Star Blog #1

 

Hola! Welcome to the Star Blog. It will be a (hopefully) daily blog with information related to Starcraft.  I can’t believe we don’t have a corner of 2old2play dedicated to this game! One of the most popular games for years! One of the biggest (if not THE biggest) eSports! And a game with a pretty large number of older gamers and a very large supportive community.  So maybe I can drum up some business for this game J or maybe I’ll pull some of you closet Starcrafters out of the closet.

 

First some disclosure – in case you thought you were reading the words of an “expert”. I’m far from it – I’m a hack. I didn’t play SC one and honestly I don’t think I’ve ever really played an RTS before.  So in addition to me going out and finding hints / tips / tricks /news / general information you’ll also be able to follow my progress as I try to ascend the Starcraft 2 ladders. 

 

 

SC2 is an RTS.   Basically it is a game of real time chess – where you are hiding your pieces from your opponent and they are hiding their pieces from you. You both get to move at the same time (it is not turn based like chess).  The goal is simple to beat the other player into submission (the normal outcome of SC2 game is one person concedes that you have beaten them) or to eradicate all the other players buildings (all your base belong 2 us!).

 

In SC2 you get to pick one of 3 races or you can choose to be a random race (the game secretly assigns you a race at the beginning of the match. The advantage to the random race is that your opponent doesn’t know what to prepare for. Until they find you on the map they have no idea what type of opponent they will be facing. The disadvantage of course is that you have to have a very good grasp of all 3 races and that the race chosen for you may not be the best match up for you or the map may not play to that races strengths.

 

The 3 races are: Zerg (alien bug like race), Terran (typical future military type units), Protoss (high tech alien race). Each race has it’s advantages and disadvantages and all 3 can be played almost any way you want! You like to turtle up and build a big army? You can build for that. You like to rush right away? You can build for that. You like a more balanced game play based on building your economy and taking extra bases? You can do that as well. And you can start a game with a plan but you most likely will want to transition into something a little different to counter what you find out about your opponent.  

 

The reason I’m loving it so much is that by nature I am a competitive gamer. I love learning new games and game mechanics and becoming better at them and there is no shortage of learning to be had in SC2. I also really enjoy how fleshed out the entire scene is. You have heroes and villains, professional gamers streaming, hundreds of tournaments (LAN and online), hundreds of streamers, professional broadcasting, a large number of podcasts dedicated to the scene etc. It is just a very fleshed out community. Another thing I like is that a lot fewer games are decided by host advantage or lag in SC2 compared to some other popular competitive games such as Halo or Street Fighter. Lag matters of course and it happens – but its effect is a lot less detrimental in SC2. SC2 also has an amazing ranking / ladder system built into the game.

 

OK that’s enough of an intro for today J I’ll leave you with a video worth watching.  This is Sean Day[9] Plott – I would consider him the face of SC in North America. He relentlessly gives to the community and tries to level up the community. He hosts a show which airs almost every day for an hour or two where gives hints / tips / commentary. Here is episode #100 where Day[9] talks about his life in Starcraft.   Enjoy!