Hello there!
My name is James, on B.net I go by MilitantXIII.
I'm 23 years old and have a full-time job.
TL;DR FOR EVERYTHING BELOW THIS - Started in the Beta in Copper League, now I'm in Gold and hopefully Platinum soon. Line 'em up, here we go.
I've told people about this ambition before, a lot of the time it gets met with laughter, people telling me to "be realistic" and not to get my hopes up. After all, how can somebody hold a full-time job and still have the time to pursue Masters? How will I possibly be able to compete? How will I be able to keep up competitively?
Practice, is how. I am a firm believer that with practice and determination, anything is possible. I was raised being taught that I can do whatever I want as long as I apply myself, and I believe I found that something that I desire to apply myself to.
I started out with Warcraft II, the original Starcraft and Brood War followed soon after. I'll be honest, I wasn't good. At all. I was actually pretty terrible. Probably the worst part about it was I had no way to know how I could improve. All I knew was that people were getting huge armies and trouncing me before I knew what hit me. After a lot of trial and an equal amount of error, I pretty much stopped trying and just played customs and BGH games that didn't matter.
That was pretty much where my interest in RTS games stopped. I played Warcraft 3 for a bit, but I ended up not liking the hero mechanic much at all, messed around with customs games a bit, and again, just generally lost interest. Until I heard that StarCraft 2 was coming.
I hadn't gotten a beta key, but I was sure as hell going to buy this game. I pre-ordered the Special Edition from Gamestop, got my beta key, and started playing. I played my placement matches, and started to get disappointed. I was getting wrecked. Bad memories of futile effort in Brood War started rushing back all-too-clearly. I finished my placements, and much to my dismay, was dropped into Copper. I was crushed.
I decided to play one or two more, if nothing else, just to test out how good the new matchmaking system was. I lost my first game, but it was pretty close. I was pretty pleasantly surprised. I mean, I still lost, but I at least felt like I stood a chance. Back in Brood War it would have been absolutely merciless as I was crushed underfoot of someone whose understanding was just that much better than mine. I decided to play another.
After a grueling 45-minute Copper League Macro Fest, my opponent GG'd. I couldn't believe it. I actually won a game. I had tasted blood and I fucking liked it. I played another, and another, and soon enough, the obsession set in. By the end of the beta, by reviewing replays, dredging TeamLiquid, and googling for any other bits of advice I could possibly find, I had clawed my way out of Copper, tore through Bronze and landed myself in Silver. The beta phase closed. Now I had to wait.
10 minutes to launch at midnight, I was at Gamestop waiting to pick up my copy. I couldn't wait. Installed and headed straight into the placements. Silver league. Fuck yeah. Here, however, is where the frustration began.
It was a tough few months between work being insane and some issues in the family, Real Life just seemed absolutely intent on tearing me away. Just after I had managed to scramble into Gold league, it was very clear that I was going to have next-to-zero time to play for the next several months. "You gotta do what you gotta do," is a phrase that I often look on for comfort, as it explains that there are some things you just can't change, no matter how much you would like to, and you just need to grit your teeth and carry on.
From January 2011 to June 2011 I did not play at all. Six months without picking it up once. Maybe 4 of those months were because I genuinely just didn't have time, the other two was just because I kind of liked having free time to dick around and do whatever for a change. Normally I'm the kind of person who MUST stay busy, I loathe wasting time, and sitting idle seems like a huge waste, but for some reason I liked having that little bit of extra time. It allowed me to not feel so rushed all the time and I did like that. Then I started hearing about MLG.
This was the first time I had ever taken an interest in the pro scene at all. I knew that BW was really big in Korea from the time I had spent on TL doing research, but I never really got all that much into it. Seeing the pro matches, discovering Tastosis and Day[9], and seeing how much everything had blown up, seeing the momentum eSports was gaining since I had been away brought me right back in. That 6-month break, however, affected me much more than I ever could have anticipated.
After a couple weeks of laddering, losing, desperately analysing and searching for any tips, builds, or advice to try and improve, it had finally happened. De-ranked. Dropped back into Silver League. I hadn't felt that de-motivated since I decided to stop trying at Brood War. Believe me, I was close to giving up and relegating my StarCraft 2 time to custom games and messing around with friends; the same fate my interest in Brood War shared. It was around this time that I discovered Reddit and, in turn, r/Starcraft.
At first, it was information overload. I didn't know where to start. Pro matches, BarCraft, discussions, a bit (lot) of drama, but most of all, discovering r/Starcraft led me to discover the rCraftGaming.com Weekly King of the Hill tournaments. Fortunately, the first time I heard of it, the Silver KOTH was that night. I signed up. While waiting for my match to come up, I watched the stream. The games were being casted by WoB (Wave of Babies) and Spartan. The stream was highly entertaining to watch, simply because they absolutely ripped on the people playing, drilling every mistake they made and then joking about it. My match came up, I closed the stream... and lost. I was a bit disappointed, yet again, but I was more antsy for the stream to finish so I could go back and watch the VOD of them tearing apart my play.
Weeks and weeks passed of laddering and hitting the KOTH. Until one day I saw a post by a guy named Lobber on r/Starcraft about how he was taking a year off before going to college to see if it would be feasible to go pro. I thought to myself, "Damn, there's a guy with determination." It motivated me. What also motivated me was that he was supporting himself by offering coaching sessions for $25 an hour, $45 for two. I decided to get an hour with him because hey, even if I just suck and he couldn't help me at all, I'm still supporting somebody that seems like a cool guy and if he wants to go pro, I'll do what I can to help him out. I had no idea how much that one hour would help.
It turned out my macro was absolutely horrible, but I had no idea what was wrong with it. I actually didn't know that you were supposed to be constantly producing probes. My Warpgates were sitting idle a lot and I had no idea when I should be taking my 3rd. Supply blocks were also a problem. Lobber helped me with all of it in the span of about an hour. I'm still working on these things, but that one session allowed me to figure out what I needed to work on. After that one coaching session, I had rocketed from rank 40 to #1 in my Silver division in a timeframe of about a week. It started matching me against, and I started beating, Gold-league players. Gold was within my grasp again, I could feel it.
August 2011, late-night browsing r/Starcraft, I see a post about a guy putting together a league. The Apprentice Star League it was being called. Open to all leagues Bronze to Diamond. I jumped on it and managed to sign up and grab one of the last 3 slots for Silver players. Shortly thereafter, I find that each team will have a Master League coach. The coaches hadn't been announced yet, but I never saw this coming. I had assumed that all the teams would be working together to help everyone improve. I was fucking stoked. If ONE HOUR with real coaching had helped me out so much, I could only imagine how much regular sessions were going to improve my game! I was so pumped I didn't know whether to scream a lot or ladder until my fingers bled. I ended up finding a middle ground, and just getting overly excited and hit the ladder from the time I got home until I had to go to sleep for the next few days. During the course of these few days of excitement, I was placed into Gold.
That pretty much covers the story so far. Today, I'm still in Gold, but hopefully not for very much longer. It's placing me against "slightly favored" and Platinum opponents, hopefully someday soon I'll be able to reach Platinum and a new height previously untouched by myself.
Until next time -
Line 'em up, here we go.
