The problems and goals of our gaming generation.

Hello dear readers

I have been posting, mostly, a lot of bitching about my issues and I have now decided to change from that for at least this post. I'm going to be talking about this ridiculous notion that gaming and StarCraft in particular is a waste of time. I will also be explaining to you guys and girls why my parents are fucking awesome. I apologise in advance to Duncan TydVirTaal (check his blog, it's on your right and far better than mine really good!) for any intellectual property of his that I am using.

So in this modern society we have this brilliant generation of gamers that are faced with this problem the generation before presents to us, because most of us, especially South Africans due to being slightly behind and other more elaborate aspects such as the more macho attitude that we tend to have, have parents, teachers, grannies, uncles, aunts, grandpas, that random bag lady on the street, sports coaches and the like telling us that gaming is wrong, that instead we should go outside and play around in our boring as hell gardens and that we should have no interaction with other people that isn't face to face or over a telephone that still requires you to wind the keys down and hand crank it for the electricity.

These people are, to put it bluntly, misguided. We live in a world which has amazing things such as the spider fishing internet at our fingertips. These archaic ingrates we call our superiors fail to notice that and seem, at the mention of a computer, to go all misty eyed and think back to when they were a kid and they were lucky to even get a branch to play with, hell, sometimes they had to imagine their branches. They don't seem to realise, as I'm sure my amazing viewer-ship should, that just because they were raised like that does not make it good or right, not to say it was bad, but things have changed and in this case change is good.

But really, we all know the problem, what is the solution? Well the solution is simple. We round them all up, ship them off to Haiti and nuke them. Really, though, all we can do is wait for them to die off, presuming they're not related to us. If they are related to us, some more work has to be done, especially for the minors in our midst, else we risk running our lives constantly butting heads with our parents. My first port of call is get your parents to watch this: Day[9] Daily #100. That video is possibly the most inspirational video I have ever watched and if your parents have a decent bone in their bodies they will want to be like Sean's mom, the mother of the leader of the foreigner StarCraft scene. This woman, who comes from a seemingly backwards town, understood Sean and Nick's feelings and did her utmost to help them and support them which brings me onto my parents.

My parents annoy the shit out of me. They're always in my face being caring and loving and trying to make me into a better person. I mean really, the nerve of them! When I stop and think for a second of how bad a person I am to these people it makes me a bit sick. My parents understand when I want to go to huge LANs like OC. They let me play computer whenever I want, to a point of course, one does need one's sleep. These amazing people support me and help me, my mom even made sure that supper was served before 7pm for the whole week just so that I could watch Day[9] during Europe week. My mom is the reason I decided to set up this blog and the one who showed me how to advertise it. They understand that I am a gamer. They understand me and they take an interest. I can go to them and get excited that I made it into platinum, which, by the way, I am super happy about, and to an extent they will understand and they will congratulate me. My little brother plays a lot, not StarCraft quite yet, for whatever reasons and instead of my parents getting angry at him they accept it. Instead of them ripping of his headset and getting angry at him for talking to strangers on the internet they commend him for it and talk about how it is what his generation do. Instead of my parents trying to force what was taught to them onto us they seem to teach this, admittedly it was probably taught to them by their parents, and this only: they accept their child for who he is and love him and support him just the same and that is what we should have.

So disregard the nay sayers, don't shy away when the jock tells you how much of a nerd you are. Don't lie about how much you play and how much you love your identity as a gamer.Argue with the fools who put you down and be proud of everything that you are as a gamer. Climb to the highest brick of your metaphorical tower and scream to the heavens with every fibre of your being "I am a gamer, and I am proud!" Don't fight the mockery, don't shy away from the razor tongues. Stand tall and proud, mighty and brilliant.

We don't need someone to cure us. We don't need to sit every non-gamer down together and give them a talk about how gaming is so brilliant. What we as gamers need to do is be proud. Be proud, don't stand down and embrace how amazing you are as a gamer and how proud you should be of that fact.

Grack

Fuck you battle.net

Hey guys.
So today I was planning on doing a post about the new season, where I want to go, where I placed and all the like instead I get stuck raging about battle.net. It's fucking me around big time, not loading the multilayer screen, telling me I have a starter version and all the like. This shit is getting so annoying.

I was so excited to place and now I get stuck here, twiddling my thumbs waiting for it to work! this is so detrimental to my desk because, having found my Swiss army knife, it is rapidly dwindling. Yes, I am a destructive person. Get over it, the wood deserves it. It sits there looking all cool and varnished being like "I'm so much cooler than you!" while I sit there and slowly cut it apart. Joke's on it!

When StarCraft decides to stop being a whiny little bitch then I'm really hoping to place platinum. Oh, a congratulations to Gavin, he placed gold from bronze which is quite impressive in my opinion!

In other news, I 4gated for the first time in my entire life yesterday. I did a Korean 4gate on slag pits because I hate that piece of shit map. I did manage to win. Just too many zealots, but being the type of gamer I am I won't do this very often because I want to become a good macro player as that, as I see it, is what is important!

Fuck Terran is annoying. I scout, see marauders and presume no banshees.... what do I get? Banshees. Ridiculous. It's not imbalanced, just annoying, but even though I lost I made platinum! So happy about that!

Sorry for the rushed and unorganized post, was more to take up time while I waited for battle net to sort out its shit.

TLDR; B.net is a bitch, Gavin made gold, I did my first 4gate and won and I made platinum

Grack

Friends will be friends

I don't know why I like my trolls friends. They constantly niggle and piss me off and make me rage and yet that's what bringsus closer. Of course I am talking about my StarCraft friends, namely Duncan "TydVirTaal", Gavin "Phoreals", Casey "noobface" "Nirv", and, though he doesn't play much these days, Luke "the Fucking troll" "LntLulzalot" These guys are the guys I probably spend most of my time talking to, we play most evenings and it's strange how we can put up with each other.

Our conversations are 90% tuning me because I'm to only Toss in a chat room of Zergs and yet I eagerly await it. If any of you reading this blog don't have StarCraft buddies, find them. They make the game so much more fun and so much more desirable to play. Half the reason that I am rapidly becoming better is because of said friends. My competitiveness makes me want to be the very best, at least amongst my friends. This competitiveness leads me to watch virtually every Day[9], but I'll talk about that gift to eSports later, it makes me play enough so that I become better, it makes me strive to get into Platinum. Apart from just me being competitive, these gods among men friends of mine are also this brilliant forum that I can come to and talk to about shit that's going down, be it StarCraft related or otherwise.

So now that that love letter is completed, story time. We decide to use our smurf accounts and place in 4v4. We're fucking around and playing random monobattles. If you don't know what that is and don't want to go search Day[9], they are when you announce at the beginning of the game that you are going to be only making one unit. I rolled Zerg and went Mutas, Duncan rolled Terran and went Marauder, Casey got Terran too and went Marine and Gav was left with Zerg and Roaches. Now unless you've been paying as much attention to my blogposts as I would to a 200/200 Colosus stalker ball that I've 1a'd to the back of his base, you will know that Duncan doesn't play Terran and something in his control settings wasn't working nicely, god knows what it was. So he asks for a pause and the stupid fuck we were playing against decides to not allow us to pause.

We really don't like bad manners, so it was incredibly satisfying to absolutely roll them like we did. My Mutariisskkss  sniping his probes made me feel all happy inside. Monobattles are so much fun to do with friends and cause a ridiculous amount of lols. It's also a win win because either you win and it's like "FUCK YEAH WE WON ONLY MAKING ONE UNIT" or you lose and you're like "whatever, we were monobattling!" So yeah, go do monobattles because they are amazing.

So in closing: my friends are awesome, get StarCraft friends, play monobattles and don't BM people you're worse than!

GLHF for life! I love you all, no homo.
Grack

Balance bitching begone

Hey guys!
Sorry about the terrible title. I know its really ridiculous and this is getting astoundingly annoying but bitching brinzmen really annoy me. This game we all play, this superb StarCraft has a great group of gamers furiously focused on trying to generate some balanced brilliance. I'm going to stop this nauseating nonsense, though, because it's making writing wretched.

The major issue I have with this rubbish is first and foremost, I am a Protoss. The second I open my mouth about anything to do with balanced I get assaulted with a swell of something along the lines of "HURPEDY DERP TOSS OP DERP!" This is mainly because I am pretty much the only Toss among my close group of friends, who are all Zerg. The thing about Zerg players is that they don't seem to understand that their units need to have counters too.


I'm not saying that balance my never be discussed ever, I'm just so fed up of the constant QQ from all the Zergs i know/ my friends. If you look at StarCraft II, you're not going to find a game that's more balanced, besides Blizard's previous achievements. Now look at the tournament results and you will see the balance reflected there. I know players like Idra  still talk about it still being imbalanced and saying that tournament results don't matter is just ridiculous. We can't just say "well I think this is IMBA and I know that it's never shown to be IMBA but I think it is so therefor it is."


So ye, in a concise closing to this retarded rant, don't be a troublesome troll. The balance is generally gosu and these terrific tournaments are amazingly accurate at credibly conveying Blizzard's balance. Lots of love.
Greg the Grack.

A shout out to my beginnings.

While I may love my parents, this is not a shout out to them. This is in fact a shout out to (mainly) HuskyStarCraft. This man was the first person that I watched a lot. I got hooked on watching StarCraft 2 with a game back in King of the Beta Hill where CauthonLuck played against Idra and Day[9] famously, amongst my friends at least, said, in a voice that at the time was way too shocked for us noobs to understand why it was so shocked, two amazing quotes, namely "That queen injected 10 energy too late!" and "One banshee beats one queen!"

After watching this hilariousness I ended up latching onto HuskyStarcraft. I watched this man for ages. I watched so many of his YouTube clips and he truly started my whole mentality of just watching a lot (relatively) of StarCraft. Now let's get onto my point shall I?

I've heard many people bash Husky, I've heard comments about him which I object to and now I'm going to voice these objections. Firstly the things I've heard about Husky from people, negatively, is that he isn't a good commentator. It has been said that he doesn't make the best analysis and other similar comments. Apart from the fact that I disagree with this analysis of Husky's analysis, that isn't the point. The point is that it is brilliant people like Husky who grow eSports and frankly I cannot think of  a better thing for Husky to be doing.... okay I can, but they involve curing cancer and helping lepers. I can show someone a game that Husky casts and they will find it entertaining no matter how much they know about StarCraft, unless they have the sense of humor of my left toe.

HuskyStarCraft is such a gift to the community. So thanks for all the new StarCraft players who you bring to this fabulous community of ours and thank you for helping us realize the dream, as talked about in Duncan TydVirTaal's blog. This dream, in short for those of you too lazy to go and read his blog, is the dream that eSports becomes mainstream and that gaming can be discovered by everyone.

Now before this turns into a love letter I'd like to end off by thanking Husky and all the other figures who have influenced my relatively short life of StarCraft and grown eSports to what it is and continue to grow it to what it will become.


TL;DR:
Don't hate on Husky, he's really funny and cool. Husky grows eSports which is the dream

Grack.

RAGE

Sup guys and girls..... yeah, i know there are no girls. First I'm gonna rant about Terran, then cannon rushes and then I will give you guys a treat of a story of some epic rage.

Okay so I was playing a PvT and I decided not to go colossus, which was logical in this game because he was going Marine Marauder Medivac with some Thors as well. (All nice to feedback.) This seemed to be going well at first because my chargelots were tearing apart but his drops kept denying by expo. I was quite happy with how i denied drops and banshees early game but in the late game i didn't go deal with them. This was my downfall. He out macro'd me, got some good EMPs off and eventually beat me. I think I would have been okay with losing to this strategy but I was angry because he didn't say GL at the start. Onto the next game.

My pet hate. Cannon rushes. FUCKING HELL. Okay, so this stupid fuck goes forge first and i scout around for the pylon in my base. I don't find it and carry on playing, looking out for a pylon. Eventually he starts warping in a metric, not imperial, mind you, fuck-ton of pylons into my base. I kill these off and then find a whole bunch of cannons on the other side of my base. I double expand to the other corner of the map and make gateways etc. I get a good economy going and feel pretty confident. I gear up for the final attack that will end this bullshit once and for all and this guy had DTs. Fuck.

Ok, now that I've had my little rant, I think you dear readers deserve a tale of rage as old as time. Recent time, but time nevertheless. So I was playing some games with my friends Gavin and Cheesey Fucktard Noobhead from previous post Duncan. We were 3v3ing but if I recall properly I was rather tired and fed up. I got cannon rushed. I do not like being cannon rushed. It fucks up my game and makes me mad.

Today it made me more mad than usual. Seemingly calm, I left the game, put down my headset, stood up and promptly kicked my cupboard door right off its hinges. After the moment is passed I start laughing and put my headset back on. "Guys," I said, "I just kicked my cupboard door off." They start laughing and WTFing. I had to walk through to the garage, fetch an electric screwdriver and fix this cupboard before my rents got home. (Yes, I'm a teen to anyone who doesn't know me. If you don't and you're reading my blog, uber ♥s to you!) Luckily it was easy to fix but to this day the cupboard door is still slightly wonky!

On a side note, writing this blog seems to calm me down.

So this game...

Okay guys! looks like this might already be devolving into just raging about shit that happens, but I'm sure you will bare with me.
So I was playing on tal darim and I opened with this cool forge first build because I was versus a Zerg. everything is going great, I see he has some speedlings but I'm not worried. then as I'm building some extra gates or something he steamrolls my units before I can forcefield with some fucking benelings.... well I didn't bother to play it out. gg f10 n. Fucking hell it pisses me off so much when I lose to stuff that comes from silly mistakes as to where I was looking at the time..... must.... focus.... on..... minimap..... eh well. Hope it'll come with time!

The Rage part.

Okay, hi guys this is my first proper post! Hope you enjoy it. It's a little anecdote which relates to how I came by the name Grack.

So my amazing friend Duncan and I are playing. Duncan, especially at the time, was not as good at Star Craft as me. He was a bronze leaguer while I had just had my internet ego grown by being promoted to gold league. So we were playing and Duncan decides to do the unspeakable. The bastard seven roach rushes me.

Now, for those of you lucky enough not to have experienced this complete and utter fucking bullshit strategy, a seven roach rush is where they get 7 roaches really fast and rally them to your door and keep rallying them. While Duncan, the cheesy motherfucker that he is, might say it isn't cheese, it is. Don't listen to his nonsensical bullshit. It doesn't give them anywhere near enough drones to go into the mid-game well...

Now, my dear readers, I am, to this day, not sure how to hold one of those off. I need more sentries or something like that but anyway, being beaten by Duncan as my friends, unforgiving, cruel friends who laugh at me not with me, watched was too much. To let out this absolute rage I walked over to a semi broken office chair with no back so it was basically a stool with wheels, picked it up and flung it across my room. It didn't break itself too badly and I still have it but because all my friends heard this over the VOIP I was using they forever troll me about it.

Thanks for reading. More posts to come!

Hello there!

Sup Guys.
This is my first blog post. I'm starting this blog about starcraft because... well... I fucking love this game! I play fairly regularly and watch a fair amount of the stuff about starcraft. My posts will be varied and we will see where this blog takes me but I will probably end up talking a lot about my life as a gamer and all the wonky stuff that comes with it, broken chairs and all, but we'll come to that later!

My gamer ID is Grack, firstly because my name is Greg and secondly because my friends compare my rage to that of Idra, for whom I have a great amount of respect! Unlike Idra, I play Protoss. I dabble with Zerg on a smurf but I'm not so good yet. As toss I am a measly gold league player, hoping to advance soon so this will not be a blog where I claim to know everything about anything like the great thought hammer, Day[9] for whom I have a tremendous amount of respect.What I can offer is laughs and some funny stories. Hopefully you will all enjoy my blog in the years (I hope!) to come and that you can share my laughter and my tears as i progress as a gamer.

I wish you all the best!
Grack