I hate being late for parties.

Teamliquid.net is the de-facto Starcraft journalism hub in the Western World.  Its members protect their passion for Starcraft like a first-born.  Need proof?  Teamliquid’s Hot_Bid drew up an article detailing the state of early-game Zerg in Starcraft II.  That is, thirty-six-hundred words detailing a problem that will be irrelevant in three months.

I’m not here to slam one for writing a dissertation on a non-issue.  The obvious hypocrasy would be obvious.  I’m more embarrassed over the ensuing discussion.

To summarize: Joneagle_X of SC2Forums wrote an article addressing Hot_Bid’s entry a review of each Zerg unit.  This conflicted with Hot_Bid’s point of view.  Eventually, Jon was goaded into defending himself on Teamliquid decided to interject himself into Teamliquid discussion for no reason at all. He began his defense with this:

I’m the guy whom HotBid “made look like he knows nothing.” Sometimes the ridiculousness you guys post makes it into my inbox and then I just have to respond. Feel free to read (and inevitably downplay) my review here. And in contrast to HotBid’s two days (maximum 20 hours) of playtime I’ve logged almost 60 hours on StarCraft 2.

A shitstorm predictably ensues, with Jon’s critics claiming his opinion is irrelevant because 1) he’s not good at Starcraft and 2) the entirety of Teamliquid has more Starcraft II experience than Jon does.

This is a fair time to note that I wake up every morning and wonder why people are content with being so stupid.

Early in my campaign against the Japanese Role-Playing Game, I was derided for playing one-hundred hours on a single Final Fantasy VII save file?  Why?  It wasn’t because I needed a life.  According to my detractor, I hadn’t played enough Final Fantasy VII to criticize the game.

In modern gamer culture, “years of experience” isn’t enough to validate your opinions.  Now, I’m supposed to get on my knees for the idiot who has played fifty games of Starcraft II?  And I’m supposed to respect the opinion of his critics because they’re totally awesome at the sequel’s predecessor?

You are terrible at this game.

I don’t care who you are: If you are reading this entry and Starcraft II has not been released, you are fucking garbage at Starcraft II and your opinion has no more merit than anyone else’s.  Being totally awesome at the predecessor does not change that.  1998’s best Starcraft players would be laughed out of a modern tournament.  Ten years from now, we will be talking about “Starcraft II in 2009″ the same way.

So if you’d like to get a head-start on being a complete dick, go ahead.  Just letting you know I’m calling you out on it.

Edit: Amending the record to show Joneagle was not directly responding to Hot_Bid’s entry.  Thanks, Dreadwave!

Edit Edit: Let’s try this again.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 25th, 2009 at 8:17 pm and is filed under Community, E-Sports, Gameplay, Starcraft, Starcraft II. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.