- This feature is written by piyade, and reflects his opinions and thoughts. -
StarCraft is holding its strong place in RTS ranks all over the world and Turkey is no exception at all. Even though the interest for StarCraft isn't less, participation to the events is a drawback for Turkey. There aren't many active players but hopefully all of them are dedicated and there are newcomers too from time to time. The community is mostly mannered, let me remind there are always some bad apples in the basket, and enthusiastic.
We welcome all the newcomers to the Turkish community. This is mostly why an ESL ladder is created. For those who do not know what ESL is, it stands for Electronic Sports League and hosts a wide variety of games from ICQ games to StarCraft. Turkish ladder was started two weeks ago on 24.09 to be more precise and currently has 17 members. We hope more players will join in time and actually we are aiming a total number of 100 participants. All the Turkish speaking players are invited since PGTour is down and WGT doesn't seem to be ready this seems to be a good chance of competition and a chance of playing with different players for the newcomers. The ladder admins are me and zir_gReen who is also the Turkish A leader and we will cover the ladder and national team in the following sections. For those who are interested in joining the ESL ladder go » here. First you have to become a member of ESL and then sign up to the ladder on that link. As I have always said the more the merrier.
Turkey National Teams
Turkish A Roster ziR_gReen-AFM- (Leader) BeeswaX ille[Shield] oR)WaLkOVeR Park-AFM- Shyman Sto4m-AFM- ut)ThraLL Yehova-AFM-When it comes to Turkish national teams both A and B teams are more active than ever for the last two months. A team has played a total of 8 games in this period which is a good number in total of 27 games pointing that they are in action. They've had wins and losses though their losses are mostly close scores like 2-3 unlikely the previous results. The most significant improvement in the A team beside being more active is the success in 2vs2 games. 2vs2 games have always been the weakest link but the new strong 2vs2 team consisting of BeeswaX and ille[Shiled] (also more known as iG.Cartier) are getting better results.
The most recent significant result of Turkish National A team is their victory against United States B ending 5-4. We had a quick chat with the Turkish A leader zir_Green concerning the A team, the new ESL ladder, the past, today and his future plans and what he estimates of StarCraft in Turkey.
First of all tell us a little bit about yourself: name, age, for how long have you been playing SC, how did you start and such?
- My name is Erol Turgut, 22 years old and been playing SC since 1997.
“storm: After a long time we became an active national team again, and developing rapidly. Soon we'll become one of the nations that others should be scared of. Nevertheless, the StarCraft community in Turkey is dying day by day. We are (the national team members) likely to be the only ones who remain playing.”For how long have you been Turkey A team leader?
- I have the leader of Turkey A for one and a half years or so since the summer of 2005.
Since you have been in Turkish community for a long time, how do you evaluate the differences between the old times and now?
- I thought in 2003-2004 that StarCraft was dying. Most of the people who started playing when the game was released started to give up around 2003. But recently especially during 2005-2006 period I see a more enthusiastic community and newcomers.
Can you tell us a little about the older days of SC in Turkey? This would be nice so that people would have a chance to compare it with today.
- Not many people had the original SC CD including the key so they used to play on free servers such as sanane and medic. People used to have fun on those servers. There was the legendary Alesta crew in Istanbul and they used to play only among themselves. They were very good players and rarely they played on internet. One of the best players of Alesta was harris. He played in a Nation War against Russia in 2004. Without knowing against who he was playing against he beat his opponent who was none other than Androide.
“Strangely enough piceyyuz didn't have a computer at his home and he has practiced at his girlfriend's place for two weeks and finished in 1st place in WCG 2003 preleminaries in Turkey.”Another cool player who isn't known by many is piceyyuz. He beat Harris and Duke who has beaten SuGosu, in 2003 WCG Turkey preliminaries, and went to Korea. Strangely enough piceyyuz didn't have a computer at his home and he has practiced at his girlfriend's place for two weeks and finished in 1st place in WCG 2003 preliminaries in Turkey. There are many players like this in Turkey skilled but without opportunities and experience. I am sure if he hadn't got so excited in WCG 2003 Grand Finals he would have ended up in Top 8. I believe sugosu had the same problem in 2004 grand finals.
There used to be local tournaments, they used to announce a tournament in Alesta and at least 32 players would join the offline event and there used to be players from different cities too. But in the last two years because of not having StarCraft in WCG Turkey those tournaments ceased. Players couldn't get enough experience due to the lack of offline events. The last biggest offline event was BEoF after WCG 2004 in which StarCraft took place which was organized by me.
What do you think about the new ESL ladder, do you think it will be helpful to the Turkish community
- ESL is very important for the Turkish SC community. I think that there will be a great participation since WGT and PGT are closed. It will be a good experience for players. As we know there are no slots for Turkey in WCG since WCG 2004 due to low participation. With that new ladder I hope that we can prove ourselves and be able to send at least one player to WCG 2007, Seattle. I also invited piyade (that's me) to be an admin of ESL ladder and he is helping me there a lot. I want to thank him from here.
“BeeswaX: After two years SC in Turkey is back in action again. The national team is more active and I think we owe a big thanks to ziR_gReen for that.”This is what we all want. Let's talk a little bit about the national team. It has been very active lately and having good results. What do you think about this?
- It's only iLLe[Shield] who was the only one playing actively in the team, then I started looking for new players by organizing tournaments, and added BeeswaX to the roster. They have been very active and playing with a 80%-90% win ratio. To be honest I am quite satisfied with the results. In the last two weeks we lost three very important matches with a score of 2-3 (opponents were Germany A, Poland A and Czech Republic A). When I started as the team leader we were in a very low level, but after one year of hard work we are very close to be a winning team. Considering the fact that some of the very good players don't want to play in the national team and not inviting some other good players, I assume that we will be a team scared by most in quite near future. Let me add my special thanks to Yehova-AFM- for supporting me in the national team and helping a lot.
Thank you very much for the interview
-No problem at all, thanks to GosuGamers.net for this opportunity.
Turkish B Roster mS_jaNn (Leader) GoKu_[Clean] Mr)BLaCK(-AFM- oR)Lfunk siesta Snail-AFM- sunduk thebasicsin“sunduk: I think SC in Turkey is somewhat behind in WCG level because of Siberlig. There aren't many newcomers but I can say that in terms of national teams we have one of the best rosters.”On the other hand Turkish B team has a new leader now - ms-jaNn, the former B team player. He is quite enthusiastic and mentions that he is very happy being the Turkey B leader and adds that "I love SC and playing for some purpose rather than casual play makes me feel better." Since leadership requires more time than being a player previous leader Yehova-AFM- decided to give up the leadership and became the member of A team as a player in order to spend more time to school. During Yehova's leadership B team has been more active like A team, though the reuslts aren't as good as A team's results.
The most recent and the best score 5-0 vs. Hungary B is quite noticable. jaNn says that "When yehova-AFM- quit being the leader the team was in a raise, B Team has won the last three matches and it is an important thing whether the opponents were easy or not. The team is in good condition and I will do my best to make it better". jaNn has some work to do for recruiting new good players and for keeping the B team in action. “snail: SC is like a virgin forest in Turkey. It started to show itself only recently.”When asked about his plans about B team jaNn says "I am currently looking for new members for B team, and I will try to arrange nation wars as often as possible and we'll look for victory". He thinks that StarCraft is getting better in Turkey and tells "If I have been asked about the situation of SC in Turkey a couple of months ago, I wouldn't have told good things but now I can see good things in the horizon. We are on the raise and you can see a Turkish flag in front of a players name almost in any SC site and of course this is very promising." He also agrees with me on WCG and says that it is very important. "I think we should take a place among all those countries participating. We have good players and they can accomplish good results in WCG. I believe that we will take place in WCG" and as a final note he adds "We will do whatever we can to make things better here in Turkey of course with your help. Thank you." Here are some quotes from Turkey National B Team players.
“park: I think we have very good players but we don't have enough good posibilities to improve ourselves because we don't have enough free time to practice due to school, personal business and real life problems.”As I mentioned above Turkish national teams have a new homepage - www.teamturksc.com under the administration of none other than me. The site is quite new, opened its pages recently and is welcoming all the people as members who are interested in following exclusive news, replays and live results concerning Turkish National teams. Since interviewing myself is kind of odd, I will just tell a little bit about our hopes for the future of StarCraft in Turkey. It was 2004 last time Turkey participated in WCG represented by SuGosu and since then due to low participation and some struggles with Siberlig the Turkish WCG organizer we aren't having any preliminaries. Personally my biggest wish is for Turkey to become a regular contestant in WCG. I believe that the Turkish StarCraft community deserves this since there is an even or perhaps greater interest in SC when compared to WC3 and CS which we are sending players to WCG. The first step in my mind is to help Turkey to take place in WCG in 2007. We'll see how well this goes.
I hope that taking place in WCG will increase the interest here in Turkey and our good players will have a better chance of being known in the SC community all over the world. If we can unite the casual gamers in one place where they can improve themselves and have fun playing together we will have a better chance. I hope that the new ESL ladder will help quite a lot on this one. “iLLe[Shield]: Well, I think team Turkey has improved very much. It is very good that we are playing so many nation wars these days. In my opinion this is the right way, to get our team better and closer. I will do my best to support the team and I think we will have many victories in the future. I also want to thank all the people who helped to get the team better, especially zir_green.”More offline tournaments in bigger cities will also be good to help players to know each other better and have some offline experience. There seems to be a long way ahead of us but I think those targets can be reached and Turkey has good chances to have a more active SC community.
We also had a chance to have a brief conversation with sugosu, unfortunately he thinks we won't be able to make it to WCG again.
First of all can you tell a little bit about yourself for those who dont know you?
- My name is Onat, I am 20 years old and I have been playing SC since 1999.
Can you tell us about your WCG experience and your thoughts on WCG?
- I participated in WCG 2004. It was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. San Fransisco is a very beautiful city and being a part of such a huge gaming event was a wonderful experience. It was also nice to see and meet those people I have been playing with online.
What do you think are the effects of not having Turkey WCG SC preliminaries on Turkish SC community?
- Not having preliminaries is of course decreasing the number of players and competition. When there were preliminaries people used to take SC more seriously and tried harder to get better. But I don't reproach to the organizers since SC is a very old game.
Do you think will we be able to take place again?
- No I don't think so.
What do you think about the situation of SC today in Turkey?
- It isn't improving as it used to be. The game is by its summit in tactical an strategical means. People used to discover new playing styles and strategies. For the last three years everybody is playing the same way.
You are one of the best players in Turkey, why don't you take place in the national team?
- Because I think it is a big responsibility, to be there on match times and practice and such. I can't spend as much time as I used to for SC, so I rather stay away from this responsibility.
