In our new feature, the Replay Roundup, we’ll gather the best StarCraft 2 videos from all over the scene and present them here for your viewing pleasure. The replays chosen will feature extreme plays, creative use of units, excellent execution of builds and strategies, and, most importantly – be very entertaining!
Our first roundup features two games played by IdrA, the notorious Zerg player, and two by TheLittleOne (TLO) – the latest addition to the elite Team Liquid – who plays Random. IdrA is an American player currently living in Korea, playing with Korean pro-graming team CJ Entus, who is known for his extreme macro-oriented play – choosing to focus on maximizing his economy and taking over the map with the purpose of overwhelming his opponent with the Zerg swarm. TLO, a German whose creativity has already earned him a fan club, is a master of unorthodox play.
In the first game, IdrA goes up against TLO, in a match played for the Altitude TL Invitational tournament on Lost Temple.
IdrA attempts to play a huge macro game against TLO’s ever changing Terran play. Great harassment in this non stop game that does not end until all expansions are taken!
The second game shows WhiteRA, a Ukrainian Protoss player, versus IdrA on Metalopolis from the HDH finals. In the previous HDH round, IdrA beat another Protoss player, NonY, on the same map with the same starting positions. Here is the second part of the video, where the action begins:
The game starts out as a replica of the previous one, where IdrA managed to completely overwhelm NonY by macroing up and negating all of NonY’s attempts to expand or move out with his force. Starting in the exact same positions as that game, WhiteRa decides to allow IdrA to macro-up at the beginning, leading to a similar game of huge army-size clashes. Will WhiteRa succeed where NonY had failed?
The next game features TheLittleOne versus NonY on Desert Oasis. This is game four of their 3rd and 4th place matches on the HDH Invitational tournament, after TLO lost to WhireRa and NonY lost to IdrA.
TLO goes up as Zerg against NonY’s Protoss in a fast-paced game showing extreme skill by both players. Excellent unit control, great timings, and a crazy use of one specific unit… !
The last game for today is from the Europe versus Asia tournament. HasuObs versus DayFly on Metalopolis, Terran and Protoss.
The Terran player opens with one Barracks, one Factory, and one Starport, showcasing what this versatile build can do. The game is accompanied by excellent commentary provided by Day[9], an amazing player on his own account and one of the best StarCraft commentators. Worth a watch!
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is about warriors, who hurl themselves into the fray, into the very teeth of danger, armed with nothing more than the biggest weapons and armored with the absolutely heaviest armor we can find. Hey, we’re not stupid, we’re just crazy.
This week, we shift gears a little. We have to talk about the constant evolution of the talent trees and class design in the beta test. The first thing we must keep in mind when we discuss the beta or PTR patches or anything like that is that the design is always evolving, and what’s currently on test may or may not make it to live. We saw a new patch with a whole host of abilities drop or change. We’ll see more of them. The purpose of looking at these patches is never “look, here’s what you will look like when you play in Cataclysm” but rather “look, here’s what they’ve done so far to the class and what we can learn from it.”
What we can see from the new talents is that more variety in terms of rage consumption and conservation is being worked into the system. As an example, Unbridled Wrath (never a particularly popular talent in the past couple of years) is gone, replaced by Battle Trance. This is indicative of the continuing paradigm shift on how rage should work for DPS players away from a simplistic “do anything you can to get more” design and towards a more nuanced, perhaps even complicated, way to look at rage, rage generation and rage consumption.
The arms talent Deadly Calm is an example of a talent designed around the oft-mentioned “disciplined, soldiery feel of arms,” one that seeks to give the spec that cool-under-fire sense, to contrast it from fury’s barbaric direction. With Deadly Calm, I see the beginning of strategy in terms of how and when to use rage as an arms warrior. If you’re close to activating Inner Rage, using Deadly Calm will let you still unleash that flurry of Mortal Strike, Overpower and Executes without preventing you from gaining the 50% damage increase for your special attacks.
Captain to away team: Set fists to Obliterize! It’s time again for Captain’s Log, our weekly venture into the cosmos of Star Trek Online. Steel your nerves and ready your weapons, because we return this week to the front lines of ground combat.
When Captain’s Log last discussed combat, we covered five of the most important basics of fists-and-phasers fighting in STO. With the fundamentals of Exposing and Exploiting firmly in mind, we’ll move on — by popular demand — to the exciting world of melee combat. Punching out a Borg invader might not seem very Trek-ish, but it sure gets the job done.
With less than four days to go before StarCraft II’s release, another financial analyst has predicted just how many copies will be sold of Blizzard‘s sci-fi RTS sequel. IndustryGamers reports that Janco Partners analyst Mike Hickey is predicting that the game will sell 7 million copies during the current fiscal year of the game’s publisher Activision Blizzard (which ends on March 31, 2011).
Revenue from the game could go over 0 million for the fiscal year, according to Hickey, with profits for Activision Blizzard reaching 1 million. He also predicts that 70 percent of StarCraft II‘s sales will be made in the current quarter that ends on September 30. 2.5 million copies will be sold in the US and Europe. In South Korea, where the game will be available via digital download, Hickey predicts revenues of 5 million from that country via both game sales and revenues from cyber cafes.
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Every Friday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting balance druids and those who group with them. This week, we are watching a moonkin dance with a mushroom once again, mostly because it amuses me, and talking about all the recent beta goodies. Mmmm, I like goodies.
I do believe I made a promise last week that I’d discuss some Cataclysm information this week, and I intend to make good on that promise. There’s certainly quite a lot of information to talk about, should you actually be a person who sleeps at a decent hour like most folks; luckily for all of you, I am not one of those people. As per usual, later into the night for most of us, Blizzard released another beta patch with a number of balance changes: a talent tree polish (a basic one, but a polish pass nonetheless) and yet another revision of Eclipse. There’s actually a good deal to be excited for this time around. Now, we aren’t paladins, so I wouldn’t be jumping out of your chain to go running naked down the street screaming in joy … But a little “whooo!” is appropriate.
Before we get started talking about all of the new changes, let me first mention a few things that are currently missing, bugged or simply not yet implemented. First and foremost, Eclipse in of itself does not currently work in beta. The bar works, you can shift the bar in every direction that you like, and the procs certainly work; however, the procs currently don’t actually do anything. There’s no bonus damage there at all, but this a bug from the mastery change when they switched over the talent trees. This actually brings up the next point: We still do not have any specialization effects as of yet, and frankly, I’m a bit at a loss as to what they might end up being. Previously, I assumed that they would merely be the old mastery effects, but looking at elemental shaman, I don’t think that will be the case.
It is safe to assume that one of our mastery effects is going to be Vengeance, to help difference ourselves from other druids. Another will likely be pushback resistances, and I’d venture to guess that the old Wrath of Cenarius benefit will also be baked in there. If there will be anything else, I cannot really say. Last but certainly not least, there are still a few things missing from the talent trees — the effects of Improved Moonkin Form still haven’t been found anywhere else that I’ve seen, anyway — so I still wouldn’t expect this to be the last pass on the druid talent trees. Things are still very likely to change from how they stand now, so don’t get too upset. With that out of the way, let’s get started.
As everyone knows in the television business, the second season of a show is usually tons better than the first (unless it’s Heroes, for some reason). Considering how well Star Trek Online’sSeason One update was received across the community, the STO team has a lot of work to do to meet and exceed that standard with the upcoming Season Two. Cryptic plans to roll out one of these bigger updates every three months, which puts Season Two smack in the middle of July.
ZAM caught executive producer Craig Zinkievich on the way to his ready room for a chat about Season Two. The big discussion revolves around the launch of the Federation Diplomatic Corps, an effort to provide an additional emphasis on exploration, diplomacy and anthropology that STO’s combat-centric gameplay has so far been lacking. Apparently, players will have to rise through the diplomatic ranks almost like a separate leveling system as they engage in first contacts and the like. We’ll just have to wait and see if they introduce a “lengthy patronizing Picard-style speech” as one of the skills.
Zinkievich also pontificated on ship interiors and the new Dabo minigame, both of which are much-requested features to help Star Trek Online feel more, well, Trekky. You can get your captain on by reading the full interview over at ZAM.
Warning! The Following Video (StarCraft 2 Ghosts of the Past) Will Blow Your Mind Away… Over and Over Again. And then Again…
Blizzard never failed to amaze with the quality of the videos released with their games. Remember Diablo 2? What about the WarCraft 3 movies? Amazing, simply stunning for their times. Today we offer you StarCraft 2 Ghosts of the Past, which is basically a pre-launch trailer for Wings of Liberty™, set for official release on 26th, this month, at midnight, location: UK, London.
In the StarCraft 2 Ghosts of the Past video, click the play arrow, then pause, then click on 360 and change movie resolution to a higher one. You can also click the four arrows to watch the StarCraft 2 Ghosts of the Past movie in full screen.
For those unable to attend BlizzCon in Anaheim, California this upcoming October, DIRECTV will once again be broadcasting it all (mostly) live online for .95 USD. The virtual ticket has just gone on sale this evening so make sure you don’t miss out. For you pet/mount collectors out there, this virtual ticket will get you the exclusive in-game item that BlizzCon attendees will be receiving (though we don’t even know what it is yet).
Last year one of the major complaints about the online stream was the fact that manypanels were delayed or possibly not even shown at all due to having only one stream available for many panels happening simultaneously, but it looks like they have a solution for that in place this year. According to the RayV page describing the virtual ticket, coverage has been expanded to four online channels offering 50+ hours of BlizzCon programming with complete coverage of panels, tournaments and announcements plus DIRECTV’s own exclusive interviews. Hopefully that means you can watch the events as they unfold rather than watching them on a delay or not at all.
Ahoy, space cadets! According to my space calendar, it’s Space Thursday again already. That means it’s time for another edition of Captain’s Log, your weekly peek into SpaceStar Trek Online.
This week marks the final installment of our ground-combat trilogy. First we covered five basics of ground combat, and last week we discussed melee combat in some depth. Now we round things out with some miscellaneous tips for upping your game in a space firefight. After I rant a little first.
Today a new Blizzard Community Manager has joined the South-east Asian Team. His nickname is Daxxarri, and he claims he will be active on other regions as well, but his main focus will be SE Asia.
Blizzard Quote:
Please join me in welcoming Daxxarri. He’ll be helping to support our Southeast Asia region, and will primarily be working and discussing the game on the new Southeast Asia StarCraft II community site. In between the normal community manager functions of meeting with developers, writing feature articles, and attending live events, he’ll be assisting in support of our Southeast Asia community sites and forums.
Welcome Daxxarri!
Blizzard Quote:
Hey all! It’s an honor and a pleasure to be here. While most of my attention will be focused on the Southeast Asia forums and community, you’ll also find me appearing elsewhere from time to time as well.
No wonder this thread isnt getting as many welcomes as the other new mod =D
Hello to you good sir, enjoy your stay *bows down*
Thanks(…)! We can’t all be wildly popular, but I don’t mind starting out on a lower key either.
Here at WoW.com, we’re on a Daily Quest (which we try to do every day, honest) to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.
Some people have things to say about everything under the sun — like the goblin pictured above, who is engaging in a frank and earnest discussion about poultry-based thermodynamics and the merits of their application in conjunction with other forms of flightless fowl. Unfortunately the only person that would listen to her is Chilly the penguin, who simply doesn’t know any better. Fortunately, we’ve found some posts that are much more entertaining than Miss Yammersalot.
And speaking of birds, Bible of Dreams has a Friday Five about our feathery friend, the boomkin.
Is there a story out there we ought to link or a blog we should be following? Just leave us a comment, and you may see it here tomorrow! Be sure to check out our WoW Resources Guide for more WoW-related sites.
We’ll take “things we didn’t see coming” for 5000, Alex. What would that be? Well, in a nutshell, Craig Zinkievich, Executive Producer on Star Trek Online and seven-year vet of Cryptic Studios, has announced his plans to step down. The long open-letter posted on the Star Trek Online official site is titled “What you leave behind” and indicates that his intent is to “take a break” allowing him to enjoy “hanging out with [his] kids over the summer, walking [his] goat more and taking care of [his] bees.”
As to just what his plans for the future are, and whether or not they may involve a return to Cryptic Studios in the future, he does not say. In the meantime, Daniel Stahl will step into his position as Star Trek Online‘s new Executive Producer. According to both Zinkievich’s note and Stahl’s own profile on the STO site, the game’s future trajectory appears to be in capable hands. We wish Zinkievich the best with his children and his goaty kids — and may he especially never wind up covered in bees.
Note that every other prediction from this rumor about the Korean Air-Blizzard event was dead-wrong.
If you’re wondering what the facts are — we will be addressing StarCraft II tournament functionality in a post launch patch to the game, soon after ship. This patch will include features to address the needs of location-based pro tournaments, but we have not discussed any specifics about tournament support beyond that.
Original post:
Even with the StarCraft 2 Beta down until further notice, the eSports arena is heating up. Rumors and teasers mentioning of a massive event scheduled to take place on June 24 have been released, and it appears that the event is not only meant to generate hype.
Big thanks goes to the TL and SCL communities for posting translations of the original material, which was released via PlayXP and sc2.178.com.
June 24 11:00~14:00
Gimpo Airport Korean Air Hangar
This event will run from June 24, from 11:00am until 2:00pm at the Korean Air Hangar, with the attendance of Blizzard HQ executives, national VIPs of the industry, reporters, and community members.
It was asked if the general public could participate, but unfortunately the event is planned to be invitation-only.
It is expected that all the details of StarCraft II’s release will be made public here.
Following Blizzard’s lockdown of the StarCraft franchise, many were expecting a major announcement to come out of Korea regarding the future of major league StarCraft competition, one that is approved by Blizzard. The event is planned to have Blizzard executives in attendance, so this just might be what fans and progamers worldwide have been waiting for.
1. There will be an upcoming “Ongame Net Starcraft 2 League,” or OSL2.
2. The sponsor of the first one will be Korean Air.
3. The first OS2L will have preliminaries all over the world and then the players will be gathered in Seoul for the Ro16.
4. There will be a “Starcraft 2 Professional Edition” that will only be provided to tournament organizers, which will include LAN functionality. Only with a special account + password that gets activated will it work. Blizzard staff will be present at tournaments to assist. Apparently, this news was first told to the organizers of the Stars War tournament after it had ended.
While the actual GomTV/OSL arrangement is not clear or fully confirmed yet, it is reasonable to assume that GomTV has found a way to work with one of the scene’s largest and most established operators. However, the most interesting part of this story is the StarCraft 2 Professional Edition, which is said to include LAN functionality.
LAN support, or the the lack of it, has been a major issue throughout StarCraft 2′s development. The gaming community did not approve of Blizzard’s decision to not support gameplay over local networks, and many fans have vowed to abstain from StarCraft 2 as long as it does not support this type of connection. It will be interesting to see if Blizzard actually does launch this “StarCraft 2 Professional Edition” and if the requirements for acquiring it will be made standard and public.
Update: Note that every other prediction from this rumor about the Korean Air-Blizzard event was dead-wrong.
Garrosh is having troubles on the home front, as shown in these spoiler-filled sound clips from the Cataclysm beta. They also have a bit of expository dialogue from Sylvanas from quests in Gilneas and Silverpine.
It’s the 4th of July weekend for most people in the United States — a chance to reflect soberly on the past of the country, or at least claim to do so whilst setting off fireworks and grilling hamburgers. Cryptic Studios is also hoping that it’s time to put in a little more playtime, as they’re having another sale in the Star Trek Online and Champions OnlineC-Stores to coincide with the holiday. Up through 10 AM PST on July 6th, all full costume sets and all existing ship variants are 20% off.
A new addition has also been brought into the in-game store for Star Trek Online(although not listed at the time of this writing on the official page) — the upgraded Galaxy-class ship from the series finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Dubbed the Galaxy-X following popular fan convention, the ship functions as a brand-new Tier 5 Cruiser with the option to equip Dual Cannons, as well as the ship’s unique Phaser Lance. The lance can hit multiple enemies and deal high amounts of damage, but unlike most weapons in the game it has to be manually aimed via turning the ship. Although Cryptic has yet to recover from the last controversy with added items to the C-Store, the sale will hopefully ease at least a few hurt feelings.
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