The Five Things I'm Most Excited About in 2014.

Alright so it's the end of the year about and that means its time to makes lists. There really isn't a whole lot to be said on that subject, its just a thing that happens every year and we all seems to enjoy it so without further stalling, let's talk about the five things I'm most excited about in the year 2014. These aren't listed in any particular order by the way.

Number 1. Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I absolutely loved this first Captain America movie, I loved The Avengers, and the trailer looks friggen cool. So yeah, put me down for one ticket to this hype train! The Winter Soldier looks to me like it's going to be a great film, the trailer led me to think that the movie will have a bit more of an "espionage" feel to it and frankly that makes me excited. With the Bourne movies having lost their shine with the absence of Matt Damon and you know Jason Bourne, were left with only Bond for solid spy movies. While I don't think Captain America will spawn into a spy movie franchise, I do think it will serve as great filler until another good one comes out. You know what I mean?

I thought since I talked about the trailer a bunch I should have it available. 

Number 2. The return of viOLet to the major StarCraft II tournament circuit. I'm generally pretty excited about anything StarCraft related, but this one I'm hyped about. viOLet went nearly the entire year without making any appearances due to being consistently denied a visa to the United States, now though he has been granted a P-1A visa, the same kind issued to professional athletes, he's good to go for the next five years. 2012 was a great year for viOLet, he performed well in tournaments, and established himself as a good personality in the scene which got him a lot of support from North American and European fans. It would have been spectacular to have seen him continue on this path in 2013, but I'll settle for 2014. He's got everything he needs to become an extremely popular and skilled player in the StarCraft scene and I eagerly look forward to seeing where he goes. Hopefully a smart team decides to pick him up as well.

Number 3. The return of many of my high school friends from their missions. There isn't a whole lot of detail to go into here. There's Brad, Tyler, Dillon, Corbin, Zach, Jason and Lysa. Seven people I enjoy the company of that I will be able to enjoy their company again. That is something to look forward to if nothing else.

Number 4. The return of the League of Legends Championship series. (LCS)  I love the LCS. It's very well produced, the casting crew are knowledgeable and entertaining, and above all else, its high level league of legends games delivered to me at a time that doesn't absolutely destroy my sleep schedule. (I'm looking at you OGN.) Over the course of this first split in 2014 I'll be writing my own personal previews for some of the games in the LCS. The focus will be around Dignitas and CLG games because those are the two teams I have a personal bias towards. I don't think that Dig and CLG are going to be best teams though. Not at all. It seems obvious to me that Cloud 9 and Team Solo Mid are looking very very strong. Cloud 9's games against Fnatic at the Battle of the Atlantic event over this last month were particularly telling of their strength. That only speaks for the beginning of the split, nearly every other team has the "untapped power" to become a contender for best team in NA. It's going to be a great season and you should tune in at twitch.tv/riotgames (Riot plz give me moneyz.)

Number 5. Idk, list just look better when they are multiples of 5 so I thought there should be five items. Sorry to dissapoint if you wanted another one, but I got nothing right now. At least nothing that I could do a write up about.

Your face when there are only 4 things on the list. 

Why I Stopped Playing Competitive Games.

Let's talk burnout. I don't really know if this is a term used like it is with gamers, but burnout is pretty straight forward, you play one game a lot over an extended period of time and then you don't enjoy it like you did when you started playing and that causes you to stop. Occasionally you burnout on a game so badly that you never play it again. Most of the time it's just temporary lasting from a month or two to as long as several years before you return to a game. I'm really burnt out when it comes to League of Legends, I honestly can't even boot the program up and stay in a good mood. Nothing about playing the game is fun for me right now. I still absolutely love watching League be played at a professional level though, but I can't play it. To extend that even further I really haven't enjoyed playing StarCraft II as much lately either, even though I feel like I'm at a peak of sorts with my level of enjoyment as a viewer. I think right now it'll be good for me to simply take a step back from playing and focus on being a more informed viewer. That means goals, which I've been really bloody awful at finishing on this blog, but you gotta keep trying ya know?

So the new goal will be to reach the point as a viewer that I can write informed and decent quality preview and review pieces on the 2014 Season of StarCraft World Championship Series (WCS) and League of Legends Championship Series. (LCS) In order to accomplish this I'm going to have to become a little more focused on what I watch in terms of streams. I think for League I should be focusing on watching a decent amount of at least one professional in each of the five positions and for StarCraft a pro for each of the races.

So basically in summary, I'm not going to really be playing games right now, but rather focus on getting better at writing pieces for Esports which I'll post up here. I'll write another post "soon" TM where I'll go into detail about the streamers I'll be focusing on. Until then, good luck and have fun peeps!