Monday, September 26, 2011

Me, being awful at Starcraft.

Okay, so I tried to play a game of Starcraft 2.  Playing is a whole lot different than watching.  It's tough making sure that your CC's are always producing SCV's!  My general strategy were just to get a big group of infantry, with a few hellions and at the end, a siege tank or two.  This was just a placement match, which means that after a few, I get put into a league.  I expect that I will enter bronze or silver if I keep going, but it would be awesome to go into gold or platinum.  Somehow, I still won!  Probably because the guy I was against was just as bad, if not worse than me.  He spent the whole time holed up in his base, building a Battlecruiser, which my marines then went in and blew the junk out of.  So I guess in a field of bad players, I rank up there in the middle.  Maybe next time I'll fraps it and watch it a bit, or look over the replay and see how I could do better.

That's all for now!

Monday, September 19, 2011

Dreamhack Valencia!

Some actual coverage of actual Esports in action!  Dreamhack Valencia was held on Saturday!  I didn't get to watch most of it, but I made sure to watch the finals.  Looking at the opening brackets, I had a completely different idea about who would advance to the end.  First off, I thought Huk would do much better.  Back in Dreamhack summer, Huk took the championship, becoming one of the few foreigners to win an international tournament against Korean players.  I was very disappointed when he lost to Thorzain in his first match up, but that just cleared the way for one of my new favorite players, THORZAIN.  Oh man, this guy was crazy during this tournament.  Apparently sending foreigners to Korea to learn is becoming more common after Team Liquid moved in with the oGs team, training with them and producing some very good players.  Thorzain really shined, and I was rooting for him to be the winner.  In the next matchup, I didn't care for either player.  I'd never heard of Moon, and I don't really care about Idra. Then there was Rain vs. Naniwa.  I like both of these players, but I had a feeling that Rain would take it.  And closing out the first round were two players I hadn't heard of, Lucifron and DonRaeGu.  I didn't know what to expect from DRG, but his Zerg play was intense, especially in the final.  



SPOILERS!: If anyone cares.

Okay, the finals were amazing!  It was so close, Thorzain using his slow, deliberate Terran play against DRG and his crazy Zerg control.  So much happened in these games that I didn't see coming!  Ultralisks! Who would ever think that we would see Ultras!  The mutalisk clouds were so ridiculously annoying, so much harass and for the most part, Thorzain just couldn't take them down.  There were so many parts in these games where I just couldn't sit still.  Whenever Thorzain repelled an attack, the crowd just went crazy, and I totally understand why!  But really, both of these players were very entertaining to watch and DRG did amazing!  

Apollo and Totalbiscuit are a great casting team, I hope that they work together more in the future.  Apollo is great at talking tactics while TB is very entertaining as the color commentator.  Down below I'm gonna throw up some links, in case anyone wants to watch the VODs of any matches.  





Monday, September 12, 2011

General Starcraft info: The super basics

Years and years ago, a game came out.  This game was called Starcraft.  I wasted many hours of my life watching my friends play this game.  So when I found out that Starcraft 2 had such a great competitive scene, it felt just like old times.  But this post isn't for people like me, it is for people who haven't played or watched Starcraft ever.

Starcraft is a Real time strategy game.  The camera is usually positioned in sort of a bird's eye view, where the player can see everything that's happening on the battlefield.  At the start of the game, you can only create harvester units, which pick up minerals which are then used to build structures which lead to more unit types and even more structures.

Collosi eating some SCVs



What are these crazy races and what do they do?!



                                 




There are three different army types to choose from.

  • Terran:  The human race.  A very beginner friendly race, which focuses on having a medium amount of moderately powerful units.  They are very, very defensive in comparison to the other races.  With siege tanks and bunkers, it's very hard to break the Terran line.  

  • Protoss: Egyptian alien dudes.  Regarded as the middle ground in terms of ease of use, Protoss focus on having smaller amounts of extremely powerful units.  They are a good balance of offensive and defensive, with cannon pushes and warp prisms, they can sneak in and destroy the enemy before they know what's happening.  Two of their specialties are unit shields, which absorb damage before taking hits to health, and the ability to build several structures at the same time, using only one probe.

  • Zerg: Creepy crawly bug fellas.  Considered the hardest of the races to use, Zerg focus on large armies of slightly weaker units, mixed in with some that do crazy amounts of damage.  All of their units start as larvae, which can all be evolved into different units simultaneously.  They have great map control, needing several bases to gain the most larvae possible.  They are very offensive, with banelings to rip apart rank upon rank of infantry, and mutalisks which do insane damage to air or ground.  
Each race has their own strengths and weaknesses.  Try out all of the races to decide which you like most.  I enjoy Protoss and Terran personally.  I am really bad at handling all of the Zerg larvae.  

Random basics to know when watching or playing Starcraft:
  1. MACRO, MACRO, MACRO!  Always be making harvesters.  Always build supply.  Always keep up an army and map awareness.  Moving units out onto the map gets rid of the fog of war that covers everything at the beginning of the game.  Keep an eye on everything you can.  +
  2. HAVE A PLAN!  Never go into a game without some idea of what you're doing.  Watch pros play and spend some time copying and testing out their builds.  
  3. REACT.  Scout your enemy.  Try to counter what they are doing.  This is tough when just beginning, but after you watch for a while, you can start coming up with ways to fight back.  Are they building tons and tons of marines?  BANELINGS! Dark Templar? Throw out some turrets.  Brood Lords look scary? Bring in the Carriers!  Know what counters what.  
  4. micro.  This should come later.  Focus on macroing and plans until you are comfortable.  Then, start paying closer attention to battles.  Use skills or position some units in a more effective way.  Great micro can spell the difference between winning and losing.  
  5. Be nice! Start games with a GLHF (good luck, have fun).  End with a gg (good game).  
  6. This is only for people who seriously want to get better.  Watch streams.  Watch replays.  I feel like this is the best place to bring up the king of us tiny little bronze through platinum league players, Day[9].  I think I might have to talk more about Day9 in greater depth during a different post, but seriously, go watch the Day9 Daily. (WARNING: Sometimes there is some foul, awful, terrible language. Still hilarious.)  
My hero.



So in closing for this one, just take it slow if you want to get into laddering.  Play through the campaign, try out the races and then just play  some games.  Odds are that you will be terrible at first, but the more you play, the better you'll get!  And always have fun! Why play if you aren't having fun?  Maybe I will take some footage of me trying to play, but trust me, I am much better at knowing what to do than actually doing it.





Monday, September 5, 2011

An intro to the intro!

Welcome! As this is the first blog post, I think that it should be an introduction to the subject itself.  E sports has been around for a while at this point.  The first appearance would probably be high score tables in arcade games.  The community and technology has made E sports grow into an industry.  Now, tournaments can be held in either LAN environments or online.  Online streaming has also revitalized the industry by giving people anywhere in the world access to the tournament.

While there are several different genres represented in the worldwide E sports community, such as First Person Shooters and fighting games, for this blog I want to focus mainly on the Real Time Strategy (RTS)  games that make up the bulk of the E sports scene.  The RTS game that will probably have the most focus is Starcraft 2, as it currently has the largest following.

The original Starcraft was a huge stepping stone for E sports.  It was one of the earliest games to receive a worldwide fan base (especially in Korea) as well as international tournaments.  The game still has a following, even after 13 years and a sequel.

As a disclaimer, I'm not great at Starcraft 2! Maybe some posts will be my attempt at playing, I guess we'll find out.  I might do some posts about League of Legends as well, as it is a game I'm actually pretty good at and can cover in way more depth than Starcraft.

That's it for today!