On the other hand I enjoyed that game for years without ever touching multiplayer....

It's always weird because everyone talks about how stressful it was, but it never was to me because I could just pause/save and walk away.

Personally i didn't really have performance anxiety, but I would get really pumped every match with my pulse racing and sometimes even my hands shaking afterwards. I always had to take breaks in between ladder games, only after an hour or two it would normalize enough to queue repeatedly.

The cheese didnt bother me much, I always loved macro and did that every game behind good scouting, often leading to some timing attack I built up to like a stim bio timing or tank marine drop.

I had that in WoW PvP. A buddy and I were in the top 50 of the second largest server and it was work. Even solo, we'd often wait for each other to come online before hitting ranked PvP so there was at least someone to talk to. It made losing not seem so bad, and if you started flunking, the other would say to stop and pick it up later.

Otherwise, pressure as hell. And for no reason other than trying to be the top rank of my class which was some pointless goal I put on myself.