ONE NIGHT IN 2005

Played a showmatch against my mate HLA that you will get a chance to see on Replayers. These games made me remember how great times we spent in  2005, that year when we were playing every single day against tons of great players.

Ladder was filled with amazing players who were great sportsmen and competition was bigger than ever. Imagine that you now press a button for ladder search and get in a game versus HLA, ReignOfDark, EyeOfTheDruid, Ojune, Pumppaaja-Eki, Boterham, Valtar, ImperialDragon, Orcouser, Gonokokken, Orc-Ownage, Han, eS.Rus, Gosu.Powa, Cecile, Golan and many more that would take me a full page to write down. Each one of these players was in top form, playing their main races and above everything - aiming for win in every single game.

Most of the mentioned players, including myself, have held level 50 at least once. Getting it was a really pain in the ass because of experience distribution that Blizzard changed after 1.14 patch. That experience distribution, which is the same as today, goes in favor of players who have lower level. For example, having a level 50+ and wining someone who has 15/0 stats would give me around 20 experience points while losing to such player would cost me 200+ experience points.

Exactly, killing 10 smurfers who have 15/0 stats means nothing if you lose to 11th. So continuation was something that was on a price back then. You have to play a lot and win a lot if you want to be level 50 or above.

Because of such hard conditions, some players had tactic to fuck up others people hard work. The term "fucking smurfer" was widely spread among the players who held the highest levels. I hope that you understand frustration of, lets say, Gosu.Powa who meets 5 smurfers in a row who can cost him a day or two that took him to gather the experience to move on the next level. It is comic even now when I remember how all the guys I mentioned, including myself, reacted when they would join channel right after they lost to a smurf. "STUPID SMURFERS!" "SMURF ALL DAY LONG SHOW YOUR REAL FACE NEWB!" And so on.

So, there I was, on the top of my Warcraft 3 addiction and on the top of my ladder addiction. It was an early spring of 2005 and I just reached level 54 and left Pumppaaja-Eki, Men0ob (great Russian player) and HATE-LOVE-ANGER behind. With Peki and Men0ob I always had good vibes and relation toward them was colored with great dose of respect in both ways. But HATE-LOVE-ANGER was different story. We literally hated each other and we used to dedicate whole gaming days to terrorize eachother.

Terrorizing would look like this. Constantly checking if the other one is in the game or he is about to search a game. Then fast switch on one of numerous smurfs we had in order to meet the object of hate and to snatch an easy win and with that to get the object of hate to lose as many experience points as possible because that leads to enormous frustration.

After months of practicing this method and months of frustrating each other HLA did an amazing thing that wasn't so amazing to me back then but which eventually making two of us great friends.

He knew how much I wanted to make that level 55 and to make myself the first, and later it will show the only, player who managed to climb that high. He knew that I was so determined to do this that I will spend days and nights searching for games.

And damn, I was so addicted. After lets say, 20 games won in a row on that level, I wouldn't stop. Even if the next game would be against a smurf and that I would get only 10xp points from it I would search and take the risk. I was addicted that much that I used to sleep in my chair over nights and put my speaker volume on maximum so when the sound of found game plays I wake up and go for the win.

And HLA knew that. So he created few smurf accounts and came with the night. I was waiting in my chair till the tiredness took over. The moment I opened my eyes I saw my base getting owned by a single hero and 5 units and the rage just started poping out trough my mouth. I started flaming from all the guns I had, knowing that this sneaky bastard feels enormous happiness because with that free win he gets he also ruins half of the day I spend accumulating experience to get my level 55.

I left that game, feeling so damn bad that I didn't heal the game sound. Fuck, lets go again, I said. So I did the same thing. I pressed the search button, maximum volume on speakers and I waited. After 20-30 minutes I felt asleep again. And you can imagine what I saw when I woke up. The same fucking scenario that happened about an hour ago. Little bitch was killing my main with his single hero and few units just like he did before.

Damn I was furious. I was so furious that it was comic. He just kept sending those "xD" smiles in the chat eventually writing "Lets go again" or something like that. I didn't go for one more, I just went to bed. Can't remember if I dreamed about getting my hands on him and choking him to death.

But I made that level and great friendship with HLA that resulted in many amazing games we played after. Still, I didn't forgive him those two sleep losses.