Diary of a Newbie

Just some anecdote/general blog shenanigans. Hopefully I'll get off my lazy ass and compile some replays of my friends and I to start up the "Tales of a Newbie" idea that's been burning in my brain.

I really love Starcraft. I do not think there is a single game that I have a stronger emotional attachment to. No game has affected me in the same way. It's helped me through depression.

I had lived in a shitty place for two years in Northeastern Ohio called Coshocton, and I wasn't very accepted there. Every day I'd come home, hop on Starcraft and play on Battle.net with some friends. Some I knew from the previous place I'd lived, some I'd met just playing the game. There was only one person who'd even seemed to heard of online gaming, much less Starcraft, in Coshocton. It wasn't until later when I got into progaming that I realized the irony that the one friend I had there was from Korea, and our friendship was based around Starcraft; however, I digress.

During my time in Coshocton, I was depressed. I mean REALLY low. I had a habit of breaking into tears during conversations online about how much I hated everything. I truly belief Starcraft saved my life. If I hadn't have found it and linked to other people with it, there's little doubt I would've done... something. What exactly that is I'm not sure; all I know is that back then I didn't want to live anymore. Now I look ahead to the future, getting into college with hopes to become a video game programmer.

My whole inspiration for this blog was me listening to the Starcraft soundtrack, and today's been a pretty emotional day. Every time I listen to any music from Starcraft, it has a very evocative effect. The power of my Starcraft nostalgia is extremely great. I remember all the times I played a melee against one of my older brother's friends nine years ago. One day, one GLORIOUS day, I managed to get a Dark Templar rush and beat him. Granted, this was after losing about 200 times in a row, but I was nine years old, this was huge.

He then refused to play against me anymore and bitched constantly to my brother. It's quite humorous when you think of it.

Anyway, I wish to dedicate this blog entry to Starcraft, memories, and all my old Starcraft buddies, most of whom I've completely lost contact with, sadly: Marino, Amir, Eric, Toku, David, Dc-Wizard (Never did catch his name), and most of all, Jeremy.

Anyone else have some fond or not-so-fond memories of Starcraft feel free to post them. Got a funny/angry/saddening/glorious Starcraft moment? Post it, I'd like to hear what other people have to say about the past decade.

P.S. Holy cow I can ramble! I originally meant to post about three sentences.

Well, I've had this idea for awhile now, that I'd post some replays of my friends and I playing (we're really, really bad). Well, we were really, really bad when I had the idea, we've progressed to just being extremely mediocre. Anyway, my idea was that I'd post replays and such of me and my friends progressing, becoming better at the game.

I'd start off by showing some of our multi-year-old vs. comp games we played. As you'll see (when I finally get around to poking around our old replays) the best one of us is about a 60 APM newbie, and it only scales down from there. With the RWA plugins being released, we could also commentate on just how bad we are, and try to give some insight into the mind of a just starting player.

Nowadays the best one of us is still only a 120-150 APM player, but we've all progessed quite a bit. We are still growing, and none of us have stopped becoming better and better, even though there's only one of us that won't dodge constantly when someone else challenges them.

If anyone has any suggestions, feel free to post them. I'd like to get some feedback on the idea as a whole and see if there's anything people would like me to add. I know watching replays of 4 n00bs fight 4 comps doesn't sound interesting, but I thought it would be fun to see how a couple players advance over the course of many games and learn new builds and such.