.
That picture you showed is just a Starcraft Distribution modified van. GM is crashing, yet. But Starcraft has nothing to do with GM. http://www.starcraftparts.com/php/index.php
Wow what I massive post, haven't gotten through all of it yet, will have to come back and finish later. The starcraft origami is pretty cool. BTW are the drones and defiler flying in the starcraft beta picture?
Really nice read, I love how the precursor and terran only demo gets mentioned too. Also the map included in demo is called (2)Byway (or with s in the end, not 100% sure).
Very enjoyable read! I never knew how much SC changed between alpha and beta O_o.
Also TA was (in my eyes) also a very enjoyable game, you had a hero unit (the commander) :p + the process of making buildings and the resource management was very unique at that time, not to mention it had air AND sea units, which SC didn't. I always imagined how it would be if terran could construct this massive cannon capable of fireing shells all across the largest possible map like in TA :p
FA, I think you took the ridiculed part wrong. Did he mean you ridiculed people for not using obs? You ridiculed the guy who used his zealot to splash the lurk? Dunno.
On June 11 2009 04:35 HuskyTheHusky wrote: I came into this expecting trash and was pleasantly surprised. This post was pretty fun to read. Though that reaver picture could use a revamp
On June 11 2009 04:35 HuskyTheHusky wrote: I came into this expecting trash and was pleasantly surprised. This post was pretty fun to read. Though that reaver picture could use a revamp
WTF ???? WTF ??? WTF ???
That picture WINS. And I DID NOT KNOW ABOUT THE TURRET hahaha Great read!
On June 11 2009 04:25 NeonFlare wrote: Really nice read, I love how the precursor and terran only demo gets mentioned too. Also the map included in demo is called (2)Byway (or with s in the end, not 100% sure).
I'd like to add that I think the reason the Koreans favoured the US West server was because they got a good ping on it and as far as I'm aware the Asia server was the equivalent of US East, filled with trash talkers.
Very good, though the text gets a bit iffy after the first half, etc. Not that it isn't edited, just doesn't seem to have the thought that was put into the beginning.
ahah yeah the french starcraft player was Bertrand aka ElkY. It was a good opponent to BoxeR. StarCraft has hard impact with many reasons like firstly, they didn't allow any FPS game so everybody played StarCraft. Then, the 공군 (Air Force) made the professional StarCraft team under gouvernment etc... About the car, yeah Chevrolet made the "StarCraft" model, and progamers use that to move from stadium to practice room etc etc... On my profile, you can find pictures about that.
Ahaha awesome guide! Did not know about the man in the turret Surprised I didn't recognize any of those West clans considering I played in WSCL, but I guess they were before my time Team Life and Team Clean forever! ^.^
On June 11 2009 04:35 HuskyTheHusky wrote: I came into this expecting trash and was pleasantly surprised. This post was pretty fun to read. Though that reaver picture could use a revamp
On June 11 2009 12:20 [M]ToaD wrote: About the car, yeah Chevrolet made the "StarCraft" model, and progamers use that to move from stadium to practice room etc etc... On my profile, you can find pictures about that.
Lol, seriously? They actually go with a "StarCraft" van? That's funny but in a rather weird way, may just be too much
On June 11 2009 12:20 [M]ToaD wrote: About the car, yeah Chevrolet made the "StarCraft" model, and progamers use that to move from stadium to practice room etc etc... On my profile, you can find pictures about that.
Lol, seriously? They actually go with a "StarCraft" van? That's funny but in a rather weird way, may just be too much
Yep that's the truth. Look the KT van, you have sticker in front of the car write (StarCraft). This is the model of the car. I dont think its too much. StarCraft is a national sport here, given that progamers are know as stars like singer, etc... they are rolling in these kinda vans, driving by the coach =)
Kain-The-Feared is another pretty successful poker player, I think he did mainly Protoss too (altho he randomed alot)
I dont think hes ever been in those major tournaments, but he told me he can definately make a living off poker (paid off schooling and etc If I recall correctly)
And if I can recall, I definately remember [GG]Slayer as mainly a terran player.
Sorry for the fact that some of the dates are bit off; I am more focused on facts. I have not included some of the important events that happened during StarCraft's 11 year history and consequently decided to make an update.
1. In 2004 Boxer played versus a blind guy.
It might seem like an easy win for Lim Yo-Hwan, but the blind guy was doing quite fine. Of course Boxer was given a handicap - he had his eyes covered for the first few minutes.. I dont want to spoil the game, Boxer had to cheese a bit.
2. Allied mines
`SlayerS`_Boxer also used allied mines in a televised game - you will know why are they banned from tournaments...
Speaking of tournaments - in the past progamers would have better outfits.
Hello! I am a Zealot!
3. Marriage
There was even a "StarCraft marriage" between: Lelis and Screwt[PiG]. Funny nickname for a guy, by the way, 'Screwed-pig'.
They met for the first time on the netcraft server and lived happy ever after. In fact they post from time to time on netwars.pl about being married and PvZ.
There are also lots of StarCraft parents: Manifesto7, KillMe1St, NotSorry, Tech)Psylo, FuDDx Saro, X)Benny, HellAngel, InfeSteD... some of them will probably rise their children to became progamers, according to their posts at least.
Speaking of ladies
Apparently miss Singapore Cassandra Ng plays Starcraft too. She is usually given as an example of gamer girls. This example is of course not true, as there are no girls on the Internet...
Does anyone remember Zia?
She used to post here, but later on it was found that she has a penis. Who will be next? LilSusie? mnm? Rpf???
There was also a female progamer league. It was quickly cancelled however, because most of the girls were ugly and could not play the game up to par. TossGirl is the only progamer girl that ever became sucessful (and in fact she is the prettiest). I have no idea why she is not called TerranGirl. She beat some progamers, some even quit StarCraft after losing to her. The best female progamer was probably [ugly]Betty - the tag explains why we do see her any more on TV..
[Oops]January... oooooooopps
4. The Team Micro Arena rage
Around 2005 everyone started playing team micro arena, which was originally created by Cygnus[x.1]. The map consists of two teams who choose units that they later use to destroy enemy nexus. This sounds simple, yet is very fun, as usually it is played by 6 players. Cygnus decided to keep the map unprotected, so many different versions were spawned, e.g. Team Banana Platform (where you could listen to the Banana song), a 4v4 version, Free-For-All platform with 4 teams, Team Micro Arena legends with completely rebalanced units and so on. In fact I have around 50 versions of this map and there is definitely even more ~ probably 150 versions float around.
There is a whole community dedicated to playing TMA: www.team-micro-arena.net/, just like there is a community dedicated to playing money maps: vilegaming.com.
5. Map editors, map makers and the whole map-making community
Noone ever gives the credit for Heimdall and Suicidal Insanity. Most of teamliquid.net players who mostly play melee maps have probably have never heard about these guys. They are the creators of the two best Starcraft map editors - Starforge and Scmdraft. Heimdall is the guy who introduced neutral buildings into games, long before they were ever known by Korean mapmakers. It always shocks me how the relatively small http://www.staredit.net/ community never receives any credit. Most of you probably do not remember the time when there was no way of making "backwards" ramps, which led to many map making problems (map could not be exactly symmetrical) - these guys solved it by allowing to edit the isometric sections of the map easily. If you read any mapmaking guide it will definitely direct you to any of those two programs.
Staredit.net members have made lots of GREAT maps and most of the mapmaking tricks would be really hard or impossible without them. Take a look at few examples:
When will we see such tricks in pro maps? Why are the professional maps so plain? This is not professional.
6. Rigged maps, winbot and other forms of cheating
Forbidden Zone, a semi-island map.
When there are ladders, people will always cheat. Some will do it to play better opponents, some just to ruin the game of others, some want to prove that they are gosu. Testie went 104-0 PvT on the map called Forbidden Zone, in order to prove that this map is imbalanced in PvT. He played like Combat-EX though - dodged all the good opponents and picked the ones with ratio lower than 50%. I am not sure if he begged the opponents to quit like the latter player though..
Speaking of maps - you should be cautious when you download one, players like LastShadow rig them, so that the units would cost less and would be built faster... - such thing even happened on Korean TV Warcraft 3 league! Yes, the organizers were cheating because they considered the game to be imbalanced and they would give Orcs some advantage. Perhaps this is the reason why replays of televised games are so rare? :-) To progamers: if you are reading this... use a tool called "rep2map" in order to extract the maps from the replay, then check them out in the editor to see if the unit statistics have not been altered.
7. The funniest post on TL.net
This post always makes me laugh. I had to post it.
8. The funniest thread on TL.net - Veg deleted RUNDLL32
9. UMS means not only sunken defense
There are many, many types of UMS maps (defense, RPG, bound, worms, the unknown...) most of which are barely known by melee players. I decided to create a map pack in order to popularize my favourite type - micro control maps.The results so far are incredible.
Gemcraft - flash game based on one of the StarcCraft UMS maps.
Many StarCraft UMS maps are so good that whole GAMES were created on the basis of their mechanics/ideas. The first to become popular was the whole "tower defense" genere - which are based on the idea taken from the map with same name.
Not to mention the most popular Warcraft III UMS:
DoTA - based on the "Aeon of Strife" from StarCraft. This probably doesn't need any explanations. Just go try it.
10. Zerg invaded the Earth!
This weird creature is actually called Bathynomus Giganteus. They have a length between 19 and 37 centimetres (7.5 and 15 in), and reach the max weight of approximately 1.7 kilograms (3.7 lb). They seem like a nice alternative for a cat. Click here for Wikipedia article.
11. The invasion of giant isopods was fortunately stopped by Lego StarCraft units!
12. The battle took place at 3D Lost Temple
13. And we won!
14.The saga continued, however, as Nada played Satan
21. In 2009 another secret got revealed - two players can parasite a critter at the same time. Did you know that? There are lost of such StarCraft trivia.
22. StarCraft bling is becoming more and more popular!
just like StarCraft t-shirts...
Ok, these are technically teamliquid, winged-horse t-shirts. + Show Spoiler +
How could anyone doubt that WC2 was pretty? It's graphics still is quite nice. I remember times of playing WC1, like no right click commands, you always had to click move, then confirm with left button, etc.
And out of all games i have ever played most notable sound comes from church in WC1. Dunno why but i liked the chorus in there so much
No mention of Dark Reign I thought that was better than TA in gameplay but people got sucked in with 3D and it was still a competitor of SC
Very interesting read - not written or formatted the best it could be, I have to say, but it does the job and I enjoyed it and learned something new. Big thanks!
Great read : ) Some stuff isn't 100% accurate though (like the order in which some players rose to stardom for example) but that isn't really important. I would suggest you edit your post on the 4th page into the OP I guess. And perhaps add a tiny bit of spoilers for the slow connexions. I think that would improve you're submission's quality for the contest^^ Again: it was very enjoyable to read, GL with the contest!
About the boxer vs the blind kid: was he supposed to only be blindfolded for the first couple of minutes??? Cause I was always under the impression that he was being a not very nice boxer when he took his blindfold off to beat the handicapped.
Nice mention on community mapmaking, although it was much bigger than staredit.net, which is a fairly young site.
On June 14 2009 21:26 closed wrote: DoTA - based on the "Defense of the Ancients" UMS. This doesn't need any explanations.
Correction: DoTA is "Defense of the Ancients," it was based on a starcraft UMS game called Aeon of Strife.
I know this cus I made Aeon of Strife, I think I still have the final version on a disc somewhere. It was just a peculiar love of the Protoss backstory that I made it, but the basic concept caught on without me as I never went on to map in WC3. Guess it's one of those "turret def" or "diablo" concepts that are instantly understandable and recognizable.
I'm going to resurrect some of the great maps by other mappers that got simply too little attention. Some are just too technically awesome.
I have learned so much about the game now. And there is so much random interesting stuff that is all tied together because of sc. lol at the english textbook with sc units.
On June 14 2009 21:26 closed wrote: DoTA - based on the "Defense of the Ancients" UMS. This doesn't need any explanations.
Correction: DoTA is "Defense of the Ancients," it was based on a starcraft UMS game called Aeon of Strife.
I know this cus I made Aeon of Strife, I think I still have the final version on a disc somewhere. It was just a peculiar love of the Protoss backstory that I made it, but the basic concept caught on without me as I never went on to map in WC3. Guess it's one of those "turret def" or "diablo" concepts that are instantly understandable and recognizable.
I'm going to resurrect some of the great maps by other mappers that got simply too little attention. Some are just too technically awesome.
Wait so you're involved with DotA?
And the "Man in turret" pic in the original thread died or smt I can't see it!!!!!!!!!!!!
I hope your main gets unbanned :D Halfway of Boxer's best highlight almost made me cry good music there.
There are no tanks in TA screenshot! You took a easy way and chose one without them! + Show Spoiler +
ok it is hard to google I'm on 10th "o" page and still only 1good screen with tanks... and almost nothing else x.x
15th page... 20th... 25th WTF... 29th FOUND 1
Maps lacked details? You could do your own by simply shooting the ground add and remove stuff by killing units and reclaiming them... and rocks, trees... no trees burn in SC - in TA whole forests! pplz made mod for Supreme Commander, making it look like TA... there were even mods for TA. I saw hundreds of fan made units and buildings. Too bad it lacked easy map editor =.=
On June 14 2009 21:26 closed wrote: DoTA - based on the "Defense of the Ancients" UMS. This doesn't need any explanations.
Correction: DoTA is "Defense of the Ancients," it was based on a starcraft UMS game called Aeon of Strife.
I know this cus I made Aeon of Strife, I think I still have the final version on a disc somewhere. It was just a peculiar love of the Protoss backstory that I made it, but the basic concept caught on without me as I never went on to map in WC3. Guess it's one of those "turret def" or "diablo" concepts that are instantly understandable and recognizable.
I'm going to resurrect some of the great maps by other mappers that got simply too little attention. Some are just too technically awesome.
This thread is a fucking EPIC READ however there is one thing...5-7 years ago when I was a kid playing the shit out of comps on BB. I found something out by just mindlessly clicking on a Bengalass and wondered at that time how few people in the world knew about this. (Even today people who have played SC for 10 years might still not know about it even thou it's just a cute trick and fireworks.)
If you start a game up in single player melee say Jungle Siege (no idea if campaign works) but basically if you click on a CRITTER and it's not how many times u click but you have to hear the audio speech play exactly 14 times and then the critter will die and in it's place a "NUKE" animation will play out but won't do any type of damage. (I think it works on any critter even Kakaru's)
I just tried it and it still works! Go try it for yourself!!! *clickity click*
This was an awesome read. I can't believe I missed out on it the first time. I played it when Starcraft when it first came out, but I'm surprised at how much I've forgotten. My phone bill took terrible, terrible damage...
In a skirmish game If you click on a critter continuously and let the critter speech play 14 times, the critter will explode and in it's place a "nuke" animation will take place, it does no damage however.
Something I found in like 2003 or something while being bored, I doubt there's many in the world that know about it lol.
On August 09 2010 16:30 ChaseR wrote: In a skirmish game If you click on a critter continuously and let the critter speech play 14 times, the critter will explode and in it's place a "nuke" animation will take place, it does no damage however.
Something I found in like 2003 or something while being bored, I doubt there's many in the world that know about it lol.
Nobody knows this... EXCEPT EVERY STARCRAFT PLAYER EVAR!
On June 15 2009 07:26 .risingdragoon wrote: closed:
Nice mention on community mapmaking, although it was much bigger than staredit.net, which is a fairly young site.
On June 14 2009 21:26 closed wrote: DoTA - based on the "Defense of the Ancients" UMS. This doesn't need any explanations.
Correction: DoTA is "Defense of the Ancients," it was based on a starcraft UMS game called Aeon of Strife.
I know this cus I made Aeon of Strife, I think I still have the final version on a disc somewhere. It was just a peculiar love of the Protoss backstory that I made it, but the basic concept caught on without me as I never went on to map in WC3. Guess it's one of those "turret def" or "diablo" concepts that are instantly understandable and recognizable.
I'm going to resurrect some of the great maps by other mappers that got simply too little attention. Some are just too technically awesome.
Whoa...YOU made Aeon of Strife?
O_o
Haha I used to love playing that game :D
Aeon was so hard, I never beat any of the legit hard ones . We knew how, but the teamwork was never there. We would try to get all four guys to go goliath hero, then we'd mass tank minions on this one version, then we'd all gang up on the fourth row before they started sending mass hydralisk, but every game someone would mess up.
On August 09 2010 08:36 HeavOnEarth wrote: Whyd he get banned :O
closed was just banned by EvilTeletubby.
That account was created on 2008-07-30 09:39:22 and had 491 posts.
Reason: Why, thank you for the colorful Private Messages Mr. Closed!! I'm glad you've demonstrated you have no couth, tact, or common sense. Makes my job a lot easier. Thnx!!
Took me a while to find..Also he had a bunch of temp bans and warnings.
That account was created on 2008-07-30 09:39:22 and had 491 posts.
Reason: Why, thank you for the colorful Private Messages Mr. Closed!! I'm glad you've demonstrated you have no couth, tact, or common sense. Makes my job a lot easier. Thnx!!
Took me a while to find..Also he had a bunch of temp bans and warnings.
Wow, you went through the automated ban list? That never worked for me. Good job.
Something like two years old, but it came out after WoL was released, so don't know how many people saw it, and was one of the most entertaining threads I ever read on this site. (ya, I didn't join until 2010, but I lurked for a long while )
EPT![[image loading]](http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/5891/wc21w.jpg)
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I thought that was better than TA in gameplay but people got sucked in with 3D and it was still a competitor of SC 
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