Note: this text was sent to the Warsow.net forums on the first of June, 2011.
Hello !
I’m Juha ‘milkflow’ Lehtonen, a semi-regular face here on the Warsow community. I was about to write an introduction about myself and all that, but I realized that my post is quite a chunk to read even without it. So, let’s get down to business straight away.
And for those who are about to go all TL/DR over this mammothpost before even reading a line: I’m going to play Warsow duels for 365 days in a row from this day onwards. Will blog and document about everyhing related to that. Check the year of gaming -blog out at www.IDDQD.org. Will be cool.
So what am I up to, really?
I am going to play Warsow – a lot of it. To be more specific, I am going to play the duel gametype for a period of 365 days in a row, with at least one duel played every day. This means that at the 1st of June, 2012, I have played a looot of Warsow. My secondary goal is to play at least a 1000 duels during this time period, alongside any other Warsow (hello pickups!) I get to enjoy. I will keep track of my progress, write about the things I learn along the way and keep everyone interested up-to-date with Warsow community news as well. I will experiment with different ways of practicing, and document the experience to the best of my abilities. Additionally, whether I win or lose, I will post every match result and upload every demo of every game I play on IDDQD.org.
The goal? To be the best, along with a few other things:
1. Actually taking something from start to finish
No matter what the subject, I’ve been terribly bad at actually taking things from start to finish all my life. If I’ve felt like not doing something, I’ve simply not done it at all. It’s often alright and doesn’t cause much issues, but sometimes I really wish I’d act differently in such situations. By forcing myself to duel every single day for a duration of one year, I’ll definitely likely get bored and want to quit. But this time no. I won’t.
2. Learning to cope with losing
As many of the more active Warsow duelers might recall, I have never really been good with losing. In fact, I’ve always been terrible, especially when it comes to Warsow. For instance, the first time I lost to Crizis in a duel I was literally filled with anger and uninstalled the entire game, vowing to never touch the game again. Yeah, things got that bad. However, a friend of mine known here in the Warsow scene as Nicolas ‘GoReY’ Lind had a conversation with me that I’ll never forget (thanks mate!). Ever since then, I’ve worked hard to overcome this loathe against losing. I still suck at losing, but I finally think I have the right mindset to actually get rid the problem – and this project is my path to the solution.
3. Overcoming my doubts and proving to myself that I can actually do it
There are dozens of better duelers in the world of Warsow. I could possibly even name most of them right here, but I will pass that since I have had yet another 6-month break and I’m not quite sure how low I’d score right now. I’ve never really believed in myself too much. I have my doubts about ever becoming the best, but I want to prove to myself that with the right mindset, one can do anything. Thanks to another friend of mine, Emil ‘Daxio’ Lanuszny from Frag eXecutors, for telling me to believe in what I do.
4. Not fighting against my competetive drive of actually wanting to be the best
This one is hard to deny. Whenever I’ve played Warsow, I’ve always wanted to get better and better. I play with passion, and I just want to beat my opponents. Surely I can play for ‘just fun’ as well, but winning is where I get my kicks from. Due to this I’m surely not the most enjoyable person to play with, but I can’t really change who I am. I am fueled by my will to win.
5. Learning to be more analytical
As a part of this project, I am going to observe and analyze the game in a much deeper way than I ever have before. From strategical decisions and mouse sensitivity changes to how time of the day and room temperature affect my play to pretty much everything else. I’m quite certain that the year will reveal a lot of interesting facts about gaming that are completely unclear to me.
6. Warsow is an awesome game with an especially lovely community
Don’t need much explaining here. Ever since I had my first run of Warsow back in 2007, I’ve loved Warsow and it’s community. I’ve even taken many long breaks (such as the one spanning from 0.4 to 0.5, skipping an entire major release completely), but I’ve never abandoned the community that I feel so deeply connected to. To be fair, the people who play the game are even more important as the game itself. Keep on rocking, all of you.
So that’s pretty much it. The blog is (in case you missed it) located at www.IDDQD.org. Invulnerability = wanting to be the best, eh? Eh?