What follows is a sea of memories perforated by lucidity in transcendent megolomania (a la Frank Thomas' legendary Hall of Fame speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMOUf97yWxU), I'll keep it Brood War related to start: I probably played with you a few times (Baron_Efreet was my ID), off the top of my head notable people I've played with: Shadow_Poga, Galdor(WC), Eomer(WC), Ecthelion(WC), semihalfwit, Legolas, Adun, Vexorian, I_Need_Alcohol, Isildur(WC) (in Starcraft 2 ironically), Hell_Razor (runs the discord), Term-of-Use, Duffman911 (still plays) and thousands more. Galdor was definitely the best player as far as how good he was on average across all maps, rest of the top 5 when I was playing was likely myself, Poga, and two randomly selected individuals that are not Semi, Adun, or Lego chosen at random from memory depending on the day (note I did have a Top 5 noted a few weeks ago but somehow can't remember the transient two). Alchy was usually fifth is something I vaguely remember.
As far as Pre is concerned I was playing Risk Marines (made by the DotA mapmaker Icefrog) at the time and did not adapt to LotR for a year or so when LA was the new hotness; I sucked with the Nums for a while and eventually started playing with Galdor and Alchy who had an endless number of maps. Adun at the time was always attended by his two fellatio granting lovers; Semi and Lego; in a tripartite circle jerk which legends dare not speak of. That being said this magnificent cerberus of stupidity somehow brewed up a fantastic map in War of the Soulstones and granted me great happiness as I mastered one faction after another, becoming the best player at five (out of eight) of them and utterly destroying Semi and co. In this process I taught my good friends, non LotR players, how to play WotS and Poga came along; these friends were MrPoey, SmartMan001, Lightning-Baron (who I am still in touch with), Tainted_God, and quite a few more; taking such luddites I beat the mapmaker's toadies repeatedly with such force as to satisfy any sadomasochist gleefully.
I eventually moved on, Galdor took Duff on as apprentice in my stead, a surrogate me if you will; though not nearly as strategically sound or tactically brilliant or ludicrously arrogant (a trait of greatness of course); I'll elaborate on my future goings after a brief discussion of BW remastered.
First it bears mention that Brood War was revived massively in Korea before Remastered, by a few years even, all of the legends returned in the greatest playlist in the history of mankind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td-12J0YmqI&list=PLo2fPnM8EiQxwqKvAnVtue6K4pt82Pudp&index=137
If Starcraft was your childhood it behooves you to watch that playlist whenever depression takes hold as it most assuredly will. When remastered came out I didn't buy it, but I did play the original version with those who did; tragically LotR was not really an aspect of this aside from Last Alliance. W.Emery was my most frequent compatriot in this process, and I did play other games beyond LotR when I was a UMS monster; the aforementioned Risk Marines, Various Diplo Maps, Napoleon's Ambition, and the Civil War maps by Fenix'01; the beloved Emery and his pals gave me just about every map I could've ever wanted; excepting Star Wars AotR, WotS, and various Melkor LotR maps.
At this time I realized that my mechanical skill had become transcendent, much higher than it was before; I destroyed everyone with trivial effort at every map; the reality is that UMS players just weren't very good and while my strategic and tactical ability has always been superhuman my raw ability at games was relatively lacking except for JRPGs in youth. But after I left Brood War (after a brief stint being a top 5 player in the world at WoW and Warhammer online) I moved on to the twin masochistic endeavours of becoming good at Fighting games and playing Souls games, starting with Demon's Souls in 2009.
I won't go into overly mundane details on those tasks but this is a combo I can do in KoF XIV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_eyPPibeio and in Nioh I was the Fourth player in the world to get the hardest trophy (clear all missions); of those who played on release (top 20 including people who had the game several days early): https://psnprofiles.com/trophy/5812-nioh/13-samurai-of-legend . Note I didn't try to get the Nioh trophy quickly, it just happened that way; which I suppose is indicative of the general skill level.
Having become quite good at other games somehow translated to much better RTS skill, though of course nowhere near Korean skill, and makes me wonder what it would have been like to be even better when I was already top 5 back in the day. The answer: Probably wouldn't have mattered that much but maybe would have made my shit talk even better.
A random strand of advice I had at work motivated me to attempt making a youtube channel and it did unbelievably well; in fact I still have a single video that gets 50,000 views a month by itself (it has 2.3 million now); which is more views than this blog has gotten over its lifespan. Most people that attempt Youtube or Twitch fail immediately and now Youtube is all but inaccessible to everyone but corporations and massive singular channels and Twitch is simply the misery of conducting an audience of 12 year olds to donate you money. But somehow despite that I did quite well with youtube leading to relative financial security despite never having a permanent degree requiring Job post university; presumably more self-achieved security than virtually everyone I've ever known who's roughly the same age.
That said I am on the cusp of transitioning into a new phase, writing a (doomed) novel and then presumably becoming a university professor in around a decade. I should be quite well for 5-6 years but who knows what will happen after that; China could invade Taiwan in that timeframe and change the entire global landscape; thus making all future plans irrelevant.
Thanks whoever read this spiel.
