Starcraft II

Okay, yes, I'm posting about something non-Nintendo. Don't lynch me! I'm just so excited! I got accepted into the beta!

(If it turns out everyone just got an invite 2 days ago, ummm.... stop laughing at me!)

That's awesome! Let us know what you think. Looks pretty sweet.

So im jealous....Been dying to get into that beta.

What does one have to do to be accepted? I am not a PC gamer, so BETA stuff has always been a mystery.

you just have to have a game registered in your battle.net account and opt in to beta acceptance. Thing is only games I have on that account are Diablo 2 and the expansion, so I doubt Ill get access to this one. Heres hoping to Diablo 3 though.

I played it last night. I lost more than won, of course, but I was surprised how well I did in general. There's a lot familiar, and yet a ton to learn at the same time. It's easier to learn these things in campaigns as those teach you each new mechanic gradually. Here it's a little overwhelming.

My favorite little detail is the addition of two rally points for the Zerg Hatchery. If you right click a resource with the hatchery selected, it will set a rally point for workers. Right click anywhere else, and it automatically sets a rally point for anything else you produce.

I've been working with Protoss, mostly. It's going to take me awhile to get it down, though. There are just so many tech paths to follow and little details about how to use each unit to its fullest extent. Mostly I just make lots of Zealots and go to town.

By the way, for those who don't know, you can get into the beta by preordering at Gamestop:

http://www.gamestop.com/Catalog/ProductDetails.aspx?Product%5FID=65548

For those who did know, and are in the beta, come look for me. I'm Antillies.wedge.

triz.trizdog

you can also get teh beta by preordering at Amazon.

Don't abuse me too much, Triz. I just like Blizzard RTS games. I never said I was good at them.

Heh, I havent won a match yet. And honestly its turning me off from actually buying the game

I haven't seen you on, yet. I'll be on tonight. It just takes a little practice. The matchmaking is pretty good once you've played enough games for it to effectively match you.

Plus, I'd buy it even for the single-player campaign alone, but then I really really like Blizzard RTS.

Oh dont get me wrong im more of a blizzard fanboy than anything. Have they ever made a shit game? nope, rock and roll racing was awesome on SNES. I have many years lost in world of warcraft and just started up again lol. But I think with the RTS genre the whole build units and rush your opponent pisses me off. I want to build my base and fortify with massive armies, not build 6 2nd level protoss and zerg the other base ftw. I dont think Ill be able to pass it off for the single player campaign that lets me do what I like to do in RTS.

I'm on now. Come play.

As for rushes, I think they've done a great job of lessening the effectiveness of that. They'll still work on anyone who tries to tech too fast while ignoring defense, but not against anyone who's had practice preparing for them and who scouts to see what the opponent is doing.

Triz wrote:

rock and roll racing was awesome on SNES.

It was ok but the similar R.C. ProAm on the NES was a much more fun experience.

No, sir. Rock & Roll Racing was much better. Plus there was the track editor. Good times. Lost Vikings was a ton of fun, too. Another Blizzard gem.

On a side note, who wants to try Starcraft II who wasn't going to preorder? I have an extra beta key. You gotta actually get on and play, though. I'm not gonna give it to someone who plays one game, loses, and goes on crying about how terrible the game is because it wasn't designed to let people win by random chance or button mashing.

ok I just repaired my gaming pc (motherboard failed) adn am finally running Starcraft 2 in all its glory. Damn this game is awesome. Antilles Im sure you picked it up. Let me know if you want to real friend me so you can harrass me when Im in world of warcraft instead of playing SC2.

Funny thing, actually- my new gaming PC is not working right at all and so is now with HP's repair shop in Texas. It's like when my Wii died, except this was a new (refurbed) computer and the service is nowhere near as good, though at least they don't charge me extra for it.

f course I have SC2. Let's friend-up. I'l be playing... uhh.. maybe next week sometime?

Also, I got a new SSD to go with my gaming PC. If you kniw what a SSD is, you're probably jealous. If you don't... well, I'm tired of typing, now. Maybe later.

we can compare specs on our gaming rig and decide who should be jealous of who if youd like.

I said nothing about specs. My machine isn't top of the line, though it's more than sufficient to play anything that's out. The SSD, though, will do things for it that no amount of RAM or CPU or GPU power can.

Not many people have them, though, because they can't get past just how expensive they are compared to traditional magnetic hard drives. It's not something that should make a big difference gameplay-wise, but it works wonders for load times for games and, more especially, everthing in Windows in general.

to be clear, I wasnt trying to flash you my epeen. I just think while improved loading is nice I dont think its as important as graphics and preformance in games. Running SC2 as it defaults to ultra everything was so much nicer than my laptop chugging and getting popups that lowering the graphics from low to lowest would improve preformance haha.

No arguments there. Still, once you've got all that, the only place to go to improve performance is the hard drive. I got a great deal on a great drive, otherwise even I wouldn't go there. If you look at your "Windows Experience" score, or whatever that's called that Windows 7 has built in, most any gaming PC's score is equal to its HDD score, since the overall score is equal to the weakest component.

For me, the performance improvement is only the icing. It's the part that makes it fun. The real reason I could justify it to my wife is its reliability and longevity. (160 years mean time to failure? Whaaaaat?) I've had terrible luck with hard drives in the past. I'm tired of it. I can't wait until SSDs inevitably replace HDDs, since they're superior in every conceivable way outside of price. (And that is dropping.)

yeah my pc windows 7 score is a 6.2...because of the HDD. If it was based on everything else It would be a 7.9.

Id probably get a SSD if I could get one with a decent size. price isnt worth the storage IMO. Cause Im still relying on a HDD even if I had a SSD.

No, one doesn't buy them for the storage. Here's the great deal I got:

(Same exact drive, but the second one has kit for installing it in your desktop and cloning your hard drive.)

With Kit

Without Kit

The idea is to use them in conjunction with a regular hard drive. The standard HDD is for storage and unimportant programs. The 64GB this drive has is more than enough for Windows 7 and your most used programs. The above deal has pretty big mail-in rebates, but the rebates are only if you buy them by Saturday. You're looking for $100 and free shipping for the one without the kit and only $15 more for the kit. Crazy good for SSD, especially since it's a high-quality Kingston drive with great reviews.

This is a big reason why I don't game much on PC's. Too much money has to be poured in to enjoy the games the way they were meant to be played.

Sorry for the interjection. I'll leave now.

Streex wrote:

This is a big reason why I don't game much on PC's. Too much money has to be poured in to enjoy the games the way they were meant to be played.

Sorry for the interjection. I'll leave now.

wrong...