SC2SEA.com - Starcraft 2 SEA eSports Community Site

Hello SC2SEA!

It's been a while since this forum was a regular browse for me, probably not since last year was it in my top 8 on Chrome. I've missed it, and upon reading the chat logs the last couple of days it makes me happy to see there are still passionate and awesome people in this community.

Anyway before I get to my main point, just wanted to catch people up with what i've been doing. Since joining Frenetic Array after WCS and playing some online qualifying tournaments, I seemingly dissapeared from 'competitive play'. The truth was, the game was not fun at all. Even as the zerg, it felt stale and moronic to play, and the rewarding feeling I used to get from playing to win a game was all but gone. I've never been a person to play a lot, and to be honest i've actually slacked for all but 4 months in my 3~ year SC2 history, which is quite awful.. but it's just how I am. My dedication for spamming games was never my strong suit, being a quick adapter and learner was. A good friend of mine, Mr. Johno Pinder once mentioned to someone that I was (I believe these are his words) one of the most talented players he'd seen, and those words were reciprocated back to him.. but what am I getting at?

Well, i've relied on my BroodWar experience and luckily having a good mind for the game for so long, and upon seeing people such as the fray boys and anyone from the SEA scene such as Light, Mafia, Rossi, PiG etc. spam at minimum 3x my games season after season, it became increasingly apparent that I was never in this for the long haul. Once it became a job that I most of the time did not enjoy, #dedication went out the window too and I lost my drive to force games out. I basically played 30 games of Zerg between October~ 2012 and March 2013, as well as a handful of HotS beta games.

For a couple of months I didn't think I would even buy Heart of the Swarm, but 2 days before release I had a realisation - I love StarCraft. Playing StarCraft 1v1 for 7 years has given me so many great memories and future nostalgic moments, and I wanted to honor the game that gave me so much. HotS was purchased and I started playing Terran exclusively as well as team games, and I put in a good amount of games, even managing to reach top 8 master on NA with my Terran after being inactive for quite some time.

As I started to enjoy the feel of playing again, I switched back to zerg and played on NA for a bit, but then soon transferred back to my beloved Korea after my ping improved and I have been there since. The things I mentioned before such as the realization of my awful #dedication cap were apparent too me a LONG time ago, but after having many months to think while furthering the other aspects of my life that I had ignored made me realize that I can simply have fun playing Starcraft. If anyone saw the NonY interview that was conducted within the last day, a lot of what he said was what I felt. I'm someone that personally suffers from terrible anxiety issues, and playing Starcraft has always been a tense experience for me. I suffer from ladder anxiety, I hate tournaments unless i'm playing a lot and in good form which has not happened for over a year, hence no tournaments and all I ever wonder is 'what will people think of me if i lose this' or 'i need to prove myself to these people so i feel accepted'. Adelaide LAN's have been a blessing, but i'm so so lucky.. well lucky is quite rude, but being able to win 6~ LANs with the anxiety I live with everyday was such a proud moment for me looking back... I shudder to think how devastated I would be if I lost even one of those. Being able to use the $100+ to suffice myself for a few weeks was what kept me going well in 2012, so in a sense SC2 didn't just give me amazing memories and moments, but also help with my personal and financial issues - however miniscule the finance may have been.

Wow, many walls of texts! Sorry, just outpouring words as I think of them so bare with me! Yeh anyway, Starcraft is still fun to me. I have enjoyed watching HotS since release and i'm enjoying the SC2 experience again, and I actually WANT to go online on korea and play games just to play - not for a team to feel useful, not to prove anyone wrong, not to be accepted, and not to practice for specific tournaments and stress myself out. I just do it because this game is great. I apologize that I was not able to stay in the scene as a consistent player or even content producer/caster, but not many people would mind anyway .

Ok so the final point - The AvCon tournament coming up in a couple of weeks will be my final tournament as a 'semi-pro' player, if I am still called that. I'm aware this is probably many months late, but i'll be officially stepping down as an official fray player and will take a coaching role - basically chatting with the boys and giving input where I feel it's necessary. Severing the player/team connection seems to be the final step for me moving forward as a person in other forms of life, as well as being able to enjoy the game i've always loved and respected.

Thankyou if anyone read all this. After WCS I had 2 months of me basically wanted to make a blog post similar to this but more emotional and full of shoutouts, but I just couldn't. I stayed quiet and faded away because I didn't want to make a big deal out of it - I'm just some guy who got lucky that his brother told him that you can play Broodwar online 8 years ago and have made life-long friends out of it.

It's been a good run. I'll make sure to try and peek my head around the scene a bit more solely as a fan now. !

P.S Special shoutout to ChadMann - It's been an amazing run since we began the Carnage experiment. You've been too understanding, thanks for keeping me around!

sPook