Being easily convinced is not a virtue.
StarCraft
All about StarCraft – The best game ever.
StarCraft and the Noob Mentality
Jul 13th
Countless times over the 10+ years I’ve been playing StarCraft, I’ve heard the following complaint from a player:
“Man, can we do something else now? These 1v1s are stressing me out, I need to relax…”
It is no coincidence that it is almost purely newcomers that express this complaint. The question is why? I will provide you with some actual context, in which a reddit user asked:
“I know its just a game, and whether I win/lose doesn’t make a difference. I’m not a top tier player, but playing ranked matches drain me mentally. I get very tense, anxious, and practically stressed out. I can play 2 or 3 ranked matches in a row tops, before I have to play some UMS games to calm down. Is there a way to overcome this, aside from just playing more?”
There’s actually nothing odd about getting tired from playing lots of StarCraft. It’s an intense strategy game so naturally your brain is on full-throttle for 15 to 40 minutes at a time. Getting anxious, tense and practically stressed out however, is not so natural. More >
Battle.net 2.0 – Ignorance is bliss
May 24th
As some may know, I have been BETA testing StarCraft 2 since around late February. A huge part of StarCraft (and all of Blizzard’s RTS games) is Battle.net. Along with StarCraft 2 came a new Battle.net. I am here to review it, mostly the ladder.
The way ladders worked in StarCraft is you would have a rating – a number of points earned by winning and lost by losing (basically). There was a single ladder, with everybody in it. If you were #1, you were #1. If you were #480 you were #480.
The problem with that is this…. Mmmm, yeah hold on, it’s actually pretty straight forward and awesome. If I’m awesome, I can see that I’m awesome! If I suck, I can see that I suck! And the last thing I want is to be awesome and feel like I suck, or suck and think that I’m awesome, when I’m not.
Then came along Battle.net 2.0 and things have changed (as you would expect from a new system!). Except it’s changed for the worse! Blizzard, in all their minds of magic and rooms full of treasure, decided players actually want to be told they’re awesome, even if they suck worse at StarCraft than Bill O’Reilly sucks at engaging in coherent discussion.
Review mania
Apr 4th
I’ve made a few purchases lately of things that are probably worth providing a review for, for any others out there intending to buy similar products. I’ll get right into it.
The first thing I’ll review is the PC I recently built which, if you missed it, was described right here.
Assembly was fairly smooth and I guess should be attributed to the quality of the case, even though there’s a few odd things about the case that annoyed me, like the door opening on the (in my opinion) wrong side, and the USB and HDD/Power LEDs being on the wrong side, as well. Nothing was of any dramatic concern. The motherboard was mounted in a More >
Community too harsh on StarCraft 2?
Dec 3rd
I’d be the first person to complain if I thought Blizzard were on the path to ruining the StarCraft name. Seriously, check my ‘Good Games’ list. Having been a fan and hardcore player of the game since its release, I believe I’m among the most anxious of people on this planet when it comes to this game, so I’ve got no reason to give Blizzard more leg-room than necessary. For example: I was a huge supporter of giving the Soul Hunter the boot. That thing was about as StarCraft as Pikachu.
My problem, and the reason I’m making this post, is that I think the hardcore community are getting way ahead of themselves. Obviously it’s great that the community are expressing their concerns with the game, and without that kind of feed-back, who knows what StarCraft 2 might actually end up like? But a line has to be drawn between helpful criticism, and the other comments motivated by biased, zealous attachment to the original game, that can only More >
Many new units. Many Blizzard responses.
Jul 21st
It’s been a couple of months now since Blizzard announced Starcraft 2 at their World-Wide Invitational event in South Korea. As expected, Blizzard have been slowly introducing some new concepts to the community. Whether it be through magazines or short question/answer bullets released by community manager ‘Karune’, of Battle.net forums.
I must say, the experience of seeing the way Blizzard are handling the development of Starcraft’s little sister is quite up-and-down. More >
Hell, it’s about time
Jul 19th
This post is way overdue. In fact, it’s been in my drafts for over a month. Time to finish it up and hit the “Publish” button. So here it is, old and overdue.
Starcraft II was announced some time ago at the 2007 Blizzard Worldwide Invitational (WWI) in Seoul, South Korea. After months of solid, potentially true rumours (as opposed to the rumours which have floated around for years) have circulated the many Starcraft communities and gaming communities a-like, not to mention the series of teaser-like splash images that have displayed on the front page of blizzard’s sites five days prior to the announcement. Finally, after 9 years since the release of the original, we are brought the long-awaited sequel to the greatest game of all time. I’ve been playing Starcraft since 2000, so naturally this is one of the most exciting times for me. For years I’ve followed the Korean pro-gaming scene which Starcraft spawned and I can’t wait to see how Starcraft II can further enhance it. More >
StarCraft Highlights of Korea 2006
Dec 22nd
Recently an excellent highlights video of the 2006 Korean Pro StarCraft scene was made to sum up the year. This included scenes from leagues such as the year’s OSL and MSL series, as well as the Sky Pro league and more from the year 2006.
Personally I rate the video 8.5 out of 10. It shows some great action footage and some great micro to drool over.
The video was made by Kmc_a3, from PGR21.com.
You may find the video at either of the following links:
Source: teamliquid.net
StarCraft Documentary by National Geographic
Aug 16th
Recently released was a documentary on the greatest game of all – StarCraft: Brood War.
A documentary? You say. Yes, a documentary, and this isn’t just some kid making some video of some good replays. This is a National Geographic documentary. Yes, a National Geographic documentary.
Once again, StarCraft continues to amaze people to such an extent that one of the best documentary production companies have aimed their camera in its direction.
The documentary is amazing. It shows a huge range of StarCraft related footage from things as simple as the game basics, to things as in-depth as the living styles of individual pro gamers.
I especially love the vast amounts of pro-scene footage. Finally the true popularity of this great game can be proven to those who have no idea (you know who you are).
But exactly the point of this documentary is not for proof at all, but to show people, just average peopl just how big StarCraft and professional gaming in South Korea really is.
This video really is awesomeness in its purest form. A 48 minute long in-depth documentary of the greatest game ever. All packed into 350mb.
You can get the torrent here.
But remember this is not your average custom vod by some gamer. This is a real national geographic documentary subject to copyright.
However I’ve never heard of this fact stopping anyone before so please do enjoy it.
prOxi vs Esc-
Jun 23rd
Tonight my StarCraft team ‘prOxiteam’ had a clan war vs another Australian team called Clan Esc
It was really fun, as it always is when vsing Clan Esc. The results were really tight.
I was really stoked after winning my 2 games vs Esc-Backlash 2-0, and hearing about kurtis and max winning their matches 2-0 aswell.
But things JUST slipped away from us with rob and graham losing their games 0-2.
Not a huge issue I thought, we’re still up 3-2. But then we had to play the 2v2s.
We lost both the 2v2s, so it ended up a loss 3-4 (7-8) 
Ohwell, at least we won last week’s round of WSCL vs Team_]i[nflow 4-3 
What’s important is that proxiteam managed to have a really fun evening and have some great games with some very skilled gamers.
You can read the full post here:
http://proxiteam.com/comment.php?comment.news.30
Adios
proxiteam popularity soaring!
May 26th
[Administrator's note 1/8/2008: One should note, this post is very old, none of these links should be expected to work now]
…And you’ll notice my website proxiteam.com has had around 16 thousand page views this month.
That’s alot, for a gaming team’s website, incase you didn’t know.
You’ll notice alot of my site’s stats increased during May 06.
This is probably because my team was advertised as a quality team, by Entropy, a well-known news reporter at pgtour.net, which is currently the most popular public ladders for StarCraft.
Giggidy giggidy, I think we’re popular ^_^