HEY LISTEN!
Hello TL. What's happenin'?
I know we've had our share of rough times, it ain't always sunshine and daisies on the internet. I started out as a regular poster on your boards, I admit most if not all my posts were in General and I hardly ever dabbled in BW Strat so I can't comment on many things with too much authority, but I can tell you one thing -- BW was bigger than all of us. This is a fact that we understand, a fact that we've come to accept; and it has humbled us in our endeavors.
I went there.
For many of us, BW taught us a stern lesson in humility. No matter smart you were, someone was smarter; no matter how fast you were, someone was faster; no matter how well you played, someone played better. It was just the natural order of things. People knew that no matter how hard they were trying, someone out there in that little-big community of ours, someone was trying harder. People understood that improvement in BW was a self-reflective process. You had to find it in yourself to win, you had to understand that the reason you lost is because you made mistakes and to get better you had to come to terms with them. It wasn't about what your opponent did right, it was about what you did wrong.
SC2 Strat.
So what's changed? Why is it that since SC2's release everyone has forgotten what it was like to be humble? SC2 strat is filled with countless discussions about balance because people don't want to admit that they are bad. You can see it in the way they formulate their posts. They give general overviews of what they think is wrong WITH THE GAME as opposed to with their own play. They hardly ever provide their own replays as evidence because they know -- let me repeat that -- they KNOW that there are other reasons they lost. They just decide to ignore them.
"Here's what I think would fix it..."
The game isn't perfect, I'll give you that; but you gotta level with me, the game isn't massively flawed either. The word imbalance has been used so much that the meaning has been warped into uselessness. Imbalance doesn't mean something is harder to do than something else, imbalance means something is impossible to do. A balanced game does not mean every race is homogeneous, it means there is equal OPPORTUNITY to win. So what if, certain races are harder to play? Should we nerf Protoss in BW because D level players find them "imbalanced"?
This guy just played 500 ladder games. He isn't exhausted, he's just tired of your bullshit.
The next time you make a thread in SC2 Strat just think for a minute or two, was it really impossible for you to win that game? Could you not have won if you played a little smarter or faster? Then, maybe instead of making some smug passing comment in a thread about how impossible it is you might want to suck it up, post your replay, and try and improve instead of using TL as your personal soapbox (the irony!!).
Don't underestimate the pony.
I think most of all we need to remember what site this is. This isn't bnet forums or some feel good suggestion forum. This is TeamLiquid. We play the game because we love it, we do things because they are challenging, and we're elitists 'cause we tell it how it is.