I finished my 100th ranked game today.

I played AOE when I was a kid like twenty years ago. I stumbled across T90 on YouTube and started watching his videos about a year ago. That led me to download the game and start playing against the AI. I knew I could play against real people but the thought of it made me really nervous. I've played super casually since then.

Since everyone is staying at home now, I've had a lot more free time and decided to play a little more on DE, but still against the AI. A few weeks ago I finally jumped into my first ranked match... and got crushed. I continued to get crushed until I ended up around 800 elo. That's where things started to even out for me. It was discouraging to lose so much in the beginning, but when I found my proper elo, things got more fun.

I still felt like I wasn't doing very well so I decided to stop playing ranked for a couple weeks to practice build orders against the AI. That helped a lot. When I jumped back into ranked last week I was winning most of my matches. I've currently settled around 1000.

Just wanted to post this for all the other people out there who only play against the AI but want to try ranked. I was super nervous to start, but I'm really glad I did. I feel like I'm playing much better and I'm having more interesting games. The AI can get predictable after a while.

And if there's anyone out there around 1000 elo who wants to practice with me please DM me. I would love to find someone to play games with and then talk about them afterwards.