Seeing as this is what all the cool kids are doing nowadays, I talked to a guy about a guy and got me a Korean account. Add me on if0r6@hanmail.net if you have one yourself.
I'll talk more about it later, but I will say that Korean bronzies are pretty good.
EDIT- OK, hows about some first impressions?
1) Koreans are unrefined. At least the 'low' level ones are. All they know is how to execute a simple one, or two base, timing and that's it. They execute it ok enough, some decent micro but that is all they can do. The rest of the game is them fumbling because they don't know what to do because the game is supposed to be over after you get some void rays out or your blue flames or whatever. So as long as the game goes for about 10 minutes, I tend to win. So far anyway.
2) There are bugger all Zergs in Korea. I'm tempted to ask them if they speak english and are foreign. But I understand it completely. Zerg is a race that has a bit of trouble executing timing attacks and a lot more troube dealing with timing attacks and the whole server is full of people who execute timing attacks like massive cockheads. Koreans must be weak willed individuals mostly because they would much rather be the cockhead handing out timing attacks then the cockhead who can read it all pretty well and deal with it appropriately. Most of the time.
After about 30 ish games I've played 3 Zergs. One game I disconnected, but felt confident my early hellions had set me up for an easy win. Second game was close spawns metalopolis and he hilariously overmade lings and my cloaked banshees owned. Third game was against a 1300 Masters Zerg who had no sense of how his economy worked except that you must devote 80% of your effort spreading creep. Didn't save his poorly microed units from dying. And seriously, if you saw how he controlled his units you'd choke on your own vomit. Running mutalisks over towers and a-moving banelings into tanks. No clue how he dealt with the thriving Terran population with play like that.
3) Korean Protoss are cheesy fuckers. I've had about 10 TvP so far. Two of them have been what I would classify as a macro game, against an 1100 Masters Protoss (victory! He could not handle my drop) and some high ranked diamond I don't give a shit about because he opened phoenixes and I haven't figured out a strong way to punish that opening with 1 rax reactor expand (grrr!). The rest have been a succession of void ray, gateway, templar all ins that I usually do deal with but still leave me incensed with rage somewhat. I dunno. Protoss is a race that does that.
4) Loads of Terrans. Good tvt practice, especially as I have a new build I want to work through and 2 Terrans coming up next week who I have to prepare some builds against. And I do got some builds.
Most of them play 1/1/1 into either banshees and/or hellions. Blue flame hellion drop openings are very common which is good because I'm good at sniffing those out and getting free wins. I won a game vs a one oGsYAHO because of this. He even spoke a bit of english! HuK/MC Fighting!
5) The general Korean playstyle is very aggressive and forward. As I said, most koreans do timing attack styles but a lot of the time they are aggressively positioning their forces around the map, which does make feeling them out a little easier, and considering that most of the Koreans I've been playing against are the low level scrubs I don't think their micro is very good so yea. That is fun.
Will update with more progress as it comes. So far I am in platinum league and with the ladder locked for a few more days I don't think I'm going to see diamond soon. But that's ok, I think my hidden MMR will carry over and I can get into Masters np np.
I've been watching Destiny on his stream as he plays on the KR ladder and I daresay most of my observations are pretty much the same. Except that since he's Zerg all the Terrans go for 11/11 (ramp block with Bunkers half the time :P). It's actually pretty hilarious to see how they fall apart once they're out of their comfortable domain.
I am in the process of acquiring a Taiwan Account for the server merge I might do a detailed writeup from a zerg's perspective (with your permission of course iaguz).
@ Most of you. I dunno. I did try streaming once months ago but the problem is that unless you are a pr0 or incredibly entertaining, or both really, then you're not going to get a lot of stream viewers. Might do it again if enough people ask. We'll see.
@ Paroxym, dunno why you think you need my permission to post stuff.
@ Minimat. I think their timing attack style could easily foil a lot of lower leaguers from other places simply because their ability to execute it is very strong and a lot of lower leaguers are either very cheesy with silly builds they will probably lose with or attempt a more management focused style they will still lose with because they don't execute a more difficult build properly. Like I said, most of Korea so far just gets confused after 10 minutes because to them the game is supposed to be over already.
Oh, and this idea of Korean Diamonds being the equivalent of NA Mid/Low masters is occasionally horseshit. I can show you a few replays of diamond level Koreans who have no ******* clue. For example, tonight I played a protoss who did 3 gate robo expand, cannons into High Templar. I hit him with 2 loaded dropships at 8-9 minutes and killed his 2 zealots, 3/4 sentries and 4 stalkers and straight up won the game right then.
On the other hand, in Cityhunter I played an NA low masters protoss and both games went to the 3 base + point (I still won both comfortably but the person I played wasn't a complete retard once he hit midgame, to his credit).
I think the confusion is because as mentioned above, Koreans are heavily focused around timing attack strategies and with a bit of micro you can execute one of these pretty much as well as any near professional player. Timing attack strategies are ******* easy. Hey look, I'm going to build 2 factories, slap reactors on them, churn out 14 hellions and get the easiest ******* win ever on Australia's best Zerg. Or I'm going to open reactor hellion expand into 2 port banshee and get the easiest ******* win over Australia's other best Zerg, and then proceed to drink his still warm tears.
Because Koreans have this mentality with their play and most people suck at executing build orders and playstyles that can account for enough of these and successfully deflect them they think the problem is that Koreans are much better because they win a lot. But when you see these supposedly mid-level masters players try and play the game after the 8-10 minute mark they are ******* terrible because this is not their mentality. They get confused and go off and play races not called Zerg.
But that's what I've got after about 30-40 games. Will put more in later (I rather suspect I'm right about this).
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