Monday 31 October 2011

FREE COPY

I have a free copy of StarCraft 2 Wings of Liberty to give away to a lovely person who thinks they're going to play it. It's worth at least £30!

A free trial of the game is available on Blizzard's website here.

If you enjoy it, create a Battle.net account and let me know via email what it is and you may be getting a free copy of the game ^_^

 GL HF guys!

(That's good luck and have fun in online speak)

Sunday 30 October 2011

Placement

I forced myself through my placement matches yesterday so that I could get my panda marine avatar, and I was amazed I didn't get placed in Bronze!!!


You can have a look at whatever stats you would like to here on Battle.net.

My friend Alex managed to get placed in the Gold league \o/

Just thought I should post a little something on here to let y'all know :P Gunna try and play a few more ladder games today. . . 

Wednesday 26 October 2011

Season 4 Begins . . .

WOOP WOOP!!!

Season 4  of StraCraft 2 has finally begun!



For those of you who don't know, when you play StarCraft 2 multiplayer using the Battle.net matchmaking system it will rank you in accordance to how often you win against people who are better than you. The first time you play a multiplayer game it will ask you to play 5 placement matches so that it can pit you against people from the different 'leagues'. The leagues are similar to any league in that the more you win against people who are better, the higher up the league you go. This eventually leads to you increasing from Bronze, to Silver and so on. And as you go up, other people must come down. It's all a crazy number crunching headache of sums based on many data sets including how often you win, who you win against, who they win against, how often you play and so on.

Essentially, anything you do in the multiplayer game generates a number which is used to calculate where you sit in the global StarCraft 2 player base. It also allows Blizzard to match you up so that you should on average win half of your games, and lose half of your games. If this isn't the case then you're in the wrong league and Blizzard will pit you against a player who may be at the bottom or top of their current league in a placement match, after which the winner goes into the higher league, and the loser drops the league just below. It really is awesome.

Right, so about this season malarky. In order to keep the game fresh, allow new players to come in and to stop people having ridiculous numbers in their win/lost stats page, Blizzard reset your history to an extent and everyone almost starts again. If you were in platinum before however, you just need to play one placement match in this new season before you can continue where you left off rising through the ranks. Your history for the previous season isn't lost, instead it is all recorded in your profile page on Battle.net for all to see. Big news with this release is that Season 4, and every season from now on, will last 8 weeks, before the ranks are frozen and reset again. I'm not sure if this is too fast or just right, but 8 weeks doesn't seem to be a long time . . . we'll see how it goes I guess.

Now the reason I'm so excited is that this is perfect timing for me to jump in and start playing multiplayer on the ladder more, and to also try and get more people into doing the same so we can all have more fun :)

See you out there in Season 4 :P

Tuesday 25 October 2011

And so it begins . . .

After watching Blizzcon 2011 I've decided to get back into StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty and finally start playing the multiplayer aspect of the game.

First, StarCraft 2 (for those who don't know) is THE Sci-fi RTS game, featuring the most balanced multiplayer gameplay of any game of the last 10 years, in addition to having a kick-ass single player campaign AND an epic set of mod tools for players to make their own maps/modes and even games using the SC2 engine.

In the multiplayer game you play as one of three races, Terran (think dumb-ass space marines from Earth), Protoss (high-tech alien types like the Asgard from Stargate) and the Zerg (Starship Troopers style insectoid creatures who terrorise the galaxy consuming/assimilating everything they come across). They all have their own advantages and disadvantages which suit different playstyles. I personally love playing as Protoss as these bad boys can warp in units, rather than wait for them to be made, meaning you can quickly mass up a strong force. Also, they have access to the best unit in the game, the Colossus!!! Think war of the worlds style epic giant robots that shoot fricking laser beams!!!

Colossi being boss! Pew pew pew!


So, in order to get back into StarCraft 2 I've decided to play at least 5 games a week, following advice from Day9 (a pro-player who has become a gaming icon). This little video I'll embed below will explain things a bit more fully.

I wanted a blog to act like a journal of my games and play sessions, in the hope that a log of my gaming will inspire me to keep on with it and actually play SC2 regularly. I think it'll help stop me going insane with the ever-increasing pressures of my PhD degree, and allow me to quickly blow of steam and have something to look forward to when I get home.

If you want to add me to your SC2 friends list my user name is KKOB on the EU servers. Email me if you want me to add you :)




Give Day9 a chance. He may be American but he's a really awesome guy who gives sound advice! Also, he's really smart too!