Roie

The wind woke me up just a moment ago, 2:20am. Very fierce winds.

I sat up and noticed a bright light outside my window. I'm still in a dreamstate at this point and immediately think "The end of the world" for some reason.

I use occum's razor and see that the light is coming from my neighbors house, or close to it at least. I can see some trees lit up by the bright light. I hardly think the end of the world would happen in Illinois.

Still, that initial fear is still with me and I'm unable to sleep. Also the winds are very loud.

Hold me.

| Low content blog |

Right after summer break started, I went to spend a month or two with my mother (divorced).

There I joined a swim team. It's a small team, and all surrounding schools/areas are small as well, so I got pretty much all 1sts and 2nds because I'm so good or whatever.

During swim team season, I probably played 8 hours of starcraft a day. My body clock, or whatever you call it, was constantly changing. It started with a normal 7am - 11pm awake-time. Then it went to a 1pm - 5am awake time. It went to a 9pm to 1pm awake time, but that was when swimteam season was over.

I used to have a job, but I got fired. They were only giving me about 4 hours a week. I didn't care. Unemployment is pretty high around here, so gl hf finding a job for me. I've still got 1 more year of high school.

The most annoying thing about coming back is adjusting to my chair/desk. It took me a good 2 hours before I could get used to playing sc again.

I've talked about gamers who play games that but aren't competitive in games. For instance, one person once told me that I wasn't a gamer because I rarely play an xbox, and that I play some retro 11 year old game. I also know that there are very few people who engage in games competitively like this community at TL with starcraft. I often quote some things from TL about starcraft to my irl friends who introduced me to sc, to which they often reply "that's nerdy even by my standards" because of the depth and seriousness the games are taken to. And they are essentially no life losers (no offense friends of mine :D).

So as a high schooler, I thought, even in my school of over 1000, there is not a single competitive gamer other than I. There were these two kids who sat behind me and talk about counterstrike sometimes. I was instantly intrigued. Some people who play counterstrike? They aren't talking about halo or TF2 or FEAR or whatever? But this game almost as old as starcraft; something I know is played competitively? Do they know the difference between source and 1.6, and play only one version for whatever reason? But who am I to impose on these two people's discussion on something they probably just play for fun, I thought.

But today, in the computer lab, one of them was looking up a LAN party or something. A discussion came up, I told him that I did have a steam ID. No, I don't have counterstrike, because I'm gay (high school joke. This isn't to be taken literally.). I do play TF2, but its not really a competitive game. I do play starcraft competitively though.

this was perhaps the only person in the school who knew what starcraft was, but I don't know if he'd ever played it. He mentioned how gosugamers had a counterstrike team (though I'm not quite sure here, do they really?) and that's how he heard of it, probably. He asked me if I played DOTA, to which I burst out laughing, but the question was asked innocently.

But even after all this, I still didn't believe what I was being told, so I did a little investigating. turns out he's in a legit cs:s team; clan tag and everything.

Chance is only a measurement for possible outcomes. It is only an idea, and does not truly exist. Reality is what we make it.

Me and my friends kind of cycle through games. First it was Doom, then starcraft, then diablo 2, dawn of war, etc.

They want to play starcraft again. They know that I'm 'super good' (I can't make it to D+), so it should say something about their skill level.

We want to do a 3v1, but even with their skill level, I think i'll lose, because of the economy of 3 bases to the economy of 1 is very disadvantageous.

What map would you recommend this game be played on to help me stand a chance?


edit: no fastest map, money map, or anything like that. It needs to be a straight up map.

People who know what I'm talking about will lol.

In hopes that I'll look back on this and laugh...
-Roie

1. When people save their 1000th post for something, Whenver I read a post of theirs there's the glaring post count that is 666 upside down.

2. when people use backwards smilies like (: or D:

D: is understandable i guess, but why (: ?
I always think its a sad face, but then there's the colon right there, and... my eyes can't take it man.

So there's this mexican-wannabe-gangster and this tall black basketball player at my bus stop.

The mexican, out of nowhere, says "man, my lips are CHAPPED!" and he pulls out some chap stick. After he's done applying it, he smacks his lips and says "mmmm, glosseh!"

The tall black dude says "Yo, gimmie some of that."

I'm like wtf just happened?

Also, while I was on the track, some kid was singing "I rub my dick in broken glass!"

Weird day

No assignment has ever made me want to burst out laughing, make me facepalm, or make me shout "Bullshit" as much as this one did.

All week, my English teacher was telling us about this essay we're going to have to write in class. She gave no indication on what we had to write about it, but it was obvious, since we just finished our novel, The Haunting of Hill House, that it was something to do with that.

So we had to fill out these charts and notes out, getting ready to write an essay. I did this half heartedly, because, well, I'm both lazy and confident in my ability to do it well.

The day of the essay. We were given an hour to write it. Not type it, for some reason. Hand write it. And so I write a 4 page essay (double spaced). I spent the first 15 minutes thinking of a thesis to write about, searching through my notes and reading through my book. Finally, I choose why one of the main characters, Eleanor Vance, was truly alone all her life or something. Because I spent the first 15 minutes, in reality, doing nothing, I didn't have time to really finish my conclusion. Instead, I just had a 'clincher', something that ends the essay and leaves the reader in thought. I didn't restate my thesis, and I didn't summarize the main points (I never understand why these two things are separate; they sound about the same to me.)

Two days later, I get my essay back. I was actually quite proud of the essay I wrote, excluding the conclusion. Instead of the sparling 95/100 I was expecting, I get this:

"[My_name], you wrote a simply amazing and thoughtful essay! (Especially in class in an hour!)
The problem is that you didn't write about the topic assigned in the directions.
That is the reason for your grade."

I see on the top part of the direction sheet we were given, which is taken up almost entirely by an outline on the structure of the essay, etc. There is one paragraph at the top. Usually, this is where the obvious directions go, like in math class, if you just covered exponentiating logarithms, it says "Exponentiate the following logarithmic fuctions". You never read this part, because its obvious what you are supposed to do. You just spent the last hour doing it!

The paragraph on the direction sheet reads:
"The Haunting of Hill House by shirley Jackson is an example of the Gothic novel genre. Referring to the notes relaing to the literary elements of Gothic literature, select any three (3) elements from the list that are obvious in the novel. Follow the suggestions in the outline below..."

I turn the paper back over to find what my grade was.

66/100 D

Hilarious as hell at the time. I wanted to facepalm at my missing the directions. And, tbh, i think its dumb how, even though my essay is "amazing and thoughtful", I still get a D.
I added up the score, it should have been an 89/100.

Fuck.

When I started gaming, it was your average casual gamer. Super mario, stealth type fps (like 007 golden eye, where there are a total of 5 enemies on the map, etc), and RPG's.

My earliest memory was asking my mother to get my older bro to turn on a light in our room. It was dark, and I was afraid, and the reason I wanted in our room? To play our awesome new SNES.

The first game I ever played specifically for the multiplayer aspect in those days was Super Bomberman 1 & 2. But as every casual gamer does, I moved on to bigger and better things (lol), RPGS!

What started this was a little memorable game called Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. Since that game, I played such games like th Final Fantasy series, the Grandia series, Morrowind, etc. Of course, I played other games as well, like Super smash bros. and DDR.

Then 8th grade happened. I had friends. We were the Advanced-classes-nerds. Of course, we all played video games. What nerd doesn't? In 8th grade, since we all had computers, all had internet, and idea came about us. "Let's play DOOM online!" One of my friends (Let's call him "J") discovered Zdaemon, which I often use to this day for all my online doom needs. Now, I watched a little show called Pure Pwnage. Since I was young and foolish, I of course imitated whoever I idolized. I thought FPS's were lame, because Jeremy, the star of the show, thought they were. Reluctantly, I gave in. And we played. J and I were the best, and were nearly equal in skill, although I remember him beating me by 3 kills (in a 30 frag limit game) or something similar in most 1v1 games.

To follow up on this exiting new thing that connected us, the internet, we tried out starcraft. Being my foolish self once again, I immediately pushed the idea aside, saying that Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2 was better. Another friend of mine (Let's call him "L", and has nothing to do with the TL member L) "acquired" this game, played it, and still told me that starcraft was more fun. "In korea, they have 2 TV stations dedicated to starcraft, because its so good!" This never really struck me as much as it does now. Back then, Asia was where people floated around on hover chairs and robots did all the work.

Finally, I agreed to play starcraft. Ahhh, the innocence of not being the best. In FFA games, we'd all lose to L because he spammed carriers. We thought it was so cheap. I knew there was a way to beat carriers. I tried everything. Dark archon mind control? Nope. Mass goliaths? Nope. Ghosts' lockdown? EMP? Scourge? All failed. Now I know that all of those will easily beat carriers, I just sucked back then. We eventually gave up starcraft. It got boring.

Looking back at my life from THAT point, I realized... I watch the show pure pwnage, I consider myself a gamer. I consider myself good. But what have I done to deserve that title? Played lots of RPG's? ha. I need something I can win in. Something to, how Jeremy would say, "pwn" in.
And so I picked up Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium wars (aka cnc3: spam wars). I innocently played, unknowing of a 'competitive community' or anything. I played to get better. And I did. I reached the top 5000 at one point, something I think is laughable by my standards today, but at the time, I was king of the world. EA says something about WCG. Wait, what?

I look it up. Competitive gaming. Money. Team Liquid.
Team liquid? What's that? Oh, a place to talk about starcraft. Lots of theories, I've tried some of these. Let's look up carrier spam. Nope, these guys are idiots. None of these counters work. Carrier spam is overpowered.

Then we all got back into starcraft. I still lost. I went back to this "team liquid". Turns out you're supposed to make more than 12 scv's. Oh. That makes sense. Build orders. The meta game. After learning all this, I was instantly the best in our group in starcraft.

And the rest is history. I joined teamliquid, I get on iccup. I can maintain a D grade, but thats about it. My growth in the game feels exponential. Back then, I read a lot about "timings", but never really used them, because they were always wrong for me. Now I do, because I learned you need constant macro in order for them to work.

Nowadays, I play Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 competitively. Its turning into a 200apm game, actually. Its a lot of fun, and no doubt EA will buy its way into wcg 2009, so that's what I'm working towards now. I also am playing Quake live, but not really competitively, granted its competitive in itself. I'm also playing SSBB, getting into poker and chess as well.

I'm writing this kind of as a final decision. I often explain to people "There's a certain magic in starcraft, where if you get good at starcraft, you are by default good at every other RTS." I'm going to go where everyone else is going, so if starcraft dies, I probably won't be playing it anymore. My goal, then, is to at least reach D+, if not C-, on iccup, so I can say "Yeah. I played starcraft better than 99% of the starcraft population, and I've beaten quite a few people who play the game competitively. I can be the best in another RTS later on, if all goes well."

So if/when sc dies, I will have gotten all the experience out of it I need.
If it all works the way I'm hoping.

http://www.gomtv.net/classics2/

Made me laugh a little.