Comment by MobileVet
17 hours ago
If you still want to experience the joys of RTS... but struggle to play after so many years away, I highly recommend catching a few streams from Grubby. He plays WC3 and a few other games and is quite entertaining to watch. He is also crazy good... His typical APM during a game hovers between 200 and 250. He is an absolute beast at leveraging his items and maximizing his heroes' hp.
I would also recommend ArtosisCasts [1]. Dan ‘Artosis’ Stemkoski has been a professional StarCraft play-by-play commentator and colour analyst for decades. He’s lived in South Korea (now in Canada) and cast countless professional matches and tournaments featuring the top Korean players.
On his casting YouTube channel he uploads a new commentary and recording of a StarCraft game every day, as well as news about upcoming events and tournaments. He loves to do deep dives and detailed analysis of strategies and the shifting metagame of StarCraft: Brood War, a game that is still going stronger than ever despite closing in on its 3rd decade since release.
[1] https://youtube.com/@artosiscasts
I miss the low res aesthetic of WC2. It's so sad that everything has to be high res nowadays. I never really liked WC3, maybe for that reason.
And although SC1/2 brought genuine improvements in the genre in many ways, there's something so much purer about the high fantasy tone of WC over the scifi tone of SC. Maybe it's just pure nostalgia, but it feels like something deeper, something more real.
WC2, SC1, and things like Heroes III (and somewhat today with Factorio) perfected that 2D art-style. It might not have as many pixels as WC3, but every single one of them was thought about and considered by someone with artistic merit.
It wasn't until nearly 20 years after WC2 that a 3D game got "graphics that look almost 2D in quality (SC3)".
I think it's also very telling that World of Warcraft made infinity money, but World of Starcraft never happened. High fantasy always lends itself to the "I can make a difference as a mortal man" but sci-fi seems to always trend toward "too big for human consumption."
> I can make a difference as a mortal man"
Thinking of popular fantasy sci-fi, this seems like the exact opposite of what actually happens! With the notable exception of lotr (and how many early readers really focused on frodo's struggle anyways?) most fantasy has some kind of superhuman main character that can singlehandedly change the world.
Scifi tends to be a lot more about people like Picard, important and respected but ultimately limited to influencing others to achieve major changes.
Grubby is good, but Back to Warcraft casts the highest level players these days. Grubby does not compete in the top league any more
Honestly, he doesn’t need to be the best to make it enjoyable. He seems like a generally chill guy and he goes back and breaks down his games. Fascinating to hear what he was thinking and why he did what he did.
i'd also recommend uthermal -- former pro sc2 player, he's got a really good attitude & makes a lot of entertaining videos
sub to the grub!