NTT returns to competitive scene, joins Serious Gaming

Jacob "NTT" Scharn is a legend. He is one of the few non-Koreans to have ever won a medal in World Cyber Games. But due to a lackluster professional scene outside Korea he retired from competitive gaming. Now he returns for StarCraft 2, by joining the Dutch organization Serious Gaming.

NTT, bronze medalist in StarCraft: Brood War at the World Cyber Games Challenge back in 2000, quickly made a name of himself during the StarCraft 2 beta already, and is now one of the top ranked players on the European server.

The Dutch Terran player brings up Robertson Davies' written piece that says "the world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, infact, a return to the idealized past" and considers himself as one of those people.

- "I've certainly idealized the time I spent playing Brood War. Hopefully I'll be able to achieve a level of skill high enough to compete with the best in the world and recapture some of my lost gaming glory. On my path to gaming excellence I plan on bringing success, acclaim and ultimately great riches to Serious Gaming," says NTT on the team's web page.

The said philosophy of Serious Gaming is converting young players into champions, which places the seasoned RTS gamer in some of a "teacher" role, despite the new game.

- "Having someone in the team that is still eager ten years after his first successes should be a inspiration to the entire team and will hopefully have a positive impact on everyone," says team manager Jos "Zerter" Buijvoets.

Jacob "NTT Scharn's two biggest achievements should feature the third place at World Cyber Games Challenege and placing Top 16 in the third season of the Battle.net ladder.

He also played under the nickname Hasudrone, but for the Koreans he is more known as 하수드론.

NTT was one of the players who back in the day relied heavily on macro management, known for making an insane number of SCVs.

SERIOUS GAMING.SC2
Jacob “NTT” Scharn
Dong Hwan "viOlet" Kim
Alexander “iNSoLeNCE” Hein
Kevin “RotterdaM” van der Kooi
Nikolaus “SonKiE” Cassidy
Lennart “SushiLicious” Roest
Dlovan “Dlovan” van den Bosch