Starcraft, you Pwn me.

(I know the picture is from sc2, it was just too hilarious to ignore)

I recently bought starcraft, was too lazy to go to the game shop so instead I paid a vist to blizzard store and surprise, surprise a digital copy! Hell yea, so I bought that online. First thing I did was to play against the PC just to get my hotkeys a bit grounded. I've played starcraft multiplayer a little bit back home, wanted to get into it again because of starcraft 2. SO i new the hotkeys, and units etc, basic basic stuff.

Now, haha! Now I was feeling confident! Of to battle.net I went but alas it was... weird. There were no games in english. So snooping around my favourite starcraft site (TL.net) I discovered Iccup. AN international server for starcraft players who are 'serious'. I thought that last part was a joke, boy, was I wrong.

Rank D. You'd think people in rank D would have problems getting the hotkeys right, you'd think they wouldnt use the keyboard, you'd think that they were just a bunch of easy kills, I knew a few builds vaguely but these people on Iccup they knew more than I did. Digg this, I've won only one single game. ONLY ONE out of maybe 8 1 v 1 matches, I've won 2 out of 3 Big game hunter matches. My first game was rather fun I had 3 rax but did not rush him, wish i should have he was zerg. I was slow, my macro was really weak and he got mutalisk. Mutalisk stacking my marines one by one but I survived for a fair bit before I gg'd.

The other games were just me fucking up, I manage to push em back far but always my macro is really bad. Or sometimes I just get jacked because of I had no anti air, or pushed too much and lost all my units, or did not push enough and he secured his natural. The worst game was this protoss player, I was playing Terran and he came into my base built a pylon. I thought well fuck it whats a pylon gonna do. I somehow managed to kill that probe with my scv. A minute later here comes another probe and he puts a FUCKING CANNON on the pylon which was on my base. I panicked sent my SCV's on him, sent I had one marine, but the single probe continued to make a second cannon and assimilator on my gas. My macro and micro was so terribly bad, I was trying to control this dumb ass situation while my minerals had stacked to 300. The rest is history I was badly, badly owned. His rank? D.

I know I'm a noob. But, damn. Noobs in starcraft are no fucking joke. I dont know how any new player would get into this game multiplayer wise. If he had a practice partner it wouldn't be so bad. I'm okay with it, because the amazing thing about starcraft is that you can analyse you game and pin point your mistake. Like not microing well enough, or not scouting the second time, or getting that armory up fast enought for goliaths, or not upgrading that overlord speed, it goes on forever.

I think the best thing about starcraft is that, sure 50% to 60% (maybe? I dont know) is your skill on the mouse on keyboard at macro and micro. The other percentage is knowledge, information, build order, its so damn important. I lost mostly cause I did not know. Some games I was ahead but loss because of bad micro macro. Its not infuriating but frustrating in a good way, because I want to get better.

I started playing at 7oclock and wanted to stop at 10pm, I looked at the clock the first time since 7 and it was 12. Losing sucks, but starcraft is fun regardless of win or lose espcially for a noob like me.

So anyone want to play starcraft with this noob? I'd be happy to play, win - lose it dont matter. Just watch out for my 4 pool!

Heroes of Newerth.

I recently have been obsessively playing a game called: Heroes of Newerth. Here's a short description from wikipedia they sum it up rather nicely;

"Heroes of Newerth is a Real-time Strategy game made by S2 Games based on the Warcraft III scenario Defense of the Ancients otherwise known as (DotA)."

The game plays exactly like Dota but in a more refined, clean and unrestricted way. The coding is not restricted to the Warcraft 3 engine, so many spells/ powers/ abilities have incredibly unique and cool animations, and the creativity is quite refreshing. Although much of the core characters are still there are new ones and the cores get tweaked in one way or another. Its the same game on the same board but with different chess pieces.

I've played roughly ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY matches in the last few days. From 2nd of April to today 11th of April. Its a fun game, but again the community reeks. Its just as bad as dota, maybe worst with all the elitist garbage. Playing this game has given me practice to cuss many phrases and insults have been made with my time playing it and its not because I was trolling, no no no no. As much as I love trolling, I was the one being unreasonably crucified with noob stakes and feeder spears. Just so you know, I was rather far from noob my KDR is 1.0 over all my games and I have a rating of 1600, a bad player would normally have a psr <1500>

After a week of playing this game, almost incessantly and obsessively, I've recently (yesterday) have toned the playing hours down significantly. To be frank, I played it because I needed something to fill the void that is starcraft. Nothing can, I bought Bad Company 2, KOTOR, redownloaded Counter strike source and Modern Warfare 2. Nothing, lasted. HON lasted the longest if we're counting hours played which I have easily managed to get over 100 hours in HON, BC2 was around sixty i think. My recent obsession with HON is because of my previous history with DOTA or maybe its because of how awesome the rating system is, its quite addictive to rack up those points and improve one's KDR (kill death ratio). Although the community really kills this game, the fact is that HON like dota is a very team oriented game. Something that may be fun once in a while for example: playing starcraft with friends is ludicrously entertaining. But, playing with a bunch of strangers takes a toll especially when most of them are unforgiving douchebags that can only help one by calling others noob, feeder, or [insert cuss word here]. The key word is friends. But still, I would not recommend this to any of my friends, word of advice; stay away. I will, glad I could try it out and now call bull fuck on it.

Also thanks to HON I have a new inclination to hate people from the Philippines, not to be racist but; their such DICKS IN HON.

Now, tomorrow I think I'll check out the closest game store to look for Starcraft Brood war.

Anime music.

I discovered this site several years ago and its an awesome site to download a ton of anime music for free. It even has some of those really obscure background music.

http://gendou.com/amusic/

So far I've downloaded 855 songs from this site.