Starcraft

[Lokishadow]

Hello, all.

It's been some time since I've been very involved with the LL, but I'm still harboring sweet memories of times gone by. It's been a failed marriage, parenthood, discharge from the military, five countries, two wars, and relief efforts for the Katrina disaster, and now I'm back in college, so time doesn't seem to be on my side where the LL is concerned. But I intend to be with the LL to the bitter end.

Recently, the "what is Blizzard up to now?" bug bit me, and I spent about two hours a day for two weeks perusing the main site and various subsites. And I noticed something:

Starcraft 2.

I don't remember where or when I first experienced Starcraft, but it must've been in Fresno, California when I was in C school in the Marines. I had a lot of free time then, and there were 24 computers with a dedicated T1 line (this is when dial-up was the gold standard), and many of the computers had games. I played a bit with Starcraft, and fell in love with the Zerg.

Yeah, I know. I like space bugs. I'm weird like that.

Anyway, reading up on Starcraft 2 and the amazing visuals got me fiending for games again. For the record, I haven't felt the urge to seriously play a video game of ANY kind in about 4-5 years. But I wanted Diablo or Starcraft.

I finally settled on Starcraft, for a couple of reasons. One, I'd never seriously played it before, and two, it was $20 for the battlechest, and $20 was my game budget.

So I went down to Best Buy and picked it up.

Much ado about Vista and a string of expletives and hacks later, I finally had my Terrans pushing into the eighth level...for the eighth time, but now I know how to keep it from crashing. If anyone else has this problem, you have to install on you Admin account, then log out, go to a Guest Account, and run the program as an Administrator. Oh, and don't forget to set it to run in compatibility mode for Windows XP SP 2, 640x480, 256 colors mode. That SHOULD work, and allow you to continue without crashing. That's what worked for me.

Anyway, I noticed how recalled how utterly devoted this site was to Diablo, and also recalled my shock at seeing a WOW page, and then I wondered, "Why isn't there a Starcraft page on the LL?"

Seriously. Bolty, and every one else, we of the LL are pretty loyal to Blizzard as a company. They're simply awesome. And while I know that Starcraft is WAAAAYYY dated, and this is primarily a Diablo site...Starcraft 2 is in closed beta, while Diablo 3 is shut up tighter than . . . well, use your imagination. Why not have some Starcraft fan service on the site?

I think it's reasonable to guestimate that we'll see either an open beta or a full release of Starcraft 2 within the year. Surely that will give us some news to cover, and some systems to pick apart. Also, it's a Blizzard game! If you're going to give service to WoW, then you should give service to Starcraft as well.

Anyway, that's my piece. I plan on posting my impressions of D3 in Sirian-esque style when it finally comes out. And I am SO looking forward to that.

-Loki

[ShadowHM]

Welcome back ! :D Glad to see you return.
There are changes galore all round.

Many thanks to Bolty for keeping the Lounge open so we can sidle in and sink into one of the comfy chairs in the corner and start or join back into conversations, eh?

Anyway, that's my piece. I plan on posting my impressions of D3 in Sirian-esque style when it finally comes out. And I am SO looking forward to that.

-Loki

And I will look forward to reading those posts. :)

[Lokishadow]

Thanks for the WB, Shadow!

Welcome back ! :D Glad to see you return.
There are changes galore all round.

Many thanks to Bolty for keeping the Lounge open so we can sidle in and sink into one of the comfy chairs in the corner and start or join back into conversations, eh?


And I will look forward to reading those posts. :)

Yes, that chair is comfy:). And you flatter me for looking forward to reading my posts.

-Loki

[Zarathustra]

Do we have any Lurkers in the SC3 beta yet? If so, look me up as Zarathustra.eck and we'll get a match or two going.

[Jester]

Do we have any Lurkers in the SC3 beta yet? If so, look me up as Zarathustra.eck and we'll get a match or two going.

I think that'll probably have to wait at least until SC2 comes out. ;)

-Jester

[Zarathustra]

er, yeah. That too.

*ahem* See what happens when I come out of Lurk mode?

[Archon_Wing]

I have to go to a friend's house to try the beta.:DI'm just going on trying the ladder; but once the game proper comes up I'll be able to arrange games with those interested. It may be possible for me to give feedback on games, even though I have no idea how the game works.

Anyhow, the new AMM feature is neat, though I woiuld seriously like a feature to communicate with people you've played after games. Sometimes you chat a bit and then the game ends; and I can't find them easily if their name is hard to type.:P

Well hopefully, I'll be matched up with more people that know how to play the game. I've usually arrived at the enemy base with my army to find pretty much nothing. Build more workers and expand! Gold minerals are particularly awesome if you can sneak a Command Center in and MULE the crap out of it. Even if it gets discovered, it'll pay off pretty quickly. Air is retardedly overpowered atm. Protoss in particular have a hard time with antiair because stalkers are pretty pathetic excuses for antiair (and as a unit-- unlike reapers who truly have an ability to effectively harass and actually kill something, blink is just a gimmick) and thus demands another tech path (stargate) just to counter air well. In SC1, one could use archons, but they don't do splash anymore to my dismay in sc2. Storm helps, but it doesn't deter it alone.

Essentially, it seems sc2 has too many hard counters where you have no chance when caught off guard. Compare this to sc1, where lurkers counter infantry, but with good micro, you can usually delay the lurkers long enough to get tanks to stop them. The same applies to mutalisks vs corsairs. In very large numbers mutalisks get destroyed by corsairs, but when numbers are smaller, you can micro the mutas to minimize the damage and have scourge support (easily accessible if you have mutas) to keep sair numbers under control. I feel like in sc1 you could micro yourself out of bad situations where I find in sc2 that I'm not microing at all, possibly my fault.:D

I also understand this is a beta and it took an expansion and many patches for Sc1 to reach what it is today. But I would want Blizzard to keep in mind what made sc1 a good game.

Currently I play Terran, as the other two races seem terribly boring. Zerg in particular just looks like crap.;)

Finally, I'd like to wonder what Blizzard will do about cheats. :/

[Zarathustra]

Anyhow, the new AMM feature is neat, though I woiuld seriously like a feature to communicate with people you've played after games. Sometimes you chat a bit and then the game ends; and I can't find them easily if their name is hard to type.:P

Go into your profile, click on the game in question, and right-click on a player name. You can add them as a friend from there.

[Archon_Wing]

Go into your profile, click on the game in question, and right-click on a player name. You can add them as a friend from there.

Ah thanks, that interface was very confusing.

Yay haven't lost a game out of the few I've played; that will inevitably change once I meet someone who knows what's going on. The gameplay is also pretty confusing. I'm not very used to those hotkeys.

[Archon_Wing]

Anyhow a friend has recieved a beta invite but has no interest in sc2 so he decided to let me take advantage of it. So I'll be on the name "allelujah"which pretty much just summarizes my reaction.:P

Though honestly, while I don't hate the game so far (I will most certainly buy it), I'm more interested in D3

[Zarathustra]

Anyhow a friend has recieved a beta invite but has no interest in sc2 so he decided to let me take advantage of it. So I'll be on the name "allelujah"which pretty much just summarizes my reaction.:P

Though honestly, while I don't hate the game so far (I will most certainly buy it), I'm more interested in D3

New Battle.net names use a two-name system. What's your surname?

[Archon_Wing]

New Battle.net names use a two-name system. What's your surname?

Ugh. :lol:
Kyrios is the surname, I should have just asked for Archon.Wing
It seems rather bland without underscores. Anyhow, I added your screen name

[Jim]

Hi,

Good read & Screenshots @ TH

StarCraft II Beta: Game Performance Analyzed

Table of contents:
1 – Same Interface, Different Strategies 2 – Image Quality 3 – Image Quality: GeForce Vs. Radeon 4 – Test System And Settings 5 – Benchmark Results: Medium Quality 6 – Benchmark Results: Ultra Quality 7 – Benchmark Results: 4x AA 8 – Benchmark Results: Frame Buffer 9 – Benchmark Results: CPU Performance