Yeah, it has been almost two weeks. Rather than raking in more loses in Starcraft, I went to Barcelona to attend Microsoft Tech-Ed EMEA 2008. I would rather have been at BlizzCon, but expecting my employer to pay for that, was probably unrealistic!
At the conference I didn't get much time to follow the Starcraft scene, but I did manage to pick up Teamliqiud's huge review of Starcraft II as per BlizzCon. If you read just one thing about BlizzCon I think you should read that.
So did I return to rainy Denmark to find a vibrant Starcraft community? It does not seem so. Most people and most Blizzard websites seems to be fairly silent these days. Probably locked down in the recent release of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King. I'm not going to join that for now, but instead spend some time practicing the skills I obviously don't have ;-).
Tomorrow BlizzCon 2008 opens. I try not to get to exited about it, but it is hard to keep down my excitement as the opening hours gets closer. So what am I looking forward to? Mostly any announcements regarding Starcraft II of course. Back in June at the Blizzard 2008 Worldwide Invitational in Paris, there was a lot of information, but not a lot of new information. I hope it is better this time around. The only thing I am sure of though, is that they are going to talk more about the single player campaign of Starcraft II. Not a high priority for me.
But then we probably get a few fansites' reports on how the game play is. Last time around the reports were, that Protoss were close-to-done and fun to play, Terrans felt complete, but somewhat lacking and that Zerg had quite a long way to go yet. I'm hoping that both the Terran and Zerg faction is improved to the next level by now.
There is also a classic Starcraft: Brood War tournament at the exhibit. 6 Koreans vs an American and an Italian. The American IdrA is currently playing in Korea, but don't think neither of them have a chance of surviving first round. In the consolation bracket they are not going to face each other, which means they will get only two macthes and then be out. fOrGG is currently the highest ranked player (5) in the tournament, but I am not sure that necessarily means that he will win. For some reason I like Nada (15) and Jangbi (12) better. Unfortunately they have to face each other in round one. I don't know if it is significant that there are 4 Terrans, 2 Protoss and 2 Zerg players. Quite heavily biased, I'd say.
And the rest of the event? Sure, they will talk about World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King and Diablo III. Nothing I am overly exited about.
We had a discussion at work today. One of my Russian co-workers told how everyone at his university played Starcraft exclusively for a period of two years. I basically did the same except me not being in college at the time. The third in our conversation had never heard of Starcraft and wanted to talk about World in Conflict! I'm stunned.
I have never played World in Conflict and I guess it is an okay game, but it is symptomatic of the difference between gamers who play games to get a set experience and gamers who play games because they offer an opportunity to dive into a game to learn to master it. It is the difference between role-playing that you command armies to the graphics and setting of the game just being a metaphor to help the player learn the underlying game mechanics.
And some people do not play to win. They want a game that gives them progress and a sense of accomplishment regardless of the level of their skill at the game. I want to be owned by the game or my opponent if I do not go out of my way to win!
Now, there is nothing wrong with playing games casually and to do a bit of role-playing too. I do that from time to time. I just bought Spore for example (and that is a shitty game, but that was not my point) to get exactly that kind of experience. But I really like the hard core game experience too and it has given me so many moments of joy over the last 10 to 12 years. I appreciate it a lot.
So I reinstalled my computer and suddenly the sound is not always working when playing Starcraft. That is annoying. I did play a few 3v3 on (regular) Hunters just see if I could diagnose the issue. One of the games were with 2 really good allies against 3 really good opponents. We were being raped due to my suckiness and my allies were discussing the n00b (aka me) on their team. Rating my ability to control my units, expand and manage my base. Extremely rude and humiliating. And I was playing without sound too.
I tried to install Starcraft on my laptop and the sound works, but it is almost impossible to use the keyboard effectively in the game on the laptop. It won't work out for competitive playing.
Then I installed Warcraft III (both Reign of Chaos and The Frozen Throne) on my desktop computer and it has no sound problems at all. Quite puzzling. I then finished the human campaign in RoC and a few games against the computer. Starcraft is a way better game than Warcraft III, but it is hard to deny the many minor features that Warcraft III got right: Like the sound working! and automatic match making.
Tillerman just posted some old Warcraft III video commentaries. They are insanely funny, so go watch them. His Scottish accent is not very easy to understand (for me), but it is part of the experience ;-).
In the four-on-four game he plays the worst ally you could ever get. Funny, as long as you where not in the game yourself.
Right now in Paris, at the Blizzard World Wide Invitational, there is a Starcraft tournament being played. The participants consists of Korean pros and some non-Koreas as well. It is half and half. The Koreans are not even currently the very best, althoug sAviOr, Sea)Shield or Stork are exactly bad either. The fourth Korean player is Siz)Kal, and I really don't know anything about him.
After the first round was played only Koreans went on to second round. All non-Koreans were sent to the losers bracket! I think that it is very telling of the difference in level in Korea and outside. Players like Dreiven and ToT)Mondragon( have a reasonable reputation in the western community and they lost!
In the losers bracket IdrA has advanced to second round, but he plays for eSTRO, so he could perhaps be considered half a Korean.
And in other news from WWI: Blizzard announced Diablo III was in development. Yawn!
I haven't really been playing online poker in a long time. I had a brief stint as a low-level poker player, back when there was something called pokerchamps.com. It no longer seems to be there.
Recently I discovered Tillerman's blog. He was once a top notch Starcraft (and later Warcraft III) player, but he, like many other western pros found out that playing poker was more lucrative. Finding his blog made me remember the good old days on Kali playing Warcraft II and then later transitioning to Starcraft. If he could make a killing at Poker, then so could I.
I created a new account at PokerStars. I don't know why I chose them -- I just did. I played a few games with fun-money and then entered a free roll tournament. I may suck at Poker, but it is nice to know, that so do many, many others
I may not be a pro like Tillerman, who confidently play the $2500/$5000 cash games, but in a free roll, I can be king too. In my first tournament I made it to the top 10% leaving more than 6000 players behind me. I admit that I then got bored an threw my stack away, yet again proving that I suck -- even at poker, where suckage seems to be pretty common.
