Starcraft 2: The Day[9] phenomenon

Heyo all, welcome back to my blog! I hope you are all enjoying reading this as much as I am enjoying finally scribbling my random thoughts down! I realise I haven't done a post about Diablo 3 for a while, so after this one I think the next one will be dedicated to my Monk character.

So while I was playing around with the 2v2 games about a year or so ago, I discovered Day[9]. He was a pro-gamer in the Starcraft: Brood War and he did very well for himself! At some stage he started making shout casts and for those who don't know.. shout casts are where some guy gets a replay off two other guys playing a game.. then describes in great detail as much of what is happening as they can. 

Now, I think a lot of his success stems from him being a naturally funny guy.. alongside the fact that he knew his stuff when it came to Brood War. He put out a LOT of content. He plugged in his webcam and talked about Starcraft for an hour or so for five nights a week, a feat he is still pulling off to this day(barring when he is out of town).

His shows have varied topics, usually as he states "It's day9 daily, where we learn to be a better gamer" and they actually do help and some of his thinking and suggestions can even be applied to other games. I would attribute my rise from Bronze to Gold to having watched his streams almost religiously for ages! For the most part now, the daily is analyzing games that he thinks are interesting and might help his viewership in their aim to get better. 

In my opinion, the best thing about his show is Monday's version - Funday Monday. Where he generally imposes a restriction on his viewers and asks that they submit the replay to him and then the next week he will play the best replays on the Monday show and generally laugh at how terribly awful the games are thanks to his restrictions. Usually he has a comic spurt at the beginning of the show where he discusses something about his day or past.

From hearing him talk about it, I found out about a professional team who had a website, which had a wealth of information on the game and a whole host of pro-gamers who stream their practice games live. I never thought I would find so much enjoyment from watching people play a computer game but with Starcraft I can't help myself, whenever I get a free moment I tend to head over to http://www.teamliquid.net/ and flip on a live stream. Of course I have my favourites and I tend to only watch Zerg players... cause well, Zerg 4 lyf.

If you are interested in hearing more about Day[9], I would highly recommend his daily #100 which can be found here - http://blip.tv/day9tv/day-9-daily-100-my-life-of-starcraft-3505715 - It's quite a long video but he talks about how he got started in Starcraft and how his life has been changed by this game.

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Ciao for now amigos!

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Starcraft 2: The middling

So, where was I? Oh yes! I remember..

So I was left with Zerg! Why not? The general creepiness of the race seems to suit me.. or so she who must be obeyed tells me!

After I had completed the campaign, I was ready for the ladder! Or so I thought, I dutifully played my placement matches and got the wondrous Bronze league! Though, as with most who got placed Bronze, I thought myself far better than that! I was at least Gold, maybe even platinum in my mind!

I ended up playing quite a few matches and having double the wins that I had losses, which only went on to prove to myself that I was better than Starcraft 2 was giving me credit for! Then, after a series of being cheesed which thoroughly annoyed me, I stopped playing for a while. Maybe one or two seasons went by and still I didn't play.

Then one day, Chris again I think asked me to play some games with him. So I did and it re-kindled my interest in actually playing and I plucked up the courage to do my placement matches and got placed in Gold. I don't know how.. maybe it was the many hours that I had spent watching Day9 (http://day9.tv/), he inspired me to change how I played but more about that later!

Armed with my newfound knowledge on how to play the game, I played a few more ladder games but mostly I just played random 4v4 games, they can be so much fun! Especially when you get placed with some awesome players and they all just trash talk each other for the duration of the game. At one point, during an especially good month of working night shift, we had 5-7 people all playing each other on lunch! This was the first time I played Shaun, who had never played against a person before and picked Terran as he'd done the campaign.. in our first game I promptly proxy hatched in his base and spine crawler rushed him.

Eventually though, my enthusiasm for playing dropped off, mostly just because I was so busy working and doing the whole being social thing. Another couple of seasons passed and someone else from work started to really get into playing Starcraft and asked me to start playing with them. Shaun was back and gunning for me. He now played Zerg like me and at that point I think I was a little above him in skill.. can't say the same now though I think!

We played together quite a lot, 1v1s and 2v2 team games.. I think they are some of the fondest memories I have of playing competitive Starcraft games, just sitting on Skype chatting while blasting out match after match. Around that time, we decided to start our very own funny little team. We used up our name changes and became team Bad Micro. We thought and still think we are so clever! Because this made my Starcraft moniker BMMacDaddy and as anyone who knows a little about Starcraft will know, BM also stands for Bad Manner. We had quite a few people talk crap to us about our name, to which we would always respond politely and happily notify them that it meant Bad Micro, but secretly we enjoyed the little smack talk that would erupt from our name.

That's all from me for now, next time I'll go into more detail about how Day9 changed my Starcraft life, introduced me to watching professionals playing and where I am at now, with Starcraft 2.

Ciao for now!

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