EPTCan you give us a brief outline of your gaming history - when you started playing, what games, etc?
I unfortunately didn't get to grow up with stuff like the Super Nintendo so I just went straight from stuff like the gameboy and the N64 into PC gaming. I started with the game Twinsen Odyssey, which is totally amazing you should all check it out. And then from there just from playing games like counter-strike and scbw and um, scbw and cs really are the ones that stuck in my mind the most because they were such fantastic games and sc2 naturally leads out of that fantastically.
Did you play competitively in CS or SCBW?
I played a bit competitively, getting to Cal-main in both CS1.6 and CSS. I didn't play competitively in scbw until sc2 was coming out and I thought “oh man I gotta get good at this so I can play sc2.”
Why the name 'orb'?
So, after the game I was talking about Twinsen Odyssey my username was originally TwinsenDude because Twinsen was taken on America-On-Line, oh AOL Back in the day... But eventually when I started to get known for my animations on NewGrounds, which is an animation website, I wanted a more original name that wasn't just taken from a video game or something, and I didn't want dude at the end, something that was original enough so that I could have the original name myself. And you know in Starcraft, so many people used like a one word noun like Boxer, Yellow, Flower. So I thought I should do something like that, and it was just kind of random. I was really into animation and I think at the time I had been experimenting with a lot of animation effects rather than actual movement but a lot of effects and I guess the Orb, thinking of a floating glowing thing and a sphere is just such an iconic symbol of animation that I think that's part of where it came from.
Recently, your popularity has sky-rocketed, why do you think that is?
I was actually talking about this with some guys I met that actually go to the same school as me that
I found out watch my stream....
That must be cool, getting recognized.
Oh ya, oh man, I didn't even know that were people here that played starcraft. I couldn't find people before but... I was talking with them about you know like... even when not featured it seemed like I was getting a lot more viewers than some of the people that were featured and I didn't understand, I thought you know I got lucky, or something about the way I cast, but I think it's a combination of the fact that I talk while I'm streaming. First off I talk while I'm streaming, sometimes talking about what I'm doing and why the other factor is that I don't play music.
Ya, I can't stand people who listen to music while streaming.
I can't stand when i watch someone else's stream and they have their obnoxious music that I am not a fan of.
Right, exactly.
It's like everybody has different tastes. Oh and the other factor would be the rage of course.
The rage
The rage, ya know I didn't do this on purpose, I wasn't like "Oh I'm gonna get mad and people are going to find it funny.” It's just what I do when I game, I'm very competitive and of course when you're competitive and you really want to win you're going to get upset when you lose. If you don't get upset when you lose then you don't really care about winning. So, I try not say anything about it in game. And I think most people don't realize this as much because you don't say much about it in game, everybody is really well mannered in game. Not everyone of course is like this.
Some people...
Most people are generally well mannered. But out of game... People think that because I'm streaming I wanna bad manner these people and I don't. I use it as a way to vent my frustration. Ya know I'll lose to some cheese and it's like "AHHHH He's so terrible at this game and I lost to it, god dammit!" So I just use it to vent. I think I've gotten this reputation from haters that, that I'm actually a bad mannered player and I'm not. I just vent. I didn't really think it would be entertaining but when someone made this Rage Board...
Oh my god, It's so funny
It's so funny. I listen to myself and I start cracking up, even though its me raging it's still funny.
How long do you plan on doing what you are doing and what do you want to get out of it, Any plans for the future?
In terms of what I wanna do with it, I mean... it is a game. I play it to have fun, despite it seeming like I don't have fun. I don't know if any of you have checked out my stream thread recently and seen the picture that Chill made for me. It's a baby raging and being forced to play sc2. That may be what it might seem like when I'm raging, but I do have a ton of fun playing despite what I might say about hating the game. I just exaggerate a lot to vent, but I really enjoy it. Obviously winning something like a tournament, those kind of things is like another dimension of the fun. It's like taking it to another level. I would like to in the future... that would be a goal of mine to win tournaments. I would especially love, in terms of dreams for the game, to win a live tournament. It's there live and you are actually playing with these people, to win something like that would be truly fantastic for me.
Oh, speaking of tournaments, quick sidebar here: How do you feel about the HDH tournament coming up?
That tournament will be wild. Oh my god they rigged those matches so hard, it's just so obvious. All of these opposite players. But you know what? Who cares!
Who cares!
It is going to be so awesome. With most tournaments I watch the "important matches." For example with the TSL, I'm kind of ashamed to say it, I didn't watch games in the RO16 and stuff. I only watched stuff in the semi-finals and the finals because it's fun to watch the important matches but ya know spending all that time I really can't do. But with the HDH every match up is going to be fantastic. I am not gonna miss one of those. It might not be "fair," but it will certainly be entertaining.
Well it is an E-sport.
Exactly, it's going to be entertaining and draw a lot of viewers, that I bet you that sponsors will get enough out of it that they are going to do it again. I bet you Husky and HD are gonna get a lot more subscribers also.
Follow up, one of the HDH rules is that livestream cannot be used in any of the matches, how many people do you think cheat using livestream in tournaments?
Oh my god, it is insane, this is a great move by HDH to legitimize the tournament scene. See it's not that big of a deal with the smaller prize tournaments. I do really think that if livestream implemented some kind of ability to add a delay. For example a 10 minute delay would be fantastic.
CS had it.
Ya and it worked great. Livestream probably never thought that there program would be used like this in this fashion.
As a defensive protoss - would you consider yourself defensive - do you think the High-Ground mechanic should be changed at all?
I definitely think I am a defensive protoss player, especially if you look at the current trends. I was about to say metagame but I don't wanna get yelled at by Nony. It seems like almost all protoss players except those at the very top of the game, all-in almost every game. Obviously this a blanket statement that isn't always true. It terms of balance, it seems like protoss is doing better than it actually is because so many protoss do all-ins. They can win because they are doing these pushes but if you play standard as a protoss you seem to play at a disadvantage particularly in PvZ. In PvT it's a little more manageable. Once the queen mechanic starts kicking in on 3 hatches it's nearly impossible to keep up. Do I think the High-Ground mechanic needs to be changed? Absolutely, I really need to agree with most of the community on this. It's just so much dependency on the map has to do with it, and it's not being used well. If you look at the maps there's a lot of upper ground situations where it literally makes no difference. Blistering Sands, Desert Oasis. You can basically just Attack move wherever you want with little to no consequence of the terrain or the position of your army except at the chokes.
What changes would you make to the game over-all if you could, Unit changing, mechanics wise... anything?
That is such a huge question.
Ya it's pretty loaded
There's so much you could do. Which would effect other things that would warrant other changes, but off the top of my head some changes I see should be experimented with are Queen larvae to 3 instead of 4. Next one is the dark archon back. If we can't see the dark archon back that's understandable, what I would like to see is some greater utility for the normal archon. Right now the archon is basically your templar are out of energy and you have nothing more to do with them. And the archon isn't even a great unit. Some changes are, well first make it "massive" which would mean its not going to be slowed by the Marauder shots. The other change that would be really interesting is some form of maelstrom as a cast for the archon. And when merging two high templar the resulting archon would only have the average between their energy. So you can't use the archons for storm and then merge and maelstrom. You would need to choose. One of the problems with archons is that it is no longer a choice between, do I want high templar or archons it's just, I want high templar and then when they are out of energy I can get archons for free basically. On the other hand, if you give archons utility on their own that they don't have when you merge them with no energy then it's a choice. This would help with the protoss' lack of anti-air unit also.
Do you think Blizzard is going in the right direction with the series of patches they had?
Alright, to speak generally about patches. I really would like to see blizzard doing more of an experimentation style of patch release. The way they are doing it is internal patches in house and then when they seem okay they release it. I think they should just release everything and get feedback. Some of their internal team is good but, there are better players not in Blizzard. So far with patches they haven't gone back on anything, unless I am mistaken. Not once. I don't know if this is like, they don't wanna be seen as wrong. Smaller patches much more often I feel would be a lot better. I would like to see them use a patch and then if it doesn't fix it like they wanted, undo it and try something else. In terms of the original question that's really hard, I gotta think about what they've been doing. So far every single patch has had a nerf to protoss. But overall I think they will achieve some sort of balance. It's just going to take some time.
Anything else you'd like to say to your fans?
I've started hosting a new show called "Orb knows best," and it's basically a show to help out mostly lower level players. They send in replays and I analyze them and show them where they could have improved, or things they could have done better in the game. It airs daily at 9pm EST, just tune in to www.livestream.com/orbtl to check it out.
