What I’m about to tell you is the most average TL story, I feel that I’m the stereotype new TL user that just learned of this site since SC2. I think it’s worth telling this story so that the older users might get a better idea about how an new user looks and what it wants. Or at the very least it will make me able to post in live reports again.
So without further delay, here goes:
First a little bit about myself, I’m 21 year old male living in the Netherlands. I first got hooked on Runescape when I was 14ish. Still haven’t found a game with better / more fun quests btw. During that I also started playing WC 3 and The Frozen Throne. I was hooked. The story was amazing, characters where fun and RTS was an amazing game genre. Naturally I made the switch to WoW when I was old enough to understand and play it, around my 17th birthday.
I played WoW hardcore for about 2 years, Ulduar still holds amazing memories. However I grew bored of it. This was around the time when SC2 beta was getting close. Eager to find a new insanely time consuming hobby I dived into SC2.
I was hooked. The gameplay vids and battlereports videos looked amazing. This was the game I had been waiting for. When the Beta started I didn’t have a key, but I watched everything there was. Like most I watched every Husky and HD vid when it came out, I saw Nazgul vs TLO the morning it went up, I learned of Day9 trough his amazing Beta tourney.
At some point I ran into TL. I don’t know exactly how, I think it was Husky. Anyway I liked the site and learned of BW. I’m sure this is going to upset some people but BW never interested me. I like the competition, and follow the BW news posts of TL, but the game itself is just to old for me to watch. I can’t see what happens, and it just looks to ugly. Sorry.
I got a Betakey by pre-ordering and also a temp ban for begging for a key
When I got the Beta I started as Protoss, the race which looked the coolest in all the vids I watched. However after one game as Zerg I just fel in love with the mechanics and swarm. I played about 300 games in 2 weeks, not that much for some, but still more then I ever have in SC2.
After the release I still had a lot of time, I have watched almost every game of the first 3 GSLs. Thanks to that people like Fruitdealer are still an obsession for me, and I doubt I’ll ever forget Legalmind.
I remember when MC dominated so hard I was confident that Blizzard would remove Sentries entirely.
I have very fond memories of livereport thread in the early morning, watching games live while talking with people all over the world about a shared passion.
Trough TL I learned about MLG, Dreamhack, Homestory Cup, and every other major tourney. I learned about the very very rich history of competitive gaming and Starcraft.
However I did lose my motivation for playing SC2 myself. My mechanics are terrible, and trough I feel that I’m connected with the SC2 community, Battlenet feels empty to me. I played a few games every season, getting somewhat close to plat, losing and then stop playing again.
Time goes on and so did my life, I had less and less time to watch but I still followed the scene closely. At this point the blog starts rambling a bit so I’ll just try to get my point across.
TL is amazing, I never felt more connected with people I don’t actually know then now. It’s amazing that this scene is at a point where you can still just approach a community figure / pro and talk to them. I fear for the growth of SC2, not that it will grow to little, but to much. Growth is good, but not at all costs. It would be a shame if TL / SC2 lost its “global village” vibe, the idea that even the biggest stars in the scene are very approachable and that we get to know the faces behind the players.
I hope that in the future I can contribute more to the scene in a more meaningful way, but until then:
GL HF and Tyvm for all the good times!