Haven't played much

Other then getting rather bored playing I haven't been on because of homework. I have tons of programming assignments that I've needed to do.

I picked up zerg and so far I really like them. I feel like there is so much more to do or so much more that I can do. I haven't tried using zerg in my 1v1 though because I'm sure I'll just get a hundred losses in a row before I start winning again.

1000 points

Not really impressive anymore but I hit 1000 points in diamond the other day. I only play about 2-4 1v1 games a day so I don't accumulate points very fast. I usually only like playing when I have bonus pool, but occasionally I play past that.  I kind of want to finish getting all the achievements but I would have to sacrifice my 1v1 rating. I know 1000 points isn't very good but I feel someone what accomplished by it just to throw it away for the sake of achievement points. Most likely I will end up waiting for season 2 to throw  my placement matches and grind wins.

Achievement Points: 4330
1v1 ranking: 1008 points Diamond rank 8

So I started playing this game called progress quest. The whole idea is to just leave the game on and it gains levels and goes on quests by itself completely unattended. It's kind of funny and I felt like making one for Starcraft 2. This picture is my 1st draft concept for the program. Nothing is implemented yet I'm just trying to get a feel of how I want to do things. If anyone has any ideas feel free to comment.

Losing Streak

I had a terrible losing streak the other day. It's hard to tell whether I was just doing really poorly or being completely outplayed. I wasn't able to win a game until it dropped me to a gold opponent. I'm doing better now but I was so close 800 points and now I am back down to 740 or so. I think part of the problem with a losing streak is losing confidence. You are slightly pre disposed to losing if you are believe you are going to lose at the start. Just like any probabilities the previous match has no effect on the next. Just because you lost one match doesn't mean you are predetermined or more likely to win or lose the next. So the point is just not to let losses get to you and you should never run into a huge losing streak like I did.


Side note: Finished 5000 FFA kills achievement.

This was my first attempt at playing against the insane AI without doing sort of all in strategy in the first 3 minutes of the game. To be honest I thought it would be much harder. You pretty much just need to play defensively since they just charge at you without any real gameplan other then brute force.

Diamond 1v1

So I finally got promoted to diamond to in my 1v1 league. Yea ok, I was terran and maybe some people look down upon that but I never used abusive strategies like massive marine and marauder balls with medviacs. I always did what I felt was the best counter and utilized every unit that seemed good. I rarely used ravens but they are very situational. Battlecruiser just never happen in 1v1 so I never got them because there is never any time for that. I certainty felt like I was ready to be promoted and that I have gotten much better then I was.

Starcraft 2 Mousepad

My custom mouse-pad finally came in today. It looks pretty good and is of decent quality. I am happy with it. Pretty nice quality for being free.

Terran vs Zerg

Starcraft II signature

It looks like someone created this cool little signature that shows your in game statistics. I still can't tell whether it auto updates or not. I would think so.

Brutal Completionist

So today I beat the game as well as all the side missions on brutal. I had been putting it off only because the people on the sc2 forums made it seem so hard and painful. In actuality it was actually pretty easy. I have also reached 3500 achievement points. Not that it means anything but they are fun to go for. I can't wait to hit 4000. I have a lot of custom games to do not to mention co-op games. I think once I finish those hundreds of AI games I will hit 4k points. I'm not planning on doing much with league games until I get home to kansas. It will be a better environment with my quiet room. I can't wait for my awesome medivac portrait though.

Solid Gold Challenge

Finally finished getting all of the gold level achievements for the challenge missions in single player. Most of them were pretty easy except around two or three of them. The ones that were giving me the biggest trouble were "Opening Gambit" and "Psionic Assault". You had to be really good at conserving as much energy as possible and doing nearly perfect micromanagement in order to have anything left at the end. It awarded me the spectre portrait.

Starcraft II released

I got my copy of Starcraft II at midnight of July 27th yesterday night. I was originally going to get it at Walmart, but I ended up getting it at gamestop. It was pretty simple and everything went very smooth. I walked in at around 11:00 pm and paid for the game and then got in line with my receipt for the midnight release. I was first in line so I walked out at around 12:02 and drove home and started playing campaign. The game is more amazing then I would have expected. The multiplayer is the same as beta so already knew how that was going to be. Multiplayer is still great though, I am just having fun with campaign right now.

I am away from home so I have to play on my laptop for now. It runs pretty good with everything on high, so I'm not complaining. 

End of Phase 2

It looks like phase 2 is over now. It has been fun while it lasted but every good thing must come to an end. the game comes out in a week so it isn't very long now until there will be millions of people playing. The 8,000 or so that were in beta will probably be the top players at release, at least for awhile they will be.

A random video of an awesome comeback in a 2v2 game.

Promoted to Platinum

Somehow after losing a bunch of games I got promoted to platinum league. I don't feel like I am ready yet to play against better players, but I guess it can't do anything but push me to get better myself. I've only played less then 30 games so far. I see other people in my division that have played 80-100 games yet they have about the same amount of points as I do. Honestly I think I would rather have 40 wins and 40 losses then 15 wins and 15 losses even if I had more points and a higher rank. I will probably play a lot more once retail comes out because it is the driving force of actually accomplishing something that will stay there that keeps me going. I know everything I do in beta will be erased so it is hard to get motivated.

Video

So my teammate decided to get owned and say that I suck before rage quitting this game. I managed to win the rest of the game 1v2 though. I am not great but at least I don't suck.

Achievments

Blizzard added a great number of achievements to the game. It's unsure whether or not these will be the achievements in the retail version but I'm sure most of them will be. The hardest to get ones being the 1000 win achievements could takes months or even years to obtain. Then there are really simple achievements like playing a replay or winning 1 game. I think there might be around 200 or so achievements to get at the moment, which is rather impossible to accomplish within the next couple weeks before the beta goes down.You wouldn't want to do that anyway since everything is going to be wiped.

Phase 2 started

Phase 2 should start within the next few days and I can't wait. I can feel myself getting rusty at this game and I'm pretty sure I'll be terrible. Think I'll have to start playing against some cpu's to at least get the game mechanics fresh in my mind again.

Edit: So I suck pretty bad now. I got placed into gold for my 2v2's and I only have a 50% win ratio.

Phase 2

Patiently awaiting for sc2 beta phase 2. I got bored playing sc1 campaign so I started playing final fantasy ix. I'm pretty much done with the game already since I'm right before the final boss, but it is fun to stop there and go out in the world and get everything that I can. I think I might try playing final fantasy 10, 10-2 and 12 after this since I have never played them before. Final fantasy 7 and 8 don't really appeal to me so I don't think I will ever play those ones. Back to sc2 beta now; I think phase 2 will start somewhere around July 5th to July 15th. Still unsure whether it will be an open beta or still be closed. I guess they like keeping secrets.

End of Beta

So according the sc2 forums the beta is going to be ending either today or tomorrow. I'm sad but I guess I'll get over it once the game comes out. I've started on sc1 campaign and I hope to finish it by release. It would be cool if they enbaled the play offline feature of the beta and added a difficult cpu to play against while we wait, but I doubt they are going to do anything like that. It seems like they want everyone anxious to buy the game while we wait during the downtime. I'm going to buy it anyway so it is frustrating. Can't wait for july 27th.

Edit: So apparently there is going to be a phase 2 of the beta in a few weeks. That would only be a short while before the actual release, so it won't be very long. My guess is that it is going to be an open beta so they can test their servers under load. I hope they have some kind of campaign testing, but I doubt they will. 

2v2 Platinum

For some reason after a losing streak and then 1 win I got promoted to the platinum league today. I have been playing mostly as random to get experience with all three races. I am doing good as zerg now and for some reason pretty bad as protoss. I think I heard that the beta is going to go down on june 7th which is in only a handfull of days. I tried to start starcraft 1 campaign earlier today but the gameplay pathing and everything is really frustrating to deal with. I might end up just cheating through every level and just reading the storyline to get the gist of it. I am still shocked that it put me at rank 4 of platinum. That seems like a big jump to me. Hopefully I do terrible in this league because I felt like I was just getting the hang of being in gold.

2v2 Gold

I have been doing better in my 2v2's as of late. Before I was around rank 60, but I got down to rank 13. Hard to tell if I am actually getting any better though. I could be playing worse opponents or having better partners. Haven't played the past few days because I drove down to Texas for the summer. I will probably still be down here when the game is released on July 27th so I will have to install it on my laptop. Yes, I have a gaming laptop. Everyone will just have to get used to it. It is a few years old but it has a 8800 gtx card in it.

Edit: Managed to get down to rank 1 for my 2v2. I really feel like everyone else is just getting worse. I won my first game as zerg just now.

Custom Games

I have been playing a lot of sc2 custom games today. I don't know if it is on purpose but most of them are impossible to complete. I understand they are supposed to be really hard but they are literally impossible. I think they just haven't quite perfected all the levels of hp and damage to make it a balanced custom game yet. Another thing that I noticed was how laggy some of the custom games can get because of the overwhelming number of units. In broodwar that was never an issue because the graphics were so low. My 9800 gtx isn't the best but it certainty isn't terrible. It can play everything but textures on ultra, but when you throw in 1500 units running around it slows down to a crawl. I'd imagine other people are having the same issue so I keep having to turn down my graphics to medium when playing intensive custom games.

Platinum 1v1

Finished my placement matches finally. I was shocked to find that it placed me in platinum. I guess that is basically the same as what gold used to be, but I don't think I am good enough for this league. I've only played 10 games so far and I only have a little higher then 50% win ratio. I guess as long as I win around half of my games I should be in this league. Hope I don't get dropped to gold now. They changed the point system to start at 0 points so now there are tons of people at the bottom of the division with 0 points, and because you can't go below 0 points there are tons of people with technically the same rank.

Servers are up

Looks like the servers are back up after patch 13 killed them. The stats are all wiped so I'm going to get started on doing my placement matches again. Hoping to end up in around gold for 1v1 and 2v2 since they removed the copper league and added a diamond league at the top. The leagues in order are now Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum and Diamond. I've only played one placement match for 1v1 so far and I won terran vs zerg.

Edit: I keep getting dropped from games so I think I'm going to wait until the servers are fixed up. From the games I finished I managed to win all of them. So 3 out of 5 wins so far on 1v1 placement matches. 

Patch 13

A few things have been added to the beta and a few things have been broken by this patch. They added 3v3 and 4v4 but everytime I try and play them I get unreasonable lag and then the game freezes. All of the usernames and achievements have been wiped, so you have to register new names. It appears they have taken away the identifiers for the username so you just pick a single name. If they do this in release it is going to be really confusing having people with the same names. On the other hand if it can't be the same then there will be a rush for good usernames before everything is gone. At the moment I have the name izzy so I'm happy. I haven't really gotten to play and 3v3 or 4v4, but it seems like it would be a rather hectic game. Maybe that will be fun, maybe not. I can't really say for sure yet.

Beta Closing

Not quite sure what I am going to do once the beta goes down for a few weeks. I am thinking about going back through starcraft and starcraft broodwar campaign to refresh my memory of the storyline before release. Without cheating at all it actually takes quite a bit of time to go through the campaign. The last time I played through it was probably around 5 years ago so I pretty much don't remember any of it.The gameplay is probably going to be frustrating after playing starcraft II, which is 100x more advanced in just about every aspect. I can usually tolerate going back to earlier graphics, but the units running into each other and the horrible pathing will be pretty bad.

Starcraft AI

I tried playing the cpu in an offline starcraft II game and very easily destroyed them. They sent about 30 zeglings pretty early in the game, but with any kind of wall and units you can kill a bunch of zerglings. I can only hope that once the actual release comes out there will be a somewhat difficult computer AI. The launcher I'm using doesn't let me do anything like 1v2 comps or else it would be a little more fun.

Rank 1 Bronze

Finally got to rank 1 in bronze league today. Not sure if it will bump me up to silver for 2v2 or not. I might have to play a bit more until it bumps me up. Currently have a winning streak of 10.

sc2 community

Lately I feel really annoyed by the general starcraft II community. The only thing I ever read about on the forums is people complaining about certain aspects of the game. Nerf this, buff that etc. It's like people don't realize that for you to win every game that means someone else loses. Then that person complains about whatever you are doing to win. It isn't possible to make everyone happy because not everyone can win all the time. This type of community most likely manifests because of the world of warcraft community, which is generally annoying and immature. People need to realize that this isn't WoW. They also need to realize that this is still beta and not all of the aspects of the game are official. Blizzard is changing things to figure out the best way to have the final game. They don't care about your beta records.

On another note I have been trying to learn zerg. I've mostly been zerglings rushing while trying to spec to hydralisks or mutalisks. Sometimes it has been successful but it doesn't seem to work very well. I love the way they look though, especially green zerg. I wish you were able to choose your color in ranked matches.

New Headphones and mouse

This didn't happen today or anything but it is still recent. I got new headphones and a new mouse, both of which are really nice. The headphones are sennheisser 280 and the mouse is a logitech G9X. It is a little strange looking but it is actually very comfortable. The drivers come with in application that allowed you to make macros and button assignments etc. It also lets you change the macros depending on what application is open. Currently I only have three different settings. Default, Internet, and starcraft II. The idea of a gaming mouse to some people might seem a little silly. Maybe it doesn't make much of a difference in actual gameplay, but I can tell you makes me feel better. Even the slightest advantage of having quick access to certain keys at my fingerstips is better then nothing. The color of the LED's change color depending on the application and what you set them to as well. Blue for starcraft, red for firefox, and green as default. If you have the money to blow on a gaming mouse I'd recommend this one. The headphones are for the most part very comfortable. They keep sound in very well and keep other sounds out. That was really all I was looking for in the headphones so they meet the only requirements I was looking for. I'd probably get cheaper headphones if I was going to remake this purchase.

Release Date

Can't wait for Starcraft II to come out. It's finally been announced to to release on July 27th. It's only taken them around 5 years from announcing it to giving a release date. I'm not planning on pre-ordering it but I'm definitely going to get it when it comes out. They never sell out of things like this so pre-ordering is just a waste of 5 dollars. The game so far in beta seems way better then I would have imagined. There are a ton of people on the forums complaining about everything though. Some people complain that the graphics are subpar for a modern game, but the truth is that if the graphics in the game were any better you wouldn't be able to play at 60 fps on ultra settings without buying a 400 dollar graphics card. The amount of objects moving around in a fluid motion is just overwhelming at such ridiculous textures. Besides, real time strategy games are hardly about how realistic the graphics are. This game is going to be great.

Starcraft II

I'm going to try and blog about my progress on starcraft II. I recently started playing the beta and I plan to buy the game as soon as it comes out. Currently I'm rank 3 bronze on my 2v2 games and rank 20 silver on my 1v1. I've mostly played terran but I'm starting to get into zerg. I only have around a 55% win ratio right now so I need to step it up.