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I love RTS, but mostly as an esport. Dont get me wrong, I also play RTS but generally the competitive 1v1 laddering is honestly just too hard, stressful, and exhausting for me to do all that often. FG has made it clear that they will attempt mass appeal for players by also focusing on co-op, 3v3 and campaign which I think is a fantastic idea, but that's a side note.
I have been following top level profession RTS, in particular starcraft 2, for about 10 years, and most of my interest in RTS stems from my love for the esport.
In this regard, the last couple of years have been rather depressing with major shrinkage of the starcraft 2 pro scene, largely due to neglect from Blizzard.
However, watching the EGC Stormgate tournament last weekend gave me a lot of hope for the future. Not only did a lot of personalities from existing RTS communities participate in the tournament, both casters (Pig, Artosis, Tasteless, Aussie Drongo, etc.) and players (Parting, Probe, Vortix, etc.), but there was also an extremely interesting storyline with PartinG been the number one contender, dominating ladder with an insane win rate with a build that recently got nerfed, after which he had kept his builds secret. In particular, the semi-final match between PartinG and Kiwian were a match for the ages.
Game 2 through 4 were all about PartinG presenting a difficult question for Kiwian: How will you handle early game aggression from doombringer/gaunt drops followed by a quick timing attack with enflamed imps.
Kiwian were not able to answer this until game 4 in which he went for early Vulcans to fend of PartinGs aggression, after which the game transformed into something very similar to a typical lategame Zerg vs Terran, where Kiwian were confined to his quadrant of the map while PartinG took almost complete map control.
This was truly an enjoyable experience as a viewer and fan of the players, and even though I had almost no relation to Stormgate before the tournament, it truly provided great entertainment like any other RTS I have watched, even though the game is only in its infancy.
In conclusion, the EGC tournament was filled with great people/personalities, great storylines and great matches, and gave me a lot of hope for the future of competitive RTS.
I will definitely make a late game GameFound pledge to FG as I missed the initial Kickstarter, because I truly want Stormgate to succeed