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.