StarCraft was one of the first PC games I remember really getting into, and the first online multiplayer game I ever played. I remember negotiating specific times during the evening where my Mom wouldn't be able to use the phone so that I could jump into some Zero Clutter NR20, Fastest Map Ever, comp stomps or one of the many use map settings of the time. When I wasn't able to use the internet, I would play custom games against the computer, usually just cheating (operation cwal, show me the money, black sheep wall) my way to battlecruisers or carriers and stomping them. I pretty much never played 1v1 back in those days and had no idea that people actually played this game competitively. Eventually it took a bit of a backseat to other multiplayer games like Counter Strike and Diablo II.
I'd eventually stumble upon competitive StarCraft sometime around 02-04 and was fascinated. It was a completely different game than I'd grown up playing. Where I was used to just amassing a bunch of a particular unit and moving in with my teammates and watching the battles play out from my parentrs basement, these guys were making fine tuned build orders, scouting, harassing, using proxies, hitting specific timings with upgrades, etc. It seemed like such an obvious thing in retrospect but at the time it never occured to me that people were playing like this. More shocking than anything was the fact they were doing it in big open air stadiums and it was being televised with the players being sponsored by companies like Samsung. This is pretty common place now for games but StarCraft is the orginal eSport. Sure, people played stuff like Doom and Quake competitively, but nothing close to the scale that StarCraft was seeing in South Korea. Of course I had to start trying to play this way myself, but didn't have much success. At the time it felt like the barrier of entry was just too high, resources were limited (this was before Youtube) and even when you could find stuff to practice (on sites like teamliquid) it was harder to find matches with most people being split across smaller communities and using services like iCcup to play. On top of all this, it was still very much a South Korean thing, with the NA scene being relatively small.
Then SC2 would get announced and the beta released. This seemed like the perfect time to really jump in with it being a lot easier to find resources - new game, renewed interest from the NA/European audience, Youtube is now a thing, etc. On top of that, while it was a sequel, it felt like everyone was starting from scratch again - there weren't establihsed build orders or strategies, units were different, maps were new, etc. SC2 was also far friendlier mechanically, allowing you to do things like map multiple production buildings to the same hotkey, create more complex rally points (even rallying workers right to the minerals) and removing the 12-unit cap on control groups. The hype surrounding competitive StarCraft 2 was huge during the first few years...GSL was the big South Korean league with many of the Brood War pro's moving over, this was complimented by huge tournaments and big support from Blizzard.
For the first few years it felt like SC2 would just replace Brood War but eventually a lot of the population started to move back. There were a number of factors here...some of the community wasn't happy with the changes/long term support SC2 received and the release of StarCraft Remastered gave some new life to Brood War. Ultimately though, Brood War has been a more timeless experience. The game hasn't received any balance changes in recent memory (though new maps are constantly added which does shift the meta) but the skill ceiling of the game ensures that its still evolving almost 30 years post release.
And I think that's the beautiful thing about competitive Brood War. A lot of those rough edges that SCII set out to smooth are the reason the games been so enduring and why were still seeing players get better and better. The mechanics make it so it's practically impossible to play a perfect game of Brood War. There's simply too many things to cover and the limitations of the game make it so even pros who play in the mid-high 300 apm range make mistakes, miss cycles, miss micro a probe, read a situation wrong, etc. And that's not to say the game plays poorly, far from it. It's incredibly responsive and very predictable if you're used to it. There's a reason the best players can execute builds over and over again. From a strategic view, Brood War is one of the deepest multiplayer games we've ever seen. Mechanically though, it's unmatched.
When you layer the mechanics onto the strategy, watching someone play at a high level is probably the most impressive thing in gaming.
The competitive scene is still going strong in South Korea, with Afreeca Starleague being the most prestigious league. They're currently in Season 21 and while the player pool changes a bit each season, this particular season has Flash (Terran), Bisu (Protoss) and Jaedong (Zerg) all playing. These three are widely considered the goat at their indivdual races with Flash being the Gretzky/Tiger/Jordan of StarCraft. Flash recently faced off against Snow (another highly regarded Protoss) in the Round of 8:
While these games are great to watch with the commentary really helping understand the nuance of the strategy and decision making, one thing they don't do is display the sheer level of mechanics on display. The amount of things these guys are doing simultaneously and with precision (especially in the mid to later parts of a game) is really unmatched in other games. You don't need to have played much Brood War to watch an FPVOD of a high level player and understand the precision involved mechanically:
TL;DR: I don't thnk we'll ever see another game like StarCraft, but I also don't think we'll ever see StarCraft go away. I'm a big fan of stuff like Counter Strike and Dota as well and obviously the team elements of these bring a different layer into play, but to me there's nothing on the level of StarCraft when you combine the strategic and mechanical demands to play it at a high level. What an era for Blizzard. The run they had with this, Diablo II/Lord of Destruction, Warcraft 3/Frozen Throne and early World of Warcraft (vanilla and TBC) is pretty unprecedented. It's a shame how far they've fallen.
I'd eventually stumble upon competitive StarCraft sometime around 02-04 and was fascinated. It was a completely different game than I'd grown up playing. Where I was used to just amassing a bunch of a particular unit and moving in with my teammates and watching the battles play out from my parentrs basement, these guys were making fine tuned build orders, scouting, harassing, using proxies, hitting specific timings with upgrades, etc. It seemed like such an obvious thing in retrospect but at the time it never occured to me that people were playing like this. More shocking than anything was the fact they were doing it in big open air stadiums and it was being televised with the players being sponsored by companies like Samsung. This is pretty common place now for games but StarCraft is the orginal eSport. Sure, people played stuff like Doom and Quake competitively, but nothing close to the scale that StarCraft was seeing in South Korea. Of course I had to start trying to play this way myself, but didn't have much success. At the time it felt like the barrier of entry was just too high, resources were limited (this was before Youtube) and even when you could find stuff to practice (on sites like teamliquid) it was harder to find matches with most people being split across smaller communities and using services like iCcup to play. On top of all this, it was still very much a South Korean thing, with the NA scene being relatively small.
Then SC2 would get announced and the beta released. This seemed like the perfect time to really jump in with it being a lot easier to find resources - new game, renewed interest from the NA/European audience, Youtube is now a thing, etc. On top of that, while it was a sequel, it felt like everyone was starting from scratch again - there weren't establihsed build orders or strategies, units were different, maps were new, etc. SC2 was also far friendlier mechanically, allowing you to do things like map multiple production buildings to the same hotkey, create more complex rally points (even rallying workers right to the minerals) and removing the 12-unit cap on control groups. The hype surrounding competitive StarCraft 2 was huge during the first few years...GSL was the big South Korean league with many of the Brood War pro's moving over, this was complimented by huge tournaments and big support from Blizzard.
For the first few years it felt like SC2 would just replace Brood War but eventually a lot of the population started to move back. There were a number of factors here...some of the community wasn't happy with the changes/long term support SC2 received and the release of StarCraft Remastered gave some new life to Brood War. Ultimately though, Brood War has been a more timeless experience. The game hasn't received any balance changes in recent memory (though new maps are constantly added which does shift the meta) but the skill ceiling of the game ensures that its still evolving almost 30 years post release.
And I think that's the beautiful thing about competitive Brood War. A lot of those rough edges that SCII set out to smooth are the reason the games been so enduring and why were still seeing players get better and better. The mechanics make it so it's practically impossible to play a perfect game of Brood War. There's simply too many things to cover and the limitations of the game make it so even pros who play in the mid-high 300 apm range make mistakes, miss cycles, miss micro a probe, read a situation wrong, etc. And that's not to say the game plays poorly, far from it. It's incredibly responsive and very predictable if you're used to it. There's a reason the best players can execute builds over and over again. From a strategic view, Brood War is one of the deepest multiplayer games we've ever seen. Mechanically though, it's unmatched.
When you layer the mechanics onto the strategy, watching someone play at a high level is probably the most impressive thing in gaming.
The competitive scene is still going strong in South Korea, with Afreeca Starleague being the most prestigious league. They're currently in Season 21 and while the player pool changes a bit each season, this particular season has Flash (Terran), Bisu (Protoss) and Jaedong (Zerg) all playing. These three are widely considered the goat at their indivdual races with Flash being the Gretzky/Tiger/Jordan of StarCraft. Flash recently faced off against Snow (another highly regarded Protoss) in the Round of 8:
While these games are great to watch with the commentary really helping understand the nuance of the strategy and decision making, one thing they don't do is display the sheer level of mechanics on display. The amount of things these guys are doing simultaneously and with precision (especially in the mid to later parts of a game) is really unmatched in other games. You don't need to have played much Brood War to watch an FPVOD of a high level player and understand the precision involved mechanically:
TL;DR: I don't thnk we'll ever see another game like StarCraft, but I also don't think we'll ever see StarCraft go away. I'm a big fan of stuff like Counter Strike and Dota as well and obviously the team elements of these bring a different layer into play, but to me there's nothing on the level of StarCraft when you combine the strategic and mechanical demands to play it at a high level. What an era for Blizzard. The run they had with this, Diablo II/Lord of Destruction, Warcraft 3/Frozen Throne and early World of Warcraft (vanilla and TBC) is pretty unprecedented. It's a shame how far they've fallen.
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